by L E Fraser
She wandered down the street, killing time until her interview. Outside a quaint bistro, she saw a uniformed veteran sitting in a wheelchair with a cardboard sign around his neck—I lost my leg to an IED. I don’t do drug & I’m hungry. Please help. People were giving him a wide berth as they walked past. One woman, Sam noticed with disgust, scowled at the soldier and muttered something under her breath. The insensitive behaviour reminded her of a bumper sticker with a sentiment she loved: ‘If you can’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them’. If she’d had one in her pocket, she’d have given it to the woman. People’s ungrateful entitlement worried her sometimes.
Sam went into the restaurant and bought a coffee and a sandwich. Outside, she handed both to the man and dropped a ten-dollar bill into the hat he held.
“Thank you for your service,” she said. “I should have asked how you take your coffee.” She gave him some packets of sugar, a few creamers, and a stir stick.
“God bless you,” he replied, and eagerly unwrapped the sandwich.
There was still ten minutes before her interview. She didn’t want one of her prospective employers to catch her loitering around the front entrance, so she ventured down a narrow opening between the west side of the clinic and a neighbouring structure. A metre into the mouth of the alley, the modern stone façade stopped. Grubby old cellar windows dotted the aged brick at ankle height. The historic building had once housed one of Toronto’s first department stores. It had changed hands multiple times over the past century, until Serenity Clinic had saved the derelict structure from demolition five years ago. She’d read that it had taken over two years to refurbish it into a functioning private hospital. Admiring the back ambulance bay, Sam couldn’t imagine what the price tag had been for such a massive renovation. No wonder they’d neglected a useless stone cellar.
She swiped fawn-coloured dog hair off her black dress pants and checked her watch. It was time to go in. She needed this clinical practicum to complete her doctoral degree. That required wooing the two pioneering neuropsychiatrists who had rejected public health care and opened Serenity Clinic, a private inpatient facility. A bit of an anomaly in Canada, but an aging population had crippled the health care system. Mental health services lacked funding. Families faced daunting waitlists and minimal options when seeking help for an array of adolescent addictions and disorders. Serenity Clinic provided an alternative, and Sam desperately hoped to be part of what they were achieving. This was a coveted internship, and she didn’t want to blow her opportunity.
In the lobby, a security guard took her name and asked her to have a seat. A few minutes later, a tall, dark-haired woman in her early-thirties marched up and shook Sam’s hand. She was unremarkable in appearance, other than the difference in colouration of her eyes—the right was blue and the left was brown.
“Sam McNamara? Ophelia, head psychiatric nurse. I’ll take you up to Dr. Armstrong’s office.”
Sam followed her through two sets of keycard-locked doors, and they continued down a long white corridor with a seamless, poured floor in a mosaic of teal and seafoam. Ophelia chattered endlessly about the clinic, the renovations, and the patients.
Annoyed by the stream of inane babble, Sam stopped walking and interrupted the woman’s complaints about black mould in the cellar. “Wow. This is gorgeous.”
She admired the stunning figurative watercolour of three women. Her best friend had finally recognized her dream and was studying at the Ontario College of Art. As a show of support, Sam had grown better at appreciating art.
“Is it an original Guity Novin?” she asked.
Ophelia’s shoulders tensed. “Dr. Beauregard’s a collector. He lends us some of his private collection.” Her lips pursed together and her nose crinkled. “He has a Picasso etching in his office,” she stated with undisguised disapproval. “He likes nice things.” She unlocked a heavy stairwell door, letting it swing closed behind her.
Sam caught the door just before it smashed into her face. “There are about sixty residential patients, is that right?” Sam asked.
“Fifty-four, mostly in recovery from drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and self-harming. We can accommodate seventy-five inpatients, but that includes the ten beds in the lockdown unit. We have five patients there now, including the one they want you to work with.”
“They want me to work with a specific patient?” Sam asked with a frown. “Why?”
