Bedlam

by Keira Michelle Telford

  “You need your eyes checked.” Leonie giggles.

  “You need your mouth checked,” Silver retorts. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  “But what about your file?” Leonie whines pleadingly, desperate to inject some excitement into an otherwise dull as dishwater day. “Elena goes out every Wednesday afternoon. She has the same appointment, at the same time, every week. We could be in and out of her office without her ever knowing.”

  “We?” One of Silver’s eyebrows darts upward.

  “I’m bored.”

  “What day is it today?” Silver has no idea.

  “Wednesday.” Leonie grins. “She’ll be leaving in fifteen minutes. Come see!”

  Leonie leads Silver to an upstairs hallway window overlooking the front path, and they sit on the deep windowsill, watching and waiting. Right on time, going about her business like clockwork, Elena walks out of the main doors and down the path.

  “Where does she go?” Silver wonders.

  “Therapy.” Leonie folds her arms, scowling at Elena’s retreating form. “Isn’t that a joke? She spends her whole life telling other people they’re the barmy ones, and yet she’s been seeing a shrink once a week every week for her entire adult life.”

  “Do you know why?” Silver can imagine why.

  Leonie shrugs. “I dunno. Chronic bitchiness?”

  Silver smirks, keeping her eyes pinned on the feminine sway of Elena’s hips as she strides up to the sleek black car waiting for her on the curbside, getting an eyeful of her stocking tops as the elegant doctor angles herself into the backseat, her skirt riding up.

  “Don’t be too hard on her.” Silver watches a pale hand come to the hem of the skirt, tugging fruitlessly on it. “It must suck being …” She decides against completing that sentence, uncertain of the dynamic between this teen and the older woman.

  “Being what?” Leonie scoffs. “A professional cunt?” She grabs a fistful of Silver’s blues. “Come on, let’s go!”

  She drags Silver all the way to Elena’s office.

  “Now what, smarty pants?” Silver taps the Authenticard door lock.

  Leonie pulls an Authenticard out of her pocket, swipes it, and the door clicks open.

  “Boo-yah!” She pushes inside, leaving Silver to follow.

  “Okay.” Silver strolls in after her. “Who the fuck are you? You’re no loon.”

  Leonie holds up her Authenticard for Silver to pluck from her hand.

  Her name on the card: Leonie Lavergne.

  “Elena’s your mother?” Silver hands her back the ID, glad she hadn’t let anything slip about the doctor’s concealed lusts. “So why are you dressed like an inmate?”

  “Because I’m a problem child.” Leonie makes a beeline for Elena’s filing cabinet. “What’s your last name?”

  “Cross.”

  Leonie yanks open the top drawer, containing patient files A—D, and nabs Silver’s from the bunch, opening it to find a brand new Authenticard paperclipped to the first page.

  “Aha!” She slaps the file down on Elena’s desk. “I told you.” She flicks the shiny plastic rectangle. “Your citizenship’s already been completed.”

  “So I can leave?” Silver reaches for the card, but Leonie smacks her hand away.

  “Since when is anything that easy? I mean, I’m sure you can force your way out of here if you really want to—it’s honestly not that hard—but it’ll only be a matter of time before someone finds you and brings you back here like a lost puppy.”

  “Why?”

  Leonie snags the Authenticard from the file. “I’ll show you.”

  She digs around on Elena’s desk, eventually pulling out a computer tablet from under a stack of papers. She turns the device on, swiftly inputting Elena’s login details.

  “You know her password?” Silver leans over her shoulder.

  “She’s not that imaginative.” Leonie types in Psych101. “It’s the same for everything.”

  Leonie scans the barcode on the back of Silver’s Authenticard, bringing up her public citizenship profile. Beneath her name, age, marital status, and profession, her residency details are listed.

  Current address: Bishopsgate Insane Asylum.

  Under the supervision of: Doctor Elena Lavergne.

  “See?” Leonie shows her the screen. “You’re in the legal custody of Bishopsgate, and my mum’s your guardian. You can’t leave voluntarily; you have to be released from her psychiatric care.”

