by Krystal Wade
Everything made sense, in a sick, twisted way. Dr. Underwood saw Rose as he wanted to see his mother, as he wanted to help her. Maybe he saw Phillip as himself, but why keep Rose and Phillip apart?
That didn’t make sense.
Unless that part truly was all in Rose’s head.
Hissing sounded from beneath Jeremiah’s dresser, and Rose nearly released her bladder the way this man had so many times on his own bed.
“I deserve this,” Jeremiah said, sobbing once more. “Just let it take me.”
“No you don’t.” Rose filed away the man’s ramblings and returned to searching for clothes. She limped over to the dresser and jumped on top to protect her feet from the snake slithering around the floor. Drawer after drawer full of needles containing medicines labeled Ketalar, Epinephrine, and Diazepam stared back at her, all the same crap Dr. Underwood pumped Rose full of. She found no clothes until she pulled open the last drawer in the dresser.
Beetles covered everything, and the snake hissed louder.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
Rose reached into the drawer and picked out clothes, and the bugs certainly felt real. She raced across the room and stood on his bed with her feet straddled around him, afraid to be on the floor. The man didn’t make a move when she unstrapped his wrists and ankles, and she struggled to lift him and put the clothes over his bruised body. He whimpered each time she lost her hold on his arm and he fell back to the bed, but Rose didn’t give up, whispering “Shh,” over and over to keep him calm.
Tears leaked from the corner of Jeremiah’s hooded dark brown eyes. Dr. Underwood resembled his father so much, too much. Rose could barely stand to look at the man for fear he’d lash out and scream at her, or push her onto a bed, strap her down, and drug her some more. All while making the world believe she’d done something wrong.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, cringing, wondering if anyone held Phillip while he was being tortured. If he was alive, if he was real.
Jeremiah shook his head side to side. “No. No. He’s my son. My son. I did this to him. It’s my fault. She’s gone. Heather’s gone.”
Rose propped her shoulder under Jeremiah’s arm and groaned as she got to her feet. “Heather wouldn’t want to see you this way. Come on.”
Every muscle in his body tensed, and he refused to step forward, putting all the weight on Rose’s shaking frame. “He’ll kill you for this. He’ll kill us both. He’s crazy. My son, he’s crazy. Just go.”
Fairies danced in her vision, and Rose suspected everyone in The Heather Shepperd Institute might be crazy. “I’m not leaving you.”
Outside the room, Rose found Mr. Gordon waiting for them. She glared at him as she sized him up. Did he want to help or not? Somewhere in his red, beady eyes she found compassion and concern and decided she could trust him. Or maybe that’s because he hadn’t injected her with anything yet. “Well? Take his other arm. He needs to get to a hospital.”
Gordon shook his head, the action distorted and creepy, like his head moved so quickly it left trails of skin racing to catch up.
“I need help.” Rose didn’t think she could hold up Jeremiah’s weight much longer. And the hissing snake was getting closer. She picked up her feet like the floor was too hot to stand on, shifting her weight side to side, the feel of fangs still there from the last strike.
“You can’t. This is . . . a mistake. Leave him until the building is secure and we can get a medic up. You need to get out of here before he finds you.”
“He’ll die in here with the snakes and the bugs. They’ll eat him alive. I have to do this, for Phillip. Have to.”
“What?” Gordon’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“How did you know where I was?”
A frown overtook all happiness from the orderly’s face, and his eyes filled with tears. “Judy . . . she started asking questions, which made me ask questions, and we both did a little investigating. We figured out who this man is. And you left a trail right to him. But he’ll be fine, unlike—” Gordon choked on his words, choked on a sob rumbling in his chest. “She called the police before she went down to find you, so they could protect her. But the only thing they did was find her body.”
Guilt ate Rose alive at the idea of Judy’s daughters not having someone to drive them to rehearsals and plays and school. Who would make their lunches and nag them about bad friends and bad grades and being a good person? “I can’t . . . But her daughters . . . Because of me . . . .”
