PRESENT DAY

The person who opens the door to the locked unit is a woman in her forties wearing flower-printed scrubs and a badge pinned to her chest that says “Ramona” in large block letters, with the last name “Dutton”

beneath in much smaller letters. Her hair is pulled back into a sensible bun, and she looks like the no-nonsense sort of nurse who has been doing this job for the last twenty years and will be doing it for another twenty years. I can imagine this woman administering shock therapy without blinking an eye.

She narrows her eyes at me and Cameron, sizing the two of us up with one sharp look. “Yes?”

Cameron steps forward first, ever the charmer. “I’m Cameron Berger and this is Amy Brenner. We’re the medical students assigned to work here overnight tonight.”

Ramona looks us over one more time, then glances back over her shoulder. She hesitates for a beat, and I’m almost worried she’s going to turn us away. Well, maybe worried isn’t the right word. More like, hopeful.

“Yes, fine,” she says. “Dr. Beck is at the nurses’ station. He’ll give you an orientation.”

Much like all the other units in the hospital, the psych ward is shaped like a circle. Cameron and I travel in an arc in the direction of the nurses’ station. We reach it at about ninety degrees. And sure enough, a man is standing at the nursing station, wearing green scrubs and a long white coat with the name Richard Beck, MD embroidered over the left breast. When he sees us approaching, he raises his right arm enthusiastically.

“Hey there!” he says. “I’m Dr. Beck. You must be…” He reaches into the pocket of his white coat and pulls out a copy of the med student call schedule, which he takes a moment to inspect. “Cameron and Amy. Yes?”

Dr. Richard Beck’s appearance surprises me. When Gabby was going on and on about how smart he was, somehow I pictured someone older, with a long white beard that he would stroke while thoughtfully answering questions about the human mind. (Yes, I apparently believed our attending physician tonight would be Dr. Sigmund Freud.) But Dr. Beck is not like that. At all. First of all, he’s not old. Certainly not old enough to grow a long white beard. He’s in his thirties, with slightly sun-kissed brown hair, and a hint of dimples in his cheeks when he smiles at us.

Now I finally get why Gabby likes him so much.

“Welcome to Ward D,” Dr. Beck says, his dimples deepening as he smiles wider. “I appreciate your help tonight, and hopefully you can learn a little too.”

“I look forward to it,” Cameron says.

Kiss-up.

Dr. Beck looks at me as if expecting me to add something. “Thanks,” I finally say.

He nods, satisfied with my answer. “Let me show you around.”

“Can you show us how the keypad works on the door?” I say, a bit too eagerly. I can’t help it though. It’s the only way out of here. I’m not going to be able to relax until I’ve got the code.

“Amy’s freaked out about being in a locked unit,” Cameron explains. “She thinks she’ll be trapped here.”

I shoot him a look.

Dr. Beck laughs. “As well you should be! Don’t they teach you anytime you’re in a movie theater or auditorium to know where the marked emergency exits are? Let me show you how to get out of here if you need to.”

The two of us follow Dr. Beck back to the door where we came inside. As we walk past the patient rooms, the door to room 905 cracks open. A pair of blue eyes flecked with yellow peers out at me, and a shiver goes down my spine. Whoever is inside that room is watching us.

And there’s also something terribly familiar about those eyes. It looks so much like…

No. No way. It couldn’t be.

When we get to the door to the unit, I see that ominous stop sign pasted on the door, and the keypad to the left of the door is glowing slightly green. Dr. Beck lifts his index finger to the keypad.

“The code is 347244,” he tells us.

I whip my phone out of my pocket. Sure enough, there’s no service. But I’m able to open a memo note, and I type in the six digits.

“You punch the numbers on the keypad, then hit the pound sign,” he explains. Then he demonstrates it himself. After he hits the pound key, a deafening buzzing sound rings out through the entire unit, even louder than it was outside. He laughs at the expressions on our faces. “Loud, right?”

My ears are still ringing. “A bit,” I admit.

“We want to know if anyone is entering or leaving the unit,” he says. “Now if somebody hits the wrong code, there is a quieter buzzing sound.”

He demonstrates this by hitting the number one six times. The sound that results is like somebody getting the wrong answer on a quiz show.

“Nobody is getting out of here if they don’t know the code,” he says, “but it’s helpful to know if somebody is trying to escape.”

As I watch him demonstrate the code, I get a prickly feeling on the back of my neck. Like somebody is watching us. I try to ignore the sensation, but then I can’t stand it anymore. I rotate my head to take a look, and sure enough, a patient is standing there. Staring at us.

The man is gigantic—way bigger than Cameron and twice as heavy— wearing what looks like a T-shirt on top of another T-shirt, on top of another T-shirt, the armpits soaked in sweat, and sweatpants that are hanging down under his massive belly. His eyes have a strange vacant look to them.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he tells us in a Spanish accent. Dr. Beck is silent, so I say, “Oh?”

The man turns his attention to Dr. Beck. “My father say I’m leaving tomorrow. So tomorrow, I go.”

“Sure,” Dr. Beck says agreeably.

“You gotta do it,” the man insists. “My father say you have to.” “Don’t worry, Miguel,” Dr. Beck says.

The man gives us all a long look, then he turns around and walks away, down the hall. His steps are slow and shuffling, like he doesn’t quite know where he’s going and he’s certainly not in a hurry to get there.

“Is he leaving tomorrow?” Cam asks.

“Oh no,” Dr. Beck says. “Definitely not. But if I disagree with him, he’ll go back to his room and call 911. Easier to avoid that situation.”

“Why was he wearing like four T-shirts?” Cam wants to know.

Dr. Beck sighs. “We need to supervise him better when he gets dressed.”

I wrap my white coat tighter around my chest. “What was he talking about? With his father?”

“Oh.” Dr. Beck shrugs. “He thinks his father is God.”

His words sent chills down my spine, but Cam laughs. “So he’s a schizophrenic then?”

“No.” Dr. Beck frowns. “He’s not ‘a schizophrenic.’ We don’t refer to patients that way. Miguel is a human being, and he’s more than his psychiatric diagnosis. He is not a schizophrenic—he’s a man who has schizophrenia. Do you understand that?”

Cam’s face turns slightly pink. “Right. Of course. Sorry.”

But then when Dr. Beck turns away, Cam flashes me a conspiratorial smile and rolls his eyes in my direction. I don’t smile back. I really appreciated what Dr. Beck said—it’s similar to what Dr. Sleepy has said. The patients locked in this unit are human beings just like everyone else. A mental health diagnosis is not a death sentence. All the patients in this unit are just trying to get better.

I will make it through the night. Everything will be fine.