The Warden Page 3

  “You . . . you’re clever.” He wagged a finger at her, that strange light still filling his eyes. “Exactly as I suspected—you’re the right choice for this new program.”

  “What new program?” Jocelyn asked, perhaps too sharply. “What would I be doing?”

  “That’s complicated, Nurse Ash. As I said, it’s experimental, and it’s to do with exactly what you just expressed so eloquently—that some people cannot be helped. I am of the same mind, but I’d take it a step further. Some patients are beyond help, but they are not beyond use.”

  She stilled. Use? That felt like an odd choice of words.

  “How do you mean?” she asked, shifting.

  The warden wiped off his spectacles on his coat again and tucked them into his pocket. Then he stood, placing his knuckles on the desk and looming over it, leaning toward her. His shadow fell across the skull statue, spilling over files and papers and then onto her lap.

  “What did you see in the basement, Nurse Ash?” he asked. “Or should I say, what do you think you saw?”

  Of all the scenarios Jocelyn had considered the night before and that morning, ending up back in the basement with Warden Crawford was not one. Fired? Sure. Lectured? Most definitely. This was, theoretically, the best outcome. So why did her blood feel icy and sluggish in her veins? The trip down felt shorter this time, probably because Warden Crawford obviously knew the way, and the stairwell was well lit in the daytime.

  Was she completely mad? It looked so harmless, so normal, like this. Maybe the shadows and her own anxieties had altered her perspective. This was totally possible—she knew enough about the field of psychology to understand that context and one’s own fears could change something harmless into a threat.

  She followed her superior closely, as if afraid she might stumble into a wrong turn and never find her way out again. Just as she remembered, the bottom level was uncomfortably cold, the tall, foreboding archway ushering them toward the corridor with its many doors. The screams were absent this time. No doors rattled. In fact, a few orderlies wandered the corridor, clipboards in hand, trays laden with small cups of water and pills. They smiled distractedly at her as they passed.

  “I didn’t mean to snoop,” Jocelyn suddenly said. She had apologized already in his office after the accusation that she had been to the basement. The correct accusation. The warden had waved off her apology then, just like he shrugged her off now.

  “Curiosity is natural,” he replied casually. “But your response is perhaps not.”

  “You don’t know that.” She was pushing too far again. That would get her into trouble, she knew, if she wasn’t careful.

  “You showed up to work this morning,” the warden pointed out. “As far as I know, you said nothing to anyone, despite witnessing something rather unorthodox.”

  “I didn’t understand why patients were put down here—I still don’t—and frankly I was going to ask you about it today. In your office.”

  “Well, this should suffice for an explanation, then, mm?”

  Jocelyn watched the doors going by, shocked by how many there really were. The daylight hours did nothing to banish the sad, abandoned ugliness of this lowest level. The staff could paint the walls yellow and put teddy bears in every corner and it would still feel like a hidden, shameful hell. The damp remained oppressive during the day, and while the floor was swept, it didn’t at all measure up to the rigorous hygiene standards of other hospitals.

  And the hospital smell was gone. She hadn’t noticed it until now, but all at once it became offensively apparent. There was a distinctly unwashed-human-being smell that wafted in intervals from the closed doors, like the rooms were ovens, heating up bodies and churning out their humid sweat stench.

  “Basements. Experiments. I’m not sure I like this,” Jocelyn said. She stuck her hands into the pockets of the clean, tailored coat buttoned tightly around her. “Are these the most troublesome patients?”

  “They are, yes.” The warden paused outside a door toward the end of the corridor. He rocked up onto his toes and pulled open a slot in the door, peering inside before producing a giant set of keys from his pocket. “They have resisted known treatments. I never would have said this when I was just a young, green orderly, but some of them seem to prefer their madness.”

  “That’s not possible,” Jocelyn said, frowning. “It’s a prison they don’t even know they’re in, how could they prefer it?”

  “Perhaps it’s an intuition that comes with age and experience,” he replied, unlocking the door. “You’ll see.”

  I doubt that.

  But she kept her mouth shut, aware that she was sliding closer to the answers she wanted out of him. Why hide these people away? Were the orderlies down here part of his strange new project? And just what did he expect from her. . . .

