Page 11 of No Asylum Here

"Does everyone who works here live here?" I asked, noting the large number of rooms. Up here, the walls were a grayish-blue, and the scent of vanilla permeated the air instead of the moldy crotch smell in the lobby.

The room Rook led me to was small and sparsely furnished, with only a twin bed, a side table with a lamp, and a dresser.

“It’s simple, but it’s far preferable to the patient units.”

After seeing the condition of the lobby and reception area, it wasn’t surprising.

I set my suitcase beside my new bed and turned to face the doctor. “Is this a state-funded hospital or privately owned?”

“Private. But we have federal contracts.”

“And how did you hear about me again? Was it one of my supervising doctors at UCSF?”

Dr. Rook’s olive eyes gleamed with what I could only discern as cool mirth. “One of your past patients, actually.”

I blinked. “One of my patients from the UCSF Medical Center?”

He cleared his throat, his hand extending toward my room’s door handle. He was done with this conversation. “It’s getting late. I’ll leave you to settle in. Sleep well.”

With that, he left. I stared at the door with a frown. How was I supposed to sleep well when Dr. Rook had left me with more questions than answers?

It didn’t take long to unpack; I hadn’t brought much. I’d left in a hurry—at least, I think I did. It was frustrating that I still couldn’t remember. I’d have to call and arrange for movers to take care of my things and put everything in storage.

For hours, I lay awake on my uncomfortable mattress, staring up at my new ceiling.

Then, the screams began.

It wasn’t until I took two Vicodin that sleep came. I surrendered to the darkness, sweeping me away from this cold, unfamiliar room…

Until I found myself in another.

Fire ignited inside me when concrete cell walls came into view.

I was having another dream like before, trapped in that same dingy cell. This time, the man in the straitjacket was nowhere in sight.

Something wasn’t right.

I was on the floor, lying on my side, and I couldn’t move. My arms were folded over my chest, the long sleeves of a straitjacket secured over my shoulders with leather straps running down the length of my torso.

Movement behind me had my blood crystallizing in my veins. I was suddenly hyper aware of the hard muscle pressed against my back, and the hot breath fanning my nape.

I wasn’t alone.

I was not only trapped inside the cell with that madman, but I was strapped to his chest… inside his straitjacket with him.

Black tendrils of hair tickled my cheek as a deep snicker rumbled in my ear. “I thought you were a figment of my nightmares. But I’m starting to think I’m one of yours.”

Chapter Five

Patient Seventeen

Most nights, I tried not to sleep. Going mad from sleep deprivation was better than suffering the evils that lived in the darkness of my mind. The drugs they forced into my system made everything vivid and painful. So when the heavy dose of sedatives took me in its grip, and sleep wrapped my head like barbed wire, I braced for the worst.

When the darkness melted, I found myself in my cell again. I knew I was dreaming. Everything in the drug-induced sleep state was slower, darker, with a constant unease eating at my nerves like a parasite.

Then, delicious clarity. This wasn’t another nightmare brought on by Rook’s drugs.

It was her.