Chapter Four
The next morning, Austin was up at his usual time to get ready for work. She wanted to make him breakfast and pack him a lunch, but he insisted on her resting and catching a few more hours of sleep. She didn't argue, still feeling worn out from her shift yesterday. He kissed her forehead before leaving and told her he'd call her at lunch.
It was nearing ten when she woke again, bolting upright in bed, drenched in sweat.
She had dreamt that Miss Crawford—of all people—was trying to kill her. Only, it didn't look like her at all, but something far more vicious and bloodthirsty, something inhuman, almost, with eyes so black and large she felt like they could digest her whole. Its limbs were thin, black, like the charred, dead leftovers of an emaciated tree. She'd had worse dreams, certainly, but now that she was awake it only served to remind her of the odd circumstances surrounding Miss Crawford's hospitalization.
Sunlight was streaming through the open curtains, and Taylor fell back on her elbows as the leftover remnants of her dream began to fade, images and sounds melting beneath a thick blanket of fog.
The room suddenly felt stifling and too hot, and with Austin gone, the silence was so heavy she could feel it pressing down on her. She showered and changed, and decided to call her father to see if he wanted company for the day.
William was surprised but happy she had called. She promised she'd fix him a late breakfast when she got there.
After calling a cab, she arrived at her childhood home within the hour, climbing the old, familiar steps to the front door, trailing her hand along the railing which was rusted now and tangled in vines that snaked around the door frame and up the drainage pipe that led to the roof. She felt herself smile when she remembered how she used to sit on these steps with Terrence and his friends.
She rarely let herself think about her brother these days. It hurt too much, knowing she'd likely never see him again, not knowing if he was even alive, but she did cling to the good memories, to the days when her mother was still alive and for that brief time when they had been a picture-perfect family.
When she knocked and her father answered, she was stunned to see that he had dressed for her and looked more presentable than he had in years. She smiled at him and pulled him into a hug.
"You look good, dad," she said, kissing his cheek, and when she pulled back, his eyes were shining with something other than tears for the first time in ages.
In the kitchen, she let him ramble about nothing and everything as she prepared pancakes and eggs for them over the stove. She listened contentedly, knowing that he no longer spoke with friends, and she and Austin were the only ones he ever engaged in face-to-face conversation with. It was good to hear him talk, and even though he was a quiet man, he had no qualms about opening up to his daughter—so long as it was nothing too personal—and had quite a lot to say.
She spent the better half of the afternoon with him, talking, playing cards—their favorite was Rummy—and watching TV.
They spent the entire day in each other's presence, and she'd nearly persuaded him to take a walk outside with her, but in the end he had declined. It was alright, though. He was far more cognizant and aware than normal, and that was good enough for her. She didn't want to get ahead of herself, but she dared to hope that maybe her father's depression was starting to recede, that maybe he was beginning to at least hope for a light at the end of the tunnel, instead of persistently trying to wish it away.
At some point during the afternoon, when William had drifted off in his recliner for a much-needed nap, Taylor let him be and decided to wander through the house, something she hadn't done in years. She was too like her father in many ways, one of them being that she too had a tendency to bury the past—where they differed was in their approach to it. Taylor did what was necessary to repress her memories, she was avoidant and dismissal, choosing instead to focus her attention elsewhere, even as her past was determined to bubble to the surface whenever it could. Her father, on the other hand, entombed himself in the past, and it was where he chose to live every day. Where Taylor looked forward, her father looked behind. There was no present for him, no future, only the past and the deep-seated pain that ensnared him, holding him prisoner in his own home.
At the top of the stairs, she went to her room first, climbing the forest-green carpeted stairs and counting the steps as she went, just as she used to. Counting was something she'd done a lot of, as a child. She'd seen many different doctors before being adopted, psychologists who specialized in child developmental disorders, psychotherapists who conducted behavioral studies and tests, counselors trained to deal with child abuse victims, PTSD, the whole spectrum. They were people eager to pick apart her brain, tell her something she didn't know, or try a new technique on—and she did try many techniques. The idea of counting had come from a psychologist that she had been very fond of, though had only done two sessions with, for reasons she couldn't understand at the time.
"Can you be my mommy?" she used to ask. And to be reasonable, this was a question she had asked many poor, bemused women. On rare outings to the park or the zoo with the other children from the orphanage, she made it her mission to approach any nice looking woman, anyone who so much as offered her a smile or a kind glance, and ask them ever-so-sweetly if they would like to be her mother. Before they could reply, she hurriedly rushed into what she perceived to be her most favorable attributes. "I always eat all the food on my plate and I go to bed when I'm told! Also my hair is very soft and you can braid if you want. Oh! And I love sour gummy worms!" More often than not, her list of "favorable attributes" turned into a list of the many different things that she liked, like monkey bars and stuffed animals and rainbow sprinkles on her ice-cream cones.
She was of course, scolded many times for wandering away from the group and talking to strangers, but also for asking "rude" questions.
The psychologist, an Asian woman with wavy, shoulder-length black hair, almond eyes, and a purple butterfly on the nameplate clipped to her blouse, had responded in kind to Taylor's request, smiling gently at her.
"I wish that I could, Taylor. You are a very sweet, brave little girl. Don't you ever forget that."
She hadn't. But she also hadn't forgotten the woman's instructions on what to do whenever Taylor was feeling worried or afraid—the counting game—which was played simply by counting for as long as it took for her fears or anxieties to go away. She knew her numbers better than any of the other children, even some of the older ones.
When she pushed open the door to her room, it was as if she'd stepped back in time. Nothing had changed. She hadn't stepped foot in her room in years, and yet everything was exactly in its place. Her plastic horses, which she had loved so much, were carefully arranged on the white shelf that her father had built and mounted for her. Her curtains were sheer and pink, and pushed aside to let in the sunlight, which trickled through the slats in the blinds. Colorful stickers decorated her oval mirror above the dresser, and her wooden jewelry box, which she had bedazzled and coated in glitter all by herself, lay just beneath it.
There were pink and yellow paper chains strung around the window frame—she'd made those in art class in eighth grade, she remembered—and her bed was neatly made as it almost always was. There were 'honorary mention' medals looped around the bed post from art contests she'd entered in the city, when she was in high school, and her drawings all over the walls, from 6th grade to 12th. Her gel pens and colored pencils were kept in a coffee mug on her desk.
