Living the Good Death

by Scott Baron

  She studied him again for a moment.

  Do I want out of here? What kind of question is that? Of course I want to get out of here.

  She took the pen and quickly scribbled an illegible signature, starting with a flowing “D” and ending with a quartet of letters that rather resembled “eath.” As she replaced the cap, pushing it home with a click, the clip snapped in her hand, jabbing her finger with a shard of plastic.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed as a drop of blood fell, spattering the page next to her signature.

  “Excellent,” Doctor Vaughan cooed. “I’ll have an orderly come help you shortly. Goodbye, Dorothy. See you soon.”

  Highly unlikely. I’m staying as far away from this place as I can.

  Her clothing had been washed and returned to her room, and she wasted no time quickly dressing and lacing up her boots. She then gathered her things and stared at the door, waiting for the orderly to come discharge her.

  Dorothy’s boot tapped on the shiny linoleum floor impatiently as she waited. Tap-tap-tap-tap, an impatient rhythm hammered out on the scuffed linoleum tiles.

  She had been waiting for nearly a half hour. Her discharge was taking a bit longer than she had anticipated, but upon reflection, and another glance at the clock on the wall as it slowly marked the passage of time, she realized she really hadn’t been waiting for that long at all.

  It was the being ready and then forced to wait that was driving her batty. Long before the orderly finally came to get her, she was fully dressed and ready to go.

  When the man finally opened the door to her room, she looked mostly like her old self, save for the tears in her clothes from her run-in with the bus. As it was, only a few remaining bandages poked through her clothing, visible only if you were looking for them. Aside from those little reminders of her recent accident, she looked otherwise healthy, and something about wearing her own clothes again put her a bit more at ease.

  At least my jacket looks to be in pretty good shape for being run over by a bus, she mused with a little smile.

  The orderly held the door for her, as a gentleman should, and escorted her through the maze of look-alike, sterile, white hallways.

  “This way, miss.”

  As they passed a nurses’ station, a second orderly finished up his conversation and joined them on their walk, falling in and matching her pace.

  They must really want me out of here to give me two guides to make sure I leave. The thought amused her as they approached the hospital lobby.

  The smaller of the two orderlies gently took her by the elbow and steered her away from the lobby and down another hallway.

  “But that was the lobby,” she said, looking back over her shoulder.

  “The discharge exit is this way, miss,” the man replied.

  Finally, after several more twists and turns down featureless hallways, they arrived at a set of double doors. The sign above read, Loading Dock.

  “Hey, are you sure this is the right way to the discharge exit?”

  “Yes, it’s right through here, miss.”

  The orderlies helped her through the exit, each taking hold of an elbow as they approached the automatic doors. Stepping outside, Dorothy realized something was terribly wrong and stiffened in their grasp.

  “Hang on a minute!” she blurted, but the realization came too late. She tried to pull her arms free but found herself held firmly in vise-like grips, wholly at the mercy of the large men.

  The orderlies nearly lifted her off her feet as they swept across the loading dock, then roughly tossed her in the back of a waiting transport truck. The reinforced-steel doors swung shut and locked behind her with a metallic click the moment she was inside. The lone bench seat and thick walls were thinly padded, and a small opaque plexiglass divider separated the driver’s compartment from the back.

  Scanning the interior further, she realized there were no handles, locks, or latches whatsoever on the inside of the passenger compartment.

  She was locked in.

  “Hey, let me out of here!” she yelled, thumping her hand on the plexiglass window. But it was no use. The orderlies were obviously complicit in her abduction, and there had been no one else on the loading dock to hear her cries.

  She was still futilely pounding on the doors as the truck fired up its engine and pulled away.

  CHAPTER 8

  The drive was relatively short, as their destination was well within the city limits, just outside the newly gentrified part of town. So far as Dorothy could tell, they had likely driven no more than five or ten miles from where she’d been swept away by the padded truck. Not that the knowledge would do her any good once she saw where she was being taken.

  The truck rounded a corner and approached an old building, three stories tall and somewhat squat in appearance. Despite its seemingly diminutive size, it nevertheless took up half a small city block, an alleyway separating it from its more traditional neighbors. The facility’s well-lit sign appeared to be the newest part of the place, and even that was fading with age.

  As she watched the thick stones of the wall surrounding the building’s courtyard entry gate grow closer, the illuminated words came into view.

  Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.

  Once a proper medical facility, Camview Psychiatric Hospital had first opened back in the late 1940s when masses of World War II vets came home from the war. The regular facilities already in the area found they couldn’t handle the overload of mental trauma cases, and thus Camview was born.

  From there, the hospital grew in fits and starts as more space was needed. Being situated in an already-developed city, the architects found themselves quite constrained by the lack of available land on which to expand. They had their half of a city block to work with, and nothing more.

  Wings were modernized piecemeal. Large picture windows had been replaced with bars and security screens in the lockdown wings, and large ventilation grates for the growing facility were installed sporadically along the ground-level façade, allowing for modern air-conditioning and heating for the ever swelling numbers of patients.

  The result of all the little additions was something of a ‘Frankenbuilding’ that lacked anything an architect would consider style, but despite its somewhat unsightly appearance, the massive beast served its purpose perfectly.

