Chapter Four
'Moping over your failings will do you no good, Dr Arden.' Bitterness in her tone was positively palpable, so much so the man in question merely looked back with a deep frown. Nevertheless, she continued her tirade of condemnation concerning his earlier misgivings. The fact that as the key physician on the premises, he wasn't around sooner seethed her to no end, especially with his attitude which seemed to have been caught on a flipside the moment he discovered Mary was involved. 'Make yourself useful and just maybe you will redeem your poor error of judgement.'
'But sister…I should…' Arden began to protest, not that Sister Jude gave him much of a chance to go on.
'You should do nothing other than what is required of you and your services, Dr Arden. And as it stands there are other patients in need of your medical…prowess…' An undercurrent of derision. The look on his face almost sought for her to let him stay; Sister Jude merely shook her head before she continued to usher him from the room. 'I shall be sure to inform you if her condition changes - you shall be the first to know - but until then I'm afraid your assets are desired elsewhere than this vicinity.' Her severe tone was all but a physical push which again he seemed to disapprove of himself.
'But what about observation? Supervision?' The doctor urged. Although he did not personally agree with Jude's suspicions that she had confided in him, he attempted provocation. 'If it is as you say, then surely someone should…' Much to his displeasure, she had already considered such a thing and her considerations did not include him beyond any strictly medical capacity.
'Such circumstances have already been taken care of Dr, I have already appointed someone to keep a close eye on our charge here without cause for complaint or misdemeanour.' She insisted.
'Surely the sisters would not…' It was no secret, the fear that had begun to spread amongst some of the other sisters. At first only minimal incidents concerning Eunice's change in behaviour, but of course once rumour had swiftly begun to circulate of this latest event regardless of circumstance which even Jude was at a loss about, the desire to avoid had spread like wildfire among the majority of the pure lest they too be dragged into whatever unfortunate goings on occurred. As much as she refused to admit that Dr Arden was at least partially correct in his assumptions, Jude had already contemplated her available options; the only staff willing on the ward to undertake such a task were already underhanded amongst other patients with crippling diagnoses or serious illness that warranted much of their hours with little to spare. So after much deliberation on her part, Jude figured the best thing to do, at least in terms of observation at least, was to request the help of someone with enough established sanity to do as they were bid, without any other duties or things to do that got in the way. Even if she had to offer something in return, which was more than likely given her viable options, the whole idea seemed more ideal than leaving the rest and recuperation to either herself who had little time between the demands of the asylum to be effective, or the not-so-subtle leering presence of the older doctor whom she had always held at an arm's length, and preferred to keep such distance - if not more - from her more fragile of acquaintances. Until a better situation came about, a patient would have to do. Surely it couldn't make things worse than they had already become.
'I don't recall mentioning the person in question being ordained Dr, merely a reliable observer for a temporary period of time.' The stress of the word temporary was not lost on either of them, albeit perhaps unnecessarily forceful in its intonation; Jude's irascibility had not been relinquished. She pushed on the door, none too subtly, ad waited for him to move. 'Now are you going to return to your work, or is that all your work has become: a constant questioning of my actions whilst neglecting your own?'
Lana perched herself somewhat awkwardly on the rickety wooden chair by the bedside of a sleeping Mary Eunice. Unsure just what was expected of herself, she drew her hands up and down the goose bumps that had risen along the length of her arms, oddly envious of the flimsy blanket draped over the figure she had been told to watch. The infirmary was unexpectedly cold, which couldn't have been much good for some of the longstanding – a bad turn of phrase, her journalistic mind complained – patients held up there and she found she longed for a threadbare blanket of her own, or even the dingy red cardigan she had become accustomed to. Unfortunately, as she had not been prepared for Jude's sudden request in the slightest, Lana hadn't had time to fetch the article of clothing before she was ushered to her first shift. Ever since that night of the storm and what she had seen, it seemed Lana's preconceptions about the young sister who slept in front of her had been thrown into disarray that even she couldn't distinguish and to top it all off she had been thrown into the situation herself without any willingness or forewarning.
