Page 23 of No Asylum Here

One of them jammed the cattle prod into my ribs so hard, lights danced behind my eyes.

“Keep your witty comments for Dr. Beckett. We’re to get you bathed and ready for the shrink.”

“I don’t want to—Wait. Who the fuck is Dr. Beckett?”

Chapter Eleven

Tuesday

As promised, Dr. Rook had delivered Patient Seventeen’s file to my office. I stayed up all night, hunched over my desk, poring over it. There wasn’t much to it. No photo. No birthdate. No previous medical records from his life outside. No medication lists. It had been scrubbed.

I’d hoped the file would give me at least a few pieces of the puzzle. Just like everything else in this cesspit of a hospital, it only stirred up more questions.

What was Rook trying to hide?

I sat back in my chair with a wince. The injection site ached. There was no telling what exactly he’d put into my body. If my hallucinations didn’t vanish like promised, then the dreams of Patient Seventeen would continue.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

At least meeting up with the real Patient Seventeen would snuff out that voice in my head telling me that the man in my dreams and the man in the black file were one and the same.

“Are you ready for him?”

I nearly fell out of my chair, the woman’s voice taking me by surprise. “Oh, Jesus, fuck—” The black file dropped from my hand, papers scattering. My attention jerked to find the head nurse in front of my desk.

Where had she come from? I hadn’t heard or seen her enter.

Nurse Beatrice’s lips flattened with disapproval. “This may no longer be a church, Dr. Beckett, but the Lord can still hear your foul mouth. Even here.”

My mouth opened to fire off a rebuttal that would have her Lord really pissed off, but the words crystallized in my throat. As the nurse hunched over to gather the papers, her sleeve rode up to reveal green veins.

They weren’t as visible as Fredrick’s veins, and they appeared to cover a smaller portion of Beatrice’s body.

“Nurse, how long have you had that kind of coloration to your veins?”

The nurse straightened with an offended huff. “Since I took the Treatment, doctor. It's a common side effect of the drug. They’ll likely start to appear on you too once you take your second shot.”

“Dr. Rook didn’t mention anything about a second injection.”

“Two total injections will be made over the course of your first month or two here. You won’t get the full effect until then.”

My mouth opened and closed. Rage throbbed in my throat, making it impossible to speak. Rook hadn’t said a damn thing about another shot. And that wasn’t by accident. He knew I would have said no—I should have said no.

I wasn’t in my right mind. I hadn’t been since Lauren’s death. The shot wasn’t right as well. All the employees here took it, and they seemed…off. Especially Fredrick. “The pharmacist… Do you know if he had those mutations before he came to work here?”

“I don’t remember.”

My eyes narrowed. The nurse’s tone suggested she was lying.

Something about the staff here didn’t sit right. The building was old. Could be lead paint, or the mysterious drug Dr. Rook injected into his staff. Or the toll of managing a mental health hospital that seemed perpetually stuck in the twentieth century. Or a bit of all three.

“Never mind. Just bring me Patient Seventeen.”

Nurse Beatrice looked me up and down, her lips curling as she took in my ensemble. A gray houndstooth pencil skirt and a close-fitting white turtle-neck sweater. “Perhaps the doctor would like to change first.”

The silent judgment etched into the lines of her face had me shooting her a less-than-friendly look. “Perhaps not. There’s nothing wrong with what I am wearing. My skirt is knee-length, and I can’t help that I have big tits. Is that what you’re getting at?”

“You’re not even wearing stockings.”