The drugs were easy enough to obtain without a paper trail of where I got them. Being a therapist to so many addicts came with the advantage of knowing where you could anonymouslypurchase any illegal substance. Slipping them into his evening pill cup would be easy enough; it all came down to timing. The nurses typically left the cart unattended in the hallway for the few seconds it would take to step into a patient's room to deliver their medicine. All the cups were labeled with the patient's room number. It wouldn’t be a strong enough dose to kill him, just enough to where he would remain silent while I went to work.
A false bottom existed in the top drawer of my locked desk. The risk of being caught with damning evidence was always present, since all patients and staff were subject to searches on the property if the need to do so ever arose. I hadn’t had it happen to me yet, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t. Inside lay a few pills and an ID card of a staff member I had stolen when I first started this goal of mine. He hadn’t reported it stolen, not wanting to answer the questions that would come along with the assumption when he had to ask for a new one. Instead—just like I suspected he would—he reported it as damaged and received a new one with the same access.
The clinic had cameras only in public areas, not in the individual halls where patients might discuss private matters with doctors or therapists. Back doors opened to stairwells that also didn’t have security coverage. Dr. Stephens was arrogant enough to believe the setup he approved was enough to keep everyone safe. And it was, at least, keeping the public and staff safe from the patients. There were flaws in his system, the other way around, for example,Dr Stephens wasn’t aware that not all night shift nurses conducted the regular head counts like they were supposed to.
Brandon was currently located in one of the few behavioral rooms with a manual lock on the outside of his door to protect the other patients from him. Tonight, Darrell was on duty as the overnight nurse. Darrell was the perfect one to be on shift when I had to get my little side job accomplished. Unbeknownst to Dr. Stephens, Darrell had a serious drinking problem and had for a while now. He kept it hidden from most of his coworkers, I was better at reading people than most of the general population.
People were easy to pick apart when you knew what to look for. Darrell didn’t even try to really hide his addiction, and if security was better at their job, they would have discovered months ago that he comes in still half intoxicated and ends up passing out at the nurses’ station after lights out. I didn’t really care why he did it; I never bothered to get to know him on a personal level, not when I was able to use his negligence to my advantage. Tonight was the perfect setup to rid the world of yet another sicko the justice system couldn’t bother to take care of the right way, and Darrell was going to help me.
July 5th 2021
I don’t know what to do anymore. I honestly don’t. Craig has turned into someone I don’t even recognize. After the silence I’ve faced for the past several days, he texted me out of the blue a few days ago and asked what my plans were for watching the fireworks on the 4th of July. Since I hadn’t heard from him, I committed to going to my coworkers yearly cookout again.
He didn’t say a word about it and asked if I wanted to come over to dinner. Naively, I had hoped I would get an apology or an explanation for why things had been so haywire between us. How could I have been so stupid?
I showed up with the bottle of wine he had asked me to bring. Craig didn’t cook, but he planned to pick up dinner to eat at his apartment. We didn’t even get to take the food out of the containers before a fight started. He told me to change my plans for the fireworks. I refused. I had no reason to cancel on my friends, especially after not hearing from him for days.
I couldn’t take the name-calling, the belittling, or his trying to convince me that my friends only invited me out of pity. Last year, taking him with me had been a disaster, and I didn’t want to repeat it. When I refused tochange my plans, he insisted he would be going with me. He didn’t really like being told that he wasn’t invited this year. I didn’t ask my friends why they hadn’t extended a ‘plus one’ invitation; I honestly didn’t care. I just wanted to go alone.
Never had I thought fireworks would set someone off as badly as if the fuse had been lit on them instead. I ended things, at least I tried to. When I tried to leave, he actually hit me, struck me across my face. Without thinking, I swung the wine bottle I had picked up to take with me and swung it back at him, hitting his head. It wasn’t hard enough to do much damage, but it was enough for him to call the police to have me arrested for assault.
I cried so badly sitting in the cop car. They hadn’t believed that he had struck me first. When he backhanded me, it hadn’t left a mark. The wine bottle, unfortunately, had left a bruise on his cheek. I was humiliated, treated like a criminal just for trying to break up with my psychotic boyfriend, but they didn’t see that. They saw a man trying to get his girlfriend ‘help’ for her violent outbursts.
