Not What it Seems by Nicky James

Seven

River

The shock of the moment was almost paralyzing. Cyrus’s hand was in mine, shaking and telling me good luck, but my mind was a million miles away, riveted on the key card lying on the floor in the corner under the camera.

He’d done the unthinkable. The impossible. Was I dreaming? Was this happening? If I was a betting man, I’d have lost the house. When I’d woken that morning, I was certain it was all over. Cyrus was too rule-bound. Too conforming. No matter what he believed, no matter how tirelessly I convinced him, I hadn’t thought him capable of taking this kind of risk.

I’d been so, so wrong.

The evidence was less than five feet away, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Cyrus released my hand. In the fraction of a second before he turned away, our gazes clashed. The strain on his face pulled at the creases beside his eyes. The man was tormented. Afraid. His jaw was like iron, his complexion draining to a washed-out, sickly gray. Tension radiated off him in waves. I didn’t have any way of reassuring him. Not yet.

Cyrus cut his gaze to the door, and in a flash, he moved, slipping away without another word. I needed to act fast, or I’d miss the window. The door hadn’t latched behind him, and I was moving, flying toward the dropped key card and shoving it down the front of my sweatpants before an orderly came to bring me back to the common area.

I was amped up, my blood roaring through my system. My thoughts raced out of control as I considered what I had to do. Cyrus had given me the key—literally—but he wouldn’t be my guide. It was up to me.

His words surfaced. He’d warned me. Cyrus had given me a time frame. I had less than twenty-four hours before this opportunity expired. I had no doubt he had every intention of writing a report and delivering it to the director as he’d implied. He would do his job. Whether I stuck around to see the results was up to me. It was get out now or go to jail.

I’d hardly had time to process the evidence he’d brought forth. Two homeless girls in a morgue. Chemical burns. This was not a coincidence.

The door clicked, unlocking. An orderly I knew only as Jared poked his head in. He wore gray scrubs and an indignant attitude. He was all brawn and intimidation. I supposed with what the nurses went up against some days, it was an attitude developed on the job.

“Let’s go.”

Jared was a man of few words.

The lounges where the doctors conducted their sessions were outside the main body of the ward, which required patients to be escorted to and from by a nurse with a security officer shadowing our every move. It was a poorly designed setup and was the result of an old building with limited restorations. I followed Jared back to the main body of the ward and into the common area. The officers rarely came into the ward itself. They made rounds in the hallways beyond, ensuring everyone was locked in tight.

The scent of lunch cooking drifted down the hall from the dining room and hung in the air. It reminded me of my high school days and the cloying scent of cafeteria food.

Patients could roam freely in the ward. We were locked in. Hallways ran along the north and south sides, leading to patients’ private bedrooms. The two halls joined up at the vast dining room. It took up a large section of the west wing and was where we took our meals. The food was tolerable, but it wasn’t good. We ate a lot of freeze-dried mashed potatoes, canned vegetables, and overcooked, processed meats. Pasta was a big one and flavorless chili.

Other than our personal rooms, patients had a large common area with several tattered couches, a wall-mounted TV, and tables along the edges with shelves and shelves of various activities on hand. Everything was old and worn out. The games and puzzles were all missing pieces, the books were torn, the couches were threadbare and spilling their innards along split seams. No one could find the remote for the TV anymore, so unless one of the nurses was willing to get a chair and change the channel, we were stuck watching shitty programs. If I never saw another episode of Chef’s Kitchen, it would be too soon. At least we had movie night twice a week, not that patients could unanimously agree on anything. I’d seen more rom-coms than I cared to admit.

So, those were my choices. Watch shitty TV, find a board game or a book, stare out the window, or hang out in my bedroom. Every day for the past five fucking weeks, that was all I did.

It could have been a prison cell.

Unless it was yard time or mealtime, not much happened at New Horizon. People came and went from sessions down the hall, but otherwise, the handful of patients on this floor were kept secure—and drugged.

We were a random bunch. Although I hadn’t made friends, I was familiar with most people on the floor and their… quirks. Mental health came in all shapes and sizes, and these were some of the more severe cases, so it was… different. I’d learned a lot, but mostly I’d learned how to stay out of the way.