  The rumbling truck pulled through the large electric gate to the rear courtyard. A few other vehicles were parked in the small lot, but it was otherwise empty.

  Dorothy peered out the thick windows as the truck backed into the loading area and noted that several orderlies even larger than the ones she’d just encountered—if that was possible—and with much more intimidating looks on their faces, were standing in a semicircle, waiting for the vehicle to park.

  She would have wondered at the turnout, but it was pretty obvious why they were all there.

  Intake.

  The doors were opened, and she hesitantly exited the truck, taking in her surroundings.

  “You. Let’s go,” the man with the most keys on his key ring growled.

  Dejectedly, she trudged toward the orderlies.

  “That’s right. You don’t give us any trouble, we won’t give you any.”

  Not likely, she thought as she gauged the men’s nasty leers.

  As they reached out to escort her inside, she pivoted from their grip and bolted for the gate. She was quick and actually evaded them all, moving faster than they’d expected as she shimmied from their grasp. She ran across the loading dock and jumped nimbly to the driveway, making a beeline for the only exit in sight.

  She hadn’t counted on the driver of the truck, who had just exited the cab.

  His massive paw reached out as she ran past and somehow managed to grab her coat as she flew by, yanking it hard, sending her flying backwards off her feet.

  Before she could make a second break for it, she felt the crushing grip of the less-than-amused orderlies haul her up in the air.

  “You can’t
do this! Let me go!”

  Their stony faces showed no reaction whatsoever as they dragged her, struggling, into the building. Dorothy stopped struggling once the large doors slammed shut behind them, locking with a heavy click. She realized fighting wouldn’t help, at least not now.

  Like it or not, she was trapped inside a nuthouse.

  Calm down, pay attention. There’s got to be a way out.

  There wasn’t.

  She was roughly ushered into an empty concrete shower room and left to wait. The walls were painted an uninviting industrial green, streaks of rust leaving great tears of iron running down them where some of the older pipes had corroded. It looked kind of like jail, but not quite. If she was a moviegoer, she’d likely have found that it was rather reminiscent of those places you see in films where inmates get a fistful of delousing powder thrown on them, then are given a fire-hose shower. But she wasn’t a cinema buff, and fortunately, delousing wasn’t on the menu.

  A key rattled in the lock and the door squeaked open, the hinges worn from years of moisture despite regular oiling. Stepping into the damp room, a rather burly female orderly, in a uniform that fit her meaty mass a little too snugly, entered carrying a small pile of folded hospital clothes in her arms.

  “Strip down and put these on,” she said, her square, Germanic jaw flexing as she paused to give her newest charge an unimpressed once-over. “Place your effects in this bag. No personal items are allowed inside the facility. Your items will be held for you in secured storage until such time as you are released from care at Camview. Do you have any questions?”

  Dorothy looked at the grim clothes with distaste.

  “I will do no such thing.”

  The large orderly crossed her arms, her jaw flexing rhythmically as she decided what to do with her troublesome newcomer. She was clearly not impressed.

  “One way or another, you’re putting those on,” the woman said, completely confident in her statement. A nasty smile began to form on her face, and as Dorothy sized her up, she decided now was probably not the time for another smart-ass remark.

  Dressed in her unflattering new psych ward attire, Dorothy found herself ushered rapidly down the maze-like halls of the old building. Passing by nurses’ stations and locked doors between wings, her circuitous path bypassed the off-limits isolation wards until she finally arrived at what appeared to be a reception area. A secretary sat at the lone desk, both gatekeeper and sentry posted in front of a single office.

  The middle-aged woman looked up from her magazine, took note of Dorothy, and nodded at her escort, who pushed the confused girl through the thick wooden door. It closed loudly behind her.

  She surveyed the new environment and realized she was standing in someone’s office.

  Unlike the rest of the run-down facility, this room had a richness to it. The walls were covered in deep mahogany paneling, the tall bookshelves were crammed with an impressive range of thick books, many appearing to be early editions of noted classics.

  A collection of animal heads stared down from their mounts on the wall, sightless marble eyes gazing, yet never blinking.

  Resting to the side of the large oak desk, she noticed a deck of cards and a handkerchief. Something about that struck her as a bit out of place in an obvious power-tripper’s office such as this, yet it also struck her as very familiar, but why?

  Hang on a second, she thought.

  A second was all she got. She heard a flush, then moments later the door to the office’s private bathroom swung open. Doctor Vaughan eyed her as he strode into the room.

  He looked different on his home turf.

  Bigger.

  Tougher.

  Colder.

  Gone were any traces of empathy or kindness as he sized her up with an icy stare. He leisurely walked to his desk and picked up his deck of cards, shuffling them absentmindedly as he stared her down.

  “Sit,” he said, hovering over her.

  She looked at the chair nearby, but decided she’d rather stand.

  Doctor Vaughan was not amused, not one bit.

  “I said sit!” Gone was the calm professional she’d met earlier. His tone was that of a man not even remotely messing around, and she thought it would be wise, at least for the moment, to not rock this particular boat. Slowly, she took a seat.

