Bad Influence (Seven Deadly Sins #2) ✅ Completed

Chapter Seven: Crazy Train

The Truman Center for Health looked exactly like what I thought every mental hospital should look like: square, brick faced, and impossible to escape.

In between Dante's info on Andy and fighting over the radio, I'd managed to dig up a few little fun facts out about where we were going on my spanking new phone. The hospital was originally built in 1899 as a military academy but once the founder, a Prussian named Frederick Blees, died it went bankrupt. It reopened as the Still-Hildreth Sanatorium in 1915, where it was promptly devoted to the treatment of all mental disorders. Among offering treatments in Hydrotherapy and exercise, it also had the distinguished title of being the first hospital to actually use electro-shock treatment on its patients. The hospital was eventually closed for some time, though the internet wasn't too helpful with providing an actual date for its official closing.

However, in 2001 the building and the acreage the original hospital sat on was bought and the new owners promptly began restoring the hospital to some of its original turn-of-the- century-mental-health glory – including a large, mosaic skylight, a grand wrought and cast iron staircase leading from the main floor to a second floor sun parlor, and the original twelve faculty suites for live-in doctors and necessary hospital staff. The building was renamed The Truman Center for Health, after former president Harry S. Truman (Missouri's own), and officially opened its doors to welcome a new generation of mental cases in 2003.

Between the hospital's history and rehashing what Andy had done to Caroline and Pete with Dante, I was doing a great job not jumping all over Dante. I'd been a little worried about being stuck inside the car with Dante for an extended period of time, but he didn't seem overly worried about it. Ok, so we weren't exactly talking about what happened earlier, so it was there between us like an awkward wall – the kind of wall where a superhot supernatural being was on one side and a ridiculously unlucky girl sat on the other, but it may have also been one of the reasons he'd discussed so much of the Andy Affair (as I referred to it now) with me. Dante must have been trying to keep me distracted so I didn't throw myself all over him like a human rug.

It'd worked too.  

Now, as I stood looking up at the entrance of the hospital, I wondered if I could actually do this. Could I really go in there and face what my Aunt Celeste had done to some hateful, yet totally played sap? I wasn't sure, but it wasn't like I had much choice either.

I watched as Dante jogged up the steps that led to the front door of the hospital. He opened the door and waved an arm for me to go inside. I took a deep breath and went up the steps. As I passed him by he spoke in a low whisper: "Calm yourself, Taylor. You're not McMurphy and there's no Nurse Ratched here."

I swallowed nervously as I stepped inside the hospital, "You do know how that novel ended for McMurphy, right?" I'd read Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the year before – I'd thought it was pretty good too. Then again, I never expected to be visiting the inside of a mental hospital so soon in my life. Perhaps if I had known what was in store for me I wouldn't have raced to watch the movie on Netflix.  

"Don't worry, I won't let anyone lobotomize you," Dante reassured me. The eye roll I could have done without.

We stepped up to the visitor's station but just before we got to the desk, Dante turned to look at me one last time. "Let me do the talking," he said.

I nodded and it was the first time I'd actually noticed he looked different. I started as I realized his hair was a little lighter and his lip piercings were gone. He didn't look quite so harsh, as a matter of fact he looked...hotter.

Was that even possible?

He was still in his trademark black t-shirt and jeans, but there was no doubt he looked much more approachable – and less likely to smite someone down with his awesome rage.