Nurses wandered around. I knew them all by name but kept a distance from them as well. The idea was not to draw too much attention to myself.

The ward held a constant air of anticipation, but not much happened. A lot of patients were too drugged to cause problems. It was a sad truth and one I wasn’t sure the outside world knew much about. On occasion, someone had an outburst as the nurses liked to call it. When there wasn’t much to do in a given day, outbursts provided a sad type of entertainment. I knew I’d probably earned a one-way ticket to hell thinking such a thing, but it was the truth of my existence at New Horizon.

In the beginning, I’d tried it out, had my own outburst. Of course, mine was staged. Planned. I was playing the game to see how far I could push my fake symptoms. I’d ended up stuck with a needle and left to drool on myself for the following six hours, so I’d never done it again.

Feigning schizophrenia was no easy task. It was exhausting. My limited knowledge of the disorder didn’t help. In the beginning, when I didn’t have the excuse of being medicated to fall back on, I’d made plenty of mistakes. Either I didn’t portray enough symptoms or showed too many. It must have been wildly out of proportion with the disorder and was no doubt why Dr. Irvine had been called. No one was quite sure what to make of me. My initial presentation was near textbook. The rest was a scam.

When I’d learned Sally, a young redheaded woman in the second-floor ward, had schizophrenia, I’d spend days studying her and noting her behavior. She became someone I could mimic. Things got easier after that, but it was too late. I’d already painted a target on my head, and the doctors were skeptical.

Which made the police skeptical.

Which caused a huge problem.

Instead of lingering in the common area like I might on a normal day, I retreated to my bedroom once Jared had returned me to the ward. The rooms were cramped with single beds, dressers, tiny attached bathrooms, and grated windows. Mine overlooked the yard. Four bland, eggshell-white walls with peeling paint were all there was to look at. There was no true privacy.

I had to come up with a plan. Time was not on my side. Every hour that ticked by was one closer to my expiration date. Alone in my room, I considered the hospital’s layout and what I could recall from the day I’d been admitted. That day had been a fast-moving blur. As far as I could remember, the main administration area was on the first floor. From that point on, things were locked down tight.

A handful of security officers roamed the hallways. Personnel all required an access key to move from section to section, floor to floor, ward to ward. And, so far as I knew, every floor and hallway was equipped with cameras. Somehow, I needed to figure out how to move around unseen to get out of the building. It sounded impossible. Were the cameras monitored? If so, how closely?

My best bet would be moving at night. Staffing was reduced to a skeleton crew, and there would be less chance of getting caught. I leaned on the door frame of my bedroom, observing the nurses as they moved throughout the ward, slipping in and out of the locked-down areas with ease. No one batted an eye. It was routine. They had access.

Although I knew where most of them were, I took better note of the cameras and which directions they faced. An idea surfaced. Getting out might not be as hard as I first thought. I needed to blend in, not as a patient but as part of the staff.

Off the common room was an area where the nurses frequently came and went. A staff lounge and multipurpose office space. They went there to eat their lunch, write reports, and take their breaks. It was also where they collected medications for happy, happy pill-time. If I had to guess, they kept their personal belongings in there as well. It wasn’t the way out. Another locked door on the opposite end of the common area was used when nurses came on and off shift.

I tallied how many nurses worked on this floor, adjusted the number to accommodate for error, and added the regular doctors who came and went, along with the few security officers I’d seen come and go. It was busier during the day, but the numbers were cut by more than half at night.

Abandoning my room, I found a spot in the common area where I had a direct view of the nurses’ lounge, and I monitored them coming and going. From where I sat, I got a general sense of the layout beyond the door. What were the chances someone kept a spare set of scrubs in a locker?

My gaze drifted to a woman I knew only as Ginny. She was a spitter. In fact, I’d seen her cover a nurse a time or two with mouthfuls of chewed food when she was agitated and people got in her space. The previous week, a guy named Rudy had had an outburst during lunch. Two of the nurses who had run over to intervene ended up wearing his tray of food. I felt confident there would be an extra pair of scrubs inside that lounge. This wasn’t a job where you could afford to be unprepared.

