“He’s no longer here,” is all she offers and goes back to typing.
I look at Nicholas’ room, then at Melinda, then back at the room. “But I just saw him yesterday.”
“And now you don’t.”
“Yes, I realize that. I was hoping you could tell me why.”
Typing faster now. “He’s been transferred out.”
“Where was he transferred? And why?”
“Smithwell Institute.”
I shake my head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“In Billings, Montana.”
“Why would he be transferred to a facility in Montana?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why wasn’t I informed of this?”
“You’re not his doctor.”
“I realize that, but I’m just wondering if—”
“You’ll need to take that up with the actual doctor.”
Getting information from this woman is like trying to swim through a sea of cable-knit sweaters. She’s being disrespectful—I’m not sure why, but I’ve had enough.
“Let me ask you another question, Nurse Jeffries,” I say. “Were you trained to treat actual doctors with contempt, or was that a self-taught skill?”
I have Melinda’s full attention, but her once-apathetic eyes now look as though they’re about to spin out of their sockets.
“Don’t you have somewhere else you need to be right now?” she barks.
I give no response—I’m about to blow a gasket.
She’s already returned to her typing. My choice is to either make a scene or report her, but all Jeremy’s likely to do is raise a brow and say, “You’d go crazy, too, if you had to sit down there all day.” Instead, I zoom from the nurses’ station and burn off my frustration with a fast walk through Alpha Twelve.
“Pssst! Hey, Christopher!” a whispery voice says.
I turn around. Stanley Winters looks eagerly at me through his window.
“Bitch Face at the counter ain’t gonna help you.” He throws a surreptitious glance up and down the hallway, then with a voice to match says, “You want answers? I got ’em.”
I step toward him.
He flashes a stained-in-yellow, snaggletooth smile. “Cost you a pack of smokes.”
“Stanley, you know the rules,” I say with a shudder in my voice that I’m unable to curb. “That’s not how things work around here.”
“Nothing works around here!”
I shake my head.
“We have to get out of this place!” he loudly states. “It’s broken!”
I step back from Stanley, and he lets out a sharp yowl, so loud, so menacing, that it carries through the entire floor.
“THAT SLEEP OF DEATH, CHRISTOPHER!” He explodes into maniacal laughter. “IT’S THAT SLEEP OF DEATH!”
The other patients parrot Stanley’s message, shrieking, howling, and banging so hard on their doors that the reverberations beat against my chest.
I bolt toward the exit and leave Alpha Twelve, nerves buzzing, Stanley’s remark whipsawing through my head.
30
The patients are speaking to me.
That sleep of death, Christopher.
A message now poking at my psyche like a puppy’s needle teeth. Once was obscure enough to be the ranting from a mind gone sour, but coming from an entire floor?
And now Nicholas has mysteriously vanished.
What do the patients want me to know? The only way to get some peace of mind is to stay rational and seek information. So in my office, still trying to warm my shivers, I take a wild stab in the dark—or rather, at the Internet—and to my surprise, I score a direct hit.
Shakespeare?
Okay, so we have some lovers of classic literature among the men of Alpha. The phrase is part of the opening soliloquy in Hamlet’s nunnery scene.
To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to dream; Aye, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.
A whole lot of talk about death there, but whose? I’m a bit rusty on my Shakespearean studies, so I examine the words individually, hoping they’ll reveal some kind of hidden meaning.
Sleep.
Death.
Dreams.
I was dead asleep, Christopher . . . Nicholas has bad dreams all the time.
Now Donny Ray’s comment comes back, and although the connection might be somewhat loose and far-reaching, I have difficulty ignoring it.
From the relative safety of my desk, I revisit Alpha Twelve. Lots of disturbing activity happening there, which I’ve yet to understand, let alone figure out. But one thing seems more than evident. An aggressive and sinister pestilence is snaking its way through Loveland’s basement floor.
Something that feels disturbingly prophetic.
“The patients are trying to communicate with me,” I tell Adam as we move through the cafeteria line.
He stops sliding his tray. “Come again?”
“They’re exhibiting some sort of peculiar mass reaction. It’s like they’re trying to give me a message.”
Adam moves on but doesn’t respond. When we get to the cashier, he turns back to me and says, “A message . . .”
“Yeah, ‘that sleep of death’ thing I mentioned. I’ve heard two different patients say it, first Nicholas, and just a little while ago, Stanley. Then right after, the others started in.”
“The patients are constantly saying crazy things. That’s why they’re here.”
“All of them? Repeating the same phrase?”
“And they’re constantly repeating each other.”
“Okay, but now Nicholas has disappeared.”
I reach for my wallet, but Adam moves faster. After paying the cashier, he says, “Disappeared, like, how?”
I tell him on our way to a table.
“I’m not sure I’d exactly call that a disappearance,” Adam says as we take our seats. “I mean, patients get transferred out of here all the time.”
“To Billings, Montana?”
“Why not? They could have a specialist who’s better suited to treat him.”
“It’s a place I’ve never heard of. Smithwell Institute. And besides, it seems like they rushed him out of here pretty fast.”