Strangers of the Night. Megan Hart

       Chapter 3

      There were twenty patients on the fourth floor of Wyrmwood, ten in each wing. Samantha had never been told she had to take care of them in any certain order, but she almost always started at the far end of A wing and worked her way down toward the end of B wing. Dispensing meds. Taking vitals. Her role as a nurse was very limited, which was a good thing, since she’d never had any kind of actual medical training. Her degrees had been fabricated the same as the rest of her history. Still, none of her required tasks were difficult, and she’d been trained to call on other staff if anything did get out of control. It made her wonder, more than once, what the Wyrmwood powers above truly intended her function, and that of the other nurses, to be.

      Glorified babysitters, she thought as she loaded the tray with necessary pills and vials of liquids for each room and pocketed her stethoscope and thermometer. Or more likely, part of the experiment, whatever it was. The cameras everywhere, the security. The out-of-date uniforms and strict rules that controlled after-hours behavior. The deathly quiet working atmosphere, no cell phones allowed. No outside reading material. It all seemed designed to drive the staff to madness right along with the patients, that was for sure.

      She paused outside A1 to look through the porthole. The patient inside, sixty-year-old Helena, liked to draw elaborate spirals but had been denied the use of a pen or pencil since she’d stabbed an orderly with the point. She’d been allowed soft chalk, though, and routinely covered the walls and floor of her room with intricate designs every day, only to wipe them all away and start over when she’d finished. She never gave Samantha any trouble and was amenable to halting her work long enough to take the drug cocktail she’d been prescribed. She didn’t make eye contact with Samantha. She answered when spoken to, but nothing beyond that.

      “Do you need anything?” Samantha asked the standard question that was rarely answered by any of the fourth floor’s patients.

      Helena shook her head, already reaching for the thick block of blue chalk. She turned from Samantha without another word. Outside, Samantha took one last peek into the porthole, but Helena was already back to her drawing.

      In a normal job, there’d be patient histories. Records she’d have been able to pull to see why the patient had been put here in the first place. She supposed it didn’t matter much. They paid her well enough not to ask those sorts of questions; more important, they paid her enough not to worry about it. Since none of the patients were being blatantly abused and all of them seemed content enough in their captivity, Samantha did her best not to care.

      Slowly, she worked her way down the A wing. Whatever fight had been inside these patients in their lives had gone dead a long time ago, Samantha thought as she double-checked the next wing’s meds and pushed the cart toward B10. She very carefully didn’t think about the man in B1. Not until she got to B5, at least, and then, then...

      She smelled lavender.

      Closing her eyes as she pretended to fuss with the cart and the meds, Samantha couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Jed knew it was her favorite smell. She’d mentioned it once, early on. She’d never told him that she noticed how the scent always wafted around her when she got close to his room. Saying it aloud would mean the ones who watched them would be able to hear. It would be proof that Jed was still capable of manipulating his environment. Proof of a connection between them that she didn’t dare let anyone know about.

      She drew in another slow breath, though, delighting in the scent. As she stood, the meds for B5 in one hand, the door at the end of the hall opened and Dr. Ransom came through it, flanked as he always was by two guards. He nodded at her, stopping in front of Jed’s room.

      “Hello, Nurse. I’m here to get Jed for a session.”

      “He hasn’t had his meds yet—” The doctor was already gesturing to one of the guards to step forward and take them from her. With a frown, Samantha pulled the small paper cup from the cart but didn’t hand it over. “If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll be happy to—”

      Again, the doctor cut her off with a dismissive wave. “Not necessary, thank you, Nurse.”

      The scent of lavender faded, replaced by the chemical, hospital stink that burned the insides of her nose, making her cough. The pills chattered a little in the paper cup, and she forced her hands to stop shaking. “It would really only take—”

      Dr. Ransom’s head swung around and, for the first time in perhaps the entirety of her working here, he looked Samantha in the face. “Is there some reason you feel it necessary to argue with me?”

      “No.” With that same bright, plastic smile, Samantha handed over the pills to the guard, who took the paper cup without even blinking. “Of course not.”

      “Get back to work,” Ransom told her, already dismissing her and looking through the portal.

      Samantha wasn’t dumb enough to say another word. She lingered, though, at the cart, until they brought Jed out. Not in cuffs, although the men on either side of him were clearly ready to handle him if he did anything out of line. He hadn’t in the past eighteen months, but she knew he had, a long time ago. Watching Ransom’s face, she thought the doctor was sort of hoping Jed would pull something now, so he’d have an excuse to order Jed’s restraint.

      Was this it? The end of things? Were they finally taking him away? Should she react? There’d been no word from the Crew, and nothing from Wyrmwood, either. No changes in the schedule that would indicate that anything had changed.

      Jed didn’t look at her when he came out of the room. Not so much as a glance over his shoulder.

      She was already planning her attack when the softly drifting scent of lavender returned. She didn’t think he even knew she was there. She’d never spoken to Jed about the real reasons she’d come to Wyrmwood, but it wasn’t impossible that he knew and understood. Not out of the realm of possibility that he would know before she could, before anyone else could, that his time here was over.