I needed to get inside the staff lounge, then I’d have a disguise. From there, it would be a simple matter of strolling out of the building like I was any other employee at the end of a shift.

The rest of the day passed quickly. In the yard, I paced, measuring each step of my escape, calculating how I would make it happen. Blend in. That was the goal. No one would know. Beyond my escape from the hospital, I wasn’t sure what I would do or where I would go. All of it hinged on my freedom, so there was no point in getting ahead of myself. If I failed to escape, the rest was moot.

Shift change happened at seven in the morning, three in the afternoon, then again at eleven when the night shift came in. I knew the drill. Two nurses worked at night in the west wing ward. Two hallways of patients. At eleven, after they conferred with the staff who were leaving, the night nurses made rounds, checking in on the patients who were all in their rooms by that time.

I lay under the covers and listened as one of them shuffled down the north hallway at a lazy stroll for the first nightly check. They happened in two-hour intervals, and I assumed they were mandatory. My goal was to wait until the second check at one in the morning. It would be later, quieter, and the staff would be more at ease.

It wasn’t uncommon for a patient to wander to the common area at night if they weren’t sleeping, so it wouldn’t raise alarms if I was caught on camera. However, if I was busted keying into the staff lounge, I could land in hot water. Once I had my disguise, I should be safe. I’d be nothing more than another nurse.

Warner, one of the male nurses I’d come to know who frequently worked the night shift, poked his head into my bedroom a few minutes later. I pretended to be asleep. The shadows were deep, and I’d pulled the curtains over the window. The light from the hallway was the only source of illumination.

Warner didn’t linger, and after confirming all was well, he moved off, heading to the next room. I slipped out of bed and crept to the door. I wanted to get an idea of his movement and how long he took to perform his checks. The other nurse would be mirroring him in the south hallway.

I peeked around the corner in time to catch Warner as he emerged from the room next door. He turned and kept walking, his back to me as he continued. His checks were fast—too fast. The distance between rooms was too short. He came out of the next room and lumbered along the hall. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, paused, checked the screen, then pocketed it again and kept going. When he turned in and out of rooms, it left me vulnerable. Warner was in profile, and if I were in the hallway, he’d see me. When I moved, it would have to be while he was either inside someone’s room or while he walked away with his back turned.

Farther down the hall, a secure janitorial closet sat between rooms. It meant Warner had to go a bit farther with his back turned before reaching his destination. That was my pocket of time. It offered me a half dozen or more seconds to get around the corner and into the common area. From there, I could race to the nurses’ lounge.

I stayed hidden in the doorway, calculating time. The round of checks didn’t take long before Warner reached the end of the hallway and turned around. The nurses were done in under four minutes unless there was a problem. Four minutes wasn’t enough time for me to get into the lounge, find spare clothes, change, and get into the main hallway without being caught.

“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath, diving back into bed before Warner passed my room again.

It was a risk I had to take. I didn’t have a choice. There was no room for error.

In bed, I lay quietly, listening to the sounds around me, waiting the final two hours before I put my plan into motion.

At twelve thirty, a miracle happened.

A patient decided to have an outburst. It was not something I could have counted on, but it was a blessing in disguise. Screaming, shouting, and crashing sounded from the far end of the north hallway, a handful of rooms down from mine. I tried to think of who it might be—not that it mattered—but a small part of me felt guilty for using their struggles to my advantage.

Warner and a female nurse, Tyanna, raced down the hall together to figure out what was going on. I grabbed the opportunity and went with it. Bunching my covers in the rough shape of a sleeping body, I slinked to the doorway and peered out. The nurses had vanished inside the screaming patient’s room at the end of the hall. Someone had flicked on the light, and steady, placating voices came from within.

I didn’t hesitate. I flew down the hall, heedless of how it would look if seen on camera. Tugging the key card from the front of my pants, I ran it over the locking mechanism on the staff lounge door. It clicked, and the light changed from red to green. I ducked inside, closing the door behind me and leaning against it, my heart slamming.

