Delirium (London Psychic)

by J. F. Penn

  There were a number of nurses walking home as the shift ended at Guy's, and several passed the window of the cafe, some laughing together, some with faces fixed in anxiety edged with desperation. Jamie knew that look from years of dealing with the public, of trying to serve those in need and being abused verbally every day and physically far too often. One woman in a nurse's uniform caught her eye, as instead of walking past the cafe, she turned towards the door of the clinic.

  Jamie ran out the door and across the road, reaching the clinic as the door shut behind the nurse. Jamie banged on it, hoping that the woman would think she had dropped something.

  The door opened a crack. Jamie showed her police warrant card.

  "Good evening, I need to speak to whoever is in charge. We have reason to believe you have a murder suspect here."

  The nurse looked suspicious, her eyes narrowing to examine the card.

  "We're not open, Detective …"

  "Brooke," Jamie finished for her. "That doesn't matter. I need to speak with your night supervisor immediately."

  At the authority in her tone, the nurse opened the door a little more.

  "OK, but you'll need to wait here while I get him."

  She pulled open the door and Jamie stepped into a waiting area, just like any up-market clinic, with piles of magazines and even a bowl of sweets on the countertop. The nurse indicated a chair.

  "Please wait here. I won't be long."

  Jamie picked up a magazine and looked away slightly, turning back to watch as the nurse entered a number on a keypad by the door and stepped through as it buzzed. Four, six, five, two, nine. Jamie repeated the numbers in her mind and before the door shut, she moved swiftly to stop it closing. As she listened to the woman's footsteps clacking down the hallway, Jamie's heart thudded in her chest. She couldn't wait for whoever was in charge to check on her warrant card, especially if, as she suspected, Dale Cameron was involved in Blake's admission.

  She heard the nurse go through another door and Jamie slipped into the corridor behind her, closing the outer door firmly. There were several more doors off to the side but for now, Jamie just needed to hide. There was no time to find Blake now, so she needed to wait until they thought she was gone.

  Jamie tried a few doors. The first was an interview room, just a table and some chairs with nowhere to hide. The second was dark, so Jamie pulled out her tiny flashlight. It was an office suite with computers and a bank of old-fashioned filing shelves on one side, with winding handles to make more space. She ducked inside, pushing the door quietly closed, and wound the shelves partly open, squashing herself down the back, away from the view of the door. Seconds later, she heard voices in the corridor.

  The angry, low tones of a man interrupted the voice of the nurse, but Jamie couldn't hear what they were saying. She hoped they wouldn't check for her, assuming she had left the building out of the main door. After they had gone back into the front office, she heard raised voices in a discussion and then they faded away down the corridor again.

  Jamie waited, concentrating on her breathing for ten minutes, twenty, then half an hour. How long would it be until they had forgotten her and just continued with the routine of the night? She looked around at the files on the shelves, realizing they were medical records, inpatient folders and test results. Jamie pulled one off the shelf near her, holding the tiny flashlight in her teeth to read. There was little to indicate anything wrong here, but the sheer volume of records was overwhelming.

  She looked at her watch. It was nearly two a.m., and the adrenalin of the day was wearing off. She was tired, which meant that the people on duty must be, as well. She couldn't go in with guns blazing, she didn't even have a weapon, but she had to try and find Blake. She stood, stretching her limbs.

  Pulling open the office door a little, Jamie listened, but all was silent and the corridor was dark. Her tiny flashlight illuminated the hallway, so she advanced slowly, trying more doors along the way. There was another office, then an examination room with nothing untoward in it. It looked like an outpatient clinic, perhaps somewhere to screen those that RAIN might be interested in. The door at the end of the corridor looked more hopeful, but it had a keypad on it.

  Jamie tried the numbers she had seen the nurse use. Four, six, five, two, nine. The door buzzed and she pushed it open slowly, expecting to see one of the staff but once again, there was just a corridor with doors leading off it. By the angle, it stretched far into the building next door. Jamie stood listening quietly for a moment. There was a faint beep of medical equipment coming from the rooms around her, but no sound of movement. She kept trying doors, until she came to one set up like a hospital ward. Jamie held her breath, not daring to move, her heart pounding as she realized there were bodies in the beds, chests rising and falling rhythmically.