'Maybe you're just as insane as the rest of them.' Lana murmured to herself as she brushed a strand or two of her own brunette hair from her eyes and frowned at the dry, unkempt state of it. Wendy would have had a fit, once upon a time… Yes, Lana took a certain pride in her appearance, or at least she used to but Wendy had always been the one to nit-pick; a stray hair, a creased lapel, the little things that escaped Lana's notice while she absorbed herself in her work. Such absorption was what got her where she was in the first place. 'Maybe that's what working here just does to a person. What being here does to a person. Worse than when they arrive.' She mused and found her dark eyes wandered to the arm that lay atop the blanket, still wrapped up in white. 'Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that you tried to…' Lana couldn't quite bring herself to finish the sentence aloud. She watched the rise and fall of the blonde's chest, all too aware of the quiet that surrounded them as though the pair were all alone, removed from the rest of the world. To an extent, this wasn't untrue, as they were settled at a distance from all else in the wing, out of sight and amusingly out of mind behind a long stretch of curtain disturbed only to provide sustenance or supervision. Seeing as these duties had been unceremoniously dumped on Lana's own shoulders she doubted that would occur without her own influence from then on. Still, suicide just didn't seem plausible although the accident that Jude had insisted upon seemed even less so. Despite the evidence in front of her eyes, of all the people in the building at any given time, Mary Eunice had been the least of expectations. Naïve, perhaps at first, tearful indeed initially, but as much as Lana had grown to dislike the growth of the haughty personality, there were no doubts the young sister had undergone a change, although quick, not so out of place, at least on the exterior. Had it been a façade for this all along? 'I could put you out of your misery right now…' Lana leaned forward, on the edge of her seat, for a closer look at the pale slumbering face, surrounded by a halo of light hair. She looked peaceful, beautiful and unaware of Lana's close proximity. 'Maybe I should…' Lana whispered.
Lulled into a false sense of security by the absence of goings on in the infirmary, Lana didn't expect the eyes – golden, or red or black, anything but the blue-green she had first met – that flashed open with a glare enough to sear her very soul. Or the astounding grasp of the hand that seized the front of her denim dress, jerked Lana so close that she had to steady herself with her hands haphazardly on the bed before she lost her footing. The young nun's breath breezed across her bare neck with a feverish heat on her flesh.
'Listen to me.' It was a snarl more than anything, a gravelly growl at Lana's ear. The grip of the dress' neckline nearly choked off her access to oxygen. Instinct suggested she call for help, there had to be someone around to witness what was going on besides herself; if it was her word alone, there was not a chance in hell she would be believed. The instinct was apparently not strong enough however and Lana remained quiet. 'You will help me. You will help heal this clumsy corpse of flesh, blood and bone or you will see yours bend and break and bleed before I drag you down screaming to the bowls of hell where we belong.' Fear bubbled uncomfortably in her stomach as the eyes she could see from the corner of her own that glared back at her with such severity showed no sign of a lie. 'If you so much as let her die, to beg for death would be a privilege.' Mary Eunice – if it was still here, which Lana was not so certain of – sneered before her fingers that had clawed around the dress slowly released the material and the reporter tried to focus her breathing which had become easier once she was no longer held in a vice-like grip but still uneven with silent dread. Her hands were still set atop the bed in an awkward bid to keep upright but rather than move them of her own accord, Lana stumbled backwards, pushed by an unseen force of some kind, as though a hand had violently shoved her away from the figure in the bed. Her back knocked into the wooden seat she previously occupied which toppled to the floor with a clatter that made her jump. She could have sworn she saw Mary's eyes return to the blue she knew them to be before they closed and she resumed her restful state – although decidedly less restful, Lana thought. Still stunned by the turn of events, Lana had barely managed to speak a word aloud before she was interrupted abruptly by the presence of a judgemental Dr Arden. Unaware that she herself had crept closer to the bed again after being shoved, she hadn't expected the older man's hands to roughly shunt her aside out of his way. Somewhere under his breath he grumbled rather liberally his views about leaving useless patients with those clearly in need of better and more competent care. Competent was not a word she would have chosen to describe himself, but she bit her tongue this time around. Arden drew his hand over Mary's forehead, feeling with the reverse of his palm for the temperature. The expression that fell upon his face showed his displeasure and he mumbled to himself in a disgruntled tone. He seemed unwilling to share any information with Lana, despite her being given the job to supervise, but she supposed that was exactly the reason why he resented her presence so much, more than the average patient who did as they were told. She had no problem receiving his unspoken antipathy, she had a mutual amount for him as she none-too-fondly recalled the shock therapy. From the mutterings under his breath, and every other word, Dr Arden assumed the sudden spike of temperature he felt on the blonde's skin was the stirrings of a fever, again he pointed the finger of blame unashamedly in Lana's direction who still stood but a few feet away picking up the chair from the floor. Even if she tried to tell him the truth of what had happened moments before he had walked in, he would have never believed her, or worse turned it around on her and used it as a viable excuse for more sessions of electro shock or solitary. If he had entered the area just a few seconds earlier… But for now it seemed as though she was yet again the only one, the only witness to this strange behaviour, psychotic, suicidal or otherwise…