The wooden frame of her bed creaked beneath her weight. She splayed her hand across the quilted bedspread in reverence and picked at one of the loose threads. How many times had she curled in this green quilt with its paisley designs and cried herself to sleep?
She went to Terrence's room next—years had passed since she'd last dared step foot in there—where more memories came flooding back to her the instant she stepped inside. She had spent a lot of time in her brother's room. The walls were dark blue and offset by dark, cherry brown furniture, a stark contrast to her pale room with the clean white dresser and bedside table. His bookshelf was overflowing, books squashed in between Star Wars action figures and the Millennium Falcon, the bed unmade. There was a basketball on the floor next to the hamper. She read the plaques on his sports trophies—he had loved baseball—and stared at the drawings on his wall, as well as his impressive stack of video games by the old, box TV. She smiled at the antennas that protruded from it like proud, crooked bunny ears.
When she arrived at his desk, she trailed a finger across the spot where he'd always kept his comic books. She left a cleared path amidst the gathered dust in her wake.
Out of curiosity, she opened the top drawer to his desk. She had no idea what he'd kept in there because she'd never been nosy enough to check when she was younger. She'd never had a desire to. Now, though, she was interested about what kind of trinkets she might find.
The drawers were filled with the regular things that one might come to expect from a teenage boy—sheets of notebook paper, a myriad of pens, markers, and pencils, a lone sock tied in a knot that was filled with loose change, an empty lighter, movie stubs, and lastly, a collection of loose, miscellaneous baseball cards. She sifted through it all fondly, smiling a little when she recalled how important Terrence's baseball cards had been to him.
She was about to leave when the sound of the recliner squeaking downstairs met her ears, but that thought was forgotten when she noticed something that had fallen between the desk and the wall, a book of some sort.
Her brows drew together as she bent down to retrieve it. It was a small, spiral-bound notebook, the size of a paperback, with a dark blue, blank cover. She dusted off the front before opening the first page.
She realized she had discovered Terrence's journal. Her brows rose in surprise at the finding; she didn't know he had kept one.
She swallowed and let herself sink to the floor, pressing her back against the wall with her knees pulled to her chest as she held the book in her hands, pressed against the front of her thighs. The pages were yellow and some of them stuck together—as if he'd spilled water on them or the book had gotten caught in the rain—and she had to peel the pages apart slowly so they wouldn't tear.
She skimmed through his entries with a cautious sort of eagerness, almost fearful of what she might find. Terrence's entries were far and in between, and the dates he had scrawled at the top of each paged indicated he wrote every one or two months, or whenever he felt stressed or simply needed to vent.
When she stumbled upon an entry dated on the day she'd been adopted by the Tanners—a day forever ingrained in her memory, the first time she'd felt truly safe in such a long time—her heart skipped a beat and she was forced to pause, unable to catch her breath. For a moment, she closed her eyes, wondering if she should dare read his secret words, knowing that he would have mentioned her in his entry. It felt wrong, but she burned to know how he'd felt, if only because she missed him so much.
His handwriting, even as a boy, was practically immaculate. She was surprised by this because her own handwriting had looked like chicken scratch at his age, but Terrence's penmanship was quite impressive. She'd never noticed it when they were younger.
She read his words carefully.
I have a new sister today. Her name is Taylor. She's not my real sister, because she's adopted, but mom and dad really like her. They've wanted a girl for a long time, and I guess mom can't have one for some reason. Taylor is quiet. She has blonde hair and mom and dad told me that we look alike. She's spent a couple weeks at our house before, to see if she likes us, I guess, but today she is my sister for real. I showed her my room and all the video games I would teach her to play, but she didn't say anything. She doesn't know what Star Wars is, but I promised her we'd watch it soon.
I hope she'll like me. Mom said it might take some time, because she's shy and she didn't have a good mom and dad, but mom said she'd come around eventually, and that I have to be patient. Taylor cried today when the firehouse sirens down the street went off. I don't know why. Mom hugged her and said it'd be okay.
I'm really happy I have a sister now, even though she's shy. I'm going to be the best big brother ever.
Here Taylor stopped, tears blurring her vision so much that she couldn't read. She let the notebook fall closed and leaned her head back against the wall. Her heart ached for him in a way that it hadn't in a long time. She wondered how different her childhood might have been if she would have just accepted her new family with open arms, instead of being so skittish and afraid. Maybe it wouldn't have caused Clara so much stress and worry, maybe she wouldn't have had a stroke and died. Maybe Terrence wouldn't have run away, and he'd still be living in Gotham, and they'd be friends and have family dinners at each other's houses every Friday night.
Taylor brushed away her tears with the back of her hand. After collecting herself, she carefully lodged Terrence's notebook between the wall and his desk, just as she had found it. Maybe one day he'd come back for it.
In the hallway, she paused at her parent's closed door, hesitating. She wanted to look inside, to see if her father had left the photos of him and Clara on the walls, to caress her mother's jewelry and spritz her perfume around the room as she'd done as a child.
Instead, she decided against it. She didn't know if she was ready to experience the flood of emotions she knew she would encounter if she stepped inside that room. Terrence's journal had already brought back so many things she had forgotten, little memories she had tucked away in the back of her mind for later but had never revisited.
She made her way back down the creaking staircase and into the living room where her father was still asleep. She smiled fondly at him and kissed his forehead, before planting herself on the couch to nap as well.
She woke at four with a text from Austin, saying he was on his way home and had finished up early. She texted him back to let her know she was at her father's house and would be back soon.
She fixed him a quick dinner before she left—nothing to fancy, something he'd be able to easily store and then heat up in the microwave tomorrow night for dinner—and then said her goodbyes.
At the doorway, her father smiled at her, almost as if embarrassed.
"Thank you," he said, and he didn't have to elaborate what he was thanking her for, because she felt his gratitude as clearly as she felt the sun on her skin as it dipped below the skyline.
She smiled back and kissed his cheek.
Austin was chatty and happy to see her when she returned home, and after telling her about his day, he was eager to hear about hers. She told him that her father looked good and that her goal by the end of the summer was to get him to step outside of the house, maybe go to the park.
