The hospital she’d been at had sent me her journal and a letter informing me that she and my sibling had died during the birth. One day, I vowed, I’d find everyone responsible for her death and send them to hell. It was the only thing that got me through those early years after her death.
It was like someone had switched the power off on the world, and after that, I only lived in darkness. For decades I’d lived without a single light in the world and no one who would care if I lived or died. Before then, I hadn’t known how loneliness could feel like a tattoo across your forehead, setting you apart from the world. Those were the times when living started to feel like an unnecessary burden. A cruel punishment.
Seeing the pregnant girls walking around the institute here, getting treatment for mental illness, I wondered how many of them would be missed if they disappeared.
They were just like me.
Unwanted.
Unmissed.
Strays. The lot of us.
After the late dinner, I walked the darkened halls back toward my room. The upper floors were quiet except for the occasional shout. Some of the doors I passed had people murmuring in a constant stream behind them. Others were still as the grave.
I strode the halls, casting a long shadow in the moonlight. Dressed in a priest’s robes, I resembled my own worst nightmare.
I was halfway along the high-security corridor when a terrible scream rent the air.
I stopped, surprised by the sudden sound.
It came from a door up ahead on the right. I approached. All the doors had observation panels cut into them with thick shatterproof glass. Slowly, I slid aside the metal flap that hid the glass and peered into the room.
At first glance, I couldn’t quite make out what I was seeing. White sheets and a white nightgown.
Is she floating?
Then she moved, and I saw how it was only a trick of the light. Long hair spread across the pillows, the sheets tangled up around bare legs.
Katarina Dmitrova. Of course it was her. Since our very first encounter, it was like a tether had formed between us. When she’d looked at me outside in the snow and had immediately seen me. The real me. The monster inside. That link was pulling us together, again and again.
“I’ll open the door, Father,” a burly orderly said. “Kat can get a little worked up sometimes and needs to see a familiar face. She just needs to be woken up at night now and again. She’ll be fine once it passes.”
Kat?The orderly’s overfamiliarity annoyed me.
“Leave treating Miss Dmitrova to the professionals,” I ordered, and brushed past him as soon as the door opened. I stepped inside and tossed a glare over my shoulder.
“You can close it up. Lock it.”
“Lock it? But . . . she’s been dangerous in the past to the staff . . .”
“She’s not a danger to me; now hurry up and stop questioning my authority,” I commanded him.
He snapped his lips shut and pulled the heavy metal door shut behind me. It clanged loudly but didn’t seem to snap Katarina out of her nightmare.
Was it a nightmare or a fit? I wasn’t sure as I went to stand over her. She thrashed, the sheets coiling around her straining limbs.
She whispered something in another language over and over again. Was it Russian?
“Toï idva.”
Not Russian. Wait, hadn’t Pavol said her friend, Mira, had been Bulgarian?
“Toï idva,”Katarina repeated, tearing now at the neck of her nightgown.
I was going to have to wake her up before she hurt herself.
“Katarina, you’re dreaming,” I murmured with a gentleness I hadn’t known I still possessed.