Nightingale Read online

  When June turned toward her bed, she started at Eleanor’s presence.

  “What happened?” her roommate asked, propped against the wall and wrapping her sweater around herself. “I was in my appointment, and I heard screaming, and then Nurse Chelsea opened the office door, asking for Joya all frantically. They made me come straight here. They made me run.”

  June tried to find the right words, tried to figure out a way to help Eleanor understand without having to explain every detail, but she burst into tears instead.

  the institution

  “Oh, my god,” Eleanor said, and went to June. They wrapped their arms around each other, and June wept.

  “Simpson’s dead,” she managed, and Eleanor went stiff in the embrace.

  They slumped down on Eleanor’s bed and talked through it. June told her all that had happened leading up to finding Simpson, but couldn’t bring herself to describe exactly what she’d seen. She told Eleanor about all the steam, about the state of the floor, and about Simpson’s blood-drenched dress and legs.

  “I can’t believe she’d kill herself,” Eleanor said after they’d talked for a long time and shared stunned silence. “I knew she got upset from time to time about the brain worm, but why now, after all this time?”

  “That sort of thing doesn’t always make sense,” June said, thinking of Dad’s brother, Lawrence, who had killed himself when he was nineteen years old. Dad never talked about it, but Mom had spilled the beans to June one evening while they were washing the dishes, before the business deal and the dishwasher and everything else that had changed their lives forever. “Brains get sick. People can’t help it. It isn’t fair.”

  As she said it, June wondered if suicide was really what this was. Was it possible? Yes. Was it also possible something else had happened to Simpson? Her gut said yes, as terrified as that thought made her feel.

  What would become of them all? What was the point of all this? Did this place have any real interest in treating people properly or not? It was bewildering. Everything was so wrong, but everybody went on like it was the most normal thing in the world. It wasn’t. And yet, there was nothing to do about it.

  Or was there?

  Nurse Joya had seemed pretty interested in the details of June’s life leading up to the morning she’d come downstairs to the Mom-thing waiting for her. What if she just told Joya what she wanted to know and saw what happened? June could play along until she had nothing more to offer them, and then she’d leave. Once she escaped, she could go get Eleanor and they could find help, tell somebody about the atrocities that were happening within the walls of the place, get the other girls out, get them all real help.

  But do I need real help? June wondered, a question that haunted her constantly. Did Mom and Dad really get replaced? I feel like they did. But I’d feel the same way if I was ill, wouldn’t I? She asked herself if she believed that was possible and, if so, how. She remembered what she had said about aliens to Joya at her first appointment. It was always aliens with June. In her mind, in her story... She reached up and ran her fingers over what she was telling herself were wrinkles but she was secretly afraid were scars.

  She loved to think about her story before she came here, loved to bask in the unexplainable bond with it that she felt like she’d built in her daydreams, a weird tale of the macabre. She’d always been a little obsessive, she knew deep down. And she’d always known she felt a little off.

  But why?

  She felt like there were no good options to explain any of it. More paranoia washed over her, made her feel sick, made her tremble and twitch a little bit. She felt unabashedly angry at her own body. It wasn’t supposed to hurt her like this, fail her like this. And if it wasn’t, if her body wasn’t sick like people were telling her, what did that mean about the world she was living in, or the one she’d written about in her story?

  It was all too terrifying to comprehend. June wished she could opt out, then remembered Simpson and recalled that she didn’t know if Simpson had killed herself or was murdered. The trembling and twitching worsened.

  “Do you remember our promise?” Eleanor whispered, breaking the long silence at last. She leaned slightly into June, absorbing some of her trembling energy, breathing long and deep until June did, too.

  “I won’t forget it,” June answered. “But... I’m really scared, Eleanor.”

  “So am I,” Eleanor admitted. “But I don’t remember feeling any other way. At least now, you’re here.”

  “Do you remember your family, now that I’ve prompted you about them?” June asked, scared to hear the response.

  “Yes, I remember them” was the answer, and June breathed a sigh of relief. “But they feel more like a dream than anything else. I haven’t seen them since I’ve been here, not even once. I feel like something happened to them. I don’t think it’s right, this place.”

  “It’s not,” June assured her. “That’s where our promise comes in.”

  “Right.”

  They fell asleep in the silence that followed, limbs tangled, their chests rising and falling as the hours went on. When June awoke, Eleanor was gone and the door to the room was open.

  Trying not to panic, June pulled her sweater on over her rumpled dress and wiggled her feet into her slippers. She stuck her head out of the room, and noted most of the other doors in the hallway were open, too. She looked in the other direction and saw that the recreation room was pretty bustling. She shuffled over and took a second to locate Eleanor on their usual couch, reading a book, while Jessica and Cassy watched television nearby.

  “Where’s Adie?” June asked and as she sat, she realized it was in the chair where she’d last seen Simpson alive. She remembered what Simpson’s dead face had looked like in a cruelly realistic flashback, and pulled her legs up onto the seat so she could hug her knees.

