Regret

Chapter 5 - The Sanitarium Blocks

Chapter Five

THE SANITARIUM BLOCKS

Past the barracks, near Neimhall's fringes and neither uptown nor downtown, was the sanitarium.

The sun's last slivers of light lit the building's peeling white walls. Valye had heard it was once a baron's estate, until a hunting accident robbed him of his family.

Whatever lavish decorum it may have held in a past life was gone now. Its grounds & structure, maintained only enough to stay standing. Every time she visited, it looked abandoned, but she knew there were many behind its thick walls.

Her boots sloshed through standing water at the rusted front gate. It wasn't closed. She trudged through the lawn, devoid of grass and much else. A few haggard shrubs lined the entrance, and that was all. Past the walls wrapped around the plot, young weilsemung trees waved in the wind.

More thunder. She looked up at the building's tower, once an amateur's observatory, now a reserve for the most dangerous – or unstable – citizens of Neimhall.

She hit the doorknocker as rainwater trickled off the roof in thin streams.

A moment, then it opened. A kindly older woman, squat with her graying brown hair in buns. She wore the sanitarium's customary uniform – white & faded brown, and a white habit over her head.

"We expected you yesterday. What happened? You're never late like this."

"My apologies, I was... held up," Valye answered.

"Oh the fire! I forgot, you're with the guard. I'm sorry, come in, it's miserable out there."

Inside the air faded from rain's freshness to a stale humid heat. The floor's marbled tiles, caked with mud near the entrance & dirty further away, stretched away into a foyer, and beyond to a stairwell. The foyer had two other halls left & right of her, but she didn't know what was down there. Those wings didn't keep her sister.

"She's in a fright today," the attendant said. "Nothing else's changed. Somehow she can always tell when you've missed a day. It's the strangest thing, I swear."

"Don't worry Ameir," she said to her. "She'll be calm afterwards. She always is." For a time.

"Ah, Valye!" another woman's voice came from around a corner, tired yet relieved. Caretaker Nomir. The building's 'warden'. "For your sister again?"

She nodded.

"You know the way from here." Nomir's footsteps echoed away down a different hall, off to some other business.

Ameir saw her down the hall to the stairwell. "I'd follow you the rest of the way, but some of the tenants are restless. They've been all stirred about since that horrible fire. And they don't like storms much either." She coughed into her hand. "You won't get lost?"

She said this every time, and always asked if she'd get lost. The sanitarium ran on a skeleton crew – the town's stipend not nearly enough for a decent living, many saved money by lodging in the guest house out back. It seemed they were always busy.

"I'll be alright," she said to her. "I remember the way."

Ameir's head bobbed and she hurried off.

Up two floors, down the main hall, right turn, right turn, Nomir had told her, three years ago. A memory as foggy as it was clear, like reality too close to a dream. Spiral staircase on your right. All the way to the top.

"Here we go again," she murmured.

Step after step she went, the cast iron guardrail creaking under her hand. Landing, then a turn, then another landing, and another turn, until she reached the first floor.