White Walls

by HMC

  They made their way to his office and Green politely offered Jade a seat. He seemed confident in her being there – as if he knew she’d eventually return. The room was exactly as Karl had described. Her palms were sweaty and she shook slightly, but this wasn’t from fear. It was from anger. It was extremely difficult not to jump across the table and wrap her hands around Dr. Clancy Green’s chicken neck.

  This part of her plan was a little vague and she had to hope things would go her way. He poured out the contents of her knapsack onto the table before them. This seemed like a stupid move, considering there could’ve been a gun inside. She would just have to reach out, grab it and shoot him quicker than he could react. Green had too much confidence in himself. He was driven by ego.

  Falling out with a clatter, the contents of Jade’s bag made Green frown.

  ‘Peculiar.’ He pawed each item carefully. ‘You brought two flashlights, a mobile phone and some rope. Intended to tie me up I suspect. What’s this?’ He picked some of the items up and threw them back down, nonchalantly. ‘Chewing gum, bandages, several whiteboard markers and a lighter. Wait, you’re going to set me on fire? Really Jade, is this how you prepare yourself for war?’

  She stared at him blankly.

  ‘Perhaps the meds I gave you did more to your mind than I thought.’ He smirked.

  ‘Let my patients go.’

  ‘Your patients? You mean my patients. Where are your little friends?’ Green picked up his office phone, before Jade could respond to his question.

  He barked down the line and Jade could guess who the listener was. ‘The agents and the brother are on their way to the hospital, or they’re here somewhere. Sort them out. If you kill them all without fuss, I’ll give you a very large bonus.’ He hung up.

  Jade had been careful leaving the hotel on her own, in case the trackers had been following her. Surely it was only a matter of time before they got to her. But that didn’t matter anymore. She was where she needed to be. Also, if Grady and Ayrah had protected Angus last time, they could do it again.

  Green glared at her.

  ‘Never mind, they won’t be bothering us. Whatever little plan you have hatching, just know that when we kill your brother, Angus, it will be on your head. Just as it is that your police friend Travis is now under our care.’

  She wouldn’t let him deter her, but she felt terrible. ‘Are my patients dead?’

  ‘Mostly not. However, we disposed of the agent. Much too dangerous.’

  ‘Disposed of him?’

  ‘It’s not hard to kill a man sleeping, Jade. Oh, and your little friend, Morty? He won’t be, let’s say, enjoying your company so much anymore.’

  It wasn’t hard to feign shock when you felt it. Morty was so young and Owen, too.

  Then again, he could be lying to her.

  ‘Who else?’

  Oddly, this angered Green. ‘You think I purposely hurt people? You know nothing. You are small-minded, Jade. People like you go around thinking you understand how the world works. But all you truly do is regurgitate other people’s bullshit. You have no mind of your own. You define and redefine, until your convoluted ideals are laughable, and you have convinced yourself that you know everything.’ The man before her was delusional. He tortured others without regret and absolutely believed that he had never really hurt anyone.

  She wondered whether he’d become a psychologist purely to cure himself. Or maybe he’d lost it over the years. For a nanosecond, Jade pitied him.

  The phone rang and Green flinched. He picked it up and in that moment, Jade took her chance. She grabbed the flashlight off the table and aimed it at Dr. Green’s head.

  ‘What’s this?’ He held the receiver to his ear, not really listening to the person on the other end.

  ‘This is a flashlight that shoots .410 shotgun shells. Have your phone conversation carefully, Green,’ she whispered.

  ‘Ah yes?’ he spoke into the phone. ‘Sorry, I was distracted. No, no coffee just yet, thank you.’ He hung up and waited. Jade used her other hand to grab the second torch. She emptied the bullets in front of him, just to make sure Green understood she was really holding a gun up to his face. ‘It would do a hell of a lot of damage at this range, don’t you think?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Jade put her wares back into her bag except for the rope.

  ‘Put your hands out.’ The doctor complied and she twisted the rope around his wrists, tightly. She sat the torch next to her on the desk and began to tie a proper knot, knowing full well that if Green went for the gun, she’d have no qualms about shooting him. Jade bound him tight, with a knot that her brother had made her practise as a little girl. She then bent down from a side angle, so that he couldn’t kick her, and tied his ankles together. The phone on his desk was bulky, so she found some scissors in his office desk and cut the cord. Oddly familiar.

  ‘So are you going to shoot me? You know, I wouldn’t have thought you would have the guts to do this, Jade. But after the little stunt you pulled on me with the needle, I see you’re a changed woman. That’s because of me you know.’

  She knew where this was going.

  ‘You’re a better person because of me. Look at you. Look how strong you’ve become.’

  Jade slapped Green hard across the face. It felt good.

  ‘I’m going to burn you alive now, Doctor. In fact I’m going to burn your little hospital to the ground.’ His cheek was instantly red and she thought she might finally see fear in his eyes, but no, there was still nothing. She would make him afraid.

  ‘What about your friends, Jade? You wouldn’t hurt them, would you?’

  ‘A small sacrifice to make.’ She was nearly ready now.

  ‘When you burn it all, you’ll have no proof. The hospital has all the data. Why would you destroy it?’