In seconds, I took in the full effect of the room, which I hadn’t been able to appreciate from the common area. It was small. A workstation with computers sat off to one side with open binders beside a keyboard and a ceramic mug filled with a warm brown liquid, wafting steam. The faint scent of cinnamon and bergamot filled the room, telling me it was tea. There was a medication trolley beside the desk, tall and wide with locks all down the front—proper locks that required proper keys. A whiteboard, bulletins, and schedules hung in clusters on the walls. There was a small beige couch and a black table.

One of the nurses had unpacked their lunch on top, and it sat abandoned—a container of raw vegetables and a thermos of soup. A tattered paperback rested beside it, open, spine cracked and face down. Against the back wall were lockers. Not many and not large, but enough to accommodate the rotation of staff who worked in the area. Most of them were secured with padlocks. I hadn’t considered that. Only a couple were without. I ran to the bank of lockers and pulled open the unlocked doors only to find them empty.

“Motherfucker. Shit, shit, shit.”

Panic surged in my core. If I had to escape in sweats and a T-shirt, I was doomed. There was no way I’d get out without drawing someone’s attention.

My eyes caught on a lower locker. From a distance, it had appeared as secure as the rest of them, but the lock wasn’t latched. It hung loose like someone had left it that way while they ate their lunch, knowing they’d have to return their belongings inside.

I pulled the padlock off and yanked the door open. It was packed full of all kinds of things. A jean jacket—even though it was summer. A handheld bike pump. A bike helmet—someone must cycle to work every day. A few paperback books, each as battered as the one on the table behind me. A nice pair of headphones. A baseball cap. And, under it all, a couple of extra pairs of scrubs.

Bingo.

I was stripping before I’d even yanked them free, stuffing my sweats into an empty locker where I hoped they’d go undiscovered for a while. The scrubs fit well, so I assumed they must belong to Warner since we were close to the same size. Dressed, I grabbed the baseball cap and dropped it on my head too, tugging it down to shadow my face.

I slung the key card around my neck and aimed for the door back into the common room.

Before opening it, I took a breath, held it, and hoped no one would be on the other side. This could all go to shit if I walked out and came face to face with Warner and Tyanna.

I wasn’t religious, but I said a small prayer and moved.

No one was in the common room. Noises down the hall told me the nurses were still engaged. I kept my chin down and hurried to the main doors of the ward. This was it. The slow-rolling click of the lock disengaging echoed like thunder in the room, and I was sure someone would hear it. I was out in a flash. Like a ghost, I vanished down the hallway beyond, thanking whatever god might exist that the security officer on shift was elsewhere. There was a good chance I could keep my chin down and it wouldn’t trip their radar, but it wasn’t a theory I wanted to test. My heart was a battering ram against my ribs, and my insides shook so badly I was convinced my bones would turn to dust.

Step one, complete.

From here, it was all about playing a game. Once I was far enough from the ward, I slowed my pace, resisting the urge to run like my ass was on fire the whole way out of the building. It would only serve to make me look guilty. I was a nurse, leaving late from a shift. Maybe I’d picked up a few extra hours, grabbed some overtime. It was all about confidence. If I believed my role, others would too.

Outside the ward, the hospital might as well have been a ghost town. The lights were off in most areas and dimmed to a nighttime setting in others. The old building had so many unused sections it was eerie. I found a stairwell and made it to the first floor without running into anyone. I didn’t know if the alternate exits were alarmed at night, so I didn’t risk it and headed for the main doors. It was almost too easy.

With the baseball cap pulled low, I keyed through the final locked door and walked with purpose toward the main exit. The front lobby was well lit. Overhead fluorescent bulbs made me squint after having been in the darker parts of the building. There were twenty feet between me and freedom.

And one man.

The security officer at the administration desk had his feet kicked up as he watched videos on his phone, stuffing pretzels down his throat. A bank of six small monitors sat on the other side of the desk. He wasn’t facing them. As I’d suspected, it was the middle of the night and people were too relaxed, not expecting anything to happen. The monitors flipped at intervals, showing fuzzy black and white images from inside the two wards on the second floor and down a few vacant hallways.

Again, I assumed the role of a late-working nurse. Nothing out of the ordinary. I was supposed to be there.

