Page 39 of No Asylum Here

My head swiveled toward the main entrance of Saint Bartholomew’s. Unlike other psychiatric hospitals, there was no security. No staff at the door. I could just…leave.

And go where?

There were no other buildings as far as the eye could see. I still couldn’t seem to recall the journey here. Did I have a blackout from knocking back too many of my pills?

Between Lauren’s ghost, the strange dreams I had of my patient before we’d met, the bizarre way everyone here acted, and the hallucinations and side effects of not only my pills, but Rook’s strange Treatment, I started to question if I could trust my own head anymore. And the longer I stayed here, the worse it seemed to get.

It was like I was alone on the edge of sanity and, any day now, I’d fall.

But I couldn’t leave yet. Saint Bart’s still held too many secrets.

If I go mad chasing answers…

I conjured the image of my dark-haired patient, his heaving breath fogging up the bars of his mask as he stared intensely at me from where he was branded in my mind’s eye.

At least I won’t be alone.

Chapter Eighteen

Patient Seventeen

My roar of pain ripped through the hydrotherapy chamber, making the lightbulbs dangling from exposed wires above flicker, dousing the cement-walled chamber in strobe-like effects. The souls that sought what refuge they could in the darkness peered at me with glowing eyes from all directions, with the pulsing light.

I’d been locked in the hydrotherapy tub for two days now, at least. Time here melded together like hot wax, and the heavy dose of sedatives fogging my entire system wasn’t helping my gauge of time. Maybe it had been longer. Weeks. Months even? It certainly felt like it had been months since I’d seen Dr. Beckett.

The memory of her painted lips, flushed cheeks, and plump thighs parting for me was the only thing preserving the threadbare vestiges of my sanity.

Rook wasn’t making it easy, with the constant supply of fresh ice added to my tub. Stabbing pain exploded through my gums. My teeth hadn’t stopped chattering. My skin was rock hard, nearly frozen over in its entirety. The rest of my organs would have shut down by now if it weren’t for the Treatment coursing through my veins like adrenaline, keeping my heart pumping. A bag filled with a sedative hung on an IV pole beside my tub, surgical tubing fed from the bag to the needle in my jugular vein, the sedative rendering me immobile and unable to fight back.

“Scream all you want, Son. You know what it does to me.”

My eyes lifted to see Rook enter the room with three nurses following behind him. He was carrying a metal bucket in each hand.

As he approached, I registered the bulge in his pants. I wasn’t sure at what point he’d developed a fetish for inflicting pain on his own flesh and blood. Sometime after corruption had devoured every last bit of the father I’d once known.

“So, are you ready to tell me how your session went with our new doctor?”

This monster had the power to plant nightmares into my head—the one where he’d put his own face on Tuesday was the first to come to mind—but the bastard couldn’t bother with a CCTV security system? I didn’t dare mention it—couldn’t risk giving him the idea to spy on Tuesday more than he already was.

“She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Don’t have to. I have staff for that, my boy.” He sat on the lip of the next tub over as he watched two nurses peel back my tub cover to pour in the fresh load of ice, while the third got on her knees before him.

My father pulled out his dick. It was covered in a complex network of green veins that were almost aglow with the toxic Treatment oozing through his circulation like sludge. His manhood was pathetically small. Yet another thing I’d failed to inherit from the prick, thank fuck.

“What’s the end game, here?” I managed to snarl through clenched teeth. “Don’t you get fucking bored with the endless torture?”

“Sometimes,” Rook admitted, hissing as the nurse drew him into her mouth. His face twisted with pleasure. “Strange. Women these days, becoming doctors. Nurses, yes. But a shrink? You would think their brains are too delicate to understand all that’s needed to be a good psychiatrist.”

If I weren’t freezing my balls off, I’d laugh. This fucker had no idea what it took to be a good human being, let alone a good doctor. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be trapped here together, hellbent on antagonizing each other for eternity. Or however long we were condemned to this place.

“W–what about Dr. Mary Stinson?”

My father’s brows contorted with irritation, like I was the one disturbing him. “What?”

“She was the first female physician hired by an in–insane asylum in the late eighteen hundreds. Or Alice Bennett, the first woman to be admitted into a psychiatric residency. Or M–Marion Kenworthy.”