  ‘We have several witnesses ready to testify.’ It was partly true. Karl’s letter and her own statement, along with all of the evidence, was enough to take him down.

  None of that would matter though, after what she was about to do. Jade had never believed in revenge before this. She wondered how much trouble she was going to get into after it all went down.

  That is, if she made it out herself.

  Jade took the lanyard from around his neck and reached under the table to take the spare that was stuck to the bottom. Another one of Karl’s tip offs.

  ‘So no one can get in or out without these cards? What a shame you didn’t trust anyone enough to give them a spare. It seems you’re in more trouble than you realise, Clancy.’ Jade watched him squirm. ‘While you wait here, to die, I want you to think about all of the people whose lives you’ve destroyed. When we expose your dirty little secrets to the world, your life’s work will be a scar on the face of medical research. Everything you’ve ever worked on will become null and void. No one will study you, except to observe what a disgrace to medicine looks like.’

  Now he looked scared. Jade left the office, shut the door behind her and activated the lock.

  Smoke billowed up underneath Green’s door.

  She really was going to burn the place to the ground! He wriggled and felt the ropes loosen slightly, but there was no way he was going to be able to free himself – not in time, anyway.

  Green’s door was locked from both sides. There were no smoke alarms or emergency evacuation procedures. It had all been designed that way. He had designed it that way.

  There was screaming echoing down the hallways, as more and more smoke filled the office. He coughed and spluttered.

  It was working. Dr. Jade Thatcher was evacuating his building, patients and all. He thought he could hear people rushing past and they were shouting to each other. She had known that he would’ve let them all burn; he would’ve locked them all in and let them die, before anyone discovered his precious secrets. Now it was too l
ate and he couldn’t get to them.

  Clancy Green was devastated. His work was everything to him. Would it all be reduced to stories in the tabloids that would discount his research, all of it accurate, as inhuman torture? If his methods were frowned upon, then his findings would be deemed useless.

  It was the worst thing that could happen.

  He wanted to scream for someone to save him, but it would have been for naught. No one could get through that door without breaking it down and who would stop and bother doing that? The doctor was no longer sure that he even wanted to be saved. He would burn here, along with everything he’d built. He’d rather that than having to face a world without his work.

  Faces rushed past her in a blur, as people raced down the halls. It could be that patients were left behind, debilitated, but that didn’t matter to her. Jade found it difficult not to laugh out loud as she watched Green’s hard work, run out the doors. She wondered exactly what he was thinking now, whether he was suffering or not.

  The door to the outside was open for them all, and they fled to it, afraid for their lives. Staff as well as patients helped each other towards the exits that were usually difficult to penetrate. The smoky air was familiar to her, but she wasn’t afraid of it this time.

  Jade made her way further into the infirmary, persuading staff to open doors that they would never usually open. Whether the staff helped the patients or not, it didn’t matter. But in the end she saw with her own eyes that people are people, and didn’t want to be responsible for another person’s death, even if their job description required it of them. The only person who would have been stopping her from freeing everyone would’ve been Green, and he was ... all tied up. She laughed to herself.

  The fire brigade would be here soon and if her friends made the call, the media, too.

  It was done. Everything she wanted to implement had gone swimmingly. She would have to let the rest fall into place.

  When it seemed that every person had evacuated the building Jade Thatcher let herself fall into a chair. She closed her eyes, coughed in the smoky air, and waited. The trackers could be coming for her. She had killed one of theirs. Maybe they would find her here in all the smoke, but Jade was too tired to get up again.

  ‘Ma’am. Wake up, Ma’am.’ Someone was shaking her shoulder. It was a man in uniform, a large helmet and a big yellow jumpsuit. She had a terrible headache.

  ‘You need to be taken upstairs,’ he said, helping her out of the chair.

  Jade rubbed her eyes.

  I’m not dead!

  The trackers hadn’t come for her.

  The fireman spoke again. He wasn’t happy. ‘Was it you who set off all these smoke bombs, Ma’am? Do you understand that it’s a serious offence?’

  She laughed at him and almost choked.

  The fireman turned to his partner. ‘She’s delirious, let’s get her upstairs.’

  Jade overheard them muttering to each other as they made their way through underground Maine, with Jade squished between them. They held her underneath her arms, like she was a casualty, and spoke as if she couldn’t hear them.

  ‘I’ve never seen whiteboard marker smoke bombs, have you?’

  ‘Mate, there’s not much I haven’t seen,’ his partner chuckled.

  ‘Very clever. Can you believe all of this is down here?’

  ‘I heard one of the patients outside going on about how they were doing some type of creepy mind experiments down here.’

  Jade grinned. Her plan had worked and her legs felt like jelly as the fireman walked her through the perfectly intact research facility. The entire ordeal had taken a lot out of her and there was so much more to come.

  As they walked past Green’s office, she saw that his door was ajar. There was no one inside. Jade had to smile at the thought of him being saved from his room. She imagined him walking out, expecting a blaze, only to see that all was well. His work meticulously intact, completely exposed for the world to be disgusted by.