"I think he's embarrassed," she said. She was pulling a package of noodles from the cabinet to make spaghetti. "He's afraid of what people will think to see him after all of these years."
Austin had his head in the pantry, getting out the spices for the homemade tomato sauce they both liked. "Has he spoken to anybody since your mom passed?"
Taylor filled a pot with water and put it over the stove. "No, and I think he feels bad about that, too. There's a lot of phone calls and letters he's ignored." She set the flames to medium and waited for the water to boil. "His friends used to stop by at first—he didn't really want to see them, but they came anyway—but after a while they just stopped showing up. I think they got tired of his behavior. He wouldn't open up."
He hummed sympathetically, and Taylor rubbed her arms as she leaned against the counter next to the stove. It felt good to talk about her father like this. He was the only family she had left, and she wanted nothing more to see him happy again. She knew dating wasn't in the cards—he'd say he was too old, and she honestly didn't think he was capable—but if she could at least get him outside again, even if it was to the store to buy his own groceries, to set up some kind of routine for him, then maybe that'd be enough.
She watched Austin wash and then slice the tomatoes for the sauce. She did not tell him about Terrence's journal, though the story of her discovery hung on the tip of her tongue. Somehow it felt too personal of a thing to share. Terrence and Austin had never met, and though she spoke of her brother little, she suspected that Austin resented him for leaving Taylor and her father in the state that he had. But she felt no animosity towards him; he was her brother and she'd always care for him, even if she felt hurt by his actions and wished he would have stayed. She knew pain made you do things you later regretted, though whether he regretted his actions, she did not know. Somehow she felt that he still cared for her, for their father, but was perhaps too ashamed of what he'd done to ever return to his old life. She wondered how differently things might have turned out had he stayed—but it was always easy to question the "what ifs" when really there was no use dwelling on what could not be.
Austin came up behind her and sighed into her neck, wrapped his arms around her waist as he so often liked to do. "Your dad is lucky to have you," he said, kissing her cheek.
"And I'm lucky to have you otherwise this spaghetti sauce wouldn't be nearly as yummy."
He laughed, watching her reach for the strainer in one of the lower cabinets next to the stove. They were both quiet as he stirred the sauce on low heat, and she drained the spaghetti over the sink. The water hissed as it splashed into the sink. He was still looking at her.
"Taylor… you know I didn't mean what I said yesterday, about your dad." Taylor's movements slowed, and he went on. "I was just so angry… you've done so much for him and he's… he's barely even a functioning human being."
"He's done a lot for me too, Austin," she said, quietly, "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him, for my mother."
"I know that," he said, biting down on his lip for only a second before releasing it. "It just… hurts to see you suffering here. I feel like if we could just get away, move out of the city, escape from all this… chaos. We've talked about going someplace else before, living off the grid, far away from all this. It's not a new concept." He swallowed, brows knit together in obvious concern. "How long are you going to put your life—our life—on hold for him?"
"My dad needs me," she said, turning to look at him.
Austin nodded, slow and measured. "Maybe that's true," he replied. "But at what cost to you? At what cost to your own mental health?" He turned the stove off and went to her, rubbing his hands over her arms, wanting her to meet his eyes. "I'm not trying to pressure you into anything. It's… something to think about. I just want you to see where I'm coming from."
He'd spent so many years trying to appease his parents, to live up to their expectations, their needs, wishes, and desires… it'd almost cost him his relationship with Taylor. He'd vowed since then never to let another person dictate his life. He knew the situations were vastly different, but he didn't want Taylor's father to dictate her life in the same way he'd let his parents dictate his.
There was so much more at stake than just their relationship this time around—her mental health hung in the balance, and he feared for the day where he found her dead on the floor in the bathroom, her second attempt at suicide a success. He thought about that every damn day.
Maybe it was stupid to think that he could prevent her from going down that road again by a simple change of scenery, a "grass is greener on the other side" kind of mindset—but he was running out of ideas, and it was all he had left.
"I'll think about it, okay?" She was quiet, gentle in the way she shrugged out of his hold and moved away. "The spaghetti's going to get cold," she said, biting her lip and nodding towards the table.
Austin nodded and grabbed the plates and silverware, feeling like all of his words had just fallen on deaf ears.
Taylor woke up at three the following morning feeling sick to her stomach, the kind where she thought she was going to throw up. She stumbled into the bathroom in the dark and didn't turn on the light until she had closed the door, so as to not wake Austin. She turned on the sink and drank from her cupped hands, letting the cool water slide down her throat. It was not seconds later where she felt saliva pooling in her mouth—the telltale sign that she was going to vomit—and she opened the lid of the toilet and stood over it, retching, only for nothing to come out.
Austin entered the bathroom only a few minutes later, squinting from the sudden onslaught of light, sleepy-eyed and confused. Taylor reached for his spare glasses—which he always kept in a dish on the sink—and handed them to him. He was blind as a bat without them.
"Are you okay?" he asked as he put them on.
"I'm sorry, did I wake you?"
He waved her off and squinted, using that same hand to shield the brightness of the overhead light from his eyes. "What's the matter?"
"I was feeling sick, thought I was going to throw up." She brought the back of her hand to her forehead; it was hot to the touch. "God," she groaned, "I hope I'm not coming down with what everyone else has."
"What's that?"
"There's this stomach bug going around. It seems like it's all I've dealt with at the hospital for the past couple of days."
Austin scrubbed a hand over his jaw. "You going to call in sick? I'll get your phone." He was already turning to go back into the bedroom, but Taylor stopped him, reaching out for his arm.
"Hey, don't." He turned, looked at her. "I don't want to take any time off unless I absolutely have to. I've still got a couple hours of sleep left. I'll see how I'm feeling then."
He was reluctant to acquiesce, but eventually nodded and trudged back to bed, Taylor following behind him after she'd washed her hands.
She didn't go back to sleep after that, her anxiety grabbing hold of her and not letting go no matter how hard she tried to shove it away. She kept thinking about the "short-term psychotic episode" of Miss Crawford's, and the hallucination that Mr. Frederick had described. There was also her other patient who'd been on the cusp of what she was sure he would have described as a hallucination had he decided to tell her, and then there was Jason's patient, too. She didn't know why she couldn't shake off the feeling that something wasn't right, that it was a weird coincidence, maybe, or that she didn't have all the facts. It made her anxious, and she couldn't stop her mind from racing, chasing a myriad of impossible, far-fetched scenarios.
