Page 17 of Unwell
The harshness of his words made my stomach turn. I imagined Ginny’s hands wrapped over the swell of life. So young, and in such despair, yet still maternally protective.
‘What’ll happen to her? To the baby?’
Robert shrugged, eyes fixed on the road ahead. ‘It’ll be adopted out once she has it. Or given to the father. Or her parents. If no one wants it, I’m sure Marney will find a use for it.’
How could he be so callous when we’d lost so many of our own? So many lives I’d barely even imagined before filling my toilet with scarlet. My nails dug crescents into my palms.
‘But that’s what she’s afraid of,’ I whispered.
‘Who cares?’ Robert pressed his cigarette into the ashtray as we approached the asylum gates, his jaw clenching. ‘She’s just another patient. You know we can’t get invested.’
But I am.
Her sweet sapphire eyes had hooked their claws into me, exposing a raw part of me I’d tried to hide for years. So often I’d strapped together my broken pieces, hiding them from everyone as I soldiered on. But each loss had shattered me anew, every time the shards got smaller and sharper and harder to hold together. Ginny carried life inside her as if it wasn’t a miracle.
And while jealousy pricked amongst the sharp talons, it gave way to worry.
‘Easy for you to say,’ I sighed, softer now. ‘You don’t have to see the way she cries to be free. Cries for her child.’
‘Just stop messin’ with things that are none of your business.’ He drove on, radio droning with monotone voices. The finality in his statement spoke volumes.
If Ginny had no one else to help her, then I’d have to step up.
To protect her from the monsters lurking among Wellard’s crumbling walls.
TEN
NANCY
Names were scratched into the visitor log in rough print. Almost like the receptionist wanted to obscure their origins from me. My brows crumpled as I made out the letters one by one, discounting each tight column of names.
I pressed my lips together as my gaze followed my finger over each of the last few pages. No name remotely similar to Elijah in the weeks since Ginny’s arrival.
Had he really been there? Or had she imagined the whole thing?
The leather spine creaked as I closed the book with a touch more force than was necessary. If Elijah hadn’t entered through the proper means, then he would havehad to use subterfuge. But how? The towering fences were old but strong. Rust-bitten, they still stood as rigid as the surest oak.
And the gates? Locked as tight as a nun’s knees and opened only for staff and approved visitors.
So either the girl was mistaken. Unwell. Or someone was aiding her. Robert had to know more than I did. Doctors discussed the patients on levels the nurses and orderlies weren’t included in.
And if he didn’t know anything, maybe he could find out.
I found him lounging with his feet up on the desk in his office, a lit cigarette dangling from his fingers.
‘Mmm,’ he said, giving me the smallest of glances before focusing on the radio, which droned on with sports talk. ‘Come for a little workday fun?’
‘Robert,’ I said, words sharp. ‘There’s no record of Ginny’s boyfriend, Elijah. The visitor logs have nothing. How does she see him?’
He twisted the cigarette end into the glass ashtray and looked at me, boredom etched over his face. ‘You’re still on about that girl?’
‘Yes. She swears he’s been to see her.’
Robert shrugged, putting his feet on the floor and leaning forward to leaf through the paperwork on his desk. ‘Then she’s imagining it. Half of them are. That’s why they’re here. Stop worrying about it.’
‘I can’t just?—’
‘You can.’ He cut me off with a mean snap of his words. ‘It’s not our business why she’s here. Our job’sdealing with her. You know how it is. Keep them up to their eyeballs in drugs and take home the pay-check. You’re not here to fix them. Just to mind them.’