  “Then how am I supposed to get out of here?”

  Leonie shrugs. “Short of getting my mum to discharge you, you can only be discharged by your next of kin.” She taps the screen. “This says you’re married, so where’s your hubby?”

  “D10, the Delta compound. Not that we’re on good terms—I kind of ran off with a Russian woman—but how do I get in touch with him?”

  “Uhhh.” Leonie skips past that casual sexual divulgence. “I guess you can send a letter, but all correspondence to and from Delta compounds is checked by Royal Mail border security and it can take months before a letter reaches its destination. I have a better idea.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “You need to work out why you haven’t been released yet.” Leonie starts flipping through Silver’s patient file. “If you know the reason why my mother’s not discharging you, then you know what you need to do to make her happy. Get it?” She flicks from page to page. “If you fix whatever it is she thinks is wrong with you, then she’ll have no reason to keep you here.”

  Buying into that logic, Silver thieves a few pages of Elena’s notes and scans through them, quickly becoming angered by Elena’s condemnations. “This is such bullshit.”

  Leonie laughs. “What’s the matter? What did she write about you?”

  “Ella Cross is insubordinate and aggressive.” Silver reads from the most offensive page. “She’s displayed Sapphic tendencies, and is prone to lewd behavior and uncontrollable sexual urges.”

  “Are you a chronic masturbator?” Leonie jokes.

  “I only did that one time!” Silver holds up a finger. “And for what it’s worth, I derived no pleasure from it. I was trying to incite a reaction.”

  “You flicked your bean in front of my mother?” Leonie pulls a face. “Ugh. Vile!”

  “Oh, don’t be such a prude.” Silver tosses the insulting pages back onto the desk. “This is a total waste of time.”

  “Wait.” Leonie spots something in Silver’s medical records. “You’re pregnant?”

  “So people keep reminding me.” Silver flops into Elena’s chair.

  “And your baby’s a Delta?”

  “Yeah.” Silver spins around in the plush leather chair. “Why?”

  “That has to be it.” Something clicks for Leonie and she seizes the arms of the chair, bringing Silver to a complete stop. “You can’t stay here.” She shakes her head vehemently. “They’ll take it from you.”

  “What?” Silver scrunches up her face.

  “Deltas aren’t allowed in London. If you give birth here, they won’t allow you to keep it. They’ll …” Leonie lets the words die.

  “They’ll what?” Silver prods her to complete the thought. “Tell me.”

  “It’s too ugly. You’d never believe it.” Leonie chews on her bottom lip. “It’s probably best if I show you.”

  Avoiding detection by the orderlies tasked with supervising the female inmates during a government enforced hour of daily outdoor exercise, Leonie sneaks Silver across one of Bishopsgate’s contained courtyards.

  This furtive operation is made markedly easier by the breakout of a fight between two inmates who both feel equally deserving of a dirt-encrusted shuttlecock discovered inside a flowerpot. The struggle for its possession causes a kerfuffle of epic proportions, requiring three orderlies to blow on their emergency whistles, summoning backup.

  By the time the courtyard—little more than a square patch of grass with a badminton net and a croquet set—quiets down, Leonie and Sil
ver are at the top of a rusted fire escape stairwell at the end of a building on the courtyard’s western tip.

  This seemingly derelict wing of Bishopsgate is boarded-up, the windows covered with plastic sheets and planks of wood. At the top of the fire escape, a loosened board provides a narrow entryway into a disused room on the upper floor.

  Smaller Leonie slips through with ease, while Silver contorts her body awkwardly, tumbling through gracelessly and landing with a hard thud on the floor.

  “Stealthy.” Leonie peers down at her. “We have to be quiet, you klutz.”

  “Where are we?” Silver groans, rolling onto her knees and heaving herself up. “And why couldn’t we use the door?”

  “My Authenticard’s no good in this building.” Leonie peeks out of the room, checking to make sure there aren’t any approaching doctors or orderlies. “I don’t have access to this part of Bishopsgate.”