Ophelia stopped abruptly and Sam plowed into her back, grabbing the bannister a second before they both tumbled down the stairs.
The nurse spun around, glaring at Sam. “I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t mention it, especially to Dr. Beauregard.”
Something strange in the woman’s mismatched eyes unnerved Sam. “No worries. But can you tell me anything about this patient?”
Ophelia unlocked the fourth-floor stairwell door, shoving it so hard it bounced against the cement wall. “No. It’s not my place.” She practically jogged down the corridor.
Sam trotted after her, feeling flustered and irritated. Neither emotion was optimum when trying to impress a prospective employer. She straightened her jacket as she came up beside Ophelia, then jerked in surprise when the nurse grasped her shoulder. Hard.
“Not a word about what I said.” She hissed the words into Sam’s face, spraying her cheek with spittle. Then, as if nothing at all had happened, Ophelia flung open the office door. “Dr. Emily Armstrong, Ms. Sam McNamara, a clinical practicum candidate.”
Sam reached up and wiped her cheek, cringing in disgust.
The doctor glanced up from her computer screen. “Thank you, Ophelia.”
Dr. Armstrong was an attractive woman in her mid-fifties, tall and thin with shoulder-length black hair that framed her oval face. A neatly trimmed fringe fell just above her large hazel eyes.
She picked up a blue file folder from her desk and motioned toward a cozy seating arrangement under a large corner window. “Sam, please have a seat.” Dr. Armstrong sat on a small sofa and dropped the file onto a teak coffee table. “Can we offer you coffee?”
Eager to see the last of Ophelia, Sam shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks.” She sat in a sand-coloured armchair and placed her leather satchel on the table beside the thick blue folder.
Dr. Armstrong smiled at the nurse. “Thank you,” she repeated.
Ophelia backed out of the office, closing the door behind her, and Sam experienced a clairvoyant certainty that the peculiar woman was eavesdropping just outside it.
“You attended my seminar last year on bi-polar disorder,” Dr. Armstrong said. “We spoke after the lecture and you exhibited enthusiasm about our work here.”
Sam laughed. “Well, I’m not surprised you remember me. I accosted you. I don’t like to let opportunities slip away.”
Dr. Armstrong crossed her legs and smoothed her lab coat over her charcoal dress. “Your letters of reference are impressive. Dr. Roger Peterson is a highly regarded psychiatrist,” she said. “You assisted in his murder acquittal a few years back, yes?”
That sounded bad, as if Sam had strong-armed Roger into writing a glowing recommendation because he wasn’t wasting away in prison. They’d been friends since childhood. She needed to correct the misunderstanding.
Before she could respond, Dr. Armstrong continued. “Let me speak frankly. I didn’t invite you here because of your application,” she said. “I’m in need of your assistance. In exchange, I’m prepared to offer you the clinical practicum you need to complete your PhD.”
Stunned, Sam leaned back in her chair. “I don’t understand.”
“You graduated from Queen’s University with a double major in criminology and psychology. When you were twenty-one, a drunk driver killed your father. You moved home and did your masters at University of Toronto. Your GPA for your undergraduate and graduate work was above average but not within the top five percent of your class.”
Sam was about to defend h
er respectable 4.0 GPA, but Dr. Armstrong didn’t give her the chance.
“You joined Toronto Police Service at twenty-five, left two years later, and opened your private investigation agency,” she recited from memory. “You and your fiancé, Reece Hash, run it together with one employee, Elijah Watson. Reece recently completed law school and is articling at the Crown attorney’s office.”
Sam studied her silently, annoyed but not entirely surprised by the intense research the doctor had clearly done. She wanted to add context to some of the dispassionate remarks but felt it prudent to let Dr. Armstrong finish uninterrupted.
“Regardless of your arduous study schedules, you’ve managed to work multiple cases,” Dr. Armstrong said. “At the inception of your career, you were instrumental in apprehending Incubus, the serial killer who murdered your sister. Last year, you solved the Frozen Statue murders. I’m fascinated by your knack for attracting antisocial personalities.”