  “Better.” He walked around his desk, staring at Dorothy with fire in his eyes.

  This one really gets off on this power trip thing.

  He stared for a moment longer, then chuckled at something, amused by a secret joke known only to him. He stopped his rhythmic shuffling, replacing the cards in his hand with a slender file. The doctor opened it with a contented sigh as he lowered himself into his plush leather chair.

  “So, the great and mighty reaper graces us with her presence.”

  “If you know who I am, why did you bring me here?”

  “Oh, please,” he snapped at her, “we’ve had nearly a dozen grim reapers in my facility since I’ve been chief of staff. You could at least try to be original.”

  “But I’m telling the truth. I really am Death.”

  “That’s what they all said.”

  He slowly flipped through the pages in the open file, then stopped at a particular spot that caught his attention, a malevolent little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he pulled out a grainy scan printout for Dorothy to see. The image was an older one, and was rather poor quality, but it appeared to be a slender young woman in dark makeup.

  A girl who looked a lot like Dorothy.

  “Dorothy Maitland,” he read aloud. “Escaped from low-security psychiatric custody in Portland, Oregon, eight weeks ago.” He lowered the page and stared at her. “Long way from home, aren’t you, Dorothy?” he said, looking at her the way a cat would observe a bug as it decided whether to eat it or just crush it for fun.

  “That isn’t me.”

  “And yet there’s quite a resemblance. Same name, even.”

  “It isn’t me.”

  “Fine, play it your way for now. I really don’t care one way or another, but if I catch you trying to run off like you did up in Oregon, you’ll be very sorry you did. I run a drama-free facility, Ms. Maitland, and troublemakers are dealt with quickly and efficiently.”

  Something in his eyes told her he almost wanted her to call his bluff.

  This man is dangerous, she knew in her gut. I need to get out of this place.

  “You can’t keep me here. You have no right.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised what I can do,” he said, a calm sense of power conveyed in his gaze. “I’ve spoken with Doctor Atkins up in Portland,” he continued. “It seems you caused him a lot of trouble up there. Quite a lot. So much, in fact, that after he and I chatted for a bit, he gladly agreed to transfer your state-mandated care to me. Seems you’re just not worth the headache to him. Congratulations, Dorothy, you’re now an official resident of Camview, courtesy of the taxpayers of the state of Oregon.”

  He pushed the red intercom button on his desk.

  “Yes, Doctor Vaughan?” a voice answered.

  He gave Dorothy one final appraising glance, then answered, “We’re done here. Take her.”

  The heavy door swung open and a pair of orderlies stepped in, roughly pulling Dorothy to her feet and out the door.

  There’s got to be a way for me to get out of this place, she thought with increasing worry as she was led down the halls. How can I cross back over from in here?

  They walked quickly, but Dorothy took care to try and note all that she could about her new environment. Of course, the fast pace at which she was being led made it a little tricky as her linebacker-sized escorts hustled her along.

  Most of the rooms she passed were empty, doors ajar, as their residents were either in the dining hall or the recreation room. She also noted that a few of the doors were locked tight, sounds of screaming, ranting, and sobbing leaking past the imperfect soundproofing.

  They continued to march her
along, then paused at a set of large propped- open industrial double doors.

  “Pay attention, newbie. This is where you’ll spend most of your time.”

  Inside, she saw what was obviously the rec room, unless they played ping pong in the dining hall. Drug-addled patients stared into space, while others, less medicated, played ping pong or board games.

  One particular group of patients sat at a nearby table playing a very old Candy Land board game, rings from beverages and unidentifiable stains spattering its playing surface. As Dorothy was marched past them, the group turned to observe her passing, ogling the new girl in the nut house. While they briefly noted Dorothy’s entrance, they were rather engrossed in their game and didn’t really pay more than cursory attention.

  Except for one of them.

  Curtis, a forty-something strawberry blond with a somewhat disheveled bedhead mop of hair, and a seemingly permanent gleam of amusement in his eyes, was different.

  Dorothy fascinated him from the moment he looked up and took notice of their new guest as she was led past. Their eyes met briefly as she walked by. He saw her see him see her, and gave her a conspiratorial little smile and a wink, then returned to his game as Dorothy continued on her way, led by her oversize babysitters.

  “She’s pretty,” Warren, the large man-child with a penchant for knock-knock jokes noted.

  “Not really my cup of tea,” Curtis replied. “But you know what? I think she and I are going to be the best of friends.”

  After what seemed like ages, the long march down the halls finally ended in front of an open door.

  The room inside was painted an institutional “soothing” beige, the space bare but for a steel toilet bolted to the wall, a small sink, and a low, tubular steel prison bed sporting crisp white sheets and an industrial-grade blanket.

  The bed was made so tight you could probably bounce a quarter off it and put a chip in the ceiling.

  They probably had one of the OCD patients make it, she mused.

  “This is your room,” said the smaller of the two orderlies. Larry was his name. With his buzz cut and demeanor, Dorothy guessed he was likely either former military or just a wannabe when she first saw him. He also had a creepy vibe, the kind that any sober woman would pick up on and run the other way.