February 15th 2020
Normally, I’m not one who is big on celebrating Valentine's Day. With my job at the vet clinic, we didn’t even get the big Holidays off. Last night though, was one of the tougher nights. We had an emergency come in right before closing, a black lab named Lucy was suffering from pyometra, and we had to perform an emergency surgery. Craig had made us reservations at a new restaurant in town, but I had to cancel with him.
I felt horrible, especially since his heart had been broken before by so many women who had cheated on him. So his reaction was understanding when he thought I was doing the same. I hadn't realized he had texted me so much since when you’re in surgery, you’re sterile and can’t leave the surgical suite. Before scrubbing in with Dr. Faris, I could have sworn I saw his car in the parking lot, but with the heavy amount of snow falling, I couldn’t be sure.
I didn’t get home until almost 11 p.m. since it took a while to get Lucy stable after surgery. She had bled a lot more than we wereexpecting. I had just gotten into bed when Craig showed up with roses and apologized for texting me so much. I told him I understood, since he had been through some rough relationships, and we finally had sex for the first time.
I even let him leave the light on so he could see my scars. He kissed every single one of them and kept telling me I was beautiful and he would never make me feel the need to hurt myself. Even though I was tired from the long day, we stayed up until almost four o'clock in the morning just talking. He wasn’t even grossed out when I told him about what happened when I was 16 and why I was no longer able to bear children, only that he would protect me from anyone who would try to harm me.
Chapterthree
The Vigilante
September 24th 2023
On any other Tuesday morning, I would find myself at the diner down the street from my private office downtown, enjoying a steaming plate of bacon, eggs, and flapjacks. A cup of black coffee would be steaming next to my food, and I’d be looking forward to facing another routine day. However, on this particular Tuesday morning, I found my routine interrupted with a phone call from Dr Stephens, head of the psychiatric department at the clinic, before I even had the chance to get completely out of bed.
My main job, and the source of most of my income, involved listening to people’s concerns and helping them make the best choices they could in their personal lives. The official title I held was a therapist, though new-age clients tend to use the term life coach. It was tiring work, and most days I found myself unwillingly trapped in their thoughts instead of my own, but it was rewarding work. Getting to watch a client's confidence build over time, or helping a lost child find their voice, gave significant meaning to my life.
Not only did I have a private practice in downtown Elston Hollow Virginia, but I also dedicated three days a week to work at the Behavioral Health Clinic associated with the local hospital. It wasn’t a job I wanted, and it was never supposed to be a long-term gig. Originally, I had just volunteered my time when they were undoing a staff shortage, but I found another job there that was just as rewarding, completely off the books which I never saw a paycheck for.
As a therapist, you couldn’t be too picky about your clients. Sure, there were a few reasons why you could refuse to see someone. Each therapist had their own unique ways of approaching problems, so it wasn’t unusual to not be a good fit for some people. Therapy was all about fitting the needs of the individual. With such a demanding job, you were better off taking on as many clients as you could. That included spending sessions with some of the most deranged psychopaths that most normal people would steer clear of.
Ninety-nine percent of my clients were what I would classify as normal in comparison to some of the stains that tarnished the earth. They ranged from soccer moms with depression issues, corporate men who didn’t know how to prioritize their personal life, and even children who were lacking self-confidence or social skills. Those were the clients I loved to help most.
Occasionally, a rare client would slip in amongst my regulars. Those individuals were usually sick with a disease that was incurable.Pedophiles, rapists, and murderers all had one thing in common. They would commit the crimes again. Rehabilitation was a myth created by defense lawyers when the ability to try an insanity defense was likely to get them out of a crime. The more research that has been presented in the field, however, proved that it wasn’t always the case. Their diseases weren’t similar to a cold or virus, that they would be treated with antibiotics or physical therapy. The disease they were plagued with went much deeper than surface illness. One that rotted away the very core of their soul, festering in their mind like an aggressive cancer that feasted on the fears of the innocent, making these people less than human.
Which is why I dedicated the smaller part of my life to helping their victims. When a sick freak who enjoyed raping or killing kids ended up in my office, they were never aware that they were meeting a worse version of themselves. I never claimed to be less fucked up than they were. I just maintained a strict moral compass that wouldn’t let me succumb to hurting the innocent. After the first time I had to listen to a grown man describe in detail that he loved how his cock felt in his seven-year-old daughter's pussy I didn’t even need to think twice about what I planned to do to him. Unfortunately for the daughter, my justice was served too late. She was alive and in therapy, but she would never recover from what her own father had done to her. The last time I received an email from her mother, young Sarah was still refusing to speak. One man's sick pleasure took a child's innocence away. From thatmoment forward, I vowed to help give an anonymous voice to the victims they destroyed in more ways than just with physical damage.
They deserved more justice than what the court system considered fair. Their suffering was worth more than their tormentors spending a few years in a cozy hospital just counting down the days until they could find a new victim.
This morning, it wasn’t one of those clients that made my boss feel like he needed to call me three hours before my scheduled shift at the clinic. Today, it wasn’t a psychopath he was assigning me with, but a young woman who had gone above and beyond to try to escape this world and managed to fail. From the brief rundown he gave me over the phone, she had mutilated her arm, and when that didn’t work, she had attempted to hang herself with a belt from her second-floor banister.
