PRESENT DAY

Hours Until Morning: 13

The psych ward is on the ninth floor of the hospital.

I stand in front of the set of heavy metal elevator doors, not sure if I want them to come faster or slower. If the elevators don’t come

soon, I’m going to be late. But on the other hand, every moment I stand here waiting for the elevators is a moment when I won’t be in a locked psych unit. So there’s that.

While I’m waiting, my phone buzzes inside my scrub pants pocket. The thought of not being able to use my phone soon is nothing short of terrifying. It’s like having my arm amputated. Granted, this may indicate an unhealthy relationship with my phone, but I don’t care. I need my phone. What sort of place doesn’t have cell reception? It’s inhumane.

I dig my phone out from the deep pocket of my blue scrubs, hoping it’s a call from Pauline, the psych administrative assistant, saying they don’t need me to cover Ward D after all. But of course, it’s not. It’s my mother.

Great.

My mother is the last person I want to talk to right now, but if I don’t answer and my reception goes out, she’s going to panic. So it’s better to take the call now and get it over with.

“Hi, Mom,” I say, just as one of the elevator doors finally opens. I’ll let this one go.

“Amy,” she says. “How are you doing?”

“Busy,” I say. “I’m going to be studying tonight.”

Okay, I haven’t exactly told my mother about my evening on Ward D. As anxious as I am about the experience, she will be even worse. It’s not so much that she worries a lot in general, but she knows Jade was a patient here. She knows that entire history.

She won’t want me returning to Ward D.

“How is psychiatry going?” she asks me. In the background, I can make out the evening news playing on their small television that was purchased about twenty years earlier. My father watches every night without fail. You could set a clock by it.

“It’s fine,” I tell her. “Easy.” “You’re not interested in—”

“No,” I cut her off. “I’m not interested in psychiatry as a career.

Definitely not.”

I would take anything else. Surgery, internal medicine, OB/GYN. I’ll even be that kind of doctor who does nothing but look at rectums all day, because that’s an important job and I could do that. But I can’t treat people with psychiatric disorders. It’s the one thing I’ll never do.

“I wonder how Jade is doing,” my mother blurts out.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” I say, even though I’m sure of no such thing. “Do you ever hear from her?”

A couple of years ago, I got a Facebook friend request from Jade Carpenter. And not only did I not accept the request, I blocked her. “Not really.”

“I haven’t seen her since the funeral…”

I get a stab of guilt. Two years ago, Jade’s mother died of a drug overdose. Apparently, she had been popping narcotics, and one day she took too many and stopped breathing. The funeral was on the same day as my first big anatomy exam, so I skipped it. I figured Jade wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t there, considering how long it had been since we last talked.

Except part of me thinks she definitely noticed. And she was pissed.

“Mom.” I look down at my watch and then at the heavy elevator doors in front of me, which slide open with a dull thud. “I have to go.”

“Okay, good night then, sweetheart. I love you.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, because I always feel weird saying “I love you” on the phone in public. Except then after we hang up, I feel bad. Why didn’t I tell

my mother that I love her? It would have been easy enough to say.

After all, what if that phone call is the last time I ever speak to her?

I push that morbid thought out of my head as I shove my phone back into my pocket. A wave of nurses in flower-printed scrubs sweeps me through the elevator doors, and I end up pushed up against the corner, which is just fine. Two nurses are chatting right next to me, and one of them is smack in the middle of describing a bad date last night in her loud, Long Island accent just as the elevator doors slam shut again.

Here we go…

I watch the buttons light up as we move from floor to floor. Three, four, five… The elevator seems to almost be moving in slow motion. Shouldn’t a hospital elevator move quicker than this? What if we had an emergency? What if I were in cardiac arrest? I would be dead by the time we got to the Cath Lab.

Not that I’m in any hurry to get to the ninth floor. But at this point, I just want to get it over with.

“…And he was using his fork to pick food out of his teeth!” the young nurse in front of me exclaims.

“Gross,” her friend comments.

I can’t help but think that I would trade this night for a date with a guy who picks food out of his teeth with a fork. Hell, I would take a guy who picks his nose with a fork.

The elevators finally open, and a mildly British female computerized voice announces, “Ninth floor.” I step into the hallway, which is lit by fluorescent lights that show every single crack in the paint on the wall. A giant blue sign has an arrow pointing to the right:

WARD D

It’s not clear to me why the psychiatric unit is called Ward D. I asked Gabby about it when she started the rotation, and she didn’t know either. I didn’t research it further after that.

After I turn the corner, I see a heavy metal door all the way at the end of the hallway. As I get closer, I can make out the lettering on the sign that is hung on the door. There’s a big red stop sign with the warning:

STOP

THIS DOOR IS LOCKED 24/7

There’s an intercom mounted next to the door, presumably to contact the nurses’ station to gain entrance. And then a keypad below it which can be used by those lucky enough to know the code. And there’s one other thing by the door. Something that makes me dread this night even more than I was one minute earlier.

