Stop the attacks altogether.
The work ricocheted hollowly throughout Dr. Naboru's head as he turned from the window. Somehow, despite what he had already seen, he had still been an optimist when he had spoken those words. How could he have ever been fool enough to think that whatever darkness dwelt inside that girl could ever be tamed? In the three years she had been under his "care" he had learned to control her anger just enough to restrain her from destroying the entire hospital. That was all.
By the end of the first year he had realized she was not likely to ever come to terms with the deaths of those she loved. Some days she mourned them, wept for them and whispered apologies they could not hear, and some days she still asked for them.
Very rarely did she speak those most dangerous of words, "small lady." He never asked and the rest of the staff was forbidden from mentioning it. She was at her most vulnerable, and unpredictable, when she thought of her small lady. There was a procedure for dealing with those days.
There was a procedure for everything.
By the end of the first year the hospital had built a special room for her. A military contractor from America had been quietly hired and paid to stay silent. The padding remained the same, something to keep her safe from herself, but the walls were twice as thick as the original safety rooms. One door had become three, so that if she managed to tear through the first they might have time enough to evacuate the patients from her path. They had never reached that point.
Yet.
Speakers allowed music to be piped in. The art therapist, who had also taken over music in the last year, chose each month's selection. So far it had helped to calm the anger and guilt enough that they usually only needed to replace a small amount of the padding. There were no microphones and no cameras inside the cell. No one could bear to hear or see what happened in there. Between sundown and sunrise no one was permitted past the first door. Looking through the window, and especially making eye contact with the patient, was strictly forbidden.
Dr. Naboru headed out into the hallway and began to make his way toward the secure ward. There was nearly an hour until sundown. Over time they had learned the best time to move her to the secure room. When they tried to move her into the cell at the beginning of the day, with the belief that this might minimize any danger she might pose to others, she had become increasingly hostile as they waited for nightfall. The next morning they had found three walls of the padding completely destroyed, and burn marks across the floor and ceiling. As this was their first time using this room the engineer had still been on hand. His face was ashen as he stared at interior of the reinforced door, the one he had sworn could hold an elephant. The blows had been strong enough to seriously strain the massive locks on the door.
Moving her too late in the day had ended even worse. The injuries of two nurses, one orderly, and another doctor had taken months to properly heal. They had been offered an early retirement with a very handsome pension for their "loyalty". Strangely, only the nurses and doctor took the offer. The orderly had returned to work when she could.
The memory came back clearly to Dr. Naboru as he spotted the young woman. Only a slight scar across her left cheek remained. The orbital socket had healed nicely from the fracture, and he had never seen even a hint of a limp. She stood at the door to the secure ward, waiting for him. Despite the injuries and such little hope for the girl's future, she insisted on accompanying the girl to her secure cell every month. The doctor worried that the orderly was becoming too attached to the patient, even granting her the nickname Kitten.
Beside the orderly was the art therapist, leaning in to listen to her speak. Both were young, far younger than anyone else on the staff. He wondered again that they were hired, with the art therapist barely older than the girls in her charge. But something in her eyes, aquamarine and deep as the ocean, hinted at hidden wisdom, and her talents could not be denied. She looked at him as he approached and offered him a pretty smile. He nodded back distractedly and looked to her companion.
"Are you ready, Miss Ten'ou?"
"Yes, doctor." The orderly exchanged a glance with Miss Kaiou, who briefly squeezed her arm, and then followed him through the secure door and into the ward.
It was remarkably quiet as they walked down the corridor. With dangerously disturbed patients a certain amount of noise, of shouting and banging, was to be expected. Instead, the silence was broken only by the soft sounds of their footsteps. When Dr. Naboru glanced through a few windows he could see the young women sitting still. Some were trying to read, some were trying to draw, and some had abandoned pretense and merely perched at the edge of their beds, tense and waiting. It was always quiet just before a full moon.
As they reached her door the doctor paused to listen. Silence there as well. Dr. Naboru looked to the nurse and orderly who waited there. Both had the same look of strained listening as the patients.
"I haven't heard a word, doctor," the nurse informed him softly. "Not even crying or things being thrown."
This was not as reassuring as it might seem. He had found her silences could be a forewarning to more madness than any screaming rage.
It was time, though, and he could not muse on that for long. He typed in the code on the keypad beside the door. There was a beep, and a click, and the door swung open.
