In the six months after her passing, Torri had been too consumed with grief to think much about her grandmother’s prediction. But it was only three months after Nana had died, that she’d had that first little blip of a sighting of the black alien ship heading towards Earth.
A little blip that had turned into endless fugue states and horrible night terrors. Nana had been right—the Seeing Dreams weren’t easy.
Not at all.
I wish she was here now to advise me—to help me. Nana always knew what to do, Torri thought sadly. Her grandmother wouldn’t have allowed her favorite granddaughter to be locked up in a mental institution. She would have gotten Tori out and given Dr. Burrows a piece of her mind. She would have—
“Well now, how are you tonight, darlin’?” a familiar voice said in her ear.
Torri jerked automatically and looked up, unable to conceal the shock and fear on her face.
It was Mike O’Toole, one of the orderlies, staring down at her from his great height of six feet six inches. He was a shambling bear of a man with skinny arms and legs but a huge beer belly that didn’t seem to match the rest of him. He had blotchy, fish-belly white skin and long, orangish-red hair pulled into a lank ponytail at the back of his thick neck. There was also a beard to match—a long wiry one the color of a ripe carrot. Little bits of food were always stuck in it, near his mouth. His eyes were no-color gray that always lingered too long on Torri’s breasts.
“You,” she whispered, unable to keep the fear out of her voice. “But…you…I heard you had tonight off.”
He shrugged his bony shoulders, grinning at her.
“Maybe I came in, just for you, darlin’. Came just to tuck you in.”
He reached out to cup Torri’s shoulder in one big, rough hand and Torri jerked away.
“I’ve told you before—don’t ever touch me!” she said tightly.
“Now is that any way to talk to your old friend, Mike?” He made a mock-sad face at her. “I can help you out around here, you know. All you have to do is help me out back.”
Mike O’Toole’s idea of “helping out” was slipping drugs and alcohol to the patients who could pay for them. What he expected in return was…
Disgusting, Torri thought, taking another step away from him but not quite daring to turn her back on the huge orderly in his flapping pink scrubs.
She had seen Mike taking patients into the soft room, when he thought no one was looking. It wasn’t often used—Dr. Burrows preferred to drug his patients into submission rather than locking them up. So Mike had started using the padded room as a sort of personal office, where he gave out the contraband items he smuggled into St. Elizabeth’s.
Torri had seen him doing it during her first week there. She had left dinner a little early and a flash of movement had caught her eye. Turning her head, she’d seen it again—a bobbing motion that was almost but not quite visible through the narrow chicken-wire glass window. There was something going on in the soft room, but it was hidden in the far corner—barely visible.
Curiosity piqued, Torri had grasped the door handle and silently turned it. She swung the door open as quietly as possible and peered around the corner, wondering what was going on.
Janice, one of the younger female patients, was on her knees on the thick padded floor, kneeling before O’Toole. Torri had heard the nurses whispering to each other that she was in St. Elizabeth’s for trying to kill herself—and for opioid addiction. O’Toole had his scrubs down around his hairy, skinny ankles and he was pulling Janice forward, both meaty hands buried in her long, brownish-blonde hair.
“Come on, darlin’—gag on it!” Torri heard him saying as he forced his shaft roughly down the girl’s throat. “I got you them pills you wanted, now you got to pay your debt! You better make it worth my while or no more pretty white pills for you!”
At his words, Janice—who had been gasping and choking—redoubled her efforts. Drool was dripping from her bottom lip and wetting the padded floor below, but she did her best to keep going, though the big orderly was fucking her throat and mouth furiously.
At that moment, O’Toole’s no-color eyes had risen to meet Torri’s. But instead of yanking away from Janice and trying to cover up what he’d been doing, he just kept on doing it. As he did, he stared right at Torri and licked his lips suggestively.
“You…you can’t do that!” Torri had exclaimed, horrified by what she was seeing.
“Looks like I am, though.” O’Toole grinned nastily at her. “You wanna come join in, darlin’, or do you just like to watch?”
“Dr. Burrows—” Torri began.
“Oh, are you gonna tell on me?” O’Toole taunted her. “And who do you think Dr. Burrows is gonna believe, darlin’? His favorite caretaker, or some dizzy bitch who screams the house down every night?”
Shaken to her core, Torri had withdrawn. He was right, she had realized with a sick feeling in her stomach—if it was her word against Mike O’Toole’s, Mike was going to win every time. He was a man and she was a woman who had been admitted to a mental institution. Who was going to believe anything she said? Who was going to take her word over O’Toole’s?
Nobody, that’s who, Torri told herself. Not in this place, at least.
Ever since that, she had done her best to avoid Mike O’Toole. But the massive orderly seemed to have taken a perverse interest in her. He went out of his way to be the one to wake her up from her night terrors when she had them. More than once, Torri had felt a hand grab roughly at her breast as the AllFather’s glowing red eyes dissolved into O’Toole’s bearded face.
She had already lived in fear of the night, because she knew she would have terrible nightmares. Now her fear was even worse because she wondered what the big bastard might try next.
“I came in just to see you tonight, darlin’,” he said, taking a step towards her and giving her a leering grin. “Figured you might need some cheering up since you and your hubby aren’t doing too good.”
“My marriage is none of your business!” Torri snapped.
O’Toole shook his head and made a tsking sound.
“Now, now, darlin’—I’m just tryin’ to comfort you. The way I hear it, you and him aren’t gettin’ along so well. Sounds like he might just leave you here forever.”
Hearing her own worst fears voiced by the huge orderly made Torri’s stomach twist into a knot.
“You don’t know anything about it!” she shouted, backing away from him. “So just shut up and leave me alone!”
“Is there a problem here?” The head night-shift nurse was suddenly right beside her, frowning at Torri reprovingly. “Is there a reason you’re raising your voice, Ms. Morrison?”
“I don’t know what her problem is, Nurse Kathy.” O’Toole put on an expression of hurt and shock. “I just said hello to her and she started shouting at me! I don’t know—maybe she needs to be sedated.” He shrugged his bony shoulders in apparent confusion.
“No, that’s not true.” Torri struggled to make her voice sound calm and clear but inside her heart was still racing and her stomach was twisted into knots. “I’m fine,” she said to the nurse quickly. “I don’t need to be sedated—I was just heading for the Patient Lounge to watch TV.”