by Ted Dekker
She nodded, pacing still. “There’s another buzzer or something that opens the real exit.”
“Of course. But getting out that way will probably be impossible. They’re too smart to let anyone out through the front door.”
“And the closet is just a mechanical trick,” she said.
“A false closet that slid into place at the push of a button. Enough to freak out anyone not thinking things through. Easy enough to construct. The main point is that anyone who would go to such elaborate planning has thought this through very carefully. We aren’t just going to walk out of here.”
To this she had no response. Her mind was stuck on what he’d just said about the closet being enough to freak out anyone not thinking properly.
Like her.
“We have to think our way out,” Austin said. “Talk our way out. Scam our way out. Something they haven’t thought about. Until we figure what and how, we have to play along. The last thing we can afford is to push Fisher’s buttons. We don’t need him thinking he needs to go further.”
He’d said this much repeatedly. She got it. His repetition of the concern wasn’t helping matters.
“And there’s no way they could be right about us, right?”
“We aren’t nuts,” he said with a little too much defensiveness for her comfort. “It’s absurd. I was in a lecture hall at Harvard this morning. I got a call from you. The professor asked me if I would be interested in attending full time! I can assure you there’s not one loose nut in my head.”
He was right, of course, although she would have put it differently. They had both always been different. And neither one of them could remember much of their childhoods.
“What about your headaches?”
He blinked several times, then spoke in no uncertain tone.
“Neither one of us is remotely unstable. You just remember that. Don’t let them get in your head. We’re going to get out. Soon. I have a doctor’s appointment to get to.”
The door opened and she startled. Kern Lawson walked in, shut the door behind him, and faced them, void of expression. He put on a smile that made Christy think he savored both his role and his element.
“Hello, my friends. Sorry to keep you waiting. Wait, wait, wait.” He flipped a hand. “Sometimes I think all there is to life is waiting. Waiting for things to get better. Waiting for things to get worse. Waiting to find out what’s going to happen or not happen. Life can be a pain.”
He walked to end of the table and pressed his fingertips on the surface, like one of those jungle trees that had roots above ground, reaching down. He was now wearing a white lab coat.
“I like to give our new arrivals a cursory orientation personally. Have a seat, Alice.”
Alice.
Christy glanced at Austin, who remained calm, then slid into the chair opposite him.
“There we are.” Fisher stood erect and paced slowly to one side then back before continuing.
“The first day is always the hardest for any patient, but I’m not one to throw sedatives at the first sign of resistance like most understaffed facilities. It only masks the illness and prevents true healing. The sooner you both accept your conditions and adapt to your new environment, the sooner we’ll be able to appropriate the correct therapy. Make sense?”
He didn’t wait for a response.
“By now you already know that getting out isn’t a solution. Neither is it possible. Please tell me that you understand at least this much.”
Waiting for Austin to take the lead seemed natural, so Christy let him give his nod before she did.
“Now, Scott…” The man held his smile for a few seconds. “I know that your particular condition probably has you thinking through solutions without end. You’re certain you don’t belong here, and you’re probably already hatching a way out, so let me help you by cutting to the chase.”
His smile vanished.
“All the exits are electronically controlled, and I’m not talking about the simple push of a button. There’s no cell service inside. The few lines out of the facility are monitored twenty-four hours a day and require electronic signatures to operate. We have a total of forty-seven patients on two floors. This floor is for those who present neither a flight risk, nor any threat to patients or staff. The upper level is reserved for our more challenging cases. We employ rather advanced, unconventional treatments on the upper level. Extremely effective, I might add.”
Two floors? She hadn’t seen any exit sign leading to another floor, but then she hadn’t been looking for one.
“It can be accessed only by a secure elevator and is operable only by qualified staff. There is no other way in or out. None.”
Lawson reached into his lab coat pocket and came out with a small box of toothpicks, one of which he withdrew before returning the box to his pocket. He slipped the sliver of wood into his mouth and rolled it with practiced ease as he studied Austin curiously.
“And since I’m sure you’re wondering, the crawlspace Alice found in the basement has been sealed. I was admittedly quite surprised to find it. Thank you, Alice, for bringing that to our attention.”
He looked at her, and then pressed when she offered no reply.
“A ‘you’re welcome’ would be appropriate here. Let’s try to be cordial, shall we?”
Play along, Austin had said.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“Well, thank you for saying ‘you’re welcome,’ Alice.”
She just looked at him.
“Are you going to say ‘you’re welcome’ for my saying thank you for saying ‘you’re welcome’?”
She blinked.
“No, you aren’t, because that would be circular, wouldn’t it? I’d keep saying thank you, and you’d keep saying you’re welcome. It would be insane. And your brain is working overtime trying to convince you that you’re not insane. Not even disturbed. Not even a little bit. Classic delusional behavior.”
“It’s also classic sane behavior,” Austin said.
