Page 14 of Ward D
Dr. Beck nods. “They’re plastic children’s safety needles—completely harmless. She’s not a high-risk patient, and knitting keeps her happy. So we let her do it—otherwise, she gets too restless.”
I imagine a knitting needle sailing through my eyeball at some point during the night. “Oh.”
“So as I was saying earlier,” Dr. Beck goes on, “we have two seclusion rooms that do lock, but only one of them is currently occupied. Let me show you.”
He leads us around the circle to a pair of rooms with keypads next to the doors. One of the doors is open, but the other is closed. I’m disturbed by how close these rooms are to the staff lounge, which is where I’ll probably be spending a lot of time tonight. I suppose that’s intentional though.
“Seclusion One is occupied right now,” he says. “And I would not recommend visiting with the patient in that room at any point during the night.”
“Why not?” Cameron asks.
Dr. Beck hesitates for a moment as his brows knit together. “Mr. Sawyer is… dangerous.”
My heart speeds up in my chest. “Dangerous?”
“Not to you though,” he says quickly. “As you can see, the door is locked. And within the room, he is also restrained. So he’s completely secured. We’re planning on transferring him to a more secure facility in the morning.”
Oh my God.
“I promise, you’re perfectly safe.” Dr. Beck flashes a reassuring smile when he sees the look on my face. “There is no chance of Mr. Sawyer getting out of that room.” He pauses. “Unless, of course, you let him out.”
Dr. Beck is quiet for a moment. It’s so quiet that I can hear a sound coming from inside Seclusion One. It’s a terrible sound—barely even human. Something between a groan and a growl.
My God, who is in that room? Or should I say,what?
“Don’t worry,” I say. “We’ll stay far away.”
“Good,” Dr. Beck says.
We turn around and walk back the way we came. On the way, we pass room 905 once again. And once again, the door is cracked open. And those blue eyes flecked with yellow are staring out at me.
Watching me.
8
Cameron and I have to choose patients to follow for the night.
The charts are all located at the nurses’ station, so we head over there to look through them and take our pick. Dr. Beck disappears into his office, while Ramona mans the floor, although what she’s actually doing at the moment is flipping through a home living magazine.
The charts are arranged on a shelf above the nurses’ station, in order of room number. There’s only one chart that isn’t on the rack and is instead lying on the table below. The name SAWYER is printed on the label on the spine of the chart. That was the name of the patient in Seclusion One. Dr. Beck must have been looking through the chart.
I stare at the chart for a moment, seized by curiosity. Who is in that room? What kind of person needs to be locked up that way? Like ananimal. It seems cruel and inhumane but it’s not my place to say it.
I don’t dare touch the chart. It feels like even doing that would be a betrayal of Dr. Beck’s trust. Or that if I opened it, the monster inside that room might come leaping out of the pages.
“Anyone you’ve got your eye on?” Cameron asks me.
“Why?” I shoot back. “Would you steal them from me?”
He clutches his chest. “Why would you say that? If there was a patient you were interested in seeing, I would give you priority. I’m a gentleman.”
“Oh right. Of course.”
He juts out his lower lip. “Come on. When have I ever been a jerk to you?”
“How about when youdumpedme?”
“I mean, except for that one time.”