Sam wondered if her aptitude for drawing psychopaths to her was the neuropsychiatrist’s motivation for the interview. That was depressing.
Dr. Armstrong leaned forward, and her tone became more intimate. “But I want to talk about Bueton Sanctuary. Specifically, I want to talk about Mussani.”
Sam sucked in her breath. Bueton Sanctuary was the cult she had exposed almost five years earlier, and Mussani had been its leader. Seventy-two people had died. It had been Sam’s first real case—a missing sixteen-year-old girl who had been discovered living among the cult members. She and Reece had met during that case, when he was an inspector with the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in the town of Uthisca.
“Dr. Armstrong, why do you want to talk about Mussani?” Sam asked, not bothering to hide her suspicion.
“Call me Emily. Everyone does,” Dr. Armstrong said warmly. “Is Mussani truly dead?”
“He fell from the Bunda cliffs in Australia.” Sam removed her suit jacket and folded it over the arm of her chair.
“Ah, but authorities never recovered his body. You were there, yes?”
Sam nodded. “I witnessed him fall.”
He hadn’t actually fallen, but Sam would never admit that truth. It had taken her and Reece six months to track the sociopathic mass murderer. Reece had left the OPP after the Bueton massacre. She harboured no regrets for what had transpired on that cliff, but it had taken her law-enforcing, moral fiancé a long time to reconcile what had happened.
“How sure are you he’s dead?” Emily asked.
“Very,” Sam answered. “You mind telling me what this is about?”
Emily slid the blue folder across the table. “Fadiya Basha is a seventeen-year-old patient who presents with severe erotomanic delusional disorder. I believe you can help her, which is why I’m offering you the internship here.”
Sam scanned the patient file. “She survived Bueton.”
Emily nodded. “Authorities found her hiding in a generator shed. She was twelve.”
“That can’t be,” Sam said softly. “There were no survivors.”
“Fadiya’s parents are very wealthy. They went to great lengths to protect her identity,” Emily said. “Their daughter disappeared eight months prior to the massacre. They were staying at a lake house in Uthisca. Her brother, Aazar, took Fadiya to the train station to visit their aunt in Hamilton, and that was the last anyone saw of her for months. Evidently, she’d gotten off the train and ran away to Bueton.”
Sam thought back to the case. The women of the cult had run a shop in town that the male followers had used as a front to recruit young girls for their leader. Fadiya could have heard about Bueton there. She shuddered. If the girl had been at Bueton for over six months, Mussani would have initiated her. The ceremony had been a degenerate ritual of sexual assault, in the guise of their Messiah cleansing the victim prior to transcendence.
A light went on in Sam’s head. “Patients with erotomanic delusions believe someone is in love with them. Fadiya believes Mussani is alive,” she guessed. “She thinks they’re in love.” Her stomach roiled.
“It’s a bit more complicated. Fadiya believes Mussani visits her at night. Here in the clinic. In the lockdown unit,” Emily said. “You lived at Bueton, yes?”
“I was inside the gates for a short time during my investigation.”
Sam studied the picture in Fadiya’s file. She was a beautiful girl with enormous eyes the colour of warm chocolate. They were soulful eyes that mirrored the pain the girl had endured and the horrors she’d witnessed.
“I don’t recognize her,” Sam said unable to look away from the photo. “It’s doubtful she even knew I was there.”
Emily leaned forward, her eyes intense. “But you know more about the cult than anyone left alive. You have the information required to challenge her convictions and convince her to renounce the cult’s ideologies.”
“You want me to act as a thought reform consultant? I’m not a cult expert,” Sam said. “Other than my inside knowledge of Bueton, why come to me?”
Emily licked her lips and reached for a crystal pitcher. She poured each of them a glass of water, picked hers up, and sipped it, studying Sam over the rim. “Two reasons. The first is to deprogram the cult’s brainwashing. I recognize the negative connotation with the term ‘deprograming’, but Fadiya didn’t leave the cult willingly.”
