by Krystal Wade
He watched her, his brown eyes bright and wide, drinking her in as if she were some sort of amazing creature, quite unsettling at the very least but to be expected by someone meant to figure her out. “Someone very dear to me drew that.”
Must be very dear for him to go out of his way to hang the drawing in his office, especially since the art matched nothing else.
After a few minutes of silent watching between Rose and the doctor, Nurse Judy ran in with a tray and apologized profusely, letting him in on the fact that they’d taken a tour and forgotten about food.
“Please don’t allow that to happen again.” Dr. Underwood waved her on, then settled his gaze on Rose as she took small sips from the glass of water and nibbled on the bread. “I apologize. Judy means well, but sometimes she gets ahead of herself.” He opened the file sitting in the center of his desk and picked up a golden pen from an inkwell. A gaudy antique as pretentious as his door.
Rose couldn’t balance the painting with the rest of him, so she began looking around for other oddities and found a small purple stone, smooth and polished, with a black line dividing it in half, sitting on the edge of his desk. Another spark of color that didn’t belong.
“Let’s start with a few easy things. Do you know why you’re here?”
Squeezing her eyes closed and putting the painting and stone out of her mind, Rose thought back to the night that landed her here. She and Josh and Megan had been at Megan’s before she left for work, talking about what to dress up as for Halloween. Megan wanted to go as a sexy nurse, the same thing she’d gone as the year before. Josh wanted to wear camouflage and hide behind bushes so he could scare people as they passed by. Rose didn’t want to go. They’d teased her and teased her about it, calling her names for thinking she was too old and mature for trick-or-treating.
“I’m almost a year older than you are, and I’m still going,” Megan had said, hands propped on her hips, her waitress nametag reflecting light into Rose’s eyes.
“Maybe that’s the problem.” Rose had been sitting on the couch, trying to work on a piece she wanted to submit to the Art Institute for a summer internship. Out of the three of them, she was the only one who had aspirations of something greater than this, something greater than Megan’s flipping pancakes for tourists who made their way through the national park every year, the hikers, the campers, the people who only came for the food and games.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Megan marched to the door and put on her dingy white tennis shoes.
Rose closed her sketchpad and put away her charcoals, no longer feeling the glimmer of inspiration to draw anything, something she’d been getting used to since the last Big Fight with her mother. “Nothing.”
“Right,” Josh said, pitching his voice just a tad bit higher. “Nothing.”
“I’ll go.” Rose grabbed her bag from next to the sofa and stuffed her supplies inside.
But before she could make it out of the house, Megan grabbed Rose’s arm and pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry. I get it. You want more. But not everyone wants the same things, and sometimes you have to enjoy the small things in life. Don’t leave. We’ll stay up all night and watch movies, just like we’d planned. My parents won’t be home. It’ll be fun.”
Opening her eyes, now, Rose gripped the wooden arms of the chair and squeezed as tight as she could, meeting Dr. Underwood’s gaze.
“Well . . . ?” His voice contained a level of patience tinged with caution, as if he didn’t want to scare Rose off. His eyes were wide open and earnest, curious, and his gold pen hovered above a blank page in a file ready to be filled with All Things Rose Briar. “You blanked out there for quite some time, so I’ll ask again: Do you know why you’re here?”
“Yes,” Rose said between gritted teeth. “I know why I’m here. My friends thought it would be funny to dress me up after I fell asleep to make it look like I’d committed suicide. Then they took a picture and taped it to the front door of my parents’ house with a note that said ‘she ran out of meds.’”
A joke. A joke landed Rose in this place.
And because her parents were so uptight about every little thing she did and said and . . . because of them she was here.
“That’s a start.” Dr. Underwood scribbled so the page was no longer blank, so he and everyone else who looked at this file would have one piece of the puzzle of Rose Briar. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“No.” She fought the urge to draw her knees to her chest and wrap her arms around them. “There’s nothing to elaborate.”
