The Warden (4 page)

L
ucy almost spoiled the plot right after they reached the main level.

For a moment, Jocelyn was certain Tanner had abandoned them, but then he came around the corner, wheelchair gleaming like a chariot, and Jocelyn felt a spike of hope. Unfortunately, that hope was immediately dashed as they crossed in front of Crawford's office. Lucy recognized the name or the door, seizing in their grasp, her mouth opening wide in horror.

Jocelyn anticipated the scream just in time, clapping her hand over Lucy's mouth and wrestling her down into the wheelchair.

“No, no, no,” she whispered. “Not him. We're not going to see him. Tanner, go!”

“Go
where
?”

“The lobby, the doors! Take her outside!”

“Outside!?”
Madge hiss-whispered, trotting after Jocelyn and Tanner. The wheelchair squeaked as they turned it around and raced down the corridor, through the lobby, past the bewildered nurses at the station, and toward the front doors. “You're going to get us fired, Joss!”

“Relax, it's just for a minute, just so she can get some air and see the sky,” Jocelyn replied, sounding much more calm and confident than she felt.

For her part, Lucy was behaving, sitting quietly, her hands clutching the handles of the wheelchair for dear life but her mouth clamped shut. Good. They might actually make it out the doors without the whole of Brookline being alerted.

Jocelyn dodged around the wheelchair, breaking into a run and reaching the doors before Tanner could crash into them. Flinging the doors wide, she couldn't help but smile, absorbing the look of wonder and excitement that broke across Lucy's face as the sunshine fell in her lap.

“Is there a point to this?” Madge asked, watching as Tanner wheeled the girl down the walkway and toward a shaded patch just to the right of the hospital. They paused near a bed of tulips, the flowers all bowed from so many nights of rain, but a few petals still clinging on. “Other than getting us all sacked, of course . . .”

“Isn't the ‘program' all about unorthodox treatments?” Jocelyn said with a shrug. “Maybe she just needed some fresh air. It couldn't hurt.”

“Yes, it could,” Madge replied. “What if she runs off and we can't catch her?”

“There's a fence.”

“What if it's . . . I don't know, overstimulating or something!? What if she has a deathly allergy to tulips? Or grass? What if she catches pneumonia and
dies
?”

“Man, are you always this square?” Tanner teased. He smiled at them, apparently enjoying the little jailbreak, his blue eyes gleaming behind his specs. “We take patients outside all the time for therapeutic walks. It's not that unusual, Madge.”

“You do not get to call me square and then pretend we're on
a first-name basis!” she squawked, pacing. Her red, red lips turned down in a pout, but then she stopped, observing Lucy from the side as the girl simply sat in the wheelchair, kicking her gangly legs out, the bottoms of her feet brushing the grass. “Fine, I can admit she looks . . . better.”

“Not so square then,” Tanner said with a smirk.

“How do you feel, Lucy?” Jocelyn asked. She ignored the ga-ga looks the other two started giving each other. She couldn't imagine how anyone found a hospital setting romantic. And she didn't expect an answer from Lucy, but she asked anyway, going to crouch in front of the wheelchair and look up at the girl.

Lucy's big, black eyes swept the unkempt yard, taking in the fence, the trees, the wisps of fog that rolled up toward the grounds from the picturesque town below. It was impossible to tell what she might be thinking, but at least she wasn't screaming.

Jocelyn carefully, slowly, put out her hand, waiting to see if Lucy flinched or recoiled. But the girl did nothing, simply watched the nurse's hand get nearer and nearer, and then she closed her eyes as Jocelyn tucked a piece of lank hair behind the girl's ear.

She would call that progress.

“There now,” Jocelyn said. “I think we can do a lot together, Lucy. I think we can help each other. You don't have to say anything, all right? Nobody expects you to say anything.”

“Carnicero.”

Jocelyn blinked. The other two fell silent, too.

“The butcher,” Jocelyn said softly, watching Lucy nod. “You . . . you think someone in Brookline is a butcher?”

“
Sí. Usted sabe el carnicero
.
El carnicero de Brookline
.” Her voice was high, prim.

Jocelyn gradually shifted her eyes to Madge, who swallowed noisily and said, “Yes, you know the butcher. The butcher of Brookline. That's . . . that's what she said, Joss.”