  She could still leave, she reminded herself. Jocelyn still hadn’t technically agreed to be part of his new program. As she stepped through the open door and into the room beyond, she noticed Warden Crawford watching her intently, scrutinizing her for the tiniest reaction.

  The room, small but tall, padded floor to ceiling, resonated with cold. A single window let in a pale shaft of sunlight from high, high above, with bars obscuring the view, just like in her room. Jocelyn took a single step into the room, trying to orient herself. That window probably looked out the same way hers did. She slept the night before floors and floors up, possibly situated on top of this very cell. And taking one look at the patient inside, a baby-bird fragile girl in a threadbare nightgown, Jocelyn knew she was the one who had roused her with screams.

  “Do . . . do you have her chart?” Jocelyn asked. She spoke softly, afraid to startle the girl.

  “You can review it later.”

  “I’d like to review it now,” Jocelyn said, turning and standing to face him. “I shouldn’t even be here with her, not without knowing her history.”

  “I’m giving you special permission.” She heard the irritation, the impatience, in his voice.

  The girl, previously facing away from them, finally noticed their presence. She turned, slowly, bare feet slapping on the floor as she shuffled around, arms at her sides, hair darkened with grease and grime hanging lank down her back.

  “These conditions . . .” Jocelyn began, stuffing down an urge to spin and throttle the man behind her. How could he let a human being live like this? It wasn’t right. Her stomach turned, her whole body rebelling at the sight of the poor, neglected girl.

  “You want to help her,” Warden Crawford observed.

  “Yes. Yes, of course I do. Don’t you?” She pinned him with a helpless look. The girl now stood motionless, pale and unnatural as porcelain.

  “And how would you help her, Nurse Ash?”

  He had sidestepped the question, but Jocelyn had more important things on her mind. “Bathe her, for one. Dress her in warmer clothing. House her in a place fit for humans. My God, I wouldn’t keep a rabid dog in here.”

  He had the grace to flinch at that assessment of his facility.

  But then he was taking the spectacles out of his pocket and placing them serenely back on his nose. He didn’t seem to notice the girl, and when his eyes chanced in her direction he only looked through her.

  “Then help her.”

  Jocelyn knew it couldn’t be as simple as all that, but she never backed down from a challenge. This was a thrown gauntlet, and she would pick it up, if only to prove that it was never right to give up on a person, especially one so young.

  Her own foolish words came back to haunt her.

  Some people cannot be cured. Not really. And it’s a misuse of hospital resources to insist otherwise.

  This was different. This was a child. Jocelyn drummed up her courage and turned to face the young girl, but she dropped the stern expression on her face, approaching with extreme caution. As a child she had always thought nurses looked so kindly and innocent, like guardian angels in their clean white uniforms. Angels were not always s
o good, Jocelyn knew that. She had read the Bible. But she was not an avenging angel today—no, this poor little bird needed to be cupped in warm hands and brought back to a nest. She was a tumbled sparrow, something to be treated gently and with ultimate care.

  Jocelyn crouched, holding out her hand to the fragile child.

  “Here now, little birdy, little sparrow. Why don’t you come here to me? You look awfully cold. Wouldn’t a warm bath be nice?”

  The girl hesitated, eyes shifting from the floor to Jocelyn’s face and back again. Her eyes were black marbles, colorless pits.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” Jocelyn asked, letting her hand fall to her side.

  Warden Crawford didn’t wait for her to answer. “Lucy. Her name is Lucy.”

  Lucy’s dark eyes found focus, gliding from Jocelyn to the man behind her. Speaking her name was like a curse, a spell. Suddenly she lunged forward, blindly, fingers unexpectedly strong and curved into talons. She tore at whatever was in her path, and that happened to be Jocelyn. Dodging, flailing, Jocelyn just managed to avoid one of those hooked hands coming for her eye and grabbed the girl around the waist, twisting and holding her, doing what she could to pin her arms.

  She heard Warden Crawford take one resolute step backward.