As I crossed the lobby and in front of the desk, the guy glanced up. In my periphery, I caught the way he startled at my sudden appearance.

His feet hit the ground with a thud, and he laughed, scrambling to sit properly. “Jesus. You scared the shit out of me, man. It’s the middle of the freaking night. Are you just getting off?”

Mind racing, I slowed my pace, knowing it would raise alarm bells if I ignored him. I played up a yawn, keeping my head lowered as I turned back, maintaining a backward pace toward the doors. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. Shit went haywire upstairs. I stuck around to help out.”

I was about to vanish out the door when his face scrunched, and he asked, “Wait. Are you the new guy in the east wing?”

This was not what I needed. “Yeah. Great way to start a new job, huh? Working until all hours of the night. I was supposed to be done at eleven. I hope someone remembers how flexible I am.” I feigned another yawn. “I’m beat. I gotta sleep so I can come back tomorrow.”

The guy laughed. “Get used to it, brother. Nurses around here are run off their feet. Have a good night, man.”

“Yeah, you too. See you around.”

Stepping outside into the muggy July night was a blessing. Relief flooded my veins, and I wanted to drop to my knees and cry. The sky was bright and filled with stars. The moon was nothing but a sliver like the Cheshire cat was smiling down on me, impressed with my cunning escape.

I aimed for the road beyond the parking lot at a fast clip, not looking back. My blood pumped, my skin tingled, and my teeth vibrated, chattering together. There would be time to savor my victory later. I had to get as far away as possible. When they discovered I was gone, all hell would break loose. The police would be called, and they’d likely send out a search team.

I needed to get somewhere safe to hunker down and figure out my next step.

New Horizon was in a secluded area of St. Thomas, not outside of town but cusping the outskirts. With a population of approximately forty thousand, St. Thomas wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small either. When I reached a commercial area of the city, I kept my eyes peeled for a location where I could make a discreet phone call. I had no money and no local friends. Even if I had been in my hometown of London, I would have been hard-pressed to know who to call.

Everything was locked down in the middle of the night. Stores were closed, and the streets were mostly vacant. I found a dive bar on one corner with a hand-painted sign that read, Denny’s Pub. A few cars were parked along the street out front, but at that time of night, midweek, even the bar wasn’t bringing in many customers.

Twangy music bled through the doors and into the silent night. The windows were dark and tinted, but a neon sign flashed Cheap Beer. Another sign, this one plastic and hanging crooked on the wooden front door read, Open.

I crossed the empty street and shoved my way inside, taking in the gloomy atmosphere. The unfinished wood floor was full of cracks with wide gaps between the planks of wood. It creaked as I walked on it, groaning with age. Old tables were scattered throughout, painted in a thick layer of black paint that was old and peeling away. The crowd was thin and primarily older men. A hum of voices, clinking glasses, and a stinking mixture of stale beer and body odor hung in the air. It was somber and unpleasant.

I squeezed between the crunch of empty tables as I made my way to the long bar against the back wall. A few taps sat off to the side, offering customers the standard ale choices. A small collection of liquors lined a shelf behind the bar, nothing fancy, most of them off brands. The guy working had a portly frame and a thick gray beard that hung to midchest. He had a stained hand towel slung over a shoulder.

Barely sparing me a glance, he slid a customer a few stools down a foamy amber beer and wiped his hands before tipping his chin in my direction. “What do ya want?”

“A phone book and a phone.”

“I serve beer. You having a beer?”

“I don’t have any cash. I need to find an address. Make a call. Do you have a phone book?”

The guy huffed a humorless laugh. “I don’t reckon they make those anymore. If you ain’t drinking, find the door.”

“Come on, man. Do a guy a favor.”

“What are you looking for?”

“A friend, and he’s staying at a hotel in town.”

“Which one?”

“Don’t know.”

A new customer approached the bar, and the scraggly bartender abandoned me to take the order. I waited, figuring he’d come back if I was persistent enough.

Keeping my head down, I scanned the room. No one seemed to care or have noticed me. The crowd was too concerned with what lay at the bottom of their mugs.