She didn't fall asleep until 5:25, just minutes before her alarm went off. She jolted awake, feeling Austin reach over her to turn off her phone. He pressed a sleepy, fleeting kiss against the column of her neck and then rolled onto his back on his side of the bed.
"Is it morning already?" she groaned. She had her back turned towards him, unable to muster enough energy to turn around.
"Afraid so, sleeping beauty." She felt his hand moving over her hip and the length of her outer thigh in a comforting gesture. "You feeling okay now?"
Taylor nodded. She didn't feel like she was going to throw up anymore, and she no longer felt feverish, but her exhaustion was a different story. And all of her anxieties—which she felt like she'd only just gotten a reprieve from only moments ago—came rushing back full force.
She pulled on her scrubs and wished she would have let Austin talk her into calling out and staying home.
As soon as she stepped into the hallway that led to the double doors of the ED, she noticed that there seemed to be some kind of a commotion going on. A loud, aberrant buzz filled the hallway. Even before she reached the entrance, she could feel dread settling in the pit of her stomach like a deadweight. Something had happened.
She pushed open the doors to find that there was a cluster of people just around the corner that she found herself gravitating towards—nurses and doctors and other medical personnel—but she stopped short when she noticed the police officers and caution tape, a bright streak of yellow slashing through the pale interior of the ED.
She caught the eye of Tyresa on the other side the tape, and noticed the mixture of fear and exhaustion in her eyes as she spoke to an officer. Tyresa excused herself and stepped forward to raise the line of tape for Taylor to duck under.
"This morning's been a nightmare," she said in greeting. Another officer was on Taylor immediately, and even though she was wearing her scrubs, she held up her badge for him to see. He waved her on, and Tyresa grabbed her arm, pulling her along with her.
"What is going on?" she asked. She sidestepped just in time to avoid getting shouldered by a very tall, skinny man with rectangular glasses, dressed in black jeans and a black t-shirt. He was walking so fast he had almost knocked her over. He hadn't made eye contact or even glanced in her direction, like she was completely invisible to him. "Who was that?"
Tyresa shook her head. "One of the detectives. He keeps leaving the scene to go pace out in the hall, and then two minutes later he's back with this weird look on his face. Gives me the creeps."
Taylor rubbed her arm, suddenly feeling cold. She thought he looked rather young for a detective, but didn't have time to dwell further on the subject when she saw two men carrying duffel bags enter from the opposite hallway and slip into one of the patient's rooms where all the officers seemed to be gathered. She could see the bright burst of flashbulbs going off from inside.
The static and the garbled voices from the officer's walkies made Taylor's skin prickle. She'd always felt uncomfortable around police officers for as long as she could remember. She turned instead to face Tyresa.
"What happened? Was somebody hurt?"
She shook her head. "I've never seen anything like it. Emily, the CNA, she heard the screams and tried to intervene. He tried to attack her, too. We couldn't get the patient restrained fast enough."
A million questions hung on the tip of her tongue, but before she could ask any, Tyresa was pushing through the officers and medical personnel and into the room. Taylor was quick to follow.
The smell was the first thing she noticed. Out in the hall, where the pervasive fetor of disinfectant and bleach hung suspended in the air, the initial stench of copper and piss was not so obvious. As soon as the threshold into the room was crossed, however, the stink was so strong it made Taylor's gag reflex jump in her throat. The smell was maddening. She held her breath as she advanced closer. She heard the sliding glass door and the curtain being drawn closed behind her.
The scene unfolded then, like some terrible picture out of a pop-up story book, one thing revealing itself to Taylor's eyes after the next. She did not know where to look first.
There was a man's body sprawled limp and bloodied across the floor.
His face was gone.
She gasped when she saw it. It was like a scene straight out of those cop dramas that Austin enjoyed so much, and that Taylor could never stomach. The only difference was that this was real, more grisly than any TV show or film could ever hope to emulate.
And yet… the scene somehow felt intimately familiar to her, something about the way the blood pooled in shallow ponds, and the way the body was stretched out, pale flesh against a tiled white floor. She was filled with a sense of déjà vu.
Why does this feel so familiar?
The snap of a flashbulb went off somewhere to her right, and the brightness momentarily blinded her, forcing her to reach out a hand to the wall behind her in order to steady herself as a wave of dizziness washed over her.
"Hey! Don't touch anything!" someone shouted at her. Taylor still felt dizzy, couldn't get her bearings back, and Tyresa was on her immediately.
"Whoa, are you alright?"
She didn't speak as she waved her off with her free hand, finding herself unable to look away from the body, like a scene replicated straight from some of her most poignant nightmares.
The face—what was left of it—was slick and shiny with blood, the harsh overhead fluorescents emphasizing the gory leftovers. The man was missing an eye, and there were shredded leftovers of what was once a mouth, leaving his gums and teeth bared.
Behind them, the young detective who they'd seen earlier stood in the doorway. Taylor hadn't even heard him enter. He was wide-eyed and his brown hair was wild, sticking out in all directions, like he'd been pushing his hands through it. His forehead was stacked with creases. She heard him speaking to one of the officers in a low tone, but her mind was already racing.
"Who did this to him?" she asked.
"Look at his hands," Tyresa said. "He did."
She looked where instructed, focusing on the man's outstretched fingers, where clumps of bloodied flesh and skin were trapped between the digits. Her gaze was drawn then to the wedding band on his finger, so familiar due to its distinct design. She knew immediately where she'd last seen it—or rather, who she'd last seen it on.
"Is this… is his name Isaac?"
Tyresa looked at her. "How did you know that?"
"Because… he was my patient just two days ago."
She was barely aware when an officer approached them, spoke words that sounded garbled and far away, and Tyresa's hand on her arm, pulling her out of the room. She wasn't cognizant of anything but that body in the middle of the floor, all that blood.
"Hey, hey," Tyresa was snapping her fingers in front of Taylor's field of vision, the way you do when someone's had a concussion and you didn't want them to fall asleep because you weren't sure if they were going to wake up. "You alright in there?"
Taylor shook herself out of her daze, tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine."