Jocelyn turned back to Lucy to inquire further, but the girl had reached for Jocelyn's hand, taking it and holding it firmly between her two small, cold palms. Even the sunlight didn't seem to warm her skin to above freezing.

“He wants to cut open my head,” the girl told her, her voice lightly accented. “He wants to cut it open and scoop out what's inside.”

“Lucy, I really don't think that's true,” Jocelyn said. “But I'm glad you're speaking to me. That's very brave of you, and I'm really, really proud. Does being outside make you feel better? I know it makes me feel better.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes, studying Jocelyn as if she were a piteously stupid creature. It made Jocelyn feel small, it made her feel like Lucy was much, much older, impossibly older, a soul that had seen and done things Jocelyn couldn't even fathom.

Lucy released her hand, placing her own hands back on the wheelchair armrests. “Don't let him cut open my head,” she said. “And now I would like to go back inside.”

An act of rebellion. Perfect. I could hardly devise a better wedge to drive them apart. A minor inconvenience has been smoothed over—my supplies have run low over the years since my initial training, and I feared the supplements might dry up
for good. But where there is a will there is a way, and where there is a need there is greed. Trax Corp. will do nicely for now, so long as they prove a discreet and reliable partner.

More exciting still, the patient I have been waiting for has presented himself. Years of anticipation leading to this moment and I can hardly describe the feeling. Elation. Relief. Patient Zero has surfaced and now my work truly begins.

—Excerpt from Warden Crawford's journals—May

T
he hammer blow of punishment never fell. Still, Jocelyn waited for it. She waited for days. She went to bed jittery and rose from restless sleep in a fog, so distracted that even Mrs. Small in the grips of her dementia noticed and commented on her demeanor. During breakfast she heard the whispers of the nurses as they gossiped about the now infamous jailbreak, keeping their distance so as not to be implicated, but none of them were ever called to Warden Crawford's office for discipline.

When he mentioned it, he simply referred to it as “that little incident” and carried on.

It made Jocelyn sick with anxiety, and it also made her realize that she really had been trying to get them all fired. It was sabotage of the most obvious kind, and it had gone completely ignored.

Jocelyn sat on her bed before another full day, braiding her hair into one plait before looping it into a bun and pinning it. The spring rain had started up again, softer now that a few weeks had gone by and May was approaching. Madge stood at her wardrobe, picking out a pair of nylons for the day.

“This poor little thing,” Jocelyn said, finishing with her hair and reaching over to the bedside table for the cracked Minnie
Mouse statue. “Did I tell you? I broke this the first night we were here. You slept right through it.”

She had even asked Nurse Kramer if she could borrow some of the patient craft supplies to fix the chip, but she was told curtly that “Therapeutic arts and crafts materials are
not
for frivolous use.”

Somehow she got the feeling that if any other nurse had asked, the request would have been granted.

“Mm. I think you told me that.”

“That's it? Usually I get an earful for telling you something twice.” She laughed, but it died slowly as she looked from the figurine to her friend. Before, she hadn't really given a thought to how Madge picked out her nylons, but now she watched more closely, realizing that Madge had picked up each clean pair in succession, held it briefly, and then put it back. She repeated the same odd ritual three more times before Jocelyn finally spoke up.

“Maybe we should get to bed earlier,” she suggested, putting Minnie back on the table and standing. She smoothed down the front of her uniform. “You're practically sleepwalking.”

“Am I?”

Jocelyn frowned, joining her friend at the wardrobe and picking up a pair of plain, nude nylons. “These are fine. The ones with the seam up the back just seem a little . . . racy. Save those for date night.”

“Fine,” Madge said, ripping the nylons out of her grasp. “We should get down to breakfast. I'm half-starved.”

Jocelyn nodded, retreating to the door while her friend finished dressing. She had tried not to notice the change in Madge,
who treated Jocelyn so similarly to the way the other nurses treated her now. Taking Lucy on that wheelchair ride had made Jocelyn a pariah, but she never expected to feel it from Madge, too. The change might have been subtle, but she felt it. How could she not? Madge was her only ally in the place. It did seem like it wasn't just an attitude shift. . . . Madge seemed to be smoking more, popping out for more frequent breaks, and she carried around a little package of lozenges everywhere, chewing them constantly, sometimes so loudly it made Jocelyn want to climb up the walls.

