The key clicked in the door and he panicked, shoving the photo back in the box and standing. Ricky could barely string two thoughts together as the door opened and Nurse Ash’s smiling face appeared. The young man in the photograph resembled him—Ricky—in a way that made him think they could be long-lost cousins. Even brothers.
There was a vague family resemblance, of that much he was certain.
“That rag wasn’t for your face,” she said, exasperated.
“I need to call my mother. Now.”
She held the door open for him, a worry line creasing between her eyes. “You know I can’t do that for you,” she said. “I really wish you would stop asking.”
Journal of Ricky Desmond—June
They should really get better about checking under my mattress. Hiding this junk is almost too easy. No, it is too easy. Kay says they search her room every single night, hunting for the smallest infraction. Me? Nurse Ash hasn’t so much as turned out my pockets since I was admitted. Not that I’m complaining, but it’s weird. I guess Mom could be paying for preferential treatment, like Kay’s dad did, but I don’t think she would, not after what I did to Butch.
Fine. I take it back. If you can sense this, Mom, I’m sorry for going after your dumb husband, and I’ll even apologize to his face if you just come and get me out of this place. Sticking it out didn’t seem so bad for those first few days but now the dreams are coming every night. It’s always that same girl. Is she even here? Is she even real?
I don’t know what I saw in that room. That person in the photograph looked like me. I’m sure he did. Even if it’s just a coincidence, I saw it, and I hate that I saw it. That I can’t stop thinking about it. I tried asking Nurse Ash about it in a roundabout way. Do I seem familiar to you? That sort of thing. It just made her really uncomfortable. The other nurses won’t even talk to me. It’s like they don’t really see us patients, or couldn’t respond even if they wanted to.
The warden said he would start my “treatment” soon but he hasn’t talked to me at all since then. I see him watching me. He’s always watching me. What is he waiting for?
Yesterday Kay glanced at Nurse Ash’s schedule when she was handing out a midday snack. They’re going to give her shock treatment. Those stupid bastards. I don’t know how they can look at her and not see what I see: just a nice girl. She’s so quiet. Does what she’s told. She’s not hurting anyone and she knows basically every Barbara Randolph song in existence by heart. That makes her more than special and they want to shock her like they did to me at Hillcrest.
I told her it wouldn’t work, that it wouldn’t change her, but I don’t know if she believed me.
I have to remember these things. I have to remember all of it. If Mom comes back for me, I don’t want to forget, and maybe . . . Damn. I don’t know. Maybe I could help get Kay out of here somehow. She doesn’t deserve to be in this hellhole. None of us do. Fine, maybe Angela, but everyone else is just so quiet. It’s like they’re already dead.
But not me. Not Kay.
“I found something strange.”
As soon as Ricky said it, it sounded stupid. They were in an asylum. Everything there was to be found in here was strange in one light or another. But Kay humored him with a look of real interest, and that was all he really wanted anyway. She’d been understandably withdrawn since her shock treatment had started, and Ricky had been feeling guilty, as if he were the cause of it somehow. Now they were on hands and knees next to each other, working with other patients to clean the common room. The floor was cold, as always, and the white, spotless gleam that came with their scrubbing only made it feel colder.
Kay had overheard two orderlies discussing some big event coming up, for which the warden wanted the whole place looking perfect. (Shouldn’t they have a cleaning staff for this?)
“What kind of strange?” Kay asked.
“Have they ever made you clean the storage rooms?”
“Only once,” she whispered, shrugging. He could barely hear her over the soft sound of a dozen rags swishing across the tiled floor. “It was nasty in there. Couldn’t breathe right for a week after that.”
“I know,” he said. “But did you look at what you were cleaning?”
“I didn’t want to, Ricky. I’m just doing my work until I get out of here.”
“Maybe you should peek next time.” Ricky stopped, checking to see that their nurse chaperones were still standing off near the doors. They were, and now they were conveniently distracted by the warden, who appeared to have stopped by to check on their progress. Like an unlucky penny, he just turned up everywhere.
