The Psyching: A Short Thriller (2 page)

“
Good.” He stands up. “Let’s go
see Mrs. Klein.”

8:10 p.m.:

I’m standing in the hallway when I hear
footsteps behind me.

“
Lick
,” someone hisses in my
ear.

I turn my head just in time to see Johnny
walking away.

8:30 p.m.:

I walk by Room 237.

The door is closed. I don’t hear anything
going on inside. Nothing suspicious. Nobody being murdered in
there.

I want more than anything to see what’s going
on in that room. This is going to drive me freaking crazy, isn’t
it?

8:40 p.m.:

“
So it turns out,” Jack says,
“they shut off the phone lines because several of our patients were
calling 911 with bomb threats.”

“
Why were they doing that?” I
ask.

“
Because they’re psychiatric
patients,” Jack says like I’m an idiot.

“
Well, when will the phones start
working again?”

“
Right after I kill you and
Danni,” he says.

Sigh.

9:15 p.m.:

Sally tells me that our youngest patient,
Mike, wants to talk to a doctor. She supposes that I will
do.

Mike is 19 years old. If you watch
enough movies and TV, you forget how young an actual 19 year old
really looks, since most teenagers are played by 30 year olds. He
looks maybe 12 years old. A real 12 year old would probably look
like a kindergartner to me. And a kindergartner would probably look
like a fetus.

Mike doesn’t seem particularly thrilled by my
arrival. He hasn’t shown much in the way of emotion since he came
here. He was brought in by his parents and is being evaluated for
his first schizophrenic break.

“
What’s going on?” I ask him, in
my “cool voice” reserved for younger patients.

Mike points to the earring going
through his left eyebrow. “I think I have an infection,
Doc.”

He calls me “Doc,” despite the fact that I’m
not a doctor, and am only five years older than he is. But at least
I don’t have earrings in my face and my hair isn’t dyed jet black
like his.

I examine the gold hoop jabbed through Mike’s
eyebrow, all the while making knowledgeable sounds. I can tell he’s
pretending not to seem worried. Our attending physicians seem to
think that Mike is having his first schizophrenic break. But we
medical students are all privately convinced that his only problem
is that he’s gay and can’t deal with it or tell his
parents.

Not that that isn’t a serious problem. But I
don’t think it’s a reason to be hospitalized on an inpatient
psychiatric unit. And I definitely don’t think it’s going to
respond to dopamine antagonists.

“
Let me go talk to Dr. Lawson
about this,” I tell Mike.

I go find Jack, and describe Mike’s inflamed
eyebrow to him. He doesn’t have much interest in seeing the eyebrow
in question. He just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, put some
bacitracin on it.”

Jack is really working hard tonight to prove
his point that he is more lazy than crazy.

10:45 p.m.:

I hear a scream.

I’m sitting at the nurses’ station, in the
very center of the circle that makes up the psychiatric unit, which
somehow seems like the safest place to be. I’m playing fruit ninja
on my phone. It makes me feel like I’m honing my fighting
skills.

At the sound of the scream, I go running. And
I actually go running in the direction of the scream, believe it or
not. I can’t help but notice that I am headed in the direction of
Room 237. I knew it! I knew there was something going on with that
room…

Danni is standing in the hallway, screaming
her head off. In front of her, there is a set of twins standing
there in matching hospital gowns. They both have brown hair clipped
behind their ears with barrettes, and are staring at Danni calmly
as she continues shrieking.

I put my hand on
Danni’s shoulder to calm her down, but I have to admit, the
twins
are
pretty
freaky. They just keep standing there, holding
hands.

“
For God sake, what’s going on
here?” Sally comes up behind us, huffing and puffing. “Is someone
dying over here?”

Danni points a shaky finger in the direction
of the two women.

Sally looks at them. “Anna, Jenny, go to bed.”
The two women plod off in separate directions. I noticed that
neither of them goes into Room 237, which is still closed. When the
women are gone, Sally looks back at us and shakes her head. “What
was all that screaming about?”

“
They looked
like ghosts or something,” I say, now feeling a little sheepish
about the whole thing. Okay, a
lot
sheepish.

“
They’re sisters,” Sally says.
“They both have schizophrenia.”

“
I know,” Danni says. “Anna is my
patient.”

I stare at her,
suppressing the sudden urge to shake her. “Then
why
were you
screaming?”

Danni shrugs. “Twins scare me. I think it’s a
psychic thing.”

Sometimes I think Danni is the one who should
be a patient here.

I’m about to remark something to that effect,
when Johnny walks past us and says in a loud voice:
“Lick.”

I wipe off the fleck of his saliva that landed
on my forehead.

11:15 p.m.:

Sally told me that a patient named Mr.
McGregor wanted to speak to me. We actually all call Mr. McGregor
“Spiderman,” because he’s schizophrenic and thinks he’s Spiderman.
It’s actually sort of funny in a disturbing sort of way. Especially
because he looks so ordinary. Although, in his defense, Peter
Parker looked pretty ordinary.

“
What’s wrong, Mr. McGregor?” I
ask him.

“
My webs aren’t working,”
Spiderman says in his flat monotone. He always speaks that way,
like a robot come to life. Apparently, it’s not uncommon in
schizophrenia.

Mr. McGregor thinks that webs shoot out of his
wrists, which would be completely accurate if he were actually
Spiderman. (He’s not Spiderman.)

“
I’m sorry to hear that,” I
say.

