CHAPTER ONE
I blinked.
A relief, right? If I didn't blink my eyes would dry out. Their corneal surface would become irritated. Debris would get inside them. The pain would be terrible, unbearable. The desire to blink would be horrendous. It would eat away at me until I gave in, which wouldn't be long. But if my eyes were forced open, eventually they would dry out completely. Wouldn't they?
Could you imagine closing your eyelids against crusted sandpaper? Your skin snagging on the jagged craters of what used to be your vision after days, months, years of exposure to the outside world? The eyeball was not meant for the outside world. It was meant to be tucked away safely inside our bodies, taking quick peeks into reality before hiding away, lubricating itself in layers of protection. The pigments of the iris, a myriad of colors protected from the things that wish to destroy it.
The light.
The eye dwells in darkness. It finds its solace in just enough light, not too much. But it finds its home in the darkness where it's safe. And isn't that the opposite of where most people find their safety?
Safety is light. Security is sight.
The very thing that allows the human form to see the light, desires exactly the opposite. The eye finds its sanctuary in the shadows of our insides.
Personified, the eye is happiest in sleep, locked away in its own private dungeon. When the eye grows weary, it's hard for the person to focus, no matter how much the brain may want to. The eyes demand relief regardless of anything else. They demand their reprieve, their dues. They must be paid.
But I was no optometrist or eye expert.
I was a psychiatrist, employed at the Silent River Hospital, an all-male, maximum-security psychiatric hospital that houses mentally ill violent criminals, unwanted by the state.
"Adeline?"
I blinked again, the surface of my eyes, smooth as glass and glanced at Dr. Ranier. "I'm sorry?"
"Are you okay?" His forehead furrowed.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, I've been talking to you and you've been staring off into space for longer than normal." I watched as he slipped a hand into the pocket of his white lab coat. It was a large hand. A hand that had touched me intimately before.
I let a bland smile cover my face. "I'm fine, Dr. Ranier."
"I don't know why you don't call me Brian. You know, it's okay to be familiar with your coworkers." He gave me an easy, charming smile. He had a small scar above his eyebrow. From the moment I met him, I'd itched to touch it. To learn the grooves of it, to understand it with my hands.
"I know that. Dr. Ranier."
He shook his head, pulled the hand out of his pocket and ran it over his dark hair. It was graying near the temples, successfully giving him that George Clooney sex appeal, and yet it had been the urge to touch that tiny scar that had lured me into bed with him. He looked disappointed. "I was just asking how you felt about the move?"
"The move?" I walked several steps and leaned against the nurses' station on my left.
"Yes, downstairs, to Ward Z".
"Ah, sure. It's okay. It's a promotion so I can't complain much, can I?" I tucked a piece of my blond hair behind my ear.
He nodded, the look on his face flickering somewhere between concern and smugness. "No one lasts down there. Not for long. You were there when they drug out Dr. Smith."
"I was." I wouldn't forget it either. Standing in the hall when the middle-aged doctor with twenty years experience was wheeled out of the downstairs facility, bleeding cuts covering his face. Self-inflicted. He muttered the words "chicken or fish? Chicken or….FISH? CHICKEN OR FISH? Chicken. Chicken. CH-ick-ennnnn. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish."
"It was just a week after I started."
"He worked down there for three years. The longest anyone has lasted since Silent River opened in the 1950s." He stepped closer. "There have been four different psychiatrists assigned to that floor since they wheeled him out. Four. In just six months. They all left, sprinting out of here. Never looking back. Leaving their life work behind for good. I heard Dr. Brightman works at a gas station now and Dr. Hoover is homeless somewhere."
I chuckled. I honestly couldn't help it. "I know the history of the heads of psychiatry down there. Did you also know that twelve of the psychiatric doctors who ran Ward Z committed suicide?"
"That job isn't some sort of joke." Dr. Ranier narrowed his eyes at me. They were brown eyes, flat in color. Lifeless, yet alive.
"You're right about that Dr. Ranier. Which is why they didn't offer you the job." A smug smile covered my face. He'd been at Silent River for two years, which put him above my six months on the job, fresh out of medical school.
"Oh, they did." It was his turn to wear a smug smile. "They offered it to me and every other psychiatrist in this place. Everyone turned the job down. You were the board's last chance to hire someone on staff before trying to look outside for new blood. We all knew better than to take that job – clearly." I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off. "Who do you think they have down there? Have they told you yet? Some say Saddam Hussein is down there, Osama Bin Laden, and Jeffrey Dahmer – that death was too good for them so they are here, rotting down there"—he leaned in even closer, so close I could smell his aftershave—"just waiting for your guidance and care." He paused, eyeing my face. "How will you care for them, Adeline?" He ran a hand down my arm, my white coat feeling paper thin.
"The same way I care for all my patients." I stepped back. "Professionally." I smiled. "Now I have my last day of group on this floor, and I need to get to it." I picked up the chart off the nurses' station.
"You won't last a week down there, Adeline," he called after me, but I didn't look back.
Dr. Ranier wasn't the first man in my life or career who tried to scare me into submission. One didn't become a psychiatrist at a place like this without some sort of struggle to reach the top. The Silent River facility was the highest security psychiatric hospital in the United States. Its location was hidden from the general population, from its patients, and even from the staff. The most violent and psychologically damaged criminals from all across the world were brought here to serve out their life sentences. This was not some sort of in between, some sort of rehabilitation center where people came to get better. The people who came here were beyond help—at least that's what the national government believed.
It's what the thousand some-odd employees of the facility believed. They worked and lived here for the pay. Some five times more than we would all receive in our respective positions in the real world. Everyone got in their ten years and moved on, retired and lived the rest of their lives pretending this portion of their life never existed.
It paid a ridiculous amount of money. More money in one year than I had hoped to make in my career. That's what drove doctors down to the belly of the beast, if they could last a year, they would be set for life, but as Dr. Ranier pointed out, rarely did anyone last that long. If they did, they stayed too long, becoming a patient themselves. Dr. Smith lived on the second floor now, still muttering about chicken or fish, day and night six months later.
No one here wanted to help these people – that became shockingly clear within hours of my first day - especially those who took the job in Ward Z.
But I was different. I was Dr. Adeline Violet. I'd graduated from Johns Hopkins University with honors and my life's work was to help people. I hadn't spent ten years in medical school to do anything less. I was going to Ward Z and I was going to help whoever waited for me – if it was the last thing I ever did.