“All right.” Dr. Underwood’s nostrils flared as he flipped through pages attached to the front of the file, scanning down them with his index finger. “Let’s talk about some of your responses to the questionnaires. Says here your greatest fear is being locked in here forever, but surely that cannot be true, since you’ve only been a guest of ours not even twenty-four hours. Please share your fears from before you came to arrive here.”
“I don’t see how any of that matters anymore, do you?” Staring at the doctor, Rose shut down. She saw him and knew he was there, but she wouldn’t give her parents the satisfaction of answering his questions. She wouldn’t cave in and tell him all her problems so he could report her condition back to them.
“Miss Briar . . . .” Underwood cautioned, picking up the purple stone from the corner of his desk and twirling it between his fingers.
She didn’t respond, and he kept rubbing that stone, leaning back in his chair and appraising her for several long moments before he finally sat up and said, “I’ll allow this once, but tomorrow you speak. Now, go on about your evening before I change my mind.”
Rose went without looking back.
3
Going about an evening in an unfamiliar place with people who are insane is probably the greatest punishment any doctor could deliver for not answering questions. And that was exactly how Rose found herself the remainder of the evening. With nothing to do and no one to talk to, she wandered the long, narrow hallways, staying away from patients socializing in the common room, and took inventory of the amount of doors the main level of the building had to offer.
Fifty-two, most locked. The doors were a combination of metal or wood with rectangular slats of clear glass above that revealed no light on the other side. Unoccupied, Rose assumed, like much of the building. The few rooms she gained entry to were empty, desolate spaces with barred windows impossible to open. Despite nurses rushing to and fro and patients drifting around, the institute felt abandoned, lacking life, friendships, laughter . . .
Megan and Josh.
Rose was alone. Bored. Afraid. Angry.
Her thoughts repeatedly landed on the two people she never expected to let her down. What happened to them? Why didn’t they come? After Rose cycled through all the possibilities—car accidents, winning the lottery and jetting off to some foreign country, severe cases of the flu—she forced her mind to other things. Her feet were so cold on the hardwood floors of the old drafty building, how they would be in the attic of her home in the winter. Stephan and Leah Briar must be happy now that their precious black sheep of a daughter, whose only crime was enjoying art, was out of that damn attic and finally getting the help she needs.
Megan and Josh would probably laugh about this situation if they were here. Hell, they’d probably make up problems to tell the doctor, just for kicks.
Rose had no idea when she’d seated herself at the round table in Hall A, or when the guy with the counting problem and bruises had decided to take a seat next to her, but there he was with his shiny black eye, and there she was, wringing her palms and leaning on her elbows.
“Hey,” Rose said, feeling stupid and idiotic for even trying to start a conversation with someone in a mental institution. “My name’s Rose.”
The guy didn’t respond. He merely stared at her the way she would a model in Life Drawing class, his intense brown eyes hooded by his forehead and lined by thick black lashes, soa
king her in, memorizing her, making Rose feel raw and exposed. Every now and then his jaw clenched and popped. So much emotion simmering just below the surface, so much insanity. He’d make a perfect model himself with all that silent misery, hair swept to the side, broad shoulders and muscles stretching the sleeves of his white, cotton shirt, muscles he’d never get to use because he was stuck in here. Rose could almost envision him in one of her drawings, this guy standing in the background, still, hands in his pockets, staring at a girl in the foreground.
Shaking her head, Rose snapped out of her daydream. Drawing was part of the past that no longer mattered.
“Lights out,” Nurse Judy called, startling them both so badly they bumped into the table and left it quaking. She laughed. “Didn’t mean to scare you, dear.”
“It’s okay,” Rose said, rubbing her sore knee. “Keep it up, though, and I’ll have bandages everywhere.”
“My eldest daughter Isabel tells me I’m always sneaking up on her too. I insist she must have a guilty conscious to be so jumpy, but with you, I’m not so sure.” The nurse smiled again, kindly, her eyes glazed over, and Rose knew the woman was thinking about her daughter. “Well, I’ll try to be more careful in the future. But for now, off you go, to your room.”