She was admitted to the Clinic late last night and would be my first individual therapy appointment that morning. By the time I left my apartment, it would give me just about two hours to start reviewing her file, including an audio of her intake assessment, before her therapy started. The clinic’s standard was waiting at least twenty-four hours before assigning a patient an individual therapist. The fact that it was rushed indicated the severity under which they had classified her.
I was able to find a travel coffee cup shoved in the back of one of my kitchen cabinets, hidden away from disuse, and madea pot of passable coffee. It wouldn’t hold up against the coffee the waitresses at the diner were able to provide me with, but it would help wake me up on the drive to the clinic.
The journey lasted a little less than twenty minutes. Neither the hospital nor its Behavioral Health Clinic was located in town, but it was a rather short drive into the county and nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. At the second light in town, it was a simple left-hand turn from my office, and you stayed on the twisting mountain road for ten miles until you came upon the hospital, unmistakable with its towering buildings sprawled along the expansive campus.
The original building was built back in 1857 as a spa to promote healing. Fresh mountain air during that time period was all the rage when it came to healing the physical body. But it didn’t only attract people looking to improve their outlook on life; it also drew in tuberculosis patients who were desperate for a remedy to their ailing health. So much so that by 1908, the state purchased neighboring land from a private owner to open the first Tuberculosis Sanitarium in the area, starting the growth and development of the hospital campus that rests on 700 acres today.
Most employees avoided the current Behavioral Health Clinic Building because it now sits on the site of the sanitarium that once housed tuberculosis patients. Throughout the years, the building had seen so much death some people claimed they could still feel the patients’ suffering imprinted upon the space. A few had toldtheir superiors about the hauntings they claimed to have seen firsthand. I’ll admit that sometimes I get an uneasy feeling when I’m alone in my office at the clinic, but I can’t be one to verify if any ghosts are lingering and refusing to move on.
Not only is it a clinic for adult behavioral health, the hospital also houses both adolescents and criminals in need of psychiatric care, each with their own floor of the building. Each floor, along its designated group, was also divided into multiple wings to provide smaller groups with more personalized care during their stay. My office is located on the fourth floor, along with a slew of other offices for the attending doctors and therapists. All manner of disorders were treated within its walls, no matter how peculiar or severe. The program the clinic developed over two decades ago has yielded good results for the majority of their patients, not only taking care of them during their time at the clinic, but also setting them up with outpatient care.
When I arrived at the hospital campus, I pulled around to the back of the Clinic, parking my black Jeep in one of the assigned spots for staff. I pulled my badge out of my console and clipped it onto the front of my worn leather jacket. Most of the buildings on the campus didn’t require a keycard to enter, but given the nature of why the patients that stayed here were receiving psychiatric care, a badge was needed for almost every door in the clinic. The hospital took the safety of their patients very seriously, which made doing my self-appointed second job difficult sometimes.
The back entrance was strictly for staff and deliveries, with a loading dock stationed right next to the only set of doors along the parking lot. Despite the clinic still maintaining most of the original structure from when it was first constructed, the beauty was difficult to see under the amount of vines encroaching on it, reaching up almost to the third floor now.
The interior of the building was a drastic contrast to the aging exterior. A sterile feeling lingered in the air, similar to a normal hospital, after years of renovations and upgrades brought the hospital into the realm of modern medicine. The most recent bout occurred after one of the most tragic events in the clinic's history. Before technology had taken the medical field down a new path, staff had to rely on old-fashioned locks to keep the patients in.
The majority of the time, the locks had served their purpose. Except for one incident, a criminally insane patient was able to escape solitary confinement and massacre fourteen people, both staff and fellow patients, before being put down by security. That was the only documented time a patient had killed someone on the property. It was a risk those who worked here had to be willing to take when the most dangerous criminals on the East Coast were sent to the clinic for an evaluation before being allowed to stand trial on an insanity plea.
I made my way down the empty hallway almost robotically and badged into the stairwell leading up to my office, wanting to avoid the elevator which most of the staff preferred to use during theday. Taking the stairs two at a time all the way up to the fourth floor. My office was located at the far end of the hall on the west wing, with my name plate, Daxton Bradshaw LPC, identifying the space as mine.
The decor was minimal to meet the standards we had to follow. Even outpatient therapists weren’t allowed to decorate their offices with anything that could possibly be turned into a weapon. Sofas and chairs were secured to the floor in case a patient got violent enough to try and lift them. The only loose items were throw pillows scattered across various seating areas to give them something to hold if they felt insecure. All the paintings on the walls were in plastic frames and also secured to the wall, and damn near impossible to move without causing a significant amount of damage to the plaster.
This office was small compared to the space I had back in town. I had one sofa for my clients to use, two plush armchairs across from it, and my desk against the window overlooking a well-manicured lawn and the vast forest in the distance. The only movable piece of furniture in the room was the chair at my desk, nothing more than a small plastic, somewhat uncomfortable, computer chair that was less likely to cause any damage if it were to be turned into a projectile weapon in the hands of a desperate patient.