“No, Ricky, you don’t get it,” she said with a sigh. She was indulging him again, but not in a good way this time. “Head down. Quiet. I’m not going to make a fuss. I want less discipline, not more.”
He paled. Ten days in, and his own treatment remained easy—really borderline neglectful. He wasn’t sure what Kay had done to deserve her more severe treatment, but she was right—if order and discipline were the obsession here, then blending in with the crowd was probably the best survival strategy. Still . . . He had felt that cold and ghostly breath on his neck. He had seen the odd patient cards with so many violent deaths. And he had seen the photograph that lingered in his mind. Trouble was finding him, whether he was looking for it or not.
“Well, lucky for you, I looked for both of us.”
Kay cocked her head to the side, resting her weight on her palms as she studied him. Her eyes were gentle, searching, but she couldn’t conceal the intense curiosity sparkling in her gaze. “Don’t leave me in suspense, dummy. What did you see?”
“I don’t think this place was always so polished,” he murmured. “Patients were dropping like flies as late as a couple years ago. And the pictures . . .”
“As bad as those?” she asked, nodding to the ones on the wall.
“Worse. And I felt this weird presence. I mean, look, I don’t believe in ghosts, okay? Let’s get that one out of the way first. But I see all these cards talking about dead people, and then a minute later there’s a person breathing down my neck and, I don’t know, Kay, it’s the kind of coincidence that comes back up when you try to swallow it.”
“Or,” Kay said slowly, gently, and Ricky knew he might need to hold his temper through whatever she said next, “you’re making leaps. It doesn’t surprise me that you would read about dead people and then see one.”
“I considered that,” he said honestly. “But that’s not even the strange thing. See, in this one picture—and yes, I know how ridiculous this sounds—well, one of the men in the photos looked like me. And I mean just like me.”
“That’s a little stranger,” Kay admitted with a grimace. “That wouldn’t sit right with me either.”
“Thanks. And thank you for believing me. About the picture anyway.”
“I’ve cleaned this room from top to bottom with Sloane and Angela before,” Kay said. “You should hear some of the stuff that comes out of his mouth in particular. He thinks everyone here is trying to kill him. Constantly. All the time. Even the mice in the walls. This conversation is reasonable if you ask me.”
Their discussion came to an abrupt halt, cut off by sharp voices in the corner of the room. Near the tall double doors, two nurses were trying to block the patients from gawking at the warden, who had begun arguing with a man his own height. They weren’t just the same height, either; they resembled each other in the face, with pale, smooth skin, even though both men were middle-aged, and had long, dignified noses. The second man didn’t wear spectacles, but the family resemblance was unmistakable even at this distance.
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. Do not barge in on me here,” the warden was saying, heedless of his audience. Ricky glanced around the room. Most of the other patients were pretending to work, but their rags were circling on the tiles very slowly indeed. Everyone had an ear turned toward the outburst.
“I’m working,” the w
arden finished.
“This doesn’t look much like work,” the other man said. “What do you expect me to do? You refuse to return my calls. Mother’s estate must be settled and it won’t be settled the way you want it done.”
“That is a topic for another day and another location,” the warden replied. “This is extremely irregular, not to mention unprofessional.”
Two orderlies had appeared, and, together with the warden, they were trying to herd the man out the door, closing in around him in a tight circle. “Okay. Kick me out all you want, brother. I won’t let this go.”
The warden’s sigh was audible across the all-purpose room. “You never do.”
Something about the conversation had upset Sloane. The old man hopped to his feet, surprisingly spry for his age, and began to scream. “Brother!” he was crying. “Brother, brother! You were like my brother! Stop, stop! How could you?”
The nurses flew to him, pulling his arms down to his sides and holding them there. The orderlies surrounding the warden’s brother heard the commotion, and without a moment’s hesitation, they sprinted into the room to help. They muzzled the old man with the mask they’d threatened Ricky with on his first day, and the word Brother! died away behind the restraints.