  “Medicated in her room,” Jessica said, while Cassy pretended not to hear June.

  June sincerely hoped Adie wasn’t having some sort of terrible trip on top of seeing her roommate’s demise. June dwelled on Simpson’s missing face, then immediately recalled the Nurse Joya monster in the tunnels also, dismembering a body like she was shucking corn. June’s eyes darted around the room to the nurses’ station where, of the four nurses, two were looking straight at her.

  Breathe, she told herself. Don’t give them reason to pay much thought to you. Sit still. Act casual.

  And she did, until it was time for dinner. June had hoped she’d somehow get called in for another appointment, but apparently she would have to wait.

  * * *

  Three weeks passed, and just when June was starting to wonder if they’d somehow read her mind already and weren’t ever planning to call her back, she woke one morning to find Nurse Joya sitting at the foot of her bed.

  “Early start today,” she whispered, dramatically raising a finger over her lips while she gave a sharp little nod in the direction of Eleanor sleeping the next bed over. “Don’t want to wake the dead girl, now, do we? Meet me at the nurses’ station in two minutes for your meds, and then we’ll walk down together.”

  June sat up and dressed, giving Eleanor a little shake before she left so that it wouldn’t seem as though she disappeared. Staying aware of each other’s whereabouts was the least they could do to help suppress their worries and the unbearable tension that had been building in the days since the events surrounding Lauren and Simpson. “Going to my appointment,” she said when Eleanor’s eyes opened. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck,” Eleanor said sleepily, and turned over to face the wall.

  After taking the blood-red capsule under Joya’s watch, they went together to the office behind the giant door. It made June even more nervous that this was only her third visit since she’d arrived. That felt like forever ago. The other times, she’d been close to all but demanding the old doctor behind the desk spe
ak to her, but now it was different. She would go along with whatever they wanted, in hopes of her unlikely release.

  This time, the vent-obscuring trash can was gone. But one of the grand bookshelves had been moved from one end of the room to the other to cover the spot instead. No way, June thought, the pit in her stomach clenching. No way!

  “Something wrong?” Joya asked from her usual weird place behind the doctor, her red lips turned down. “You look awfully interested in that bookshelf. Mind telling me why?”

  June felt her face heat up. She looked to the nurse, who was regarding her with a startling intensity. It felt so much like she was challenging June about what she’d seen in the tunnels. But that couldn’t be possible, she thought, even though it was one of June’s darkest fears that it very much was indeed.

  “I’m ready to talk about my life with you now,” she blurted in reply, desperate for her plan to work. She forced herself to breathe slowly in order to appear as relaxed as possible.

  “Oh?” Nurse Joya sounded surprised. The doctor gave a little grunt and leaned forward. June couldn’t help but stare at him. She’d finally gotten something out of him. This really was what they were looking for. This was what would set her free!

  “Yes,” June said and cleared her throat. She looked to her lap. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about the stresses of my life at home contributing to...what happened with my parents. Telling myself they weren’t themselves.”

  “Do you still believe they were replaced?” Joya asked, pencil in hand, ready to record everything.

  “No,” June said, strongly. “I didn’t want to go through with all the things they wanted from me. I wanted to do my own thing. I almost did, actually.” She thought about the letter she’d received addressed to J. Hardie months prior. She thought about how she wouldn’t finish her book in a retreat cottage in upstate New York after all. “But it didn’t work out, and things kind of exploded in my family. All because of me.” She was saying this because she thought it was what the nurse and doctor would want to hear, but it was a harder truth to face than she’d expected. “My parents thought I should have been a better young woman.”

  “But you didn’t want to be.”

  The nurse couldn’t have looked more genuinely interested in June’s answers, to the point where June second-guessed her assessment of this place for a moment. Then she saw the newly moved bookshelf out of the corner of her eye, remembered Nurse Joya’s intensity when she’d asked about it just now and remembered Simpson and the brain worms. Get yourself out of here!

  “I did want to be,” June lied. “I just wasn’t very skillful at certain things, I suppose.”

  “Things like...” It was the doctor who spoke this time. Still as a statue, Joya glanced down at him.

  June felt a flare of hope in her chest again and looked into the old man’s eyes. Something about him wasn’t quite right: his body’s bone structure seemed disproportionate to the size of his head, his wrinkles folding so deeply into themselves that they looked fake. His voice was much perkier than she’d imagined, though, almost matching Joya’s in tone.

  Let me go! June thought with all her might, looking desperately into the doctor’s eyes. She remembered the first time she’d been in here, how this man had washed over her body with his eyes. She leaned a little closer to the desk and licked her lips.

  “Things like cooking fancy dinners,” June answered, almost sweetly. “I love to bake but never got the hang of cooking things like a nice roasted chicken or a meat loaf. That was my mom’s strength. She just wished I had that facility, too.” She paused. “Maybe I just should have stopped struggling against the current and let her teach me, really pushed myself to try.”

  The doctor and Joya were quiet for an uncomfortable length of time. June once again was struck with the odd feeling that the two staffers were somehow communicating without speaking.

