Chapter 10

Gifts

Angie came back to herself on that gray bedspread, blinking in the disturbed dusty air of the long-left room. A noise had awakened her; she forced her stiff body up from the bed, cautiously. Jane was nowhere in sight. There is an attached bathroom, she told herself, don't panic. To her relief, she found a sliver of light shining beneath the door; she must be in there. A few less pleasant options soon occurred to her, but she gladly ignored them for the moment.

"Jane?" she hesitantly called, reluctant to stir the air further. There was no noise from downstairs; she couldn't recall if she'd been able to hear Daniel before falling into her memory or not. No answer came from behind the bathroom door.

Angie stood tensely for a moment, unsure. Eventually the light beneath the door went out, which did nothing to calm her nerves. The knob turned with unnatural slowness, and Angie backed up a few steps, jumping when her knees encountered the bed.

A shape lumbered into the room; beyond the now open door, Angie could hear the unexpected sounds of the autumn rainstorm sweeping dead leaves across distant rooftops. Orange streetlamps shone wetly on the frame of a very small window set in the shower stall; no windows to the outside apparently carried a more casual meaning to a man accustomed to safety at home.

The figure moved forward, hands clutched to chest. Fleetingly, Angie saw another shape skitter across the dark bathroom, but there was no time to process the meaning of it. The person before her stopped just shy of the dim light.

Her brain was slack; all intake, no thought. Finally, into her numbing and momentary stupidity, the figure entered the circle of dirty light. Jane stood there, to Angie's immense relief; it soon lessened, though, as she saw that the girl was soaking wet and shivering. She held something close to her chest, some rectangle of light paper.

"Jane?" she whispered, hesitant to step forward. "What – what happened?"

Jane's gray eyes had not rested directly on hers for some time; now they did, abruptly. "He gives this," she gasped, the cold audible in her voice. She thrust the package toward Angie, whose instinct it was to jump out of reach. She steadied herself, and took the dubious gift.

Without looking at it, she reached out and wrapped the shivering girl in her dry and relatively warm arms. Leading her to the bed, she pulled the bedspread off of the mattress and drew it around her friend as well as she could. When Jane was safely swaddled and sitting securely, eyes again downcast and distracted, Angie took a seat beside her and held the package to the light.

It was a file, a manila folder; the kind one would see in a doctor's office. The patient name was printed with unusual clarity in the tab at the top. The papers within rustled uneasily; it was a feeling Angie felt keenly as she read the label there.

All these months, obsessively scrambling through Jonnie's patient files, all to no avail. Now, when she'd stopped looking for her own secrets so suddenly her head had nearly spun, she had the documents in her hands. She'd found Jane's file in the search, but had had scarcely enough time to find the girl's reason for being there before she'd been chased out of the office. Now, Jane had returned the favor.

But how

"Where did you get this?" Angie asked, knowing it would do no good. Predictably, Jane was silent.

Perhaps there are more ways around than Danny boy has told us, Angel baby?

It is rather an old house

…on rather an old island. The wind rattled the building to its foundations, startling Angie as she was irresistibly drawn to the file's contents. The jump was purely reactive; her conscious mind was on the papers she was about to uncover. As much as she'd wanted it at Arkham, however inexplicably, she now found herself almost ill with apprehension. Still, she continued.

Inside lay her past with Crane. Of course, she knew it all already, at least from her perspective. What had she wanted this for in the first place, again?

To know what he thought of you, right?

Like he'd really write, "Angie: hot chick in Max ward"

That internal monologue was wearing out its welcome. Ignoring the sounds of her own thoughts, Angie looked over the personal file, the identification photo taken at her admittance, the tiny tapes recorded during certain therapy sessions, and other notes regarding medications and ward moves. She had nothing to play the audio tapes on; gladly, she found that the transcripts had been included. This was too fortuitous to be…well, real, it seemed. The entire evening had been surreal; could she expect things to start making sense now?

Bending nearer to the papers, Angie realized that if she wanted to avoid future heart attacks, she had to keep a closer eye on Jane. Resolving to do just that, she strained her eyes in the half light, and began to review her history.

Patient 16B: Angel Adlam