  Silver takes in their surroundings: an old doctor’s office. Squirrels have been nesting in the desk drawers, having found their way in through a broken window pane, and medical books on an old bookshelf have been shredded by mice, the paper used for padding their burrows in the walls. Why a damp, dingy place like this would be off limits to Leonie, she can’t fathom.

  “Stay down low and follow me,” Leonie instructs quietly, getting on her knees and crawling out of the office onto a narrow walkway.

  Silver, humoring Leonie only because she doesn’t have the energy or the inclination to argue, drops to her knees and creeps up beside the teen, huddling near the edge of the walkway.

  The entire upper level of the off-limits building is lined with offices and storage rooms. Doors are falling off hinges, massive cobwebs are clinging to the ceiling, and it appears to be mostly abandoned. Paint is peeling off the walls and black mold is spreading throughout, the air smelling damp and musty, the stench of rot barely concealed by a few dangling air fresheners.

  The horseshoe-shaped walkway—little more than a metal gangway, suspended from the ceiling and harnessed to the walls—jiggles with their movements as they shuffle over to the railing. It looks down on a single hospital ward below, the long room filled with three rows of single beds, patients in almost all of them.

  Nothing like the clean, sterile environment inside the main body of Bishopsgate, this place is dank and filthy. The cheap linoleum floor is cracked, covered with stains of blood and other bodily fluids, and many of the stick-on tiles are coming unglued, curling at the edges.

  Power cables run from an over-taxed generator, supplying the constant demand of heart monitors and other medical equipment, as well as the bedside lamps which provide the only source of artificial light.

  The patients—men and women of all ages—are strapped into their beds with leather wrist and ankle cuffs, some of them covered in sores, others losing their hair. Eyes closed, as if asleep, they’re hooked up to IV drips—one in each arm. Several appear to be on life support, requiring special equipment to help them breathe. One of the women is heavily pregnant, her swollen belly ballooning out the thin bed sheets.

  Squinting in the dim light, Silver makes out the forms of at least three children in the mix, their beds kept apart from the others. She shudders.

  “What did you say this place was?”

  “The Delta ward.” Leonie gestures for her to keep her voice down. “The patients here are sedated and put on vitamin and mineral drips until Doctor Montgomery has what he wants from them.”

  “Doctor Montgomery?”

  “Elena’s father.” Leonie tips her head to a lanky gray-haired man in a white coat who’s checking patient files at the end of the room. “He owns Bishopsgate, and he runs the Delta ward.”

  “Are these people sick? Why are they here?” Silver watches Doctor Montgomery scratch at his silvery mustache, deep in thought.

  “They’re used for testing experimental treatments or drugs. Mostly stuff that’s not yet been sanctioned for trials on humans.”

  Silver’s eyes fall back on the children. “How can this be legal?”

  “It’s not.” Leonie wriggles back from the railing, tucking herself out of sight. “At least, not this ward. Doctor Montgomery manages a government funded research hospital in addition to Bishopsgate. For that facility, Deltas are bought from Delta compounds—from families who desperately need the money or whatever—so all the test subjects are essentially volunteers.”

  “But not here?” Silver moves away from the ledge.

  Leonie shakes her head. “The Metropolitan Police or the Crown Prosecution Service sometimes run into Deltas within the Northside city walls. By rights, these illegals should be exiled back to their compounds, but … that’s a lot of paperwork, you know? Instead of going to all that trouble, they quite often hand them off to institutions like Bishopsgate on the sly. But since they’re not in the system—since people like Doctor Montgomery don’t have permission to use them like this—they have to be kept away from the legitimate research facilities.”

  “And this is what they want my baby for?” Silver asks incredulously. “A free lab rat? That’s disgusting.”

  “I warned you.” Leonie crawls back into the old office. “Now we’d best be getting back.”

  Silver catches her elbow. “We can’t just leave them here like this.”

  “What do you think you can do for them?” Leonie jerks free and gets vertical, brushing dust off her blues. “They’re in medically induced comas and too sick to move. Plus, you’d never be able to get them out of the Northside.”