  Perhaps he had come to terms with dying, but she’d never have allowed him to get away with it all so easily. Green would have to face his demons and explain to an appalled world what he’d done. He would have to live with the shame forever.

  Jade passed by several policemen and women as they entered the facility. They were all chattering, including her friend, Agent Grace Burns. The older woman glared at her.

  Oh, you’re welcome. You didn’t want to do your job, so I did it for you, you dried up old bitch.

  Grace continued to stand back and watch as one of the policemen took Jade from the firemen and arrested her. She’d known it was coming. Jade could only hope that Angus, Grady and Ayrah were okay and that they would make sure that wherever she was taken, she’d be safe.

  As Jade moved out into the open air she saw that her brother had done her proud. It looked as if he had contacted every person in Fairholmes, including the television and newspapers. The faces all blurred together as reporters gathered around her on the stairs.

  However, there was only one thing on her mind.

  Jade scoured the area for her patients and prayed that she’d not been too late. Moving around the hospital she’d not seen a single one of them. The downstairs lair had been a big place and the doctor became more and more worried. As the officer guided Jade down the steps and to a police car, they were ambushed by the paparazzi.

  ‘She IS alive!’ A young, female reporter rushed over, jabbering into a microphone. They stood in front of a cameraman, who held a large portable on his shoulder. ‘Dr. Jade Thatcher, who was supposed to have died in the Rowan’s Home fire, stands before us today! She is also a victim of the Maine Hospital ordeal. Dr. Thatcher, please tell us where you’ve been and what they did to you down there.’ These reporters were quick and Jade was relieved they would uncover the story for her. It wouldn’t be necessary for her to say a word until she was in a courtroom.

  Several other reporters rushed over to her and almost bowled the others over, along with the policeman. He was trying hard to steer her along in the cuffs, but was having a tough time of it.

  The officer was pushy and frantic, and that made her worry. As Karl had said to her before, trust no one.

  Jade looked around. Where was Grady? Where was Angus?

  The crowd heaved towards her and she was becoming claustrophobic. There was a possibility that the man behind her would be taking her to the trackers and if she didn’t do something, it might be too late.

  ‘Angus! Angus, where are you? Angus!’ Jade shrieked. She didn’t care how she looked on the cameras.

  For her efforts, she received a punch to the kidney.

  ‘Shut up,’ the arresting officer hissed.

  Full-fledged panic set in. Surely he wouldn’t shoot her here, in front of all of these people. She’d come too far to give up now. She felt the gun biting into her and feeling that it was her only chance, screamed bloody murder. She kicked and pulled and yelled as loudly as she could.

  The news cameras were all over her and the crowd went into a frenzy.

  Just as Jade was about to be crammed into the back of a patrol car, a man shouted out for them to stop. He flipped his wallet open to reveal a badge and shoved it in the face of the unsuspecting officer. My Hero.

  ‘Special Agent Grady. This prisoner is under my jurisdiction.’ His face was bright red. She was lucky that he’d spotted her.

  The policeman ignored the agent and continued to try to push Jade into the car, until Agent Grace Burns appeared.

  Uh oh. Guess we’re about to find out whose side she’s really on.

  ‘Let her go with Grady, Sargent,’ she ordered.

  The cop removed Jade’s cuffs immediately. He pushed her to Grady, and then stormed off. Jade memorised his face.

  ‘You’ll have to make a statement,’ Grace said directly to Jade in a softer tone as they
walked together. Oh please, not with you.

  ‘I suppose you’ve already considered that and know what you’re going to say?’

  Jade nodded.

  ‘Self-defence, then?’

  The doctor thought for a moment. ‘Yes, it was self-defence.’

  ‘The reason you went into the hospital was because I told you that we could do nothing about saving your friends. You knew some of the police were corrupt and you felt that if you didn’t do this, they all could’ve been killed.’

  Jade nodded. Where was this going?

  ‘So are you saying that you took your brother’s bag, knowing that it had the smoke bombs in it?’

  Jade nodded.

  ‘You are also saying that you didn’t take the other weapons out, as the thought didn’t even cross your mind. You pulled the weapon only when Green physically attacked you, and because you realised they were available to you at the time. There was no premeditation involved. Then, you decided it would be safest to tie him up.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jade was stunned.

  ‘It’s funny. Green said the same thing.’ Agent Grace Burns curled her lips up into what Jade assumed was supposed to be a smile. She turned and walked away towards the journalists. Jade realised she now had a friend in a very high place and that was what she was going to need.

  Grady said, ‘Come with me.’

  Before Jade could get another word out of him, he pointed a finger for her to take a look.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  Gathered in a small circle were Sam, George and Freddy. Although they looked haggard, they were alive, and Jade had never been so happy to see them.

  She turned to Grady. ‘What about Agent Owen Taylor and Constable Travis Bourke?’ Jade would never forgive herself if she’d got the constable killed. He was the only family Sam had left.

  ‘Both a little worse for wear, but okay. They’re in the hospital. The good part of the hospital. After we found out you were all right, I sent Angus and Ayrah in with them, ’til support arrived. We won’t be able to leave any of you unprotected for a while. Your brother would make a good agent, by the way.’