Page 45 of No Asylum Here

“That’s Rook’s father? How did he end up skinned in the glass case?”

“Rumor has it that it was by his request. He was super into the whole church and Jesus thing. I think he was a priest before he became a brain doctor. Believed that suffering was a part of being closer to God or some stupid shit.”

I chewed my lip as I digested this new piece of information. So it was a family business. “Bunny, may I ask why you were admitted to Saint Bartholomew’s?”

"My stepdad got me pregnant,” she said with a shrug, as if it was old news. “Momma told everyone I was a sex addict who seduced him. But I didn’t want to do those things with nasty Roger. He was old and creepy. He made me.”

“Bunny—I’m so sorry.”

I hated how this wasn’t the first time I'd heard a story like hers. I'd provided therapy to so many abused women of all ages. Where was the justice? My eyes went back to her lobotomy scar. Certainly not at Saint Bartholomew's.

"It's okay." She sighed as she pulled at her doll's hair. "He got what he deserved."

"You killed him, didn't you?" I asked, remembering the few details from her file.

"Yup! The next time he tried to take my clothes off, I cut him up." She made a chopping motion, as if wielding an invisible cleaver. “Then I chopped his thing off and put it in the meat grinder."

Keeping my face straight would have been impossible if it weren't for my years of training. Keeping a non-judgmental space for her, where she felt safe to open up to me, was vital in gaining her trust, which I'd need if she were going to show me to Rook's office.

"And what did you do with the meat?"

She beamed at me with a toothy grin. "I made meatloaf. Momma's favorite."

Chapter Twenty-One

Tuesday

A strange sense of pride worked through me as Bunny told her story. No one had come to her rescue, so she’d taken matters into her own hands.

It was brutal, what she'd done... But so was her stepfather.

He had it coming.

“You’re not still pregnant, are you?" My eyes darted to her flat abdomen.

"Ha! Hardly. I lost the damn thing a few weeks after I got here. They said it was my fault that I lost the baby. You know, with a coat hanger.” She made a motion with her arms that had my stomach flipping at the imagery. Her mouth curved with a pensive frown. “I don’t remember doing that. But it’s been years, and my head is fuzzy.”

It couldn’t have possibly been years. If her stepfather impregnated her when she was seventeen, and she was eighteen now…that math didn’t add up.

What was ages to Bunny could have been days to me or others. Though with every passing hour I spent here, I was doubting more and more that it was just the patient's confusion.

Rook’s experimental drug maybe wasn’t the miracle “treatment” he’d advertised it as, but maybe it did make everyone who’d taken it appear younger.

Without thinking, I gently took Bunny’s arm and pulled the sleeve of her gown up. She held up her dolly and wiggled it around while speaking in a higher octave. “What are you doing to my mommy?”

“Checking to see if she’s healthy, Joanie.”

“If you’re looking for those weird green veins, you won’t find them.”

My gaze centered on Bunny’s. “No?”

She shook her head and lowered her doll. “Only the hospital staff have those, silly. If you don’t have them yet, you will soon. Unless you turn into a monster."

The woeful dip in her voice had me shifting uncomfortably in the pew. "What do you mean?"

"The green stuff they shoot up all the staff with. Turns the strong ones into demons and everyone else into gross monsters with mush for brains.”

If Bunny were a patient of mine at Braith Psychiatry, I would have written her tangent off as nothing more than a result of the outdated brain procedure she'd received. Now, I wasn’t so sure.