Evergreen

The scream sounded like a vase shattering against hardwood floor. It was so guttural and primal that Beca Mitchell believed with her entire body that it hadn’t sounded off in the first place. She was hazy from sleep, stiff from being propped up on the brick wall of her tiny room- a room she didn’t recognize at first. She hadn’t remembered falling asleep, but Emma was right, she had missed dinner.

She found herself yearning for a moment, for the floral chair that was always positioned in the corner of her room at home. It was draped with a fleece blanket and a sharp chill had settled over her room here. Her eyes wandered to the shadowed edge of the space now and she found nothing but a nasty crack dripping with rusted water.

That scream.

It made her jaw ache as it sounded again, over the hum of her own heartbeat. She had dozed off with her dip pen in her front pocket, the ink she had set up on the night table. It had leaked a spot that looked too much like Australia against the front of her pinstripe shirt. The button of her pants dug uncomfortably into her stomach as she scooted to the edge of the cot.

Evergreen Sanatorium, that’s where she had ended up. It had been so breathtakingly silent when they arrived like trained animals sat at the edges of their cages as Emma lead her down corridors. There wasn’t a sound to be had, but this one was so horrifying that it made the wallpaper curl.

She rushed to pull the faux gold watch from her front pocket. It popped open with a little click, the metal cooling against her sweaty palm. It almost burned with its starkness, but she licked her cracked lips and read the time. It was half-past two in the am.

Beca stood with much effort and slid the device back into her pocket her pants, ignoring the way the chain fell unevenly down the front of her slacks like uncombed hair. She crept silently to her door and flinched as it wailed like the source of the scream.

The hallway was still bathed in harsh neon lights, the fixtures humming above her like trapped flies. She glared at them for a moment, as if that would cease the buzz. It gave her nothing but spots to blink away as she peered down the corridor. It was empty, no one seemed to stir at the commotion.

She had pushed her boots off and left them by the cot, and thankfully so. Her socked feet made no noise as she tracked past the other closed doors that finally lead to the staircase. There was an echoed hacking bouncing off the walls, but that wasn’t the noise that disturbed her. It cut across the air once more, ending in a garbled crackling cough. It was coming from upstairs.

Beca gripped onto the railing as she walked up two full flights. Each floor was set up in the same way; unnaturally bright and deathly cold. Instead of living quarters, functioning rooms stretched to her left and her right. There was a reception desk at the top of the third floor. she squinted at the emptiness of the world.

There was an orderly, a dark-skinned man dressed in white linin slugging a mop across the tile. Beca let the breath caught in her chest pool in front of her as she pulled her shoulders back and walked towards him. The bucket that he used was muddy, and so was the water that he pushed around. There had been a stain the size of a notebook there before and he scrubbed toughly at the edges, dried and caked.

He glanced up, then down, and up again. He had pretty emerald eyes. “Ma’am?”

Beca suddenly didn’t know what to say. She was barefoot and quite disheveled and out of breath from her jog up to this level. And here was this orderly with a strong build and a kind smile with confused eyes. She hadn’t thought her way through anything. I’m the reporter from Chicago, what were those horrid screams?

“Ah, bathroom?”

He laughed dryly and leaned against the wooden stick of the mop like it was a crutch. His chin lifted towards a long hallway that jutted from the rest, and suddenly, if she did have to use the restroom, the prospect of venturing into the shadows deterred her. So did the scream that echoed once more, louder this time.

“Right, thank you-“ She frowned, holding her finger up as if to stop herself “What is that noise?”

“That would be Miss Mesa. She’s been a resident here longer than most. Likes to holler her head off until she gets somewhere with it. Usually, we can hold her off for a bit longer, but she’s unruly tonight.” He lifted his chiseled chin “You visiting family, Ma’am?”  

“No, I’m a reporter with Chicago Gazette.” The words felt like jelly in her mouth. She had never said them to a man before. It was easier with Emma, it was a part of her title and branded into her skin. But this was different somehow, this tore through her chest in a flutter of disbelief.

“In that case, apologies for the disturbance. Anything else I can help you with? Other than directions.”

She scoffed “What’s your name?”

“Ian Atkins Ma’am, the best damn orderly in this place. Just don’t’ say that to any of the other ones or they’ll try to prove me wrong, that will get them to work a hell of a lot harder.”

Beca decided that she liked Ian. He had bags under his eyes, the deep green pools reflecting the awful checkered pattern of the floor. But he worked through it and she found that admirable enough. She smiled and relished the lemon cleaner that burned her lungs.

“I'm Beca,” She offered, narrowing her eyes “This Miss Mesa, how long exactly has she been here?”

He pressed his lips into a thin line and leaned into the stick of the mop a little more. “Well, that depends, I’ve been here for a few months now and that rooms always been occupied by her shouting. She’s a bit of a legend around here, suppose.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, you ain’t hear this from me, but some of the lower staff have bets on when she’s goin’ to croak. There’s a money pot in the back. But the more religious of us believe that even when she does bite the dust, she won’t go far. You’ve heard her yell, that’s not something stopped by death.”