Tyresa looked unconvinced, but didn't push it. "The incident report is gonna take damn years to write. Anyway," she sighed, "I just thought you should see it so you could understand the severity. The police and detectives are going to try and have everything out of here within the hour, if anyone asks."
"What'd he come in for?"
"Girlfriend brought him in, said he was acting weird, violent. I was just waiting on further instruction from the doctor when this shit hit the fan."
"Where is she now? The girlfriend?"
"They escorted her out. We were able to extricate her before things got bad. But she's in hysterics."
"Does she know he's…?"
"Not yet."
Taylor felt her heart crawling up her throat, like it wanted to escape. "What precipitated all this?"
Tyresa shrugged. "Hell if I know, could be PCP, crack, bath salts… anything. We're waiting for the results of the tox screening." She shook her head. "It's gonna be a long morning."
For the remainder of the morning, she couldn't stop thinking about what she'd seen. It was hard to focus on her work, even after the general excitement had dissipated and the police and detectives had left, and Isaac's room had been sealed off until a final cause of death could be declared. In the quiet moments, she felt her mind wandering to images of his mangled face, all that blood….
What could possibly drive someone to turn on themselves like that, to cause themselves so much pain?
And that something like that should happen only days after Miss Crawford had attempted to do the exact same thing. She said she'd seen herself as a monster—had Isaac seen himself as a monster too? But none of their medical conditions were related—was there possibly some common denominator that she wasn't seeing that could have caused them to react the way they had? And what about Mr. Fredericks—he had reported hallucinations, too. And Jason's patient… what about him?
Once the afternoon hit, she kept busy with a steady flow of patients, and when an armed robbery at a convenience store in Red Hook left several injured from gunfire, Gotham Medical took the brunt of the victims.
Near the end of her shift, when she was counting narcotics in the med room with another nurse, she was startled by her cell phone vibrating in the pocket of her scrubs. They had just finished their count and the other nurse was leaving, allowing her a moment of privacy.
"Austin?"
"Are you alright?"
She frowned into the phone, held it tighter against her ear as her brows pinched together in concern. "Baby, I'm fine. What's the matter?"
She heard him let out a loaded exhale into the receiver. "I saw a report on the news that a nurse was attacked at the hospital. I thought... fuck, I was so worried."
Taylor's heart clenched at his admission. She hated worrying him. "I promise I'm fine. It was already over by the time I got here." She paused to swallow the rising panic in her throat as she pictured the scene. She turned around, her back to the Pyxis machine. "God, Austin, I saw the aftermath. There was so much blood. I've seen a lot throughout the years, but never that much. It just—"
It's really quite easy. All you have to do is make him bleed.
Taylor's sentence faltered and she paused, wondering where on earth those words in her head had come from. A pang of stabbing familiarity hit her just then. She knew she'd heard those words before but couldn't place where, or who had said them. Her mouth was suddenly dry.
"Taylor? Are you still there?"
She snapped out of her daze and swallowed, clutching her cell phone so hard her knuckles were white. It was a struggle to breathe normally.
"Yes, I'm here."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
She wet her lips and glanced at her wristwatch. She didn't want to talk about it, and she'd have no idea what to say if she did. "I really can't," she said instead, "I'm on the clock... "
Austin didn't say anything for a moment, but she could picture him nodding his head on the other side of the phone. She knew from years of watching him talk on the phone to others that he had a tendency to gesture or nod even though the other person couldn't see him.
"Alright. I'm just... I'm so glad you're okay. You have to call me as soon as stuff like this happens so I don't worry about you, you hear?" There was a wearied smile in his voice.
"Okay."
"I'll see you tonight."
"See you soon."
Taylor stood outside the doors of the hospital in the burgeoning darkness and let the warm night air wash over her. She closed her eyes and exhaled, feeling the sounds of the city reverberate around her, trying to leave all of her stresses and anxieties in the building behind her; it was hard not to take your work home with you, where it clung to your skin and infested itself, the worst kind of parasite.
She sent a quick text to Austin to let him know she was on her way home, and was turning towards the parking garage when she noticed a familiar figure standing not far off from her, near the corner of the building where people sometimes gathered to smoke.
She cut through the damp blades of grass to reach him, where he was leaning up against the side of the building, head down. He didn't see her approaching, and he startled when she called out his name.
Jason's head shot up and he reached for the cigarette clamped between his lips. She noticed a slight tremble of his hand when he did, whether from the nicotine or something else, she didn't know.
"I didn't think you smoked," she said, knowing the shock she felt was written all over her face.
He looked at her, a mixture of shame and embarrassment. "I don't," he said. He had the decency to lower the cigarette and switch it to his other hand, so the wind didn't carry the smoke in her direction. "I used to, in high school. That was the cool, angst-y thing to do."
"What are you doing here? I thought you were off today?"
"I switched shifts, I'm working tonight instead of tomorrow morning."
"Are you really about to walk into the hospital smelling like a dive bar?"
"Nancy does it."
"Nancy is nurturing a twenty-year addiction to nicotine." She was tempted to reach forward and pull the cigarette out of his mouth. Flumes of smoke escaped from his nostrils, clinging to the back of the worsening humidity. She always found it hypocritical of nurses to promote wellness, abstinence from smoking, and a healthy diet and then not to live by the very standards they were advocating for. She knew Jason shared her sentiments, so she was baffled as to why he was out here smoking like it was the last cigarette he'd ever have. "What are you doing here anyway?"
"I was thinking about something you said the other day."
"Something I said?"
"About your patients who'd mentioned having hallucinations."
Taylor felt her heart give a little jump in her chest. "What about it?"
"It piqued my curiosity. So I looked into it."
She frowned. "Did you find something?"
"Maybe." He looked away and brought the cigarette back to his mouth again, like he'd suddenly realized how long he'd gone without a drag and was desperate for a fix. His fingers shook. He knew she saw, but realized too late he couldn't turn his back to her because the smoke would blow into her face. "Let me show you something."
Taylor followed him back inside where they took the elevator upstairs to the third floor. She knew where they were going. There was a conference room there which was usually empty, with a bank of computers that had access to the entire hospital. It was typically used as a training room for new employees who needed to become acclimated to the system—but sometimes doctors could be found here too, wanting to work in silence.
