Lockdown

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

01/07/2019. 12:22 hours. North Virginia Psychiatric Facility, Falls Church, Virginia.

"Dr. Reid? Spencer? It's time to wake up. It's lunchtime."

Spencer softly moaned at the gentle hand squeezing his shoulder. He sluggishly opened his eyes and blinked to clear his vision.

"There we are. It's time for lunch, Dr. Reid."

"Please. Spencer is fine." Spencer furrowed his brow, his head throbbing and closed his eyes again.

"Okay, Spencer. I'm Laura, and I'm going to be your nurse for the day. Are you having any side effects from your treatment?" Spencer stretched out his aching jaw and nodded slightly.

"My head hurts." Spencer attempted to move and groaned at the pains throughout his body. "Scratch that. Everything hurts."

"That's to be expected. Let's get you sat up first." Spencer swung his lanky legs over the side of the bed, the tiled floor cold against his feet. Laura placed a hand on Spencer's upper back and guided him upright. Spencer peeled his eyes open to take in his situation. He was wearing a white t-shirt and blue scrubs trousers. The pale green strap around his ankles remained fashioned into a set of shackles. His wrists were still wrapped in tight cuffs that were strapped to the belt around his waist. He glanced up at Laura, dishevelled hair falling into his eyes. Laura's hair was of a dark copper colour, and she had caramel coloured eyes that complimented her hair and her pale skin. She had a fine dusting of freckles across her nose. She smiled softly at him.

"Can you take these off? Please? I'm not going to do anything right now." Laura grimaced.

"I don't have that authority until Dr. Sharma sees you to assess your mental state. Let's sit you in the chair and I'll get you some lunch." Spencer shook his head. Nausea bubbled in his stomach.

"I'm not hungry."

"You need to try. How about a sandwich? Start you off light?" The sigh that Spencer released whistled through his still healing nose. He nodded softly. With her left hand in the small of Spencer's back and her right hand on his right forearm, Laura carefully guided the doctor to the armchair beside the bed. Once he was seated, Laura quickly exited to the room in search of food.

Spencer took a moment to look around the room. The walls were white and clinical, save for the apple tree painting on the wall above the small wooden desk to his right. The sheets were rumpled from where he had been lying on the hospital bed. There was an open door to the right of the door revealing a small bathroom. The door to the room was sturdy, with a square window in it. It was sparse of any personality. He stared morosely at the straps binding the cuffs around his wrists. How had he let it get to this? He was no better than his mother. Surely the FBI would fire him now? He had expected to have memory loss after the ECT, but it remained as intact as ever. It was the one treatment he feared above all else. His intellect was his shield, his life. If the treatment erased that, he did not know who he was.

Spencer was running through Riemann's hypothesis in his head for something to ground himself when Laura returned with a small plastic plate in one hand and a plastic mug in the other. She smiled softly at him as she set the mug down on the floor beside Spencer's anxiously bobbing foot and dragged over the simple wooden chair from the desk. She seated herself in front of the genius and rested the plate on her knees. Spencer quirked an eyebrow at her.

"You looked like you were in a world of thought," said Laura with a chuckle.

"I was running through Riemann's hypothesis." Laura tilted her head in confusion. "It's a mathematical conjecture from the nineteenth century that states that the Riemann zeta function zeroes all lie on the critical line."