The one time she asked for one, Madge shot her a glare and flatly refused.

At least Tanner still spoke to her occasionally.

Everyone here is so wonderful, Mom. Just so warm. Kind, really. You'd be so proud of how Madge and I are doing. The warden has taken a shine to us, and
I think this
points to a bright future for us both.

She winced at the memory of writing to her family. Three drafts ended up crumpled, torn, and thrown under the bed because they told the truth. Even writing it all out had felt strangely cathartic—the long hours, the strange requests that they filled for Warden Crawford (sit with the patients between these hours and these hours, use these words with them but not these, give them exactly this kind of food), the secrets, the pervasive cold of the basement, the violent, screaming episodes. . . .

But Jocelyn couldn't bring herself to send those letters. Her mother would worry, and Jocelyn couldn't have that.

There was one bright spot to write about at least, she thought
with a half smile: Lucy had seriously improved in the last few weeks. Crawford had even encouraged Jocelyn to take the girl outside a few more times, and as long as he stayed out of sight, the time out of doors seemed to soothe and bolster the child, even if she had never spoken another word after that first trip.

Jocelyn roused herself from her thoughts, finding Madge had put on her nylons and heels and moved to the bedside table. Holding the Minnie Mouse figure, she swayed almost imperceptibly back and forth.

“Madge? We should get going, don't you think?”

Madge's bouncy blond curls shot up as she inhaled and placed the figurine back on the table. “I was just looking at her. She reminded me of our trip to Disneyland when I was nine.”

“I didn't know you went to Disneyland,” Jocelyn said, grinning. “I've always wanted to go. It sounds so magical.”

“It was,” Madge said, smiling herself at the memory as she followed Jocelyn out of their room and into the hall. “It was. I climbed on a bench because a crowd was forming around Mickey. My father told me to stay still and be patient but I couldn't. I climbed onto a bench for a better look. I remember him saying, ‘Careful, doll, you'll fall! Don't fall and hurt that pretty face.' But of course I was so excited that I
did
fall, right on my dumb face. Mickey came over because I started bawling my eyes out.” Madge shrugged and snorted. “So I guess in the end I got my way.”

“We should go back together,” Jocelyn suggested lightly. “Maybe next summer. I'll have some money saved up by then. It could be nice to get away.”

“I'd like to see it again. This time I won't climb any benches.”

They ate at their usual table. Madge stayed silent, forking
down the eggs and porridge on her tray. It seemed to take longer to get their food these days, but Jocelyn didn't mind. Her appetite had improved, but not much. Madge, on the other hand, was hungrier than ever. She had put on a little weight because of it, but she simply looked prettier; Jocelyn was fairly sure nothing at all could take away Madge's appeal.

The orderlies had noticed, of course, David and the others swarming around like vultures whenever Madge flounced down the corridor alone, but she only had eyes for Tanner. And that was generally in her favor, considering he practically drooled on himself whenever she happened by.

“Nurse Ash.”

Jocelyn started, dropping her spoon into her oatmeal and splattering her uniform. She hastily dabbed at the mess with her napkin, twisting to find Warden Crawford standing next to her, his hand flattened on the table near her tray. Madge, apparently, had been too engrossed in her scrambled eggs to notice his approach.

“Enjoying a leisurely breakfast, I see.” He retracted his hand, digging into his pockets for a mint before clearing his throat and nodding toward the exit. “I need you in my office.”

“I'll be done in just a—”

“Now.”

Jocelyn paled. He had never used that tone of voice before. She quickly gathered her napkin and drink onto her tray and scurried to the drop-off window. As she returned, Madge gave her a quick, nervous wave. Jocelyn didn't dare return it.

Oh God. Was she in trouble? Following him out of the cafeteria, Jocelyn ran through everything she had done the day
before. It was possible she had given someone the wrong medication or the wrong dose, or she might have forgotten to mark down her rounds correctly. But that was so unlikely! She paid excellent attention to detail, even when tired, even when under immense pressure. . . .

“You can relax, Nurse Ash. Nothing is amiss.”

“It's just that usually you don't summon me that way, sir. . . .”

Warden Crawford chuckled, nodding and munching on his mint. “Today is unusual. Today is special.”

