Stained Credence. Book One: The Wretched

TWO

Grady received the call just before 2:00 AM telling him to come to the office. It was rare for him to receive a call so early in the morning and in his hazy state of mind had neglected to ask for any details. While hastily putting himself together enough to be somewhat presentable he came to the conclusion that one of his patients must have either suffered an extremely horrible episode and either killed their self, someone else, or any combination of the aforementioned. His imagination was not operating at full capacity so he deviated from envisioning any gruesome details of what he may face upon arrival.

With a loosely wrinkled shirt and slacks, a water splashed face, and quickly brushed teeth he grabbed his briefcase and headed out the door into the dew-soaked night.

Greene Brooke was a revolutionary psychiatry facility and was more than just top-of-the-line, it was leaps and bounds beyond anything that had been developed thus far. Or at least that was the pick-up line he preferred to use when describing his occupation since there were few ways to glamorize the fact that some of his patients smeared poop on themselves as casually as a woman applying lip gloss.

Most of the patients housed there suffered extensively from their illnesses, which doomed them to the inability to live on their own. Being held at Greene Brooke was hardly a sentence compared to the one their own minds held them in. Many of its residents had been tossed on the scales of the American judicial system for having committed crimes directed by their addled mind and had been selected to serve their time at Greene Brooke verses a state facility, or worse, prison.  

His phone rang and Harvey’s face stared at him from the screen. Grady answered gruffly, “On my way.”

“Leave your briefcase in the car. Just leave everything you can in there.” It wasn’t the odd commands that concerned him, but the overwhelmed tone of his voice.

“Harvey, are you okay?”

“Just leave everything. Everything, Grady. And hurry the hell up.” He heard a dull beep followed by the sound equivalent to holding a brick to his ear, indicating that Harvey had hung up. Sometimes he wished cell phones came with the monotonous tone that landlines cried after one end hung up, but the evolution of technology had deemed that unnecessary.

He pressed the gas pedal a little further down.

x

Grady swiped his badge at the gate, waited for it to open and was startled when someone walked out of the guard shack. He rolled his window down. “I need to see your identification,” the guard said. 

Grady had never been stopped here, he knew that there was a protocol for it, but could not remember the defining reasons that called for this added level of security. He handed the man his company badge, who checked it more thoroughly than Grady thought necessary; especially considering they saw each other nearly daily. Handing it back to Grady he said, “I need you to open the trunk now.”

Grady bristled at the demand but raised the lever in the floor to unlock it. The guard shown his flashlight through the windows as he made his way to the trunk, where he rummaged before closing it. He then signaled that Grady could continue driving. As he drove past the guard shack, he realized there was a second guard sitting in there. A shot gun propped between his legs.

Pulling around the corner into the multi-level parking garage he was surprised by the number of vehicles already parked. Driving past them he noticed they were all rentals, the tell-tale no-smoking sticker in the windows, and made it a point to park several spaces away from them.

He set his briefcase in the trunk of his car, placing his cell phone and wallet inside also and again closed the trunk. He clipped his identification badge to the front of his wrinkled shirt, wishing he’d had the mindset to at least grab a dress jacket before leaving home. With nothing on him other than his ID and keys, he made his way toward the entrance.The ticking sound of the cooling engines and his footfalls were amplified in the cement garage.