“Not because of you,” Gordon said, “Though she loved you very much.”
“I’m not going without him.” Rose looked pointedly at Jeremiah, who was slipping down her shoulder, his face a deadly shade of white, his eyes rolling back in his head. He was someone she could save. Someone she would save. She had to for Judy. And they had to move quickly because she saw something dark and slender slinking up his leg, wrapping around it in circles. “Something’s on him. Get it off. Get it off.”
“Nothing’s there. Hand him to me. I’ll help you. Just . . . don’t freak out, okay?” Mr. Gordon took over the job of supporting Jeremiah’s weight, and Rose dropped down and grabbed at the snake and pulled it off his leg and flung it across the room, but not before it sank its fangs into her wrist and she cried out. “Stop panicking, Rose. Come on.”
She teetered to her feet and her arm and leg throbbed, and her foot slipped as she made her way down the stairs, the blood making traction near impossible.
Jeremiah groaned and lolled his head to the side.
“He doesn’t have much time. We have to move.” Gordon picked up his pace, taking the stairs so quickly Rose thought for sure he’d fall. When they reached the main hallway, Gordon paused and hollered down to the officer now standing guard over the front doors to have a gurney and medic sent up immediately, trying his best to hold Jeremiah’s weight. But the man kept slipping through his arms like dead weight, and Gordon had to rest him on the floor with the bugs and the snakes. “You have to keep going, Rose.”
“They’ll get him. They’ll get him. You can’t leave him there.”
“Please,” Jeremiah whispered. “Please, this is my fault. My fault. Mine. Mine. Mine.”
She looked at the man, at Dr. Underwood’s father. Through the blood and cuts and bruises and pale skin, the resemblance unsettled her. The long, long nose. The high cheekbones. The forehead practically hanging over his eyes. But she couldn’t leave him. She felt sorry for him, connected to him in a way she couldn’t put to words. “I can’t. Not until you’re safe.”
Gordon grabbed Rose by the shoulders and shook. “Listen to me. The building isn’t secure, there aren’t snakes or bugs or anything out to get you other than a crazed doctor. They haven’t found him yet, and he’s already shot one person. Do you want to be next? Do you want to live to be free? To be a teenager again? He’ll shoot this man first and then you, or the other way around. It doesn’t matter. But if you stay here, you’ll end up dead, and not because of hallucinated things.”
The world spun around Rose as she stood in the center of the hallway, and she needed something to hold on to, something to keep her rooted in reality. The paint peeled off the walls like she’d been dosed all over again. Gordon’s angry red eyes swirled in their sockets.
Thoughts circled around Rose’s head, images of Dr. Underwood dressed in robes, his face melting off, him giving her drawing materials, him trying to be her friend, someone she could talk to. Underwood trying to be like Phillip.
“Is he real?” she asked, heart racing.
“I’m going to need you to forcefully remove her, sir. She’s not leaving on her own,” Gordon called out to the officer shouting for her to clear the building.
“Just tell me, Mr. Gordon.”
“Tell you what, Rose?”
“Is Phillip real?”
“I—” But he didn’t get to finish his sentence because the officer had his arms around hers and wa
s pulling Rose toward the stairs. She fought and kicked and screamed for Phillip, over and over and over. She didn’t want to leave this building without him. She didn’t want to live in a world without him.
Things were too messed up.
Who would she talk to who could understand what she’d been through?
“Stop fighting,” the officer said, squeezing tighter.
But Rose swung her leg back, right into his junk, and took off running. She slid to a stop in Hall A, taking in the quiet stillness of the space. Since this only housed two patients on a good day, there weren’t any orderlies rushing around. And she doubted the officer would follow her in here. He had his hands busy helping Gordon and looking for Underwood.
Dr. Underwood’s office door hung wide open, the room eerily empty and dark. Rose crept by, unsure where her tormentor hid, and then propelled herself to Phillip’s room. His bed was made, untouched. She pushed through the door and opened every drawer, tossed the mattress and moved the dresser to look for marks, drawings, words, anything that might make it look like someone had recently been here.