Special?
Jocelyn didn't like the way he lingered over that word. They arrived at his office, but they stopped there only briefly. She stood near the door, watching him collect a stack of files from his desk and a leather bag that she knew to carry his medical instruments. Unlike his office, his instruments were kept in perfect order, a fact she observed on the rare occasion he even brought them on his rounds.

They made the descent to the basement, a trip that Jocelyn still found unsettling. It didn't matter how many times she traversed those steps, she never got over the feeling of the wet cold creeping into her bones.

“And how is Nurse Fullerton?” he asked, breezy.

“Oh. Fine, I think. Working hard like the rest of us,” Jocelyn answered.

“You don't sound confident.”

“I can't see inside her head,” she replied.

“More's the pity,” Warden Crawford said with a short laugh. “She seemed quite disturbed after treating Mr. Heimline yesterday. I had to calm her down for an hour afterward.”

Jocelyn slowed—Madge hadn't told her a single thing about
this. It wasn't like Madge to keep something dramatic from her. “This is the first I'm hearing of it.”

“Hm.” He shrugged, leading her down the last of the stairs and toward the yawning archway. “She must have made a full recovery then. Forget I said anything.”

She wasn't likely to forget, but Jocelyn tried not to dwell on Madge's problems, recognizing that they were on their way yet again to Lucy's room. Normally, Crawford would stop well short of the girl's door, aware that even the briefest glimpse of him could send her into a spiraling panic.

But this time he marched up to the door without a hitch in his step, motioning to two of the orderlies to join him. He stopped and turned to look at Jocelyn, watching her down the thin, arched bridge of his nose. “Why don't you wait for us in Theater Seven, Nurse Ash.”

“But Lucy is always so calm when I'm—”

“You will wait in Theater Seven.”

Jocelyn snapped her mouth shut, taking a tiny step away in the face of his command. She had the gall to hesitate, but Crawford stared at her until she began to leave, his eyes never straying from her as she continued down the hall. She didn't look away either, glancing over her shoulder to watch as the orderlies opened the rusted, scraping door to Lucy's room.

The door to the operating theater had to be opened, cutting off her view of the corridor. The last sound she heard before stepping inside was a single, piercing shriek.

This was a nightmare. She was paralyzed, in her skin but out of her mind, watching as if her soul had departed and now hovered
just above the ground. Why couldn't she move? It was fear, she knew—fear and sharp, crushing failure.

Lucy, God help her, was strapped to the operating table, her cries long since snuffed out by a hateful gag.

Jocelyn's fingernails cut into her palms and her mouth behind her white paper mask had grown clammy. The girl's black, glassy eyes stared up into the light hanging over the table, reflecting the perfect yellow circles. She had gone still. That was worse. When they had first dragged her in, she had kicked and screamed and struggled, but now, facing her wide-eyed resignation, Jocelyn felt she had given up.

He wants to cut it open and scoop out what's inside.

A shiver propelled Jocelyn forward and into the harsh light over the operating table. The orderlies who were there to assist, also garbed in white with their mouths covered by crisp paper, paused with their hands in midair, staring. Warden Crawford stopped what he was doing, too, setting down the gleaming bone saw.

“Your participation in the procedure is not yet required, Nurse Ash,” he told her gently. “You may step back.”

The room was cold. Too cold. How could he operate with steady hands when it felt like they were all encased in ice? And now, over the paper mask covering half his face, Jocelyn could see just his eyes. Just his eyes, and they were different. Honed. Sharpened like a razor, cutting into her as readily as he was about to cut into little Lucy.

Little Lucy, who still wouldn't speak, but smiled whenever they got to see the birds outside, and smiled a little bigger when Jocelyn called her “sparrow.”

“Is this . . . is this really necessary? She's been improving, sir. Steadily. You've seen it, I know you have. Why would you—”

“You may step back.”

Don't let him cut open my head.

“No,” Jocelyn said. Her voice shook, but she pushed through it. This was all that mattered. Lucy, and doing right by her, was all that mattered. It was why she had become a nurse. It was why she had even stayed at dark, horrible Brookline in the first place. “No, sir, I can't let you do this. There is no medical justification for this procedure. You know it isn't right. We both know it isn't right.”