  “That all sounds fine and dandy, June Hardie,” the doctor finally said, his voice growing dark. “But what we’d really prefer to hear from you is what things you were good at. I read in your file that one of your hobbies was writing.”

  Book, book, my book, my book, I miss it, I miss my sweet book...

  “Not really,” June said, feigning confusion. “I liked to read for sure, maybe played around with a short story or two when there wasn’t any more housework to do, but generally, not as much as I enjoyed baking or playing cards.”

  My book is done but it doesn’t feel finished, oh I miss my story so much, the stars, the creatures, the girl, the gaping holes in her head, the way she made everyone on Earth scream after she returned...

  “Interesting. I don’t see baking in your file at all,” Nurse Joya said, reviewing the folder in her hands. “Your parents seemed to have left it out, which is confusing. You’d think they’d remember to include it since you loved it so much.”

  June was still, her mind racing with potential ways to answer.

  “It’s almost like the people who filled out this file are not the same people who raised you,” Nurse Joya suggested, and a mean little smile grew on the doctor’s lips.

  She’s trying to trick you, thought June. “Of course it was the same people,” June said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s just not logical that they were replaced. But there is one thing I remembered. I really didn’t sleep at all the night before the incident.” She found herself talking faster and faster. “That’s probably why I lost my head for a little bit there. But I think I’ve got myself together, and I’m ready to go back to my parents and help them around the house and everything else.”

  It was so much more difficult than she’d anticipated, to appear genuine and calm when she couldn’t stop thinking about Simpson’s melted face and Lauren’s fluid-stained bandages and the tunnel that had appeared in the wall.

  “That’ll be enough for today,” Joya said suddenly, and the doctor gave a little nod, causing the loose skin on his neck to waggle around. “You sure had a lot to say, compared to your other appointments. I think we may be making some progress at last.”

  “I think so, too,” June answered excitedly, working her hands together as she followed Joya out. She glanced at the doctor to offer him a goodbye wave, but he looked angry. He glared at June as she retreated, causing a chill to run down her back. “What are the next steps, now that we’ve gotten to this point?”

  “Well,” Joya said, opening the door and offering June a wide, perfect smile. “Next steps will be up to our dear doctor, of course, but rest assured we will let you know. And next time when you come in—”

  “Next time?” June couldn’t help but interrupt. No, no, no!

  “Yes,” the nurse said, her smile fading into a hard frown. “Next time you’ll tell us what happened the night before the incident that brought you here. The party you mentioned before.”

  Thinking about the party made June’s throat close up, but she shook it off as best as she could, desperation driving her fully at this point.

  “I could do that right now—” June tried, but Joya threw her hand up to stop her.

  “No.” Nurse Joya looked back at the doctor, then back at June. “We should probably wait until you’re ready to tell the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking smug. “Liar.”

  June’s stomach felt heavy. “Excuse...excuse me?”

  The nurse leaned close enough for June to smell the waxy perfume of her lipstick. “Liar,” she whispered, then straightened up and began to shut the door. “Just like that poor little Simpson girl.”

  This time, she heard no muffled mocking tones behind the firmly closed door. There was only silence, which somehow felt much worse.

  days past

  Before she knew it, high school graduation had snuck up on June, and she found herself shopping for a dress at Sears with Mom. Ever since
she’d gotten her scholarship acceptance letter for the writing retreat in New York, June’s life at home had been significantly less difficult to handle. She continued to go on dates with Robert and was relieved that he never brought up marriage during their hour-long walks in the park or while they were watching movies at the drive-in. She even let him take her dancing one night, something she had always wanted to try but felt too clumsy to do outside of her bedroom.

  There was something magical about living a life that she knew she’d be leaving behind soon, June realized as she bounced and swayed to the wonderful new rock-and-roll music that had started playing at the clubs, laughing herself silly while Robert beamed. She could enjoy it as something separate from herself, a trivial thing with zero power over who she was and what she would do with herself next.

  “Just look at these!” Mom clapped her hands together in delight as she looked down the row of fancy dresses. They were all cut almost exactly the same, only varied by pattern or color. “These are gorgeous, June! What do you think?”

  June strolled right over to the rack and picked out a sleeveless dress, mint green with a lace trim. It had a snug bodice, and the full skirt was made of a swishier material than the usual, less giving crinolines.

  “This one’s lovely,” June said, knowing her mother would love it.

  “Oh, my word, that is beautiful!” Mom stepped forward to rub the skirt material between her fingers. “I’ve never seen you pick something like this before—it’s amazing!”

  June fantasized about the writing retreat almost every night. She had to make a true effort to stop herself from writing too much, because she didn’t want to get too close to the end and then have it be easy and quick once she arrived in New York. She wanted to get to the real guts of the story while she was there: the payoff of it all, the reason she wanted to tell it in the first place. It was surprisingly difficult to refrain from sitting down to work on it, though; a few times, she found her forehead damp with sweat with the effort of having to find something else to do in between housework tasks.