8

T he following day, I made friends with a useful contact at work. That sounded worse than it was. Axel Gomez was twenty-three with short dark hair, an open, honest face, and a healthy disregard for the old regime. The more I got to know him, the more I actually liked him.

I was the only person in the staff lounge, eating a lunch of creamy mushroom pasta from the canteen. It wasn’t terrible.

I’d noticed that most of the bustling activity here occurred behind closed doors. If that’s what you could call the groups of men, some in scrubs, some in suits, that occasionally entered or exited a ward. The atmosphere seemed pretty sedate. Hushed. I didn’t know if that was normal, or if a lot of the staff had been dismissed—and I guess they’d pressed pause on most of the therapy sessions or whatever counted as rehabilitation in this place.

Anyway, there I was, twirling pasta onto my fork with one eye on the open binder beside my plate, when a dark-haired guy in pale blue scrubs entered the lounge. Pale blue meant he was a nurse.

When he saw me, he made a bee-line for my table, his widening smile pressing dimples into his round cheeks. “Georga West.”

“That’s me.” I closed the binder holding my confidential patient notes.

“Freaking Georga West,” he gushed, his voice slightly high and giddy. “I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you. Do you mind if I sit?”

He placed a hand on the back of the chair across the small table from me. His other hand clutched a paper-wrapped sandwich. “No pressure. Say no if you want to be alone. This is just so cool. I have to ask, you know?”

He’d obviously seen my face on the screens. He knew who I was. But why was he acting so weird about it? “I don’t own the chair.”

He stayed on his feet, his smile waning.

“I mean, you’re welcome to sit.”

“Oh, cool.” He pulled the chair out and sat, his smile back to full wattage. “I’m Axel, by the way. Axel Gomaz.”

“You’re a nurse?” I said. “I didn’t see you around yesterday.”

He unwrapped his sandwich. Turkey and mustard. “I’ve been working the night shift.”

“That sucks.”

“Nah, it’s cool.” He lifted the sandwich to his mouth, but didn’t bite down. “I like the graveyard shift. Not much happens, and no one’s barking orders at you. But they rotate us, one week day shift, one week night shift.”

My ears perked. “So, it gets kind of quiet here during the night?”

“Yeah, total skeleton staff.”

“What does that mean?”

He blinked at me. “Ah, right.” He shrugged. “Well, it’s just the night nurses and there’s an on-call doctor, although he doesn’t always stay at the center. It’s a short ride if he needs to come in.”

“No one at reception?”

Axel’s radar finally went on alert. He gave me a narrowed look and took a bite of turkey sandwich.

Had I blown it? I laughed and brought a forkful of pasta to my mouth. “I’m just curious about how this place runs. Too curious for my own good. That’s always been my downfall.”

“Are you kidding me?” His brow hiked. “You’re legend. You took out the council in, like, one night. That was so sweet.”

It was my turn to blink at him. “Sweet?”

“Epic.” He leaned over, lowering his voice confidentially. “You have a huge following, you know that, right?”

I shifted in my seat, really awkward now. “A following?”

“Well…” He glanced around to check we were still alone. “Me and my friends, we’re not fans of the council. And we’re not the only ones. But it’s not like any of us had the guts to do anything about it. Some of that council bullshit…it’s sick, you know?”

I nodded. “They hid a lot from us.”

“Yeah, and it’s not just that.” He took another bite of sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “I shouldn’t be saying this…”

“Saying what?”

“This is strange, right?” He looked around again. “Suddenly we can say things that would’ve gotten us locked up in here.”

His gaze swung around to me. “Not you, though. You just went ahead and said it all, right in their faces. That was so sweet.”

It was definitely time to set him straight. “It wasn’t my decision to go public with those screenings. I didn’t even know the Sisterhood was going to do it. If I had, I’d like to think I’d have been okay with it, but I’m not sure I’m that brave.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

My father’s words flooded me. “I’m not kidding, Axel. I’m not this great hero, or leader, or whatever you’re making me out to be.”

“You went over the wall,” he said firmly. “You went to The Smoke. And you came back to tell us. If you think you’re nothing special, that’s sad. There are loads of us who think you rock big time.”

Well. “Thanks?”

“Don’t let the system take your juice, you know?”

His manner of speech was making me slightly dizzy, and it wasn’t just the overly zealous enthusiasm. “Juice?”

“You’ve started a whole movement,” he said. “That’s you. We’re done with the old crap. Like, take my mom for instance, she’s awesome. Smartest lady I know. Much smarter and tougher than my dad. No one should be telling her when she can and can’t leave her house or how she’s allowed to use her time. She would have loved to be a nurse, you know? She’s the one who made me passionate about it.”

Something wasn’t adding up. “If you feel so strongly about this, how come you work here?”

He snorted. “I apprenticed at the Medi-Center. I was hoping to get assigned there, or at any of the clinics. But we don’t get a say in our placements.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s all good. I mean, it’s not like they’d close the place down without me. This way, at least I could keep an eye on the women on my watch.” He leaned forward again with a smirk. “Hey, I heard the councilmen were admitted to Ward Red this morning. What’s up with that?”

Geneva was moving fast, that’s what. “What happens in Ward Red?”

“Sick shit, that’s what.”

My heart picked up an unnatural beat. Not that I cared about Julian Edgar and his council cronies, but Daniel would be next. “Axel, I’m serious.”

“I don’t have clearance for Ward Red.” He shrugged, making me wait while he popped the last of his sandwich into his mouth and swallowed. “But what I do know is, patients never go straight there. They’re usually only sent there after they fail to respond to treatment in Ward Y.”

“How bad is it?”

“Depends,” he said. “The real sick shit is the experiments, like shock and torture therapy. But that’s just what I’ve heard. Not sure it’s true.”

I thought of Bev, who hadn’t spoken since her six-year stint in rehab. Geneva had called her a hard-crack case. My mouth turned sour.

“But mostly it’s the laser operations,” Axel went on. “When nothing else works, they zap parts of the brain to cut off certain stimuli.”

I thought of Miriam Edgar, and if I’d had any sympathy for her husband, Julian, which I didn’t, it would have evaporated on the spot. “How does that work?”

“Hell if I know,” Axel said. “But usually they take at least two days to map the brain before they operate, and they do it while the patient is still in Ward Y. I’ve never heard of anyone being admitted straight off the bat to Ward Red.”

I didn’t have any answers for him, but thank goodness Daniel and the heirs were being transferred to Ward X.

Geneva had confirmed it.

But for how long? Two days? Just long enough to map their brains before Ward Red erased their souls?