The room was empty when they entered.
"Remember when I told you I'd overhead one of my patients saying he'd been having weird hallucinations?" Taylor nodded as they both founds seats and Jason logged into the computer. "Name was Derrick. Found out he died last night, heart attack. He was a young guy, not much older than me."
"I'm so sorry," Taylor said.
"That's not all though. The guy you were telling me about, Mr. Frederick? I looked him up too. Want to know what I found in common? They were both given this drug called 'Remcon'—ever heard of it?"
She shook her head 'no' as Jason pulled up Mr. Frederick's information, which was kept in the system for up to seven days after discharge in case amendments needed to be made.
He pointed at the date and time. "Look, it says here—when he was first admitted for a broken wrist—that you gave it to him IM, left deltoid."
Taylor's brows furrowed together in disbelief. "That's impossible… I don't even know what that drug is for. I always look up a drug first if I'm not sure. And I know I never gave him anything IM."
"It says here you did."
Taylor was floored. "This is insane, I never gave that." She could feel her heart starting to pound faster. "It wasn't even ordered at the time… does it say when the order was placed?"
"Two PM, just fifteen minutes before you started him on a normal saline drip and gave him Motrin." Jason shook his head. "It says the same thing for me, Taylor, that I gave Derrick this IM Remcon."
Taylor's mind was racing. She knew—without a shadow of a doubt—that she had not given that drug. And she also knew it had not been ordered at the time she had been caring for Mr. Frederick, she would have recognized it when Jason had first mentioned it to her if she had.
"Search for Isaac Billings."
"Who's that?"
"This guy—he killed himself today in the ED. He was acting… he was acting the same way Miss Crawford was—that woman who came in the other day who we had to restrain?"
"You mean the one who was clawing at her face?"
"That's the one."
Jason pulled up Isaac's file. "His first admittance—here," Jason pointed to the screen, "just a day before Frederick's—and would you look right there." The mouse hovered over 'Remcon' once again in the list of drugs that had been administered. "Coincidence?"
Taylor was speechless. "What is this drug even for?"
"It's part of the new line that pharmaceutical rep was here to announce a couple weeks ago."
"Andromeda?"
"That's the one. I looked them up, they're part of an umbrella corporation, under Janus."
"Janus Cosmetics… the makeup company?"
He nodded. "Again, it's an umbrella, Andromeda is part of their health, medicine, and research faction."
"And Remcon?"
"That's the thing, it's nothing more than an NSAID to treat pain. It hardly raises any red flags."
"When you overheard your patient talking about the hallucination? Did he mention anything about monsters?"
Jason frowned. "I don't think so. Why?"
"Because when I spoke to Miss Crawford, she said she'd attacked herself because she thought she was a monster. And Mr. Frederick, when I asked him what he'd seen, he said, 'that thing everyone's afraid of underneath their bed'. I'm just wondering if there's some kind of connection?"
"What's her first name?"
"It's Marilyn."
Jason typed her name into the search bar and selected it when it came up in the results.
He paused to read her file. "You didn't tell me she'd died, too."
"She what?" Taylor leaned closer to the screen to look for herself. "That… that can't be. She was recovering fine on the medsurg floor. I talked to her just two days ago."
"Another heart attack. And look," it took a moment for him to switch tabs, but then he was pulling up the list of medications she'd been given, and once again, she had also received Remcon during her initial stay in the ED, the day Dr. Bishop had berated Taylor in front of the entire staff for disagreeing with him. "It says you gave it to her right after giving her this PRN order for Nitro."
She leaned forward to get a better look, and was again struck with the same anger and disbelief as before; she hadn't given that medication, and it hadn't even been ordered at the time.
"So… this Remcon is causing these hallucinatory episodes that make people want to kill themselves, and if they survive, they eventually succumb to a heart attack?"
"Mr. Fredericks isn't dead though… but it does look that way."
"We have to do something about this, we have to tell somebody—" Taylor was already on her feet, ready to take action, but Jason urged her to sit back down.
"I'm not done yet."
"There's more?" she asked, baffled.
"Aren't you noticing who the doctor is for all of these patients?"
Taylor took the mouse from Jason and clicked through all the tabs they'd just opened.
All of them had Dr. Bishop's name listed at the top.
"What are you saying? You think he has something to do with this?"
"Think about it," he said, "he's the only one who could have put in this order after the fact."
"But to sign in as me, to say that I'd given this med? He can't do that, can he?"
"He could've had help, maybe someone hacked the system for him."
Taylor shook her head. She couldn't believe everything she'd just heard. "But why?" she wanted to know. "I don't get it, what's the point of all this? What does he have to gain?"
"I'm not sure, but," Jason craned his head to look around Taylor, making sure no one was about to enter the room, "I'm telling you this because I trust you, alright? I think I took something I shouldn't have, from Dr. Bishop's office."
"What were you—"
"It's not important now. I just thought—I don't know, that I'd find something, some incriminating evidence maybe. Instead I found this."
He dug out of his pocket a yellowed and wrinkled piece of paper, unfolding it and handing it to Taylor to inspect.
What the…?
She frowned as she held it between her hands. The symbols were unlike anything she'd ever seen. There were boxes and circles and dots and half-finished triangles—all hand written. It didn't look like any language she'd ever seen before, though of course there were thousands she wasn't even familiar with. It could've been any number of different languages.
"What is this?"
"I have no idea."
"And you found this in his office?"
"It seemed important at the time, like I could use it as evidence or something. But I realized afterwards I have no way of figuring out what those symbols mean."
Taylor stared at it, feeling dread settle in the pit of her stomach. "Do you think it could be some kind of cipher? Like a code?"
"Maybe."
Whatever it was, it raised even more questions than it answered. If it was a cipher, then why had Bishop gone to such great lengths to conceal something? And more than that, what had he concealed?
"What do we do with this? Do you think we should contact Shelly? Or the police?" Shelly was their nursing supervisor who they always went to with all of their problems, but even this felt too big for someone of her scope.
"No," Jason said, voice firm. "We go to the police now, and Bishop closes up like a clam. We don't have enough evidence to prove anything yet."
Taylor was flabbergasted. "The evidence is right here!" She pointed to the screen. "I did not give this medication!"
