"Doct... Doctor Fairmile, I presume?"
"Indeed. How can I help you?"
Despite being almost certain to whom she was talking, this threw the young woman. The man in front of her didn't look like a doctor. It was perhaps a cliché to expect a white coat and stethoscope, but even she was surprised by the threadbare unbleached linen shirt, hanging over faded grey slacks that looked two sizes too large. He wasn't even wearing a name badge. He didn't look like a doctor, no matter how polite and accommodating he appeared to be. If not for the twisted lanyard slung about the man's neck bearing a single unmarked security fob, Fairmile could easily have been mistaken for one of the patients here. And this was a thought that her brain refused to discount.
"I'm... I'm Peter Belmont's daughter, I--"
"Ah Megan! Your father speaks very highly of you, it's so nice to be able to put a face to a name."
"My father's mentioned me? I didn't think he'd be in any condition to..."
"Oh in his er, calmer moments, yes. He's quite responsive some of the time."
"Well, that's why I'm here. Would you say my father is showing any signs of... of improvement?"
"Ah. I must be honest with you Megan. Overall, he is not..." The man in the linen shirt looked suddenly deflated, as if resigning himself to a conversation he'd hoped to avoid. His hands twitched in the air between them while he grappled for the right words, as if absent-mindedly conducting an orchestra of schoolchildren.
"You saw your father before he was admitted, in fact you placed the call I believe, so you know how distressed be was?" Megan nodded quickly. "Well, he's still moving between periods of great psychological upheaval and comparative clarity. The onset and the duration of each is impossible for us to predict, so I'm afraid your father has to remain in our care. For his own safety, as much as others'." He seemed to almost be biting his own tongue, now.
"Of course, yes."
"As well as looking after Peter physically, we're still running tests to try and get to the bottom of what's affecting his behaviour this way. But... well, the brain is a labyrinth we've yet to map fully, and the 'mind' is another place entirely." Suddenly aware that he had almost become glib, the man's speech dropped into a confessional tone. "Without wishing to alarm you, your father is in uncharted territory..."
"Is my father in danger?"
"Megan, we may all be in danger. You've seen yourself the things that happen when he dreams. We're worried he may somehow be... actually causing those events. We just have to figure out how, before we can get to the why."
"Hold on... those... are you saying those things were real? Those... those monsters?" Her face, that had been growing red with anger moments earlier, drained of colour as if a plug had been removed.
"Well, yes. Or as real as anything we'd normally choose to believe, day to day. Certainly, the deaths of the two care workers during his last seizure have been considered hard evidence by the police..."
The rational part of Megan's brain might have been amazed at how quickly the entire world could be up-ended, whether it be a sudden sound of screaming coming through a wall, the deafening click of the front door lock when returning to an empty house, or just a rapidly escalating conversation in a stark, whitewashed corridor. But that rational part of Megan's brain was drowned out by the noise echoing around those walls. Her noise.
"The WHAT? Deaths? When did this happen?? Are you saying my father's KILLED someone?"
"No, no absolutely not. Well, not as such." Megan said no more but shot an involuntary look which demanded the clarification of such a facile rebuttal. "Look, all our staff are highly trained, but working here is often dangerous as you can imagine. It's part of the job. The patients can be unpredictable and people are injured from time to time. Sometimes things get out of hand, everyone knows this and no one will be pressing charges--"
"Charges? No really, are you telling me my father has killed somebody?"
"No Megan, I'm just telling you two people died. Well, one person died. We can't find the other one. Or, not all of him. It's a little--"
"Okay, that's enough. I have no idea who you actually are, where's the administrator's office?" Megan was by now white with rage and not a little fear, her own hands shaking by her sides. Those of her verbal opponent were raised flatly in a defensive gesture.
"Miss Belmont, please, if you'll just come with me--"
The rest of the sentence was cut off as an unseen alarm bell burst into life; a sudden unbroken shrieking cacophony of panic which only seemed to escalate as it bounced around the hard corridor. Megan winced, although she noticed even now that her guide seemed to be calculating what this could mean rather than actually being worried by it. Somehow, seeping in through the milliseconds of dying reverberation after the hammer struck the bell, Megan could hear another identical alarm in the corridor beyond the double-doors she had entered. Whatever had triggered this alert, its result was for everybody.
Not attempting to speak over the clamour, the doctor took Megan by the elbow and led her swiftly to the doors at the far end of the corridor. The man's confidence was such that she didn't resist this, despite the feeling that she was being guided deeper into the heart of chaos.
Before they reached the doors, the alarms ceased. The echoing quickly faded even though the tinnitic after-effect persisted, and the sound of their shoes scuffing the polished floor returned.
"Okay, well that's something..." Fairmile chimed positively, his left hand already outstretched to push the swing-door open without breaking their stride. The door resisted his presumption as he crashed into it, however. Locked. As was its adjoining twin on the right. Mumbling apologetically to himself, the doctor reached for his security fob, leaned forward and swiped it across the black plastic panel by the door frame. The small red bulb above it showed no acknowledgement of this action and both doors remained immovable.
Suddenly aware of the thundering silence only punctuated by their accelerated breathing, Megan looked unashamedly lost now and studied the man's face for any sign that this was a normal situation. She didn't find one. Instead, Doctor Fairmile grew increasingly more agitated as he restrained himself from trying his security fob again, but also from beating the doors which wouldn't let them through.
Then the lights went out...
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• Short stories © WorldOfBlackout.co.uk, all entries are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Y'know, mostly.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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