Cameron Berger.

Oh God. What the hell is my ex-boyfriend doing here? Was that what his “hey” was about?

“Amy!” Cameron is waving frantically at me like I’m not five feet away and I might have missed him. “Are you on tonight too?”

Like me, Cam is wearing a short white coat and a pair of light blue scrubs—likely also purchased from the medical student bookstore on the third floor of the hospital—except his are about ten sizes larger than mine because the guy is built like a linebacker. He used to play football in college, but not good enough to go pro, and anyway, he always wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon, not a jock.

“Cameron,” I say tightly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on tonight.” He lifts his chin, which juts out a little more than it should and makes him look a bit like the snooty rich kid in one of those old John Hughes teen romps my mom made me watch when I was a kid. “You too?”

“Where’s Stephanie? She’s supposed to be the other medical student here tonight.” I add accusingly: “It was on the schedule.”

He lifts a shoulder. “She needed to swap.” Great. This night keeps getting better and better.

Cam’s light brown hair is falling slightly in his eyes like it usually does. And like I always used to, I get that urge to brush it out of his face. I better not though, because if I reach up there, I might end up scratching his eyes out. “How have you been, Amy?”

“I’m fine.”

“Still living with Gabby this year?” “Yep.”

“Great, great.” He scratches at the slight stubble on his square jaw. “Doing anything fun the rest of the weekend? After this, I mean?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah.” He nods thoughtfully. “Same. I haven’t been up to much either, you know?”

I don’t know what to say so I just stare at him. I can’t believe I have to spend the entire night with this guy. The worst part isn’t even that he dumped me—I’ve been dumped before and I can handle it. The worst part is why.

At the beginning of the summer, Cam informed me that we couldn’t see each other anymore because he wanted to focus all his energy on studying for the board exam, and he was concerned that spending time with me would get in the way of that. That’s right—he dumped me for a test. Way to strike a blow to my self-esteem.

Amy—test. Amy—test. Well, that’s a no-brainer. Never mind that I had to take the exact same test, and yet I was miraculously able and willing to juggle studying with a relationship.

I’m glad I didn’t know he was on tonight with me. Because then I might have been tempted to break out my little bag of makeup or do something with my dark brown hair besides pulling it into a low ponytail behind my head. And then I wouldn’t respect myself anymore.

He’s got his eyes on me while I whip out my phone and bring up the number for the psych admin office. I click on it, my fingers crossed, all the while knowing in my heart that everyone has got to be gone for the night. I hold my breath while the phone rings on the other line.

“So this will be an interesting night, huh?” Cam comments. Still ringing. Five times now. “I guess.”

“You have reached Pauline Walter, administrative assistant to the chief of psychiatry. Our office is currently closed. Please leave a message or call back during the hours of…”

Great. I knew they would be closed. And even if I had gotten through to Pauline, what would I have said? I can’t do my assigned rotation because the student I’m rotating with dumped me a couple of months ago? That’s pretty weak.

“Who are you calling?” Cam asks.

I shove the phone back into my pocket. “Nobody.”

“Look, cheer up. Not everyone gets the experience of spending the night in a locked psych unit. It’s kind of cool, isn’t it?”

I raise my eyebrows—he would think so. “So it doesn’t bother you at all that we’re going to be locked in there all night?”

“Why would it? It’s not like they’re going to torture us or do shock therapy. Anyway, we’ll have the code to get out.”

“What if one of the patients attacks us?” “That’s pretty unlikely.”

It doesn’t surprise me one bit that Cameron isn’t sympathetic. There’s clearly something wrong with his empathy gene. Is that a thing? I think I may have learned about that in genetics. I also learned about a disease where your urine tastes like maple syrup. “Fine. Whatever. I guess nothing bothers you.”

And then we’re just standing there, awkwardly. I wonder if he buzzed to get inside. Well, I’m not going to be the one to do it. I’ll stand out here all night if I have to, claiming ignorance. Nobody let us in—oh well!

“Look.” Cam’s cheeks take on the slightest tinge of red—his face always gets splotchy when he’s feeling uncomfortable. “Amy, I—”

I don’t know what Cam was going to say to me, and I never will, because at that moment, a deafening alarm blasts from the door in front of us. We both leap backward, and a second later, there’s a loud click. The door to the psychiatric unit is unlocked.

Cameron steps aside. “Ladies first.”

Yeah, the one time he acts like a gentleman…

As the door swings open, my stomach drops. All I can think is that I don’t want to be on this unit. I want to turn around and run down the stairs until I’m out of the hospital. It takes every fiber of my self-control to keep from doing it. I really, really don’t want to be here.

And nobody could possibly understand why except for my former best friend.