With no record, I was booked and released, due in court next month to possibly face charges. They gave him a five-day restraining order against me. Once those five days are up, I’m scared of how this is going to play out. Will he continue pressing charges against me? Or will he let me go?
Chapter twenty-four
The Vigilante
October 1st 2023
Today was turning out to be a day of more legwork than a typical workday for me, with more driving and running back and forth than I was used to. Worth it, in the end, it would be worth it. To see the look on her face, to see her realize that I saw more of her than just what lay on the surface.
Daily therapy sessions were part of what made a trusting relationship between a therapist and their patient so strong, especially during such a short amount of time when someone was staying for inpatient care. On mornings when I had mandatory meetings, my sessions were usually pushed back, all piling up in the afternoon, or vice versa, depending on when Dr. Stephens sent out the schedule. Today I happened to be lucky enough to get an hour off between my obligations in the morning and when my first session started this afternoon, with Rae as my first patient.
After the quick errands I ran during my extended lunch, I felt like I was high. Never having tried any type of drug before, I had nothing to realistically compare it to, but I could imagine this was how someone felt when experiencing nirvana. I felt damn neargiddy with anticipation, like a boy going out on his first date, completely unchaperoned.
I was accustomed to being irrationally happy the day that I decided to take someone’s life. It was a strange feeling, the addictive taste that murder left me with. This was something different, something strange and potent, something that almost felt. I racked my thoughts for the best word to describe it, better, in a way. Maybe it was a combination of getting to see her and what I was going to do later that had my body practically humming with excitement. Maybe I was going down the rabbit hole just like the men I murdered, bat shit insane.
Giving my office one last glance, making sure everything was perfect and exactly the way I wanted it, I left the door, which automatically locked behind me. Everything was perfect. The very least that she deserved was perfection, and I’d try my hardest to give it to her.
An epiphany had struck me the night before, after I’d been so wrapped up in the feeling of her body. I knew I wanted to take pleasure from her that way, over and over again, until she was putty in my hands. But I also needed to make sure she knew I wanted her on a different level than what lay on the surface. I’d been so wrapped up in the whirlwind chaos we’d be thrown into that I hadn’t slowed down to really think things through.
Slow wasn’t in my nature, and I wasn’t about to change that and slow anything down. What was in my nature, however, wasthe inexplicable desire to make sure Rae felt like she was seen. Truly seen, not just for her addictive body, but for every layer underneath. Everything thought, every dream, every desire, every wicked thing, I wanted to know them all.
The elevator, however, was extremely slow.
Patience, I told myself. Rushing wouldn’t get me anywhere, and it’s not like we were somewhere she could stand me up and not be where she was supposed to be.
Ethical bureaucracy had officially left the building when I took her on as a patient. Every standard I had once held myself to professionally—minus the occasional murder, of course—had crumbled under her presence.
After scanning my way onto her wing of the building, I bypassed the empty patient rooms on my way to the lounge. Only one patient still occupied his suite, the evidence in the form of Thomas standing guard outside his room. He gave me a polite nod to which I nodded back, suppressing the smile I felt like giving him, knowing that his extra duty would be over soon. Once Brandon was gone, a weight would be lifted from all our shoulders and would hopefully give his family peace.
The lounge was fairly quiet for the middle of the day, the usual banter dulled slightly behind the hum of the radio on in the nurses’ station. As soon as I stepped through the entryway to the communal space, I could feel my eyes drawn to whereshe was.
Sitting on the couch, next to Thelma, Rae sat with her feet crossed under her body, a book propped open on her lap, completely immersed in what she was reading, to notice what time it was. The rest of the room faded into the background as I watched her read, her focus intense on the pages before her. I found myself curious, not just because I was her therapist, but because I genuinely wanted to know what she was reading. She referenced a lot of her favorite novels in her writing, comparing reality to the fictional men who would burn the world down for those they loved. The way she wrote about the relationship dynamics, it was obvious that she craved someone who saw her as someone who was irreplaceable, someone worth holding onto despite the odds stacked against them.
Clearing my throat slightly, I got her attention away from the book, her eyes forced away from the pages before her as she closed it against her legs.