“True enough. Only this time we know that’s not the case. Deep inside, Alice knows that. Like many in her shoes, she’s so accustomed to being the way she is that she honestly thinks it’s all completely normal. As is the case with you, my friend. You can see that, can’t you?”
Austin thought a moment, then followed his own advice.
“Yes.”
“Yes, of course. You see how much better this is than resistance. Simple acceptance is always the first step to freedom.”
“Makes sense,” Austin said.
“Everything I say will eventually make sense.” Lawson withdrew his toothpick and pocketed it, maybe for future use.
“All the therapists conduct their cases under my strict supervision,” he continued. “On occasion, I take cases on personally, which is what I’ve decided to do in your case, Alice. If you’re agreeable, that is.”
Christy wasn’t sure how to take him. The man that stood before her now seemed quite different from the one she’d first met in his office. And yet quite the same. She didn’t know when he was toying with her and when he was serious.
She looked at Austin, who still sat in stoic control. He offered her a slight dip of his head.
“Yes,” she said.
Lawson glanced between them.
“I can see that you two have formed a bond. Scott, you will remain on this floor until we develop a more thorough treatment plan. Based on your file, your illness is severe, but I see no manic behavior that concerns me.”
He faced Christy.
“Fortunately for you, Alice, we have an effective treatment for patients who display the kind of extreme dissociation you’ve exhibited. You’ll be taken up to the second floor as soon as we’re done here.”
“What?” The thought of being separated from Austin and placed in some secretive upper floor pushed her mind over some unseen cliff.
“I’m not a problem!” she cried, feeling her control slip. A voice somewhere to
ld her to play along, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I’m not some nut and I’m no worse than Scott.”
“Maybe not, but make no mistake, Alice. You are a problem. You’ve been in here less than a day and you’ve already gone to great lengths to escape, once through the basement and once out the front. You injured yourself in the first attempt and took another patient with you on the second.”
“That’s not how it happened,” she snapped, but she saw immediately how Lawson could see it differently.
“That’s not how you’ve convinced yourself it happened,” Lawson said. “And that’s okay—you’re in a manic cycle now. You just called him Scott—that’s a good start.”
“Because you called him Scott.”
“Because his name is Scott. The truth is you are very ill, darling. So delusional, in fact, that you are completely unaware that your name is Alice. Most psychiatrists would already have you on medication. But the meds noted in your file clearly haven’t produced the kind of results we like to see. You’re a perfect candidate for our more progressive programs.”
“I am not!” Her hands were shaking. So was her mind. Screaming objections to his accusation that she wasn’t who she thought she was. Protesting the thought that he might be right, however impossible that seemed.
However much sense that actually did make.
She spun to Austin, frantic. “Tell him!” She jumped to her feet. “Don’t let him do this to me.”
“You see how emotional you become, Alice,” Lawson said. “I think you’re making my case as we speak.”
“Please, Austin!” She found her hands pressed together, begging. Tears flooded her eyes as her panic swelled. “Please…”
His eyes were calm, but his fingers were trembling.
“It’s going to be all right, Christy.” Then again, without offering any solution. “It’s going to be okay.”
But she knew it wasn’t.
Nothing was going to okay.
ONE THING was certain: Austin’s quick trip to the storage room to check on Christy had pulled him into a hellish scenario that reduced the threat of a brain tumor to a mere sideshow. Fact was, he was in way over his head. That much he could no longer deny.
Showing no interest in Austin’s request for an extended audience with Lawson, the administrator had instructed the staff to leave Austin in his room, door locked, alone with his thoughts. Food would be brought to him. His therapy would wait a day.
He’d watched them lead Christy from the interview room, offering her assurance that everything would be okay. The pleading look in her tearful eyes had broken Austin’s heart. He was in a position to keep his senses about him, but she was already drowning in her own fear and desperation.
He spent the rest of the day pacing in his room, powerless and alone. Mind obsessing over their predicament.
Over Christy’s fate. Where was she? Upper floor, but where and under what conditions? Had she stabilized? Had they broken her down and given her drugs?
What now?
There was nowhere to go, no one to reason with, no connection to the world outside of his mind—nothing but the precarious balance between what he knew and what he did not know. At times, the distinction between the two blurred.
His mind refused to shut down and sleep.
The meal tray the nurse had delivered last night sat untouched at the foot of the bed. Next to it: a small paper cup that held three blue pills. Also untouched. Something to take the edge off and help him sleep, she’d said.
He wasn’t interested in sleep. Anything that wasn’t focused on the singular objective of escape was a waste of precious mental energy, sleep included.
Surviving this ordeal depended on his ability to outthink and outwit Lawson. Both his and Christy’s lives depended on him now, and only him.
He rubbed his head gently as he walked incessantly between the room’s farthest walls. A dull constant pain sank into his forehead and spread behind his eyes. Exacerbated by fatigue and stress, his migraine had worsened through the night. Then there was the high-pitched ringing in his ears, which had started during the meeting with Lawson.
