Lucidity

Chapter 6 - Welcome to the Freak Show

Grace closed her eyes against the pain and leaned her hip against the railing, using it as a guide as she shuffled down the walkway. If she was going to die, she had to get Kat to safety first.

You can wait a few minutes longer, can’t you, Jimmy?

Jimmy was silent.

A hand reached up to touch Grace’s arm. Her eyes shot open in surprise.

“I’ll get the door,” Alex said, his voice barely audible over the tympani pounding in her head. He moved past her, opening the door to the seventh floor of the Tower just in time for Grace to stumble through it.

She leaned breathlessly against the wall on the other side, sliding Kat’s limp body onto a love seat upholstered in raw silk. The entrance to the Tower was a lobby with two banks of elevators, just like the entrance to the Annex. But unlike the Annex, there were no scuffed linoleum or cracked tile walls here. Instead, there was Berber carpet and furniture that looked like it belonged in the office of an expensive plastic surgeon.

The lobby was empty except for the three of them. Two solid mahogany doors stood across from the elevators. The only other door was a fire exit leading to the stairwell.

“Welcome to the Freak Show,” Alex said glumly.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” she said, before realizing that her arms were wrapped tight around her chest, warding off something. “Which room is Kat’s?”

“Seven-oh-three. Down the hall and to the right.” He jerked his chin at the double doors.

“I can take her if you want to go back downstairs.”

He bit his lip but shook his head vehemently. “You shouldn’t go in there alone.”

As she lifted Kat once more, he wheeled forward and opened the thick, wooden door. Grace carried Kat through it, wrinkling her nose against the smell. Not the antiseptic that tinged the air of the rest of the hospital. A sweet scent of carnations and lilies—almost like an expensive French perfume. But too sweet. To Grace it smelled like death.

She looked down and saw Alex also breathed through his mouth, his nostrils pinched in distaste.

“This way,” the boy said, leading her down a corridor with dark paneling on the walls and expensive reproductions of famous paintings, all with a floral motif. Halfway down the hall there was a receptionist desk, also mahogany. The clerk had his back to them, head bent low as he spoke with someone on the telephone.

Grace and Alex moved quietly past several large, well-appointed treatment rooms, all of which stood empty. Dinner hour, Grace guessed. She’d lost her appetite.

At the end of the paneled hallway stood a sturdy metal door with a large lock and a reinforced glass window.

“What’s down there?” she whispered, feeling like a prisoner trying a jailbreak.

Alex frowned. “The Beast. Never, never, go there.”

He led her along another hallway flanked on both sides by patient rooms. As they walked, Grace couldn’t believe how silent this floor was. Most hospital wards bustled with activity and noise—even ones like the NeuroICU where the patients were comatose. Where was the gossip of nurses and medical staff? The cafeteria workers with their trays, the housekeepers, the bleep of machinery and monitors?

It was as if they had left the hospital for another world.

The patient doors were all open. Grace glanced inside the rooms. They also bore little resemblance to the typical hospital room. Instead they were furnished like an upper class hotel room, complete with floral chintz curtains and mahogany sleigh beds.