“Whoa,” Kay whispered, watching as the warden’s brother stormed away and Sloane was carried out of the common room.
“I take it that kind of thing doesn’t happen around here often?”
“Extremely irregular,” Kay replied. “Like the warden said.”
“Where’s Nurse Ash?”
Ricky glanced around the reception area where Nurse Ash had brought him last Friday. An orderly he didn’t recognize had brought him here, pulling him out of his room for what Ricky had assumed was lunchtime. Instead, he’d found a surly nurse waiting for him in the main lobby, tapping her foot as if they were running late for something.
“You will go inside,” that nurse said now, pointing to the door that had “Warden Crawford” painted on the glass.
So he was finally going to see where the Big Boss spent his days. It was time to slow his steps, drag this out, because—finally, a week after the threat had been made—his treatment was about to begin. He couldn’t tell if this was in reaction to something he had done earlier or what. Yeah, he’d been chatting with Kay while they worked, but surely that had been nothing next to all the other commotion in the room.
God, he hated the word “treatment.” It had that nice, cute word at the beginning—treat. A treat! A treat was skipping school to go with Martin to Pier 6 and getting covered head to foot in crabmeat, butter, and Old Bay. A treat was a candy watch in your Christmas stocking or the way a new copy of Rolling Stone smelled.
Treatment was getting shocked with a hundred volts of electricity at Hillcrest. Treatment was sitting in a circle of guys at Victorwood and talking about what it had felt like to grow up in a home without a father. What would treatment mean at Brookline?
The warden’s door was already slightly ajar, and Ricky put his hand on it to push it open farther. It was hot to the touch. Ricky yanked his hand back, his palm aching as if it had been scalded. For a moment he felt the warmth of a blaze on his face and heard a woman screaming. Footsteps raced by on either side of him. He leaned against the doorframe, catching his breath, blinking and finding that the heat and the noise had vanished.
“Inside,” the nurse said, right behind him.
Pulling himself together, Ricky ducked into the office, where he was relieved to find that the warden wasn’t here, not yet. He leveled his voice, not wanting the nurse to know what he had just felt. Escaping Brookline would be a lot harder if he was having visible episodes in front of the staff.
“I like Nurse Ash better, if my opinion counts for anything,” he said with a forced smile. The nurse’s dark, small eyes fixed on him and then rolled. It was the most emotion he had gotten out of any nurse besides Ash.
“It doesn’t. Sit.”
Ricky fell into the chair hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs. The nurse waited at the door, probably hovering in case he tried to take one of the warden’s fountain pens and commit mass murder with it. He wondered if anyone stopped to realize that the patients here were all perfectly docile already—Sloane’s performance in the common room yesterday notwithstanding.
Ricky and the nurse waited for what felt like hours. Was this all part of it, too? A strange nurse he didn’t recognize barking at him; a long, uncomfortable wait in the warden’s freezing office when he was starving, and while he could do nothing but replay the strange heat that he’d felt on the door . . . Maybe his treatment had already begun without him knowing it.
You’re just out of sorts, he reminded himself. And you’re tired. Underfed. Homesick.
Finally, the warden appeared, but not from the door behind him as Ricky had assumed he would. He came instead through a door on the far wall that Ricky had taken for a coat closet. Ricky caught a brief glimpse inside at what looked like stairs that led down. If the heartbeat of Brookline was in its basement, it seemed the asylum had many arteries and veins.
“Ah. Here you are, Mr. Desmond. Excellent, it’s time we made introductions and got started. I’m very eager to work with you.”
Ricky’s back straightened into a rod. He listened as the warden dismissed the nurse, and then he heard the door shut and lock behind him. His eyes swept the room in a panic—there were no visible surgical implements the warden could use on him, but maybe this was just some kind of brief consultation or therapy session before the real torture began in the basement.