He’d spent some time considering the possibility, however remote, that Lawson was right about both of them. There were a few logical threads that supported the notion that he was, in fact, suffering dissociative delusions of grandeur, but in the end, that reasoning couldn’t compete with the evidence that supported his sanity.
Still, the way his world had unraveled so quickly yesterday was unnerving. And if it was unnerving for him, it must be mind-numbing for Christy.
Who could say how far they would push her? Fisher needed them both insane to cover his tracks. He would go as far as he needed.
Some people were inclined to identify with their trauma, even to the point of falling off the cliff into madness. Christy might be such a person. He’d always known she had her issues, but maybe they cut deeper than he guessed.
Lawson, it seemed, was either in on Fisher’s plot or truly convinced that Christy was Alice. And that he was Scott. Possible? Technically. Realistic? So far from it that Austin had dismissed even the possibility of it in his mind.
They needed to get out of the psych ward, period.
Lawson said there was no way out, but there had to be. Finding it was simply a matter of outthinking the man. Austin had mentally rehearsed a dozen escape scenarios a hundred times, but like a mythical Hydra, each problem he seemed to solve sprouted two new heads, two more problems.
The facility was designed to keep its occupants in, and every eventuality had likely been taken into account. Getting out through any conventional means was almost certainly impossible. And he could think of no unconventional means except one.
Alice. Assuming she was alive.
Everything led back to Alice. More specifically, to the words he’d overheard.
I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I know.
Finding Alice might mean finding a way out. She might know what was really happening, information that might break this place wide open. Doing that might mean getting her out too.
So find Alice, but how? Where would Fisher have put her?
Upper floor? Maybe.
Basement? Maybe.
Killed her? Maybe.
Readmitted her with a new identity? Maybe.
Without more information, Austin was at a loss. What he did know at the moment, was that Christy was on the second floor and in dire straits, suffering treatment that was likely not sanctioned.
His desire to reach her overrode his desire to find Alice. Reaching Christy first was the most important thing, if only to know that she was safe.
He taxed his mind to the point of exhaustion, working incessantly to think of a way to her. Every course of action seemed to form a twisted knot of trouble.
But even the most tangled of knots could be unraveled, couldn’t they? While the rest of the world slumbered in peace, he had methodically dissected the challenge—but he could think of no feasible way to reach Christy.
His mind wasn’t processing thoughts properly. There was a way, there had to be, he just wasn’t thinking about it right.
“Lost in thought, Scott?”
Austin jerked his attention toward the door. Nancy Wilkins, the therapist Christy had mentioned, stood in the doorframe holding a small stack of folders under her arm.
It was strange to hear her call him Scott. Scott Connelly. An imaginary patient Fisher had fabricated to lock Austin in this twisted world.
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t hear me opening the door.” She stepped in and pulled the door shut.
“Sorry. Just… thinking.”
“I can see that. Did you sleep well?”
“I never sleep well. Insomnia. Chronic, actually.”
A look of genuine concern softened her face as she glanced at the still-made bed, then back at him. “Sometimes goes with the territory.”
He was tempted to correct her but thought better of it.
“So they say,” he said.
“Well, as you grow accustomed to your new surroundings, Saint Matthew’s will begin to feel like home. You’ll see.”
She considered him for a long beat. Austin noticed the methodical movement of her analytical gaze. In a single smooth sweep of the eyes, she had taken in him and the entire room. Question was, what did those eyes see?
“What time is it?” he said.
“Just past ten. You’re free to leave your room. Maybe go to the recreation room or grab some breakfast in the cafeteria.” She nodded toward the food tray. “Looks like you could use some food.”
“Maybe.”
She paused. “If you’d like, I can walk down with you. Show you around if that would make you feel more comfortable.”
“No thanks. I’ll be fine. I can find the way.”
“Of course.” She reached for the door, hesitated, and then turned back. “We’re here to help you, Scott. This is a safe place for you. You can trust me. Okay?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
She opened the door. The faint sounds of people talking drifted in from the hallway. “I’ll see you later. We’re scheduled for a two o’clock session in room 408. Sound good?”
“Looking forward to it,” he said with a smile, trying to suppress any sarcastic edge.
“Good. We’ll find you. Any questions, feel free to ask the staff.”
“I will. Thank you.”
She closed the door behind her as she left. Unlocked.
He was free to roam the floor. He’d been through the halls once before, but now he had enough time to inspect the rest unhurried.
An image of Christy filled his mind. Upper floor. His failure to settle on a clear course of action coaxed sweat from his pores.
He took a deep breath, opened his door, and peered out. Wilkins stopped in front the next patient room, knocked twice, and entered. Morning rounds.
Austin exited his room, pulled the door quietly shut, and walked toward the recreation room, ahead and to the left.