Nothing.
The space was desolate, cold, lifeless. He hadn’t left anything to signal distress, or that he even existed.
Rose slunk along the wall to Underwood’s office and peeked around the corner. Empty, quiet. He wasn’t here. She rifled through his drawers, knocked over his bookshelves, tore through his books, everything she wanted to do when she and Phillip broke in but was afraid to. Rose wasn’t afraid anymore.
She located the Fear book, the Heather Shepperd file, and her own file all sitting open on his desk. In the unlocked cabinets, folder after folder after folder of other patients were there, but no Phillip MacGregor. She looked again, but Rose stopped sifting at the name Jeremiah Banks. Rose. She couldn’t be sure if other Jeremiahs lived in the institute, but she grabbed the file and took it just in case. No way would she allow the doctor to get back here and destroy evidence of what she’d experienced.
She remembered the office full of files on her way down to get mail. That’s where Rose would go next. Just before leaving, she glanced back and spotted the stupid stone Underwood always rubbed. She grabbed it too, knowing how much its absence would upset him, then sprinted as fast as she could toward the mailroom.
Halfway down the hall, Rose pulled up short. Underwood crested the top of the stairwell, gun down at his side, finger on the trigger. When he spotted his father, his face transformed from one of calm resolve to pure loathing and hatred. His lips pursed into a fine line, his eyes narrowed, and tension held him still.
“What is he doing here?”
Gordon spun around and held up his hands. “Found him here, sir.”
“Get him back upstairs. Now.”
The officer who’d tried to pull Rose out of the building joined Gordon, gun drawn and pointed right at Dr. Underwood. “Don’t move.”
Rose gasped, not sure she wanted to watch this happen, but at the same time glued to the action. For once she preferred the haze of fairies and snakes and bugs because she knew that they would be easier to watch than this scene.
Underwood turned toward the sound of her gasp, not listening to the officer. And when he spotted Rose, he smiled. “Ahh. There you are, Miss Briar.”
Rose didn’t move. She couldn’t. Underwood and the police blocked the exit, her freedom, all because she had to go back in search of Phillip, someone who she couldn’t even prove existed.
“Frank,” the officer called over his shoulder. “Get her out of here.”
Another man, Frank presumably, stepped around the first, hands held up in surrender, eyes on Underwood the entire time. “I’m just going to escort her to safety, until we can get the building secure. Is that all right?”
“No,” Dr. Underwood said, holding up a hand. “I’d rather her come of her own free will. It will be better for her in the long run.”
He played the sick child card, the I’m the doctor and you better listen to me or she’ll freak out card. And the first officer already knew her to be a fighter.
“May I speak to her?” Frank asked, hands still up in front of him.
“You need not worry, Officer. I would never hurt one of my patients.”
Rose laughed at that, clutching tighter to the files to prove just how much he hurt at least two of his patients.
“Miss, would you mind walking to me very slowly, calmly?”
She took a step, eyes fixed on Underwood, and heard the hissing sounds of the snake. Her heart slammed into her throat and blood trickled down her leg, and not running away and screaming took every ounce of effort she could muster.
“You tried to find him, didn’t you?” Underwood asked, matching her step. He now stood closer to her than anyone else, the snake at his feet. Two of them, big and proud and tall and staring up at him, wanting to do his will. Rose shook her head, tried to erase the image, to tell herself they weren’t real, but they were still there. “Feel free not to answer, but I know you did. You’re just like her. Heather Shepperd was offered a choice to leave this hospital several times, to give birth to her child in a safe facility because my adoptive-parents believed she’d recovered, that she could go back into every day society. But you know what, Heather wouldn’t leave him. This man who’d stolen her potential from her, who’d led her down the path of drugs and violence, who’d made her believe that he was worth more to her than her own life, her child’s life.”