Beca hummed for a moment and stared down the stretch of hallway. Ian looked like the only spirit here. The mop squelched under his weight, its water a dark color that was akin to blood. If she didn’t need to use the bathroom before, her midsection ached as if it had to now.

“Religious, are we?”

“Not all of us, no.” He shook his head, kicking dumbly at the dingy yellow bucket “When you live in a place like this it’s easier to cling to the idea of something, suppose. Some of us prefer logic, but there’s a temple in the basement if you’re inclined.”

She wasn’t, not in the slightest. She wished she wasn’t blinking away sleep or the raw feeling in her bones. She should have brought up her journal, something to pull bytes from. She would shield his name from the public- no one with sense listens to an orderly, but lucky for Beca Mitchell, she didn’t have much, to begin with.

Beca fished into her front pocket, still soaked with ink, and produced a folded five-dollar bill. It was damp from her own sweat, or maybe the coolness of the weather. She clamped it between two fingers and held it out “Five on her not making it until I leave.”

Ian eyed it apprehensively for a moment before that dazzling smile cut through his expression. He grabbed and unfolded it, letting it snap like a wet towel in a locker room. “It’s a bet, Beca.”

“What’s a bet?”

A certain blush of color rushed to Ivan’s cheeks. It was painstakingly visible under the fluorescents. He stopped leaning on the stick of the mop like a vice and pushed its soaked base around. Beca stiffened at the sound of authority in the stranger's voice. This wasn’t Emma, and by the sharp tone, it wasn’t a patient either.

“Nothing, Miss Beale, the new kid and I were just discussin’ a few things.” He cleared his throat.

Beca let her shoulders drop as she turned to face the woman. Her lungs contracted and suddenly she felt like no amount of water, or liquor, in the world would quench her thirst. Even in the light of the harsh overheads, the woman held a certain archaic beauty to her; a painting that was left unfinished by just one stroke of a brush, a pencil drawing smeared by the palm of the hand.

Her hair was like fire, or the sun bouncing off of a large body of water. It flowed around her shoulders and stood out magnificently against the mint green undershirt that was hidden by a nurse's apron. She wore the same shoes Emma did, and Beca realized at that moment that they were impossibly quiet and that she had been staring, open-mouthed, for two long.

“You’re the head nurse?” She took note of the name. “I wasn’t expecting…”

The woman narrowed her eyes “No, go on, finish your sentence.”  

“Someone so young.”

“Right, well, someone as young as me also isn’t as daft as one would think. I don’t take kindly to my staff betting on the mortality rate of my patients. You seem well seasoned, I figured you would know that.”

Beca felt like she had been punched in the gut. The only thing worse than doing a bad thing was getting caught doing a bad thing. Emma had said that the nurses wouldn’t take to her in any capacity. But Nurse Beale’s hostility made her skin prickle. She was taken aback by the insult and even more by the beauty of the mouth spouting it. 

The nurse must have sensed this, she lifted her chin, tone softer as she walked towards the stairs “Follow me.”

The reporter gaped for a few moments before dashing off behind the woman. She gave Ian a half-decent goodbye first. She pretended vaguely to not be out of breath. Nurse Beale was fast, and mean, and damned attractive.

“Not even an hour here and I’m being taken to the principal’s office.”

“I’m not in charge.”

“Sure act like it.”

She stopped abruptly. Beca was shorter than her and walking faster, her shoulder hitting the other woman’s. The nurse was cold, not just in demeanor, but by the touch of a hand. Beca felt every inch of hair raise as her breath caught. She smelled metallic and hot like the base of a tea kettle.

“While you’re in Evergreen, Miss Mitchell, there is a certain code of conduct that is to be followed.”

Beca swallowed hard, “Which is?”

“Respect,” She drew out the word like the long edge of a blade “The staff respects me, and I mind Emma. But when Emma isn’t around.”

“You’re the one to follow,” Beca nodded slowly.

“Right. And I don’t much appreciate you snooping through the halls at night. Not for a puff piece.”

Beca let out a laugh that might have been too loud and nervous for the situation, but she didn’t care. Her cheeks here hot and her fingers were twitching, and the woman in front of her was dragging her stare up and down her body.

“A Puff piece? This is going to be the story of the year.”

“Quite cocky for a woman.” Beca frowned and the woman held up a hand “Mind yourself, Miss Mitchell. You know where your quarters are. I suggest you find your way back to them.”

The woman walked briskly past the staircase and through a set of doors that were labeled in big red letters. Off-limits. Beca watched as she vanished. She stood at the top of the staircase for a few moments, fingers trying to rub some feeling back into the place where her arm brushed with the head nurse.