  If this was the first test, Jocelyn would not give up. She tried again, coaxing the girl’s arms down to her sides and holding them fast. This did little to deter Lucy in her rage. She wriggled and bucked, hurling herself back and forth until the force of it was too much for Jocelyn.

  She fled, releasing the girl and retreating to the door. But Lucy didn’t follow. Instead, she tore around the room, spinning, pulling at her own hair, knocking herself against the walls until she was breathless and panting.

  Jocelyn paused on the threshold of the room, feeling helpless. Smash. Smash. Smash. With every brutal toss of her body against the wall the girl was saying something, whispering it, hissing it out in a slice of a whisper.

  It took Jocelyn a moment to catch the word, hearing it cleanly just as the warden tugged her out by the shoulder and closed the door.

  “Do you still want to help her?”

  It was a ridiculous question. Jocelyn ground her teeth together as she followed Warden Crawford back through the basement and toward the staircase leading up.

  “Yes. Naturally.”

  “You saw how she reacted to the mere suggestion of a bath,” he replied, taking another mint from his tin and eating it before starting up the stairs. He walked with his hands tucked behind his back. It struck her as indecently casual, given what they had just witnessed.

  But that was a doctor’s life, she reminded herself. If every wound or tantrum or spot of blood knocked them off their post, nothing would ever get done.

  “I think she reacted to you, or to her name,” Jocelyn replied. “I’m sorry if it’s offensive to say so.”

  Warden Crawford shrugged. “Not at all. Lucy is a strange case. Her parents swear up and down that she has no history of abuse. That one day she simply stopped speaking. They took her to specialists—speech therapists, hypnotists, you name it, they tried it. Then the outbursts began. Silent, furious storms not unlike what you just observed.”

  “That was anything but silent,” Jocelyn murmured, hugging herself.

  “The screaming didn’t begin until she came here. Her muteness persists between episodes, then something causes the hysterical fits. Men, usually. She is mostly docile if only nurses see to her. Bathing and clothing her remain . . . challenging.”

  Jocelyn paused on the landing, feeling the dread atmosphere of the basement slip off her like chilled silk. “Then why did you go into that room? You deliberately wanted to frighten her?”

  He stared back at her evenly, one eyebrow cocked in amusement or irritation. “Perhaps. Perhaps I wanted you to see just what you’re up against.”

  “And this is all part of your . . . your program?”

  “Lucy and the others in basement confinement are difficult cases. Traditional methods have proven ineffective, counterproductive, even. Medicine must march forward, Nurse Ash. Surely you understand that.” He turned, assuming she would follow. He continued, “We could sedate Lucy, true. She could live out a long, wasted life in a stupor, or we could do what others will not.”

  A hard shiver raced down Jocelyn’s spine. “You want to experiment on her.”

  “You make it sound so dreadfully Frankensteinian,” he said with a chuckle. They had reached the lobby level and he held the door for her. Jocelyn flinched, afraid even to get too near to him. “Most leaps forward happen by pure accident. What I’m suggesting is far more methodical. Hypnotism, surgery, drug therapy . . . These techniques are often used independently of one another, but I foresee a future in which we can control and guide these patients back to productive living through an aggressive combination of all three.”

  He led her swiftly back to his office, and again she ducked past him into the room, curious and listening despite herself. “Why hasn’t this been done before?”

  “Cowardice?” Warden Crawford suggested, sauntering behind his desk and dropping down into his chair. “Lack of vision? Fear of failure? Take your pick, I suppose. We stand on the cusp, Nurse Ash, and to be the vanguard we must be bold.”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Would it help if I asked Nurse Fullerton to participate, too?” he asked gently. “She seems capable enough. Perhaps between the two of you, you can keep me in check. Two heads are better than one, and three is certainly better still.”

  His smile was wide, movie-star white. For a moment he almost looked boyish. His face defied the look of a true age, as if he was hovering always between adolescence and adulthood. Timeless, her mother would say. Madge would probably say it, too.

  Something gnawed at the edge of her subconscious. Jocelyn cleared her throat softly and asked, “What was she saying? Lucy, I mean. That word she kept saying . . . What does it mean?”

