What Keeps Our Hearts Beating

Chapter 4

Dr. Weber sounded as defeated and miserable as all the other doctors her father had paraded her around to for the past 3 years. The same negative diagnosis, the same wrinkled brow, the same low pitched trying to sound sincere tone of voice. It was all just a waste of time and even with his, "I told your father I would enroll you in this experiment but what I am testing for is for blood disorders. Yours is a heart disorder. But I will do what I can."

He sounded sincere in a god-like sort of way. Or of a character trying to play god and failing miserably. Lacey just nodded like an automaton and then they proceeded with the various tests. The X-ray of her heart, the vials of blood that they took with a disgruntled nurse sticking her arm multiple times until she found her vein. She couldn't recall how many times she had blood drawn and yet she still couldn't look at the sight of them taking her blood from her. She couldn't look at the needle and instead hummed a tune to distract herself from fainting. "Oh when the saints go marching in" she hummed. She didn't even know why she hummed that stupid song. Probably some subconscious memory of her mother singing it to her at the doctor, when her mother had to go and undergo this same waste of time process. It didn't save her mother's life and it sounded like it was just wasting precious hours of Lacey's life when she should be living instead of wallowing and wasting away in the confines of this manor house with these other kids just as miserable and deflated/defeated as she felt.

"Are we done yet," she cried out aggravated as the nurse was taking another vile of her blood, the white specks starting to spread across her vision and she fought the urge to pass out. She wouldn't give in to that humiliation on her first visit.

"God you're a feisty one. I thought Brasen was the worst of the bunch."

Brasen again.

"I take that as an honor to be the worst," she said smiling sadistically. The nurse snarled at her and seemed to take her time taking the needle out of her arm, letting it linger perched inside even after she had cut off the blood wire. She put a bandage over her arm and then spotted red vials in a special marked red box that read only "B".

"Is that his blood?" she asked, running her hand over the glass pane.

"Stop that," the nurse smacked her hand off the pane. "And yes that's "his" blood, the young arrogant arsonist."

"If he's so dangerous, why the hell is he still here at the manor house and not in some prison?"

The nurse chuckled like this girl was truly an outsider, labeling the bottles of Lacey's blood and sticking them in some forgotten plain wire rack. "Your father really kept you in the dark, child. All those guards outside this house, the gate with the barbed wires. Do you really think that's to keep you safe from the outside world?"

Lacey whirled around, fearful as the nurse just shook her head at her.

"If it's not to keep us safe," Lacey asked, "then what is all that security there for?"

The nurse nudged Lacey forcefully out the door and into the deserted hallway at that late hour. The nurse pointed her gloved finger up the staircase, toward the northern spire. "It's to keep him from ever getting out. You'd better sleep with one eye open child. None of us are safe with him in this house."

She slammed the hospital door shut, the bang echoing in that empty hallway. Lacey put her hand over the bandage on her arm nervously as her neck craned upwards, her eyes scanning the circular steps that led to where Brasen was locked up. Her heart seemed to palpitate out of her chest, the only sound beside some distant footsteps. She wondered what Brasen was doing up there, remembering those cold eyes that had stared down at her when she stood on the manor steps earlier that morning. The hospital door sprung open, and Lacey nearly screamed, jumping back and clutching onto the black railing for support. It was Dr. Weber. He stared at her curiously, also taken aback that she was still loitering in the hallway.

"Students don't wander around the manor house after curfew, Lacey" he stated roughly as a warning, void of any kind sentiment from the examination earlier.

"I was just..."

"You'd better go straight to your room."

She scrambled over her feet and headed back down the hallway toward the dormitory, glancing back once to see Dr. Weber's eyes still watching her, ensuring she didn't turn back.