Spiderman holds his wrists out, and says, “Go
web.” He looks back up at me. “See? Nothing.”

I’m not sure what to do to fix Spiderman’s
defective imaginary web shooting mechanism. More Haldol? “Do you
think a Band-Aid would help?” I suggest.

Spiderman thinks for a minute. “It
might.”

God, I love it when patients ask for something
I can actually get for them.

I head over to the supply closet. I find a
Band-Aid, then I take an extra one, just in case he needs one for
each wrist. Then I open the door to leave, but it doesn’t
turn.

I stare at the doorknob for a second, baffled.
I grip the knob with all my strength, and try to wrench it
clockwise. It doesn’t budge. Not even a centimeter.

It’s locked.

I feel sick. Someone has locked me in here.
The door only locks from the outside. For some reason, somebody
wanted to trap me in here. I’m locked in the closet, locked in a
psychiatric ward.

Oh God.

I feel around in the pocket of my short white
coat and I’m incredibly relieved when my fingers close around my
phone. I pull it out of my pocket. I’ve got one bar of reception,
but hopefully that will be enough.

Of course, who should I call? I don’t want to
page Jack. After all, what if he’s the one who locked me in here
and he expects me to contact him first?

I decide to try Danni’s cell phone, but she
doesn’t pick up.

The only other person on the floor that I can
think of is Sally. Except I can’t call the floor because the phone
lines are still down. But I can call the operator and page Sally
overhead.

I reach the operator, and ask them if they can
page Sally. There’s an awkward moment because I have no idea what
her last name is. Who remembers nurses’ last names, for Christ’s
sake? But the operator acts like I’m worse than Hitler for not
knowing.

I hear the page boom out overhead, even from
within the supply closet. Finally, I hear Sally pick up. “This is
Sally on the psych unit,” she says.

“
Hi, Sally,” I say. “Um, this is
Wendy.”

“
Who
?”

See? She doesn’t
even know my
first
name. “You know? The medical student.”

“
Oh. Right.”

“
Listen,” I say. “I’m sort of
locked in the supply closet and I need you to get me
out.”

For a moment, I had been worried that maybe
Sally and Jack were in cahoots, and maybe she wouldn’t let me out
of the closet. But the amount of time she spends laughing after I
tell her my dilemma completely reassures me that she is not
planning anything nefarious.

“
Welcome back,” Sally says as she
opens the door to the supply closet, still chuckling.

“
Somebody locked me in here,” I
say, raising my chin, trying to maintain what little is left of my
dignity.

“
The handle sticks,” Sally
explains. “You have to jiggle it.”

I’m still not entirely convinced.

11:35 a.m.:

I spend about 10 minutes staring at the door
to Room 237, wondering what the hell is in there. I swear I can
hear music coming from inside. Weird, creepy music.

The ironic thing is that if Jack hadn’t told
me not to go into the room, I never would have considered going in
there in a million years. Stupid female curiosity. I really hate
being a stereotype, but here we are.

I am
not
going to open that
door.

Midnight:

I wander by the resident room, and happen to
notice that the computer is on, and there is a jumble of words and
paragraphs on the screen. Jack was recently called away and he must
have been working on his novel. I guess he forgot to close the
document.

I know he told me that he didn’t want anyone
to see it until it was finished, but I can’t help myself. I’m
curious. If I can’t know what’s in Room 237, I need to at least
read this novel.

I sit down in front of the computer and start
reading.

12:30 a.m.:

“
So what do you think?”

I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of
Jack’s voice. I tear my eyes away from the horror that was on the
computer screen, and back away from the monitor. “What?” I say
innocently.

Jack raises his eyebrows at me. “My novel. You
were reading it, weren’t you?”

“
No,” I say
quickly. I jump out of the chair, preparing to bolt from the room.
My legs feel like they’re spring-loaded. “I mean, I just glanced at
it. That’s all. I
swear
.”

Jack smiles crookedly. “It’s almost done, you
know.”

“
You don’t say,” I
mumble.

“
I just need a title,” he says. He
takes a step towards me. “Any thoughts?”

I back away from him. “Not really. I’m not a
creative type.” I glance down at my silent pager. “I actually have
to go. I was… you know, paged.”

Jack raises his eyebrows at me, but thank God,
he lets me out of the room.

12:45 a.m.:

As I back out of the resident room, I hear a
voice coming from the right: “Lick.”

It’s Johnny, whose lips are a horrifying six
inches from my ear, close enough that I can actually feel his hot,
malodorous breath. I nearly jump out of my skin, but manage to keep
from screaming through the grace of God. I give Johnny a dirty
look, then quickly hurry towards the nurses station.

Danni is sitting
there, messing with her phone. I hope she isn’t texting with Dr.
Sadler. More importantly, I hope she isn’t
sexting
with Dr.
Sadler.

“
Hey, Wendy,” she says. She
flashes me a sleepy smile.

“
Hey,” I say, sliding into the
seat next to her. “I just saw the novel that Jack has been
writing…”

Danni stares at me. “And?”

I heave a sigh.
I’m not sure I can trust her, but I can’t keep this to myself any
longer. “Danni, it’s
awful
. It’s the worst written piece
of drivel I’ve ever seen. It’s about this detective who doesn’t
play by the rules, but he always gets the job done. It’s so
painfully clichéd.” I wince at the memory. “There’s even a
detective who’s one day away from retirement and then gets
murdered.”