“Good night,” Rose said to the guy.
But he didn’t respond, not that she expected him to. He gave Judy a long, hard glance, then got up and marched to a door on the opposite side of Hall A. Judy didn’t pay any attention to him as she wrapped her arm around Rose and ushered her off to bed, holding out a pill cup.
“Here you go. Meds and rest, Rose. Meds and rest. The best thing for you, aside from being open and honest with Dr. Underwood.” The nurse smiled in a way that said she knew open and honest hadn’t occurred earlier today.
“You heard?” Rose wondered exactly who was in the inner circle when it came to her private life. Everyone? Just the doctor? Obviously not. The orderlies too?
“I heard.” Judy nodded at the medicine cupped in Rose’s palm. “Go on. Take those. They’ll help take the edge off.”
The pills slid down easily, then Rose muttered goodnight and crawled into her bed and under the covers. She jolted when the door clicked closed, as if a death sentence had been delivered, and shivers shook her body nearly all night long.
Which made sleep nearly impossible. Every click of the baseboard heaters reminded her of the heaters in the attic/art space at home, the space she and her mother spent days, weeks, years in. Every rumble on the floor located over Rose’s, as nurses and orderlies walked around or pushed carts, sounded like a drum banging in her head. This place was unfamiliar, and she needed Megan or Josh or someone she could talk to, someone she could whisper with about the doctor and his odd painting and his odd stone, someone she could try to make sense of the counting guy with. But Rose wouldn’t have a friend for at least a week, even if Megan or Josh could find it in their small hearts to show up. And no way would her father or mother risk their reputations by showing their faces here any time soon. Nope. Rose was stuck with a week of solitary confinement with no chance of company.
Seven days of staring at the speaker in the ceiling, right next to a water stain that was sort of shaped like a face. The face had a long nose, a mouth, two eyes, ears, and a protruding forehead.
Just like Dr. Underwood’s.
Rose kept watching it, her mind filling in the blanks where the skin should be, the eyes blinking and taking on life, peeling off the ceiling tile and drifting down toward her. Down, down, down until the eyes were three-dimensional and only an inch from Rose’s.
Heart pounding wildly, she lifted the covers to her chin, ready to hide beneath them if she had to. But the fluorescents blinked on, making the face disappear, and then they blinked off and it was back. Dr. Underwood stared at her now, a fully formed Dr. Underwood with arms and hands and legs and a torso.
“What’s your greatest fear, Rose?” His voice ricocheted around the room and bounced off the walls, around her brain. Underwood sounded a million miles away and very close all at the same time.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
“Why are you here, Rose? Rose? Rose? Why are you here? You need to be honest with me if I’m to help you.” He reached out to her with fingers as long and knobby as a witch’s. Rose backed away, against the headboard, on the opposite side of the bed.
She couldn’t get away, couldn’t move fast enough, and he poked at her cheek, leaving a searing pain scorching it.
Isn’t real. Isn’t real. Rose whimpered and pulled up the sheets to cover her head, pressing her cool fingers against her hot, hot cheek, and then the light was gone. Off. Out.
She lowered the covers and found the room empty, the buzz of the fluorescents filling the space with so much noise she covered her ears, afraid the drums might burst, or she might have permanent damage like people who stood too close to speakers at clubs.
“Hello? Dr. Underwood?” Rose called out, unable to hear her own voice over the cadence of sounds filling the room. She wondered where he went, if he were really here in the first place. “Please. Make it stop. Turn them off.”
No response. Only more buzzing, the sound of a million bees all poised to attack.
A flutter of wings brushed against Rose’s wrist. She glanced at it and found a tiny bumble bee, with its bulbous, furry yellow-and-black-striped body resting there on her skin, stinger so close.
Shaking her arm, Rose jumped out of bed, bolted toward the door, and flipped off the lights, wanting everything to just shut up and go away. Leave her alone. Let her rest.
This isn’t real.
But the lights wouldn’t turn off.