  “Then we’ll call the police. Let them deal with it.”

  “Were you not listening?” Leonie pinches one of Silver’s earlobes and tugs on it. “The police brought most of them here to begin with. They all turn a blind eye. The only Delta you need to worry about is the one growing inside you.” She pokes Silver’s stomach.

  “Fine.” Silver fumbles her Authenticard out of her pocket. “Lead the way.”

  “What’re you doing with that?” Leonie tries to grab it from her. “Elena updates her files daily; she’ll know it’s been taken.”

  “So let’s not give her the opportunity.” Silver scrutinizes the small rectangle of plastic. “What’s stopping me from taking this and walking out of the front door right now?”

  “You want a list?” Leonie counts items off on her fingers. “There’s orderlies, nurses, doctors, security staff—”

  “Okay. How about the back door?” Silver cuts her off. “You must know another way out of this place.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No buts.” Silver pushes her toward the window. “I’m getting out of here, and you’re going to help me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Silver hops up onto a washing machine in the laundry room, waiting for Leonie to doff the blues she pilfered from a basket of fresh linens and retrieve her proper clothes from a stashed bag hanging on a hook behind the door.

  “I told you to wait outside,” Leonie grumbles, pulling her scrub top off over her head. “If you get caught in here, we’ll both be in trouble.”

  “Hurry up and get your kit off, then,” Silver urges her impatiently. “I wanna get going before I lose the daylight.”

  Holding the scrub top to her chest, her upper body covered only by the tight-fitting white cotton tee worn by the inmates beneath their blues, Leonie waits for Silver to realize her manners and avert her eyes. She’s out of luck.

  “A little privacy?” she prompts then, tossing the scrub top onto Silver’s head. “Don’t look!”

  Silver leaves the blue fabric in place, her face obscured, not caring one bit to steal any peeks of Leonie’s semi-naked body, nor wanting the reserved teen to have any reason to accuse her of doing so—especially not in this political climate.

  Her nostrils flooded with the scent of Bishopsgate’s lemony laundry detergent, the starchy fabric rough against her cheeks, she ponders why someone—problem child or not—would ever opt to strip themselves of their individuality and become sub
merged in this awful place. Teen rebellion? Morbid curiosity?

  “Why do you do it?” she has to ask.

  “Do what?” is the muffled reply, the white tee halfway over Leonie’s head.

  “Why do you spend your free time posing as a nutjob?” Silver listens to the ruffle of more cotton, assuming Leonie’s now stripped to her undies. “Does your mother know?”

  “I only do it when she’s not around.” Leonie wriggles into a pair of kicksies. “It’s just nice to be near people who always speak their mind, even if half of it comes out gibberish.”

  “You’re not happy at home?” Silver infers.

  Leonie, now mostly dressed, whips the scrub top off Silver’s face. “You want to know about my mummy issues?”

  “I want to know about your mommy.” Silver slides off the washing machine. “What’s she like outside of this place?”

  Leonie shrugs, pulling a double-breasted, military-style woolen jacket on over a vest top with a red rose motif snaking up the side. “Much the same as she is in it, only sadder and angrier.”

  “Why sadder?” Silver asks, suspecting that she might already know the answer.

  “Because she hates being around me and my dad.” Leonie tosses the used blues into a random laundry pile. “She’d rather stay in her office, writing patient reports and penning more of her stupid journal articles than come home and eat a meal with us, or—heaven forbid—actually talk to us.”

  “It’s not you,” Silver says without thinking, traipsing behind Leonie into the hall.

  “How would you know that?” The teen snorts derisively.

  “Because I do,” Silver defends her statement. “It’s your father she feels awkward being around, not you. I’m sure she loves you, she just has difficulty expressing herself.”

  “Yeah, right.” Leonie stops in front of an emergency exit.

  It’s alarmed—as are all of Bishopsgate’s doors and windows—but one swipe of her Authenticard against the lock and the alarm will be disabled.