He couldn’t bring himself to continue looking in the mirror, so he sat on the toilet and placed his head in his hands. The wounds stung as he bent, but he was too exhausted to sit upright.
Brooks stayed like that until Lytta slipped back into the bathroom with clean gauze and bandages. She made quick work of applying ointment and rewrapping his ravaged torso, silent but efficient.
When she finished, she stood behind him contemplatively, but it didn’t take long for a steely wall of determination to fall across her features.
“Come on. There’s something you need to see.”
Brooks searched her face trying to find anything there that would help this make sense. Ever since she crashed into his life at the asylum, it had been a snowball of change that he couldn’t stop or deny. Lytta turned his life upside down, and he was afraid he couldn’t fight it anymore.
With a resolute sigh, he nodded and stood to follow.
It was odd the way Lytta traveled so unnoticed around the asylum. She showed up out of nowhere more times than he could count and was never reprimanded for being near him like so many other unfortunate patients.
He pondered this as they made their way through the dark winding halls of St. Dymphna’s. He should have been keeping track of their path in case they were caught and needed to flee but, unsurprisingly at this point, his trust in Lytta dulled his paranoia.
It was easy to let her take the driver’s seat.
That, too, was alarming.
He pulled his attention from the thoughts drawing him from reality and focused on where Lytta was dragging him in the dark.
The passing halls were unfamiliar.
It wasn’t the hall with faded photos of different flower genuses leading from the treatment hall to the greenhouse, nor was it the hall filled with inkblot photos where the psychologists worked.
They turned into a hall with a single door at the end lit up by a dim light on the overhead frame, and a sign with a person stepping on a zigzag placed in the center.
A stairwell?
Brooks supposed they could be in the employee wing. Patients never climbed stairs and were only escorted in the elevators when sedated and preparing for any sort of treatment. This was typically in a wheelchair.
“Lytta,” he whispered as he tugged on the arm grasping his hand. “Where are we going–”
“Shh.” She didn’t stop to explain, only tightened her grip and sped up their pace.
When they reached the door, Lytta opened it cautiously before peeking inside. Once she was satisfied, she opened it wide and pulled him through. His bones ached and his muscles screamed from the torture he’d been through, but that didn’t stop her from urging them forward.
The race down the stairs left him breathless and, when he was close to begging for a break, they reached a platform where she shoved him off to the left and forced him into a crouch.
She knelt beside him and covered her mouth with a finger, urging him to be quiet.
He threw her an exasperated glance that he hoped said,“I’m fucking trying but you just pulled me down a million flights of stairs after I had one hundred and twenty volts of electricity coursing through my body.”
Her answering wink confirmed she got the message.
Lytta walked in her crouched position to the other side and stood.
There was a rectangular window at the top of the metal door. She stood on her tiptoes to peer through. Brooks held his breath as she watched and prayed to Zeus that the coast was clear.
He wasn’t sure he could make it back up the steps as quickly as they’d come down.
When she crouched back down, her eyes met his urgently.
“I need you to listen to me, okay? It’s going to sound crazy, butplease, shut up and listen.”
He wanted to argue. Wanted to let his confusion take the reigns as millions of questions boggled his mind. Instead, he placed that trust in her hands once again.
“When I open this door, Brooks, everything changes.”