  Nobody moved, no alarms went off. Jamie swung her flashlight around the room. There were four beds, with a person in each, but all were hooked up to drips and seemed to be deeply unconscious. Was Blake one of them?

  She quickly checked each one, all young men, but no Blake. Jamie frowned. It was strange that they would all be sedated, but perhaps it was a way to avoid extra staffing. There were no charts on the beds, but there was an empty nurses' station. Jamie bent to the desk and shuffled through the paperwork. The sheets for the four men were stamped with 'Transfer,' but beneath them was a procedural document on managing insulin coma. Jamie pulled it out, reading the words but not quite believing them. It seemed these men had been 'recruited' locally from the homeless population and were now being used as test subjects for a new form of insulin coma therapy. Popular in the 1930s, insulin was injected to decrease blood sugar causing the subjects to descend into seizures and eventually a soporific coma that could be revived through intravenous blood sugar with the aim of shocking the system into recovery. The notes on this document implied they were being given the treatment in combination with ECT, and they would be transferred to the long-term RAIN facility the next day. Jamie took out her smartphone and snapped a couple of pictures of the paperwork and the bodies of the men in the beds illuminated by torchlight.

  She replaced the documents and edged out of the room into the corridor again. The next room was a similar ward, but this time with a curtain obscuring the back half. Jamie tiptoed closer, hearing the rhythmic breathing of a person behind the curtain. She peered around to see Blake's face on the pillow, his head closely shaved. Her heart leapt.

  "Blake," she whispered. "I'm here. Wake up."

  No response. Jamie stepped behind the curtain and leaned down to his ear. "Blake. Wake up." She touched his shoulder. Still no response.

  His face was calm in repose but there were dark shadows under his eyes and even in the few days since she had seen him, he had become gaunt and thin. His arm was hooked to an IV and Jamie pulled the tubing from the cannula, hoping that the sedation would stop and he might come round. There was no way she could get him out while he was unconscious. She saw the shackles on his wrists and knew then that he hadn't come in willingly.

  Jamie looked around the back half of the room, noting a chair with restraints and a head brace. What had they done to him? Jamie leaned down and stroked Blake's forehead, his skin dark against the white pillow. He moaned a little, his face twisting.

  She had to get the cuffs off him. Jamie walked to the chair and saw the trolley next to it, with medical instruments in a neat line. There was a key in the perfect line of implements, as if placed there by an OCD torturer. Picking it up, she unlocked Blake's cuffs, gently freeing his scarred hands. She tucked them into the sheets as she waited, hoping the drugs would wear off enough that he would wake soon. Meanwhile, she needed to find evidence of what this lab was for.

  At the back of the room was a white workbench, with a closed laptop and paperwork filed neatly next to it. Jamie looked through the pile of papers, finding a thick brown file with Blake's name on the front and an old book, bound in burgundy leather. She opened the file to find a sheaf of p
hotos, taken over a period of years by the looks of them. There were some images taken more recently, at the Imperial War Museum a few days ago and some of an older man, his face similar to Blake's. Putting the photos aside, she scanned the papers, finding two versions of a family tree – one handwritten on thin paper and the other a typed medicalized version, similar to the one she had seen at Monro's psychiatric practice. The two had some differences, but both were clearly of Blake's extended family. Jamie turned to look back at the bed, Blake's wan face on the pillow. RAIN clearly wanted to understand his genetic history, but how far would they go to get it?

  Suddenly she heard a sound in the corridor, the squeak of wheels and the slow footsteps of someone approaching.

  Chapter 30

  Jamie slipped round Blake's bed, ducking down behind the curtain, folding herself out of sight of the door. She heard a rush of air as it opened and the steps of someone coming into the room. Her heart pounded in her chest, her pulse racing. They couldn't find her now, not when she was so close.