After filling another pint, the bearded man stalked toward me, chest puffed and his round midsection making him look nine months pregnant. He wrung the towel between his hands as he took me in. Without a word, he snagged a cordless phone from beneath the bar and slid it toward me. From his pocket, he withdrew a personal cell phone, peeled a napkin from a stack, and took a minute looking something up and scratching down numbers.

He slapped the napkin down in front of me. “These are the only hotels in town. You have five minutes. After that, you order a beer, or you hit the road.”

I didn’t waste time. The napkin contained five phone numbers, no hotel names. I entered the first one into the phone.

The receptionist answered on the second ring, using the name of the establishment. “Sunnyside Motel,” he quipped.

I had no clue where Dr. Irvine was staying, but he’d clearly stated he was going back to his hotel.

“Yeah, hey. Can you transfer me to Cyrus Irvine’s room?”

“Hold, please.”

Some piano concerto played while I waited. A moment later, the same person returned to the line. “I’m sorry, we don’t have anyone here under that name.”

“Dammit. I must have the wrong place.”

I hung up and dialed the next number down.

No luck.

Then I tried the third.

“Triumph Hotel. How can I help you?” A woman this time.

“Yes, can you please transfer me to Cyrus Irvine’s room?”

This person didn’t put me on hold. There was a long pause and the clicking of a keyboard before she said, “Transferring you now.” When the line clicked, I hung up.

The bartender was chatting with a customer at the other end of the bar. I waved a hand to catch his attention, and when he decided to saunter over, I shoved the phone across the bar top and asked, “Triumph. Where’s it located? How do I get there?”

“You not getting a beer?”

“I told you, man. I’ve got no money. Triumph. Please.”

The man sneered and took his time putting the phone back before the guy he’d been chatting with down the bar yelled out, “Give the kid a break, Den.”

“Near the highway. On Rathburn. Keep going down this road until you get to Ingersol Avenue. Turn right. Rathburn is about a half mile down. Go left, and it’s by the exit ramp for the highway. Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.”

I was halfway to the door when Den called out, “Next time, you buy a goddamn beer first.” Then he muttered, “Fucking kids.”

It was a hike to get to Triumph Hotel. By the time I made it, I was pouring sweat. Summer nights might cool off by a few degrees when the blazing sun went down, but the thick humid air was enough to make it miserable.

I didn’t know what room Cyrus was in, so I stopped at the front desk and assumed another role. It was all about that confidence again.

The young woman working the desk greeted me with a professional smile. “Checking in, sir?”

“No, my boyfriend already did. I was supposed to be here hours ago, but I got held up in traffic, and now I just locked my keys and bags in the freaking car with my phone. I swear, everything that could have gone wrong tonight has gone wrong.” I gave an embarrassed chuckle and leaned against the administration desk with the air of an exhausted traveler. “Can you do me a favor and call his room for me? Just let him know I’m on my way up. I don’t want to freak him out. He can be jumpy. It’s Cyrus Irvine.”

“Didn’t you call about an hour ago?”

“I did, then I was forced into a detour due to construction on the highway.” There was construction on every highway in the summer, so I didn’t expect her to bat an eye. “He’s probably nodded off again, and me pounding on the door will give him a heart attack.”

My smile won all the points, and the young woman returned one of her own filled with understanding and sympathy.

“Sure. No problem.” I waited for a beat while she picked up the phone and checked her computer guest list before punching the code into the switchboard. It had the appearance of a complicated five-digit number, but the last three were two, one, six, which was all I needed to know.

The receptionist smiled as she cradled the phone to her ear, listening to it ring. I winked and waved, then slipped into the stairwell and bounded up to the second floor before Cyrus answered and the kind, gullible woman clued him in.

At room 216, I knocked, a smug smile on my face.

The door flew open less than a second later, and a ridiculously sexy and disheveled Cyrus Irvine glowered back, wearing nothing but a tight pair of underwear.

“No,” he snapped, his eyes bulging. “Absolutely not. You’re not coming in here.”

When he tried to slam the door in my face, I put my foot in the way and grinned. “Hey, sexy. How’s my partner in crime?”