Chapter 25
Dr. Crow
“This way,” Crow told Dr. Knight, leading him into the restricted wing of the hospital. They ducked beneath heavy canvas sheets meant to stop the spread of any leftover disease after a flu outbreak the previous spring killed ten patients.
“Very wise choice,” Knight told Crow. “Though how can you be sure the cleaners won’t come through here?”
“They’re scheduled for August 20th. Believe me, they’re as terrified of the flu as a black plague. They won’t step foot into this hallway until the last possible second.”
Crow opened the door into Orla’s room. It was a large, square room, used for operations, with a drain in the center of the floor, no windows, and a long metal table and sink along one wall.
Orla lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Benjamin, fetch my bag,” Crow told the man who hovered in the corner.
Benjamin nodded and scurried from the room.
“How do I get one of those?” Knight asked. “If I ask Nurse Polly to hand me a tissue, she near melts me with an angry stare.”
Crow ignored the question, stepping beside Orla and placing a hand on her pulse. Her heart was racing - good.
“I’ve brought someone who’s interested in your gift, Orla. This is Dr. Knight.”
Orla’s gaze remained transfixed.
“Maybe she belongs here, after all,” Knight joked, moving closer to the bed and staring into her Orla’s face. He touched a strand of her long black hair.
Ben returned to the room carrying a black leather medical bag.
Crow took it and shooed him away, before pulling out a white doctor’s coat.
“Is that Kai-”
“Shh…” Crow snapped. “Watch.”
Orla curled her fingers, but Crow forced them open.
“Remember what we discussed, Orla. You don’t want to upset me.”
She allowed him to shove the coat into her hand.
Orla
She wanted to resist, but Crow’s words rang in her mind.
“The grave is already dug,” he’d told her an hour earlier. A grave meant for her. If she disobeyed, f she refused to reveal her secrets, he had no use for her. She would die, be buried. Her parents would never know her fate.
The stiff white cotton touched her palm, and the images poured forth.
“Doctor,” she muttered. “Stephen Kaiser. Murderer, matricide, but now I’m a doctor, Mother. Don’t you see? The girl who speaks with ghosts. The ghosts are everywhere, eating me, they’re eating me,” she screamed and clenched her eyes shut.
The second doctor, Knight, had backed away as she spit the words out. He watched her with curious dread.
Crow pulled the coat away and folded it over his arm.
“You see?”
Knight looked at the coat, and then at Orla.
“But how?” he stuttered.
“Good God, Knight. How many patients have you observed in the chamber? You still approach the supernatural with such reverence and naivety. It’s alarming.”
Knight touched the white coat tentatively, as if he feared the same images would arise in his mind.
“It’s just a coat,” he murmured, and then he shot a skeptical eye at Crow. “Did you prepare her?”
Crow nodded.
“I told her if she didn’t share the vision, I would kill her.”
“That’s it? You told her nothing of Stephen Kaiser?”
“Not so much as a name. But don’t take my word for it,” Crow added. He pointed at Knight’s watch.
Knight looked at it and shook his head.
“My wife-”
“Shut up,” Crow snapped.
Orla closed her eyes. She wanted them to leave. Alone, in the silence, she could continue to plot her escape.
Reluctantly, Knight removed his watch.
“Put it in her hand.”
Knight placed the watch in Orla’s hand.
“Sears, Roebuck and Company, a gift from your wife for Christmas, she bought a matching one for her father. You dropped it in the bath last week, feared you broke it. Your dog’s name is Critter.”
Orla gazed into Knight’s astonished eyes.
In truth, she was astonished too. She’d never spent so much time tuning into her ability. Each vision seemed to grow stronger and more pronounced. They flooded her brain, tricked her emotions so that for those minutes of seeing, she lost Orla and took on the life of the object in her hand.
“Interesting, she would pick up the name of your dog. Was she correct?” Crow asked.
“Yes,” Knight breathed. He lifted the watch and returned it to his wrist. “Critter licks my watch when I sit with her on the floor.”
“There you have it,” Crow said, clapping his hands.
Orla watched, dismayed, as Crow took a needle from his coat and slid it into her arm. He drugged her every day before he left the hospital. If she awoke at all during the night, she was disoriented and barely able to open her eyes.
“The others must see this,” Knight added.
“In time,” Crow said.
Dr. Crow
Crow invited only five other doctors of the brotherhood to the chamber. They did not record their findings in the Enchiridion. It was unorthodox. No, it was forbidden, but he couldn’t risk putting Orla on display for the entire Umbra Brotherhood. What if one of them considered the experimentation too risky?
The publicity surrounding her disappearance put all the men on edge. They were used to working with the forgotten, the abandoned, the lost.
Crow glanced at Orla, bound to a heavy wooden chair. She glared at the other doctors. During his observations, he noticed that the clarity of her impressions improved when she was upright. He wondered if increased blood pressure amplified her perceptions.
She watched the men with hooded, angry eyes. Her temper never waned, and she was surprisingly strong. The first time he took her to the chamber, she nearly broke free. Had he not sedated her, she might have escaped.
Crow bribed her to ease their transition to the chamber. In the beginning, threats of death were enough, but then she started to challenge him.
“Go, then,” she’d growl. “Get it over with.”
The bribes were more to his liking. That day he’d given her a set of clean clothes and a cup of coffee. If she obeyed him during the session, a pear would be her reward.
“I’d like to consider an injection of-” Dr. Knight started.
“No drugs,” Orla snapped. “I’m sick of your fucking drugs. I swear, I’ll never speak another word if you stick that in my arm.”
Her eyes paused on the syringe resting on the little metal table.
“Fair enough. For today,” Crow told her.
He picked up a cup and placed it in her palm. Her arms were bound with her palms face-up so they could put objects in her hands.
“Margaret, waitress, she’s fifty - no, sixty, chipped a nail this morning. Black coffee, bitter. Customer’s always right. None of her business if the man wants to burn a hole in his stomach.”
Crow beamed, his head bobbing up and down.
“Very good.”
The other men surveyed their notes. They’d each brought an item, prepped each other beforehand on what they knew. Crow laughed at Margaret’s displeasure in his choice in black coffee. He didn’t care, but it was intriguing. Private thoughts on display through the touch of a coffee cup.