"Says who? This is what I mean, Taylor—if he did this, if he really did forge your name—it'd be your word against his. You have nothing to show for it. Legally, the computer says you documented this, and that's how the court will see it."
"But you have proof too! You know you didn't administer Remcon. That makes it two against one."
"Two against one very powerful doctor. He'd eviscerate us. He's been practicing for years, he's respected here. We're easily replaceable in the grand scheme of things."
"Then what would you have us do? We can't just sit here."
"We have to gather more solid evidence. Something doesn't feel right, Taylor. You know it and I know it, but this whole thing could be blown out of the water before it even gets started."
She knew he was right. She hated it, but she knew that if they took it to the board, or even to the police, they didn't have enough evidence, just a smattering of strange symptoms and their word against that of a prestigious doctor.
She shook her head. "I still don't like this, Jason. It feels wrong not to say anything. More people could die, and this is too—"
The door opened just then, revealing two male doctors, and Taylor unconsciously curled up the cipher and stuffed it in her scrub top, hiding it from view.
Both she and Jason shared a silent glance before he exited out of all the tabs and signed out of the computer.
Outside in the hall, amidst the bustle of people, Jason kept his voice low. "I'm have to clock in now."
"What do you want me to do?" she asked, on the fringe of desperation, knowing they needed to take action, but also knowing they were powerless to do so.
He shook his head, feeling just as powerless. "The only thing we can do for right now. Keep a weather eye. Whatever we're about to uncover, I have a feeling it's going to be messy."
Taylor woke the next morning feeling groggy and sore. When she rolled over to glance at the clock, she started, surprised to see that it was almost eleven. She heard sizzling coming from downstairs, and she pulled on her bathrobe to investigate.
She found Austin in the kitchen making pancakes and bacon. He stood with his back to her at the stove, pouring batter onto the waiting skillet. Feeling playful, she snuck up behind him, wrapping her arms around him and making him jump slightly in surprise.
"Hey," she said, planting a kiss on the back of his neck. She loosened her hold on him so he could turn her in his arms and wrap them around her waist.
"Hey, baby," he said softly, winding his arms tight around her. "How are you feeling?"
Taylor buried her face into his chest and could feel his warm exhales of breath on the top of her head. "I'm okay now, I think." She hadn't said anything when she'd come home last night, just crawled into bed and let him hold her until she fell asleep. And she hadn't even begun to unravel the investigation she and Jason were involved in. She hardly knew where to start.
"I didn't mean to sleep for so long," she said at length. "I was going to make you breakfast."
"I don't mind making you breakfast." He kissed her cheek and pulled her into a hug, holding her for a few moments in silence and wondering what was going through her head. "Do you want to tell me about it?"
Taylor inhaled, taking a deep breath that she was slow to let it out.
Don't you want to play?
That made her breathing stop altogether, and Austin could feel her tense up in his arms. He loosened his grip and took a step back so he could look at her.
"Taylor... "
She didn't hear him. All she could hear were those words, over and over again. And that voice… that had been the same voice from before, the one she'd heard while on the phone talking to Austin yesterday. What did these phrases mean? Was it something she had heard once in a dream?
"Hey, come back to me." Austin's fingers tapped gently against her cheek. She raised her eyes to meet his. He smiled, wanting to ease the sudden tension that had formed, but she could see that he was worried. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, alright? I just want to be here for you. Right now I feel... well, I feel pretty useless." This he almost seemed sheepish to say, and Taylor shook her head.
"You're not," she promised, firm.
Austin grinned at her and pinched her waist before turning back to the stove. "You're just saying that because I made pancakes."
"Maybe," she teased, though he could tell it was halfhearted.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye to make sure she was really okay. They stood beside each other as she tended to the bacon and he made pancakes, Austin trying his best to distort the batter into different objects such as dinosaurs and cars, and even a stethoscope, at her request.
"Hey, I'm a writer, not an artist," he said when the stethoscope came out looking more like a certain reproductive organ of the male anatomy and not at all like a medical instrument. The rest of their pancakes turned out quite disfigured, much to Taylor's amusement. They sat at the island in the center of the kitchen, feet dangling from the barstools as they talked about their week and filled each other in on everything they'd missed. The conversation was light and easy, and for a short time, Austin made her forget about the worries on her mind, and all the things she'd spent yesterday stressing over. It was easy not to talk about the things that scared her, the things she didn't understand—maybe perhaps too easy.
She'd learned early on that talking about her problems very rarely solved them, and in fact they usually made them worse. Bottling everything up was what she knew how to do best, what she had been forced to do in her early years at the orphanage. Subsequently, it was all she was good at it, what was most familiar to her. And that familiarity, however harmful it was to her in the long run, was something of a comfort to her nonetheless.
When they were finished and had loaded the dishes into the dishwasher, Taylor spent some time on the phone talking to her dad, and they agreed that she and Austin would come over for dinner later that evening.
She spent her day forcing herself not to think about everything that was going on at the hospital, even if she did keep her cell phone close in case Jason should call with new information.
Austin spent the early afternoon in the garage organizing some of his car tools since he'd been putting it off for months, and she retreated to the backyard to pull fresh cucumbers and tomatoes. The squash hadn't grown much since she'd last watered it, so she decided not to pick those.
When she came back inside, a brown paper bag was filled to the brim with fresh vegetables. She rinsed the dirt off them in the sink and placed them back in the bag. Austin was just finishing up in the shower, and she took one herself when he was done. The two of them made a quick run to the store to pick up a few things for dinner and then drove to her father's house.
She cooked a chicken pasta dinner for the three of them, and as always whenever she cooked in her childhood home, she was flooded with memories of her mother having done the same thing. She still remembered the way Clara looked when she stood at the stove, or that way she used to peer into the fridge, or how she used to look over her shoulder at Taylor and smile. And Taylor, who'd sit at the table in her usual chair, feet dangling, loved watching her mom work, fascinated by all the things she knew how to do, how she moved through the kitchen with such ease, like she was practically floating on a cloud.
William was in a cheerful mood that night, and at the table, it didn't escape her notice that he drank water instead of beer. He wasn't a raging drunk, by any means, but it wasn't uncommon for him to down a six-pack in a single day. He'd developed a high tolerance for it now, and she was ecstatic he'd put down the bottle for a change.