Sam had no familiarity with deprograming, other than knowing it was an extreme and sometimes violent method of intervention. It had nothing to do with her field of study as a psychologist.
“And the second reason?” she asked.
“That’s highly confidential. If you’re willing to accept the internship today, I’ll confide in you.”
Sam’s distrust ramped up to high gear. She wanted the position but she wasn’t negotiating blind. “Look, Emily, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I suspect it hasn’t much to do with a clinical internship. If you need my help, you have to tell me the truth. All of it.”
Dr. Armstrong took another sip of water and regarded her coolly for a moment, considering.
“Fadiya is pregnant.”
“And…” Sam prompted.
Emily dropped her eyes. “She’s in a lockdown unit with no patient fraternization and supervised visitation. The entrance to her room is under twenty-four-seven surveillance. There’s no indication on our security footage of any unauthorized personnel accessing her room. She’s legally incapable of giving consent.”
“Someone raped her,” Sam stated.
Emily nodded. “Over the past four months, Fadiya’s condition has deteriorated. She’s rarely lucid. Her regression baffles me. But every time she’s aware, she insists that Mussani comes to her.”
Sam contemplated various scenarios. “The most obvious explanation is that whoever raped her told her he was Mussani. It would play into her delusion and keep her quiet.”
Sam refrained from pointing out the other logical conclusion: that Fadiya’s rapist was someone inside the clinic with access to the girl’s private case notes.
“That’s my guess,” Emily agreed. “But she’s only eight weeks pregnant and her insistence that Mussani visits her began four months ago. If our supposition is correct, it means this person has been impersonating Mussani and assaulting her repeatedly over the past four months.”
“How many male employees have access to the lockdown unit?” Sam asked.
“My partner, Dr. Beauregard, one psychologist, two nurses, and five security officers. Once apprised of this… this horrific crime, all nine volunteered to do a DNA test. A prenatal paternity test last week proved that none of them fathered Fadiya’s baby. I need to know who did.” She sipped from her glass of water and dropped her eyes. “My hope is to identify the father before I’m forced to disclose the pregnancy to the family.” Emily looked up and held Sam’s gaze. “Can you help?”
Disappointment flooded over Sam. Emily Armstrong, a highly respected expert in her field, didn’t want her as a clinic
al psychologist. She wanted her as a private investigator.
“You want me to investigate the rape,” Sam stated flatly.
“In part, yes,” Emily said. “But the salient need is to help this girl. Three years ago, the Ontario court ruled Fadiya mentally incompetent. Last year, her parents entrusted her to my care. The family situation is complicate, but it’s imperative that the federal court overturn the incompetency ruling.” Emily took Sam’s hand and held it tightly between her own. “I’ve dedicated my life to studying severe psychiatric disorders and improving quality of life. Given the fact that Fadiya is pregnant and a victim of foul play, I genuinely believe you’re her only hope. If you can challenge the brainwashing and convince her to relinquish her beliefs, we can begin trauma work to help her heal from what happened at Bueton.”
Sam extracted her hand. “And she can identify her rapist.” She picked up her satchel and stood, reaching for her suit jacket. “An unknown security breach that led to the rape of an underage patient by an unidentified subject will provoke a Ministry of Health investigation,” she said. “Health advocates who object to private hospitals in a public health system will use it as leverage to demand the closure of your clinic. That’s really what this is about.”
Emily’s eyes widened. “Of course not! It’s about the violation of a vulnerable girl I promised to protect.” She stood and faced Sam. “Yes, I’m asking you to use your investigation skills, but I’m offering you a legitimate clinical practicum. Much of psychology is investigative. You have experience in both disciplines.”
“What you’re asking is for me to go undercover and lie to a patient, possibly damaging her in the process.” Sam struggled to keep her voice level. “In exchange, you’ll sign off on a bogus internship, and I’ll receive my PhD under duplicitous circumstances.” She laughed bitterly. “No thanks.”