  The wheels of the trolley squeaked closer. If it was a nurse with night meds, they would see very soon that the IV was unhooked. They would know she was here. She had to move. Jamie grasped the handle of her tiny flashlight, ready to use it as a weapon, and braced herself to jump forward.

  "I know you're here, Detective." A smooth voice filled the room and Jamie started at the unexpected sound. "You might as well come out and we can talk. I know you're worried about your friend, but perhaps I can explain his treatment. This is a hospital, after all." The man sounded reasonable and Jamie stood, unfolding herself from the folds of the curtain.

  It was the bald man she had seen with Cameron at the station, his head a strange asymmetrical shape. His dual-colored eyes were sharp and focused.

  "Detective Brooke, my nurse said you were looking for me. I'm Dr Crowther, and I would have shown you the facility if you'd requested it. But now you're here, you can see that Blake is fine. He's restrained for his own good – we had to stop him self-harming after the death of his father."

  "I want to talk to him," Jamie said, keeping her eyes fixed on Crowther. "I want to know that he's consented to be here."

  Crowther frowned.

  "You know he's mentally ill, don't you? He supposedly sees visions of other dimensions, of the past. All evidence of insanity, which we can help him recover from. I can tell him you were here when he wakes up tomorrow, and we can arrange for you to visit at a more … sociable time of day." He gestured towards the door. "Let me escort you out."

  Jamie hesitated. Crowther was being so reasonable, implying she could visit Blake easily tomorrow. She thought of the men down the hall locked into insulin comas with transfer papers. But perhaps Blake wouldn't even be here if she came back later.

  Crowther's eyes narrowed as if he could see her hesitation and his hand slipped into his pocket. Seeing the movement, Jamie shoved the bed with her leg, smashing the metal frame into his knee, as he whipped something from his pocket and sprayed it directly in her face. Jamie felt the sting of pepper, her eyes streaming, and she began to cough, her lungs seizing up. She dropped to the floor, bending over and heaving as she tried to draw air into her lungs. Crowther's boot thudded into her side and she rolled sideways, pain exploding through her body, panic descending as she fought to breathe.

  "You silly bitch," he sneered. "You think you can just walk in here and take my prize specimen away?" He kicked her again. Jamie gasped, fighting for air. "You have no idea who's involved in this. Your boss, Cameron, he knows, and you'll find you have no place in the police now. Not ever again." He reached down and grabbed Jamie's arm, dragging her up and into the chair. "Now, why don't we try and send you a little mad? I hear you're close to the edge already and the main facility is always happy to get fresh brains to play with. No one's going to miss you anymore."

  The chair was hard against her back and as she rubbed her eyes, Jamie felt her other hand clicked into place, manacled to the arm of the chair with a metal cuff. His words resonated through a haze of pain. Perhaps he was right. Without Polly, without Blake, no one would miss her. Missinghall would try to find out something, but he was hospitalized for now. She would be left inside whatever hell Crowther wanted, a lab rat for the mind, an experimental subject with no identity, just a label they decided on. In the past, women had been sent to Bedlam for nothing more than questioning their husband's authority, and now she would be sent there for challenging the supremacy of those in control.

  "Let me go, you bastard. Help!"

  Jamie shouted, twisting against the man, throwing her head back to try and hit him with her skull, reaching round with her arm, her eyes still blinded by the pepper spray.

  "There's no one to hear you. No one who cares, anyway." He laughed, his voice further away now. "We just need a little sedation, and then you won't be able to speak. You won't remember anything but the nightmares that emerge in your sleep, when you wake covered in sweat, fear dripping from your pores." He fought with her, his higher position and strength giving him just enough leverage to click the manacle onto her other wrist. "You think you've seen the depths of what humans can do in your work, Detective, but what I show you in here, strapped to this chair, will send you right over the edge."