Just don’t forget who you are, Ricky reminded himself. You can get through this. You’ve gotten through it before. You can pretend if you have to, but don’t really forget. Martin’s crooked smile. The gap in his teeth. The lights on Boylston Street at midnight, that feeling of sneaking out and being free, happy, and alive.
“Can we get this over with?” Ricky asked, folding his hands in his lap and staring straight ahead.
Warden Crawford took his time pacing a circle around his desk before returning to his chair and taking a seat. He sighed quietly as he regarded Ricky, like a disappointed grandfather saddled with chiding a bad child.
“This doesn’t need to be an antagonistic relationship, Mr. Desmond. Have you not been treated well since you arrived?”
Ricky glared. “That’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it?” The warden’s eyes widened in mock-surprise. “Then what is ‘the point’?”
“This is an asylum. I’m not here of my own free will. And you’re hurting my friend, aren’t you? You’re using shock therapy on Kay, and she’s done nothing wrong.”
“Keith Waterston’s aberrant behavior has nothing to do with you, nor does the treatment deemed appropriate by his overseeing physician.”
Ricky had felt his fear and anger bubbling up distantly, but he didn’t expect it to explode out at that precise moment. He never did. He slammed his fist on the desk, making the porcelain head statue on it bounce. “You’re doing it to her and you’ll do it to me, too! I knew it was just a matter of time. All those cutting-edge treatments your doctors told my parents about are a sham.”
The warden fell silent, staring at him again. That was almost worse. He should be restrained for that outburst. Punished. Sedated. He wasn’t being very orderly or disciplined. Whenever he lost his temper like that he felt so cold afterward. Ashamed.
“I understand your frustration, Mr. Desmond, but there is no need to raise your voice.”
“I’m not—look, I just want to talk to my parents. My mother. I don’t know why you’ve basically been ignoring me so far and I really don’t care. This whole stupid thing is a misunderstanding.”
Leaning forward, the warden rested his elbows on the desk and adjusted his wire-rim spectacles. The lenses didn’t exaggerate his eyes. If anything, they did the opposite, making his pupils smaller, more focused, like needles aimed at Ricky. “Every patient here is an individual. Ac
cordingly, every patient is evaluated and treated based on their specific needs. We try to maintain a baseline level of routine. Especially at the beginning, the consistency is important. Your family entrusted you to my care, and I have no intention of betraying that trust. You and I can trust each other, too, Ricky, but not if you regard me with suspicion. Or worse, open hostility.”
Ricky crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest, glaring. “Why would I trust you when all you want to do is change me? I know why I’m here, and it’s not going to work.”
For the first time, he saw real emotion flicker across Warden Crawford’s face. The pale, smooth surface of his facade rippled, the ugly facsimile of a smile distorting his cheeks. He leaned further forward, nearly halfway across the desk.
“Why do you think you are here?” the warden asked.
Ricky stared back at him, refusing to answer.
“I see. It makes you uncomfortable to say it. That’s not uncommon.”
The door opened, startling them both. Nurse Ash strode inside, her neutral expression twisting to one of fear when she noticed the two of them together. “Oh!” she said, beginning to back out. She had a small tray with a lump of tuna fish and some crackers on it balanced on her right arm. “Excuse me, sir, I had no idea you were with someone.”
“You should examine the daily schedule more closely,” he barked at her. “It is subject to change, which you know but have somehow forgotten. And as is polite here and in general society, one should knock.”
“I really do apologize. It’s just usually you take your lunch at—”
“The schedule, Nurse Ash. Do not make me repeat myself.”
He didn’t know why he was so surprised. Of course this man was a bully. Nurse Ash practically sobbed another apology mixed with an excuse as she backed out of the office, closing the door so carefully and lightly Ricky hardly heard the door click.
“You treat everyone like that, don’t you?” Ricky asked. “Your employees, your brother . . .”