Rose took a deep breath, using the pain radiating up her wrist and leg to keep her in the moment, from passing out. Everything still swirled, bright colors in a dim world. “You mean your life.”
“You’re an intelligent girl. The same as Heather. If your mother had been good to you, she wouldn’t have put fear in your heart. You would have been great. Could still be great, if you’d just let me treat you.” He took another step toward Rose and rubbed his index finger against his thumb. The officers didn’t flinch, and when Underwood realized this, he straightened and smiled and took one more step toward Rose. “We had such high hopes for you, and your treatments were so promising, Rose. So very promising. But instead of focusing on college or art school or your family, you showed more interest in some boy. And where is he now? That boy you would give up everything for? Was he ever there at all? Do you even know?”
“He’s real.”
“No. Your weakened mind manifested him, Rose. All of him. Do you know how many times I watched you talking to yourself out on the lawn? How many times I followed you around as you traversed “secret passageways” you swore he taught you? It’s okay for your mind to do this. It’s normal. But you made him up to deal with your parents putting you in this place a year ago, and look where that got you.”
A year ago? She’d only been here six months at most, not a year. Did time move faster here? Or did she not pay attention? Rose shook her head. Time wasn’t important. Getting out alive was.
“You’re lying!” she shouted, tears trembling in her eyes. Because she didn’t know the truth. Because she didn’t know whether she’d ever see Phillip again, whether she’d ever seen him at all. And Rose didn’t know how long she’d been here. All the times she’d been drugged, the days she lost track of, the amount of time she spent in that dark room downstairs. Rose had no idea. “You’re a liar!”
“Am I?” Another step closer, a step the snakes and Frank mirrored, the officer’s hands no longer held up in surrender but instead reaching toward his gun. “Let’s head down to my office where we can discuss this in private. Then you can leave with the police, they will evaluate you and come to the same conclusions I have, and then this entire situation will be resolved. They will understand I shot Judy out of self-defense.”
Rose held back a sob. She wouldn’t let Underwood have the satisfaction of her suffering. “She had children! You murdered someone trying to help me.”
The officers glanced at each other, then back at Rose, then to Underwood. Frank moved closer. The first officer kept his gun dra
wn and on the doctor as a medical team ran in with a gurney.
Frank motioned with his hand to keep the doctor talking. They needed more time to move Jeremiah.
Dr. Underwood remained clueless, gaze laser-focused on Rose. “It appears your delusions got the best of you down there. Come back to your room, return to treatments, and this can all be over soon. After, you can go home to your parents with a clean slate, and once you make it through school, they’ll allow you the freedom to go to a college of your choice.”
So much of what he said was what Rose wanted: her mother and father and art school. And she knew if Dr. Underwood cleared her medical charts, she could have it all. But his career was over. The Briars would need to find another doctor for Rose, one who could help her overcome her experience here, as well as help her learn to talk to her parents again.
“That’s right, Rose. You know what I’m saying is true.”
Seven steps toward him. She took them without even realizing it. Only a handful of steps were between her and the stairs, and right as she was about to make a mad dash with the files in hand, everything changed all at once.
Jeremiah grabbed a needle from one of the medics, rolled off the gurney, barreled toward his son, and stabbed the needle in his neck. Before Underwood could react, the old man lost his balance and fell to the floor and was dragged away by Gordon.
“Time to go.” Frank grabbed Rose and pushed her down the stairs, not giving her an opportunity to fight or look back or see what happened.
And then a gunshot cracked.
Officer Frank pushed her down on the stairs and covered her body with his. She squeezed her eyes closed as another shot charged the air with a fear so tangible she could taste it, and then another shot. Her ears rang so loudly the sound pierced her skull. Rose pressed her cheek against the dusty hardwood floors, breath rushing out of her faster than it should.
“Move.” Frank grabbed her up by the arm and pulled her away from the scene, but Rose realized she’d dropped one of the files and attempted to turn back for it. “No you don’t. We have to get out of here.”