He was being annoying, but I knew he was doing it on purposethis time to distract both of us. To make us feel more normal as a chill crept up the back of my neck.
“You don’t have any money,” I shot back, playing along.
“Fine. I’d spend Dad’s money to see you naked.”
“Gus doesn’t have enough money for that.” It was definitely cold up here. Someone had turned the air-conditioning up high. There was a door at the end of the corridor, the only exit.
“We should have gone the other way,” Bradley said.
“I don’t think the other way is any better. Besides, people work here all day, every day. How haunted can it be?”
“Pretty haunted,” was his reply. “Violet, let’s go get a sandwich. I’ll even buy.”
I put my hand on the door and turned to him. “We’re doing this,” I said. “It’s for Ben.”
“What are we doing, exactly?”
He didn’t know. We’d talked about his shirt and his biceps, not my little brother or the terrible night I’d had last night. I’d told Bradley almost nothing at all.
“Your father’s file said that there were no medical records for Ben,” I explained. “No photos, either. No dental records. He didn’t go to school. According to the records, it’s like Ben didn’t exist.”
Bradley frowned. “That can’t be right.”
“No, it can’t. Ben existed. If he existed, he had to be born, right? And if he was born in Fell, it would have been here.”
“So we’re looking for a birth record.” Bradley rubbed his chin. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and it made a raspy sound. “Your mother didn’t have anything?”
“Nothing. I got a complete catalog of her belongings when she died. There was no paperwork. But it gets stranger. I have no memory of my mother being pregnant.”
“Wait. What? So—”
The door opened, bumping both of us back. A man in a white coat and horn-rimmed glasses—presumably a doctor—came through. “Excuse me,” he said curtly, and walked past us down the hall toward the elevator.
I looked at Bradley. “You saw him, right?” I whispered, because for a minute, I wasn’t sure. Who wore horn-rimmed glasses anymore?
“Yeah,” Bradley said. “Violet, what’s going on? You think your parents stole a baby?”
“I don’t know anything,” I hissed back. “That’s why we’re here. Let’s do this quick.”
I opened the door and walked through before I could second-guess myself, before I could turn and leave. It didn’t matter that all signs pointed to this being a normal hospital on a normal day. Something was wrong. I’d spent too many years seeing the impossible—and paying the price—not to believe my own instinct.
That voice in my ear from yesterday.Sister sent me.
She couldn’t be here. She wasn’t capable of it. Then again, she’d never sent anyone after me before.
I knew why my gut had told me to bring Bradley with me.
We had gone the wrong way. This was a ward, with a nurses’ station, corridors cluttered with equipment, orderlies coming and going. Three nurses in blue scrubs stood at the nurses’ station, two of them talking quietly, one of them writing on a clipboard. Doors opened from the corridors, presumably to the patients’ rooms.
Most people, I knew, hated hospitals. The smells, the fluorescent lights, the reminder of sickness and death. I didn’t feel fear or hatred, only tired resignation. This was all too familiar to me. Invisible weight settled on my shoulders, and I felt my teeth try to grind. I took a breath and made myself relax.
I took a few swift strides to the nurses’ station and spoke to one of the chatting nurses. “Excuse me. Hi there. I’m looking for Joan Sleeter.”
The glance she gave Bradley and me was the incurious kind that only a nurse is capable of. It saidI don’t know who you are, and if you’re not my problem, I truly don’t care.“Oh, the admin wing,” she said. “You went the wrong way at the elevator. You can get there through that door, then take a right.” She pointed to a large set of double doors at the end of the corridor, sizable enough to easily wheel a bed through, as all hospital doors were.
They swung open, and an orderly pushed a man in a wheelchair through. A nurse passed them, going the other way, leaving the ward.
The nurse was wearing a starched white uniform, not the blue scrubs of the other nurses. Her hair was tied up tightly at the back of her head. The doors closed behind her.