The three of them chatted pleasantly for a while, the table having long since been cleared of the dishes. When she showed her father all the fresh vegetables from the garden she had brought him, he was delighted. She smiled to herself as she put them in the fridge, thinking that even the smallest things could sometimes make someone's day. After a while they all moved into the TV room where William took his usual seat in his recliner and Austin and Taylor sat on the couch. Austin held her hand in his lap while they watched TV, and William never said, but Taylor knew he appreciated their presence, even though they were simply sitting there, not talking. She knew he enjoyed their company, and, out of the corner of her eye, she occasionally caught him looking over at the two of them and smiling a little. It made her infinitely happy.
She didn't realize she had drifted off to sleep until she felt Austin gently patting her thigh to wake her. She had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, and she jolted awake from a nightmare about Dr. Bishop.
Austin's expression in the semi-darkness was one of concern, but she shook her head and waved him off, whispering that she was fine.
In reality, sudden knots had tangled in her stomach, and she felt nauseous with anxiety. Suddenly all she could think about was the paper that Jason had taken from Dr. Bishop's office, the one currently still nestled inside the pocket of her scrubs. She'd somehow managed to forget that it was still there, that she hadn't given it back to Jason.
What if Bishop realized it was missing? If it was as important as she was beginning to believe it was, then he was going to notice. And now she had it. The whole thing was a ticking time bomb, and she felt like she was just sitting around, waiting for the explosion to go off.
She brushed her hair from her face and tried not to look too visibly shaken. The room was dark save for the bluish glow of the TV, and William was fast asleep in his recliner, snoring softly. Taylor gently roused him by putting a hand on his shoulder. His lids blinked open to reveal a bleary-eyed look.
"We're heading out now, okay?" she said quietly.
"Oh."
She smiled sadly at him, noticing for the first time in a while just how old he was beginning to look. Bags and dark circles laid cemented beneath his once-bright blue eyes. His hair was thinning and so was his increasingly scrawny frame; he looked smaller and more fragile than ever. When she leaned over to kiss him on the forehead, he wrapped an arm around her, holding her close for a moment longer than usual.
"Goodnight," she whispered. "I love you."
Fifteen minutes later, Taylor was waiting in the car as Austin made a quick trip into the small convenience store outside of Essex Avenue. He would be leaving for a camping trip with some friends in the morning, and he needed to grab a few more supplies that they'd forgotten to get during their earlier grocery run.
It was muggy outside, and Austin had taken the keys with him without thinking, leaving Taylor unable to turn on the car and relieve herself with the air conditioning. She sighed and rested her head against the window, staring into the side-view mirror with glazed eyes and an impending headache forming at the base of her skull.
That was when she saw it.
A black SUV parked only two rows behind her, and in the flickering lamplights of the parking lot, she could just barely make out the two figures in the front seat. She couldn't see their faces, but the constant fear she kept tucked down inside her suddenly coiled and snapped, and she knew, knew that the two strangers were staring straight ahead, looking at her... watching her.
She had seen the same SUV parked outside of her father's house when she and Austin had first arrived that night for dinner. She didn't even know why she was recalling such a detail, but she did remember it; maybe because it was so large and bulky, and otherwise out of place on such a quiet, low-key back street.
It was too bizarre—the SUV showing up at this convenience store at the same time she was here—to be considered a coincidence.
Wasn't it?
It took only seconds for her hands to become clammy. She swallowed, slowly removing her head from the window to sit straight back in her seat. She felt paranoid all the sudden that the strangers might know that she had spotted them. She averted her eyes from the mirror and looked around the parking lot; it was empty save for one or two cars farther out.
Her mind was quick to remind her of the paper—that cipher. That couldn't possibly be what this was about, right?
Now you're just being stupid. You're not being followed. You're not. Stop being paranoid. Bishop probably doesn't even realize the paper's gone. It might be nothing more than bored scribbles.
She jumped when the door opened, and Austin was so preoccupied balancing a gallon of milk and his keys in one hand and a plastic bag in the other that he didn't notice anything was wrong as he slid into his seat.
"I got you that soup you said you wanted to try. It was on sale so I figured I'd get two." He passed the items off to the back seat and then started the car, pausing to look at her only when she hadn't replied. When he noticed how white her face was. He frowned and reached for her arm. "Hey, what's the matter?" His brows were knit together with concern. "You look pale."
Taylor swallowed, barely able to form words. "Wh—what?" She pretended to check her appearance in the side-view mirror, when really she was seeing if the two figures in the black SUV were still watching her.
The SUV, however, was gone.
Had I imagined it?
She swallowed down the racing flutter of heart, willing it to slow. You're going crazy. You only imagined it.
But if the truck really hadn't been there, then why had her stomach lurched like that? Why had she gotten so nervous? She hadn't felt that sick since...
She shook her head. She was not going to think back to her psychiatric sessions. She'd been working hard for months to erase them from her memory, and she was not about to undo her efforts.
Austin squeezed her arm, and she turned to see his concerned expression.
"I'm okay, I must have dozed off. You startled me is all." When Austin's frown deepened and he gave her a look to show how unconvinced he was, Taylor smiled reassuringly. "I'm just tired, baby." She feigned a yawn, even though now she was far too jittery to feel sleepy. "Let's go home."
"Okay." Austin withdrew his hand from her arm, still unconvinced, but knowing better than to push the matter when she clearly was making an effort not to talk about it. He reached for her hand instead once they'd exited the parking lot, pulling it into his lap and tracing his thumb back and forth over the pulse point of her wrist.
She cast a furtive glance into the side-view mirror once more, but the SUV was still nowhere to be seen.
She squeezed her eyes shut and lay her head back against the headrest, wondering if her paranoia had become so bad that it was causing her to hallucinate things that weren't really there.
A part of her wanted to tell Austin what was going on—she hated keeping him in the dark—but she also didn't know where to start. She knew the story would sound far-fetched and absurd, that he'd chalk it up to coincidence and tell her not to worry, and that whatever was going on with Remcon was just a big mix-up, a fault of the computer's.
And maybe all of those things weren't necessarily untrue—but she also knew, deep down, that something much bigger than she could possibly imagine was unfolding right before her, and she and Jason had to figure it out before things got much, much worse.