Page 3 of No Asylum Here

I had once considered myself unbreakable. As a foster kid with no family, not a penny to my name, who’d put everything into paying my way through med school, I had to be. But now, it all seemed like a waste.

I’d lost my job. My reputation, too, if Robert Braith had anything to say about it. I was already under a mountain of student debt, and now I had no severance pay or savings to support me until I found another job. If I could find another job.

The cherry on the shit cake was the manifestation of my guilt in the form of Lauren Hawkins, haunting me like a ghost.

I’d seen some fucked up shit in my life. Especially in my residency. Sawed off limbs and gushing arteries, crushed bones and pus-filled infections. During a shift in the ER, a man who’d been driving behind a semi-truck hauling rebar came in. The load wasn’t probably secured to the truck bed, and a piece of rebar went straight through the man’s windshield, punching into his eyesocket, like something out of Final Destination. None of it had rattled me like this.

All I wanted was to stop seeing Lauren’s face.

There was only one thing that helped.

A sharp pang pulled under my gut as I reached into the box in my passenger seat. I pulled out my prescription pad and pen and scribbled down my own name.

Chapter Two

Tuesday

By the time I pulled haphazardly into my designated space in my complex’s parking garage, the sun was down. I’d done some shopping. A bottle of cheap vodka and the white paper bag holding my prescription now joined Joanie and the fidget toys in the filing box. Everything I needed to throw an epic pity party.

I wasn’t normally one to sit around and feel sorry for myself. I was a “go-getter.” Look where that got me. I was drowning in student loans and credit card debt. I wasn’t just in the red—I was completely and financially fucked. The position at Braith Psychiatry had been my ticket to digging myself out of the hole I’d gotten myself into, for a career I flubbed out of the gate.

Getting out of the car with the box tucked under my arm, I walked to the service elevator and stabbed the call button with no response.

Out of order. Of fucking course.

I pulled the vodka bottle from the box and took a shaky swig before beginning the trek up seven flights of stairs to my studio. It wasn’t the fact that I was in heels that had me swearing bitterly beneath my breath, but the increased chance of running into my landlady.

As my shit luck would have it today, Mrs. Zieliński’s door opened the instant I stepped onto her floor. The old woman came shuffling out in a mint green housecoat, with her silver hair up in yellow foam rollers that she was never seen without.

I stashed the vodka bottle back in the box. “Mrs. Zieliński, hi!”

“Don’t ‘hi’ me,” she snapped in her faint Polish accent. “I’m tired of your excuses. Pay what you owe, or you’re out by the end of the month.”

I nearly choked, but covered it up by clearing my throat with the most professional I-totally-have-my-shit-together smile I could muster. “That’s three months’ worth of back payment. I need more time, Mrs. Zieliński.”

“I thought doctors were supposed to be rich.”

My head throbbed as anxiety bubbled up my throat. Just keep smiling. Then you can go upstairs, take your meds and pretend like today didn’t happen.

“I’m expecting another paycheck in a week. It will be enough to cover a month’s worth of rent.” Also, my last paycheck, which I didn’t say out loud. It was smart to leave that detail out for now.

“End of the month. No more excuses.” She peered into the box in my arms, glaring at the vodka bottle and fidgets. “Maybe if your generation spent less money on toys and booze.”

Without another word, she turned on her heel and slammed her apartment door behind her.

I glared at the brass plate affixed to her door, reading MANAGEMENT. This day just kept getting worse.

Turning toward the stairs, I nearly dropped my box. “Sonofafuck!”

There she was again, Lauren Hawkins, clutching the banister with her tearful eyes, boring into me.

My spiraling mind grappled for the logical. Hallucinations were a common side of stress and other intense emotions, sleep deprivation, alcohol and psychoactive drugs—all of which I was experiencing.

Taking a deep inhale, I did as I instructed my patients when hallucinations set in. “Close your eyes… Count to three. One. Two. Three.”

When I opened my eyes, she was still there. With trembling hands, I took another drink of the vodka. Then another… until the bottle was mostly empty. “Ghosts aren’t real,” I drunkenly challenged the visage of my dead patient. “You’re just a manifestation of my own guilt.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Help us, Dr. Beckett.”