Page 62 of No Asylum Here

“I haven’t been able to spend much time in the bell tower lately,” I replied, unbothered that every eye in the room was currently glued to us. A perfect opportunity to humiliate my father. “Too much work to do down here. Speaking of work, don’t you have that pile of paperwork I gave you to complete?”

“I didn’t graduate top of my class from Brown to do grunt work.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the bitterness dripping from his every syllable. While I’d spared his life, I’d done everything I could since that day to make him miserable, including stripping him of all his patients and his prior duties.

“Would you prefer pot and pan duty in the kitchen? You’d be the perfect man for the job, considering you’re now missing most of your scent receptors. That kitchen does get rancid, thanks to your previous budget cuts.”

“Mal—”

“From now on, you'll refer to me as Dr. Rook,” I corrected him with an antagonistic smirk flung over my next spoonful of pot roast. “Now, get to work. Finish it soon, and I might even allow one of the staff to suck you off in a supply closet. Help you to appreciate what you still have.”

His face burned with fury as he swallowed down the rebuttal I gleaned in his eyes and nodded his compliance. “Yes, Dr. Rook.”

Stepping closer to me, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do we have to do this here?”

“You’re the one who wanted to make this a public spectacle.” I raised my voice to ensure everyone within the cafeteria could hear. “Any volunteers? Hmm, no? Sorry, Dad. Guess the giant hole in your face isn’t doing it for them anymore. That Rook family nose was really doing a lot of legwork for you in the looks department.”

“You’re going to regret humiliating me.”

My grin took on proportions that would give Caesar Romero as the Joker a run for his royalties. “I don’t think I will. And even if you do manage to make me eat my words, I’ll do it with a grin on my face, because nothing beats the satisfaction of making you pay for your sins.”

His salt and pepper brows arched. “And who will make you pay for yours?”

The shift in his tone sent a chill through my bones, crystallizing my marrow. I brushed it off a beat later with a chuckle. “Why did you come down here?”

“To inform you that while I haven’t yet stooped to sorting your paperwork, I have been getting some valuable work done. I called an adoption agency and invited them here.”

“I think it’s a little late to put me up for adoption, Father.”

“Hilarious. You should have been a comedian.” By his expression, he found my joke anything but amusing. “I called them for Patient Forty-Two’s baby.”

“For Christ’s sake. She’s the mother of your unborn child, and you can’t summon a sliver of humanity to the situation by calling her Barbara? Go uninvite them. Now.”

He blinked. “Why?”

“Because we’re not giving my sibling to strangers.”

“So what do you suggest? She’s due in a couple of months, and this is no place for a child.”

As much as I hated agreeing with my father, he was right. But Bunny wanted to keep her baby, and I was quietly looking forward to having a kid brother or sister. It could be my only chance at having a relative who wasn’t either dead or evil.

A bell went off, sewing a thrill of urgency through the cafeteria, and the staff scrambled up and out of their seats. My father hadn’t bothered investing in an electronic system. We still relied on the turn-of-the-century bell and pulley system my grandfather had installed when he originally converted the old church.

I hurried down the hallway and headed to the surgery ward, brushing off Rook’s offer to accompany me and promptly leaving him in a frustrated huff.

Halfway there, the head nurse rushed toward me from the other end of the hall. My stomach flipped.

I knew that urgent pace. That look.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Barbara Reed, Doctor. She went into labor.”

“It’s much too early. Are you counting her contractions? I’ll also need a read on her vitals and⁠—”

“Dr. Rook. I’m sorry…”

The nurse’s gentle tone rendered me silent. This woman never bothered to hide her dislike for me, so this uncharacteristic manner of hers unsettled me. “What is it, Nurse? What happened?”