She tried the switch five more times, ten, fifteen, before movement out in the hall caught her attention.
“Hello?” Rose called again, turning the handle and yanking. Locked. Of course. “Please. Dr. Underwood, if you’re out there, I need your help. Something’s wrong with me. I don’t feel well. Help!”
A tall, dark figure cloaked in black rose from beneath the table where she and the guy had sat earlier. Oh so tall. The figure stood there, unmoving, the cloak billowing as if being blown by a breeze.
Rose rubbed her eyes. Not real, just a dream, she kept telling herself, but she didn’t feel like she was asleep. She didn’t feel like she could wake up either.
Something slammed into her door, and Rose peered through the glass but was greeted by darkness. Complete and utter darkness. But darkness couldn’t move, spin, or have glowing red eyes.
Rose backed away from the door as the handle began trembling under the weight of the figure. She bumped into her bed frame, then switched directions and barricaded herself inside the bathroom, breathing heavily, sweat trailing the back of her neck.
Over and over something beat against the door, shaking her to her core, rattling every nerve, until heaviness weighted her eyes so badly she could no longer keep them open.
“Rose! Rose, you open that door this instant!” A shrill cry cut through Rose’s tenuous hold on sleep as someone pounded the metal door. “We know you’re in there.”
Yellow light filtered across the floor tiles from beneath the door, and shadows crept back and forth. Someone paced outside the bathroom, the same way her father always paced when Rose and Leah would get into an argument and lock themselves in a room to discuss the situation.
Overcome with exhaustion, Rose slid over so whoever stood on the other side of the door could open it. She wanted a bed, sleep, a pillow, a blanket, and no more attacks in the middle of the night. Two male orderlies shoved their way into the bathroom and hauled her to her feet and toward her bed. They must have been the bulk for the stern-looking nurse standing near the dresser. The young woman fixed her blue eyes on Rose and glared, hands propped on thin hips.
“We came as soon as we heard you screaming. Why wouldn’t you let us in? Why wouldn’t you respond?”
Screaming? The room spun around and around, and Rose collapsed into the
bed before she either passed out or vomited everywhere. “I was just in the bathroom.”
“Yes. I gathered that, considering that’s where you came from. And I can have your door removed if you plan to barricade yourself in there regularly.”
“Guess I didn’t hear you knocking.” The woman’s voice and demeanor and everything about her grated on Rose’s nerves. She preferred Thomas and his snide comments, Martin and his injections, even Judy with her pills over this.
“Want me to grab meds, Vicki?” one of the men asked, his voice closer to the exit than to her bed.
Vicki huffed. “No. Frederick will be here shortly, and he’ll want to have her lucid so she can answer his questions.”
“Frederick?” Rose asked, her fingers cold and soaked with sweat. Every part of her was drenched and shivering and longing for something familiar and warm and friendly. “Who’s Frederick?”
“I am,” another man said. It took a moment for his voice to sink in, but Rose realized Frederick must be Dr. Underwood’s first name. “And I understand you’ve had quite the night.”
She opened her eyes, but the room still spun, and she quickly shut them.
“Make a note in her chart to reduce her dosage by two milligrams, Vicki.” Underwood placed the back of his hand against Rose’s forehead. “And reduce the temperature in here. This is too warm. She’s burning up.” He removed his hand from her head and grabbed her fingers. “Rose, I apologize that your first night hasn’t been so good. Can you tell me what happened?”
Rose didn’t know why, but she found his hand comforting and held onto him tightly as if he could make all the frightening things that happened go away. “I had a nightmare.”
“Do you often have nightmares, or is this something new?” he asked, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles.
Suddenly, Rose didn’t want the comforting touch of the doctor anymore. She didn’t want to tell him her problems or nightmares, and she certainly didn’t need him going and blabbing about this to her parents. She’d never had nightmares before, and the fact they started now showed just how fragile this place had made her. Pulling her hand away and sitting up, Rose took a deep breath and opened her eyes, silently cursing the room for trying to spin.
