The keys are too large and too heavy to the doctor more used to modern facilities but she doesn't say anything, just follows the orderly as he pulls the large door open, straining under its weight even though he must open the thing ten times a day.
Through the doors and into the dim halls that seem a portal to another decade and she thinks that as soon as she can, she'll upgrade the lighting as well as the locks. Fluorescents and keycards, that's what this place needs. And doors with smaller windows. As it is, half the things are open and barred and she can see the patients far too easily as the orderly walks her down the corridor, making light chitchat and pointing out the more interesting patients. Many of the disorders are extreme but still, this is a hospital, not a jail and everyone deserves privacy.
"This one talks about nothing but his wife and begs for painting supplies. When we give them to him though, he only paints monsters and it seems to upset his neighbor across the hall. That one there thinks he's psychic. Be careful of this one here, he's polite as can be but has dissociative identity disorder and the alternate personality knows how to pick locks. This one... actually, he's the sweetest one here. Sweet but schizophrenic. Talks to himself a lot when he thinks no one's watching. And that one is convinced that this one killed his father and has sworn revenge, even though he killed the man himself. That's what landed him here."
She listens patiently and he leads her all the way to the back, showing her a spacious office with it's own closet sized bed and bath tucked away behind yet another door.
"Some of the past doctors liked to spend the night if they were keeping an eye on a particularly difficult patient."
He avoids her eye and hands over a full set of keys, explaining the number system engraved on their cold iron.
He finally looks up and she's not sure if she likes what she sees in his face.
"Please be careful, Dr. Mazaki, more often than not, the doctors that come to this place end up just as crazy as the patients."
She laughs and assures him that things will be fine.
She's had the fixtures changed and the bulbs replaced, several times, but the halls never seem to get any brighter.
She sees shadows now. Not ones cast naturally, but ones that crawl about the walls, blacker than black and she knows where the extra light goes. They eat it.
The keys are still large and heavy and she keeps oil in her office because they stick in the locks but she doesn't even think of changing them anymore. For some reason, the larger the lock, the better she feels.
She doesn't go home anymore and when she does go out, it's to buy more alcohol. She's seen the monsters on Mr. Crawford's canvas move, she can now see the difference between Ryou and his alternate, and sometimes laughter, his and others', echoes down the halls and mocks her all the way to her office where she bolts the door and drinks to forget.
When Malik kisses her impulsively and his sessions become more than just therapy, it's not ethical at all and she knows it but she's long since abandoned ethics ever since she saw the living shadow in Yugi's cell, the shadow of his own image that wraps around him tightly and possessively and looks straight at her when she passes by and somehow she knows that the thing controls the other shades. Just as she knows that it hates her.
And when it all goes horribly wrong one day, she doesn't care. When Ryou, who has insisted on being called Bakura for months now, picks the lock on his door and everyone else's, the first she knows of it is Malik coming to her office. But he's not Malik, he's someone, something, else and his touch is rough and unpleasant but by this time in the evening there's been too much scotch (another half bottle gone) and she can't find a way to refuse properly. He thanks her mockingly afterwards before leaving and she picks up her clothes and pulls them over herself as best she can before stumbling out into the hall.
The first thing she sees is blood and she follows it to the body of the orderly, slumped against the wall with six different knives jutting from his chest in a circle and she thinks it might mean something but she's too drunk to think what. She runs further down the halls and the cells are empty, every single door open, the bars and heavy wood making the space a maze.
She sobs and she's frightened but she also has to see and when she comes to Yugi's cell, he's still there, the only one left, sitting patiently and waiting for her despite the door being as open as the rest. She stifles a scream.
He smiles at her with a sympathetic understanding which is somehow far too sane for this time and this place and the shadow child watching her over his shoulder. When Yugi steps forward to greet her and she steps back, he stops and sighs, speaking to her from inside his cell still.
"It's okay, it's not your fault. Too much magic concentrated in one place can make people see things they're not supposed to." He moves forward again and when she didn't step back this time, he pats her reassuringly on the arm. "You can still be a dancer, you know."
He turns then and walks down the hall toward the front doors and despite the shadow that clung so intimately to him, she thinks she can see him glow. The thought comes, unbidden, that if he learns to control the creature that glares at her even now, that he just might save them all.
When he's gone and she's alone, she slides down the wall (as she thinks the orderly must have and wonders whether the knives were placed there before or after he died and knows it must have been after because there had been no blood around the wounds). She pulls her knees to her chest and cries. For the career she's messed up, for the one she could have had if she'd stood up to her parents long ago, and for fright because she had never never never told anyone about how desperately she's always longed for something so very different.