  Jamie's eyes were clearing now, tears streaming down her face as they washed out the pepper spray. She could see the hazy outline of Blake in the bed. Crowther filled a syringe with green liquid, a smile of triumph on his face. She twisted her body, shaking her arms, pulling at the restraints, desperate to get away. Once she was drugged, she would be out of control, and she would truly be whatever he wanted her to be.

  He turned with the syringe in his hand.

  "Now, if you hold still, this will be more pleasant for both of us. Or, I can restrain you even further. Regardless, you will be sedated. This particular concoction also has amnesiac side effects."

  Behind the doctor, Jamie saw Blake move his head towards the sound. His eyelids were fluttering. She tried not to look at him, willing him to wake up fully.

  "Surely it would be more fun for you to torture me without sedation," she said, trying to keep Crowther's eyes on her. Behind him, Blake opened his eyes.

  The doctor smiled. "Who said anything about torture? This is research, Detective, a scientific endeavor that gives this country a competitive advantage. Think about it. If we can find ways to turn off empathy and regret, our soldiers will be more effective in the field. If we can find a way to kill sexuality in the brain, we will no longer have sex offenders. If we can find a way to make people commit suicide, we will rid the world of those hangers on, the drain on society that means we all pay so much in benefits. If we can control behavior and emotion, then we will truly be the most powerful country on Earth. To learn all this, to test all this, we need subjects. You should consider your participation to be the ultimate in service to your country. You would have joined the police for similar reasons, surely, Detective?"

  Crowther took another step towards Jamie, syringe held ready. Behind him, Blake was slowly sitting up, realizing his limbs were unshackled.

  "I chose the police in order to make a difference," Jamie said. "But my actions within the force were my own choice. The people you experiment on come to you for care, and you abuse their trust by treating them as test subjects. Your research would be banned if the public ever knew of it."

  "The public?" Crowther snorted. "They couldn't give a shit about the mentally ill. They just want to be protected, defended and made well again. Those half-assed liberals still want the best for themselves and their own children, and our research will give them that future." He took another step forward. "And your sacrifice will help."

  Chapter 31

  Blake reached for his IV stand. As he did, he brushed the metal cuff on the side of the bed. Crowther turned at the clanging sound and dropped the needle in his haste to reach the panic button on the side wall. As he moved, Jamie kicked out, knocking him down. Crowther scrambled to his feet b
ut Blake was up now, swinging the heavy IV stand down to smash onto the doctor's back. He moaned, but still crawled forward.

  "Hit him again," Jamie shouted. They couldn't let him press that panic button.

  Blake shifted his grip, his face set in a grimace. He slammed the IV stand down again, the metal bottom smashing into the side of Crowther's head. The doctor slumped to the floor, unconscious. Blake stared down at him, his eyes still vague and hazy.

  "He won't be out for long," Jamie said. "Blake, look at me. You need to get me out of these shackles. We both need to get out of here."

  Blake looked up, his face twisting with anguish. "I don't know what's real anymore. What I see and what he made me see. Am I really crazy, Jamie?"

  "Come here," Jamie whispered, longing to hold him. "Just breathe and listen to my heartbeat." He walked forward and laid his head on her stomach. She wanted to stroke his head, like she used to do for Polly, but her hands were still shackled. "That's what's real. I'm real. You're real. And we need to get out of here."

  After a moment, Blake stood up straight again, his eyes clearing of clouds, the blue sharpening as some of the natural color returned to his face.

  "You're strapped down," he said.

  Jamie smiled. "Good to see you're paying attention. The keys are over there, I think." She indicated with a nod of her head to where a number of implements lay next to the doctor's laptop. Blake found the key and unlocked her cuffs, his movements unsteady.

  Jamie rubbed her wrists and then swung her legs off the chair, adrenalin fading as tiredness washed over her. "We have to get out of here, right now." Blake leaned against the chair, clutching at it for support. "Can you walk?"

  He nodded, his eyes determined. "I'll manage."

  She grabbed the file with Blake's notes from the sideboard, shoving it in a large specimen bag. She added the syringe of green fluid, putting a plastic cap on to shield the needle. It was evidence of something, even if she didn't know quite what.