  His smile collapsed in on itself. “Nonsense, I imagine. We have patients here who have made up entire languages to confound.”

  It sounded like Spanish. It didn’t sound made up at all.

  The thin remnants of his smile cracked with impatience at the edges. Jocelyn weighed her options quickly—there was always leaving, of course, but she worried about leaving Madge alone. And now she worried about Lucy. The girl was human like anyone else and she deserved a better life than she was getting at Brookline. If Jocelyn could improve it, she would, and if the warden insisted on trying to cure Lucy with newfangled ideas, Jocelyn would be there to make sure he didn’t do more harm than good.

  First, do no harm. And second, make sure nobody else does harm either.

  “All right,” she said quickly. “I’ll do it.” She swallowed around a golf ball–sized lump of anxiety in her throat. “When do we begin?”

  “Tomorrow, I think,” Warden Crawford said cheerfully. He winked. “After you tell Nurse Fullerton the good news.”

  The path is set down. I have already instructed the cooks and provided them with the necessary embellishments. I know the treatment works on the vulnerable, it will be exciting to see if it similarly affects the whole of mind. Though really, it is debatable how whole that ninny’s mind truly is. No matter. She will be the perfect demonstration—Lucy is tragic, yes, but to witness a fall from sound to unsound? To be powerless to stop such degradation? It will bring the girl around and it will sharpen her into a fine tool for my use.

  —Excerpt from Warden Crawford’s journals—April

  “This isn’t the Serengeti, Madge. Stop hunting.”

  Madge batted her eyelashes and shrugged, pouting about as innocently as a kid with her hand still fully submerged in the cookie jar.

  “I have no idea to what you could be referring,” she said, bumping her hip against Jocelyn’s as they organized charts in the nurses’ station. It was monotonous work, but crucial to keep the schedules running efficiently.

  “F
irst Tanner and now . . .” Jocelyn groped for the young orderly’s name, blushing. She had a quick mind, but not the best memory for names and faces. He was handsome, that much was obvious, and he had just sidled away from the station while giving Madge a heated, hooded-eyed smolder.

  “Oh, David,” Madge purred. “He’s just a friend, I swear.”

  Jocelyn paused, cocking her head to the side. Again, her subconscious flared, whispering the word that had followed her from the basement to her rounds to her bed that night. She had started chanting it to herself silently to keep from forgetting.

  “Look, I know this is a long shot, but are you still in touch with that guy you used to go with back home? He was Spanish or something, right?” she asked.

  “Puerto Rican,” Madge corrected, a little sharply.

  “Do you two still talk?”

  “Lord, no,” Madge said with a giggle. “Where’d that come from? I haven’t thought of Armando in months.”

  Jocelyn shrugged, picking at her fingernails. “I just thought maybe you could ask him something for me. There’s this word in Spanish I’ve been trying to figure out. At least I think it’s Spanish. . . .”

  “Well, geez, that’s no trouble. I learned quite a bit just from getting to know the guy,” Madge replied with a grin. She tapped a few folders on the countertop, squaring them off. “It’s such a good language for seduction.”

  Jocelyn finished her portion of the alphabet, her eyes scanning involuntarily for Lucy’s name. She didn’t see anything; maybe the girl’s information was in Madge’s half of the stack.

  “Nothing like that. I just heard a word yesterday that I couldn’t place. It sounded like carnee . . . carnay-zero? Carnaysarah . . . God, I’m hopeless at this.”

  “Yuck, I hope that wasn’t someone talking about your bedside manner,” Madge teased. She tapped her hip against Jocelyn’s again. “Carnicero. It means butcher. You didn’t stick their vein wrong with a needle, did you?”

  Jocelyn forgot to answer. Butcher. Butcher. And Lucy had started screaming it immediately after Warden Crawford spoke her name. . . . Jocelyn felt suddenly queasy. Madge had already been called into his office that morning and agreed to help participate in this “program” of his without question. What the hell had Jocelyn gotten them into? It was too late to leave now, she knew, because if she did she would forever worry about what had happened to Lucy. If she had gotten better, or if the warden had kept her down in that dank cell until the cold and the darkness consumed her.