A Breath of Fresh Air

“Higgins, you’re going to be on corridor four. Don’t worry, the ones down there aren’t too crazy. Corridor three is the one to watch out for though, so you might hear some screams. Schwartzman, you’re on two. Everybody else, business as usual. Any questions?” 

Higgins opened his mouth to ask the first of a dozen questions when Stevens slammed the clipboard back on the counter and said, “Good!” before he turned around and walked back to his office. 

“Hey, don’t sweat it, man. Corridor four is an easy one.” Higgins looked over to see Sanders clap him on the back. This wasn’t exactly comforting since Sanders was the regular patrol for corridor three. But he didn't want to be rude on the first day, so he just nodded his head and went to start his rounds. 

***

Corridor four may not have been the worst one to be stuck with, but it was still creepy as hell. The whole facility was to be honest, but Higgins hadn’t had any luck finding a better job. And he heard this was better than working in a prison where the inmates got to roam around. 

His first order of business was following the orderlies door-to-door while they delivered food to each of the patients. “How long have you been working here…” he searched her uniform for a name tag, “Brenda?” She didn’t say anything. “Okay…” Higgins muttered to himself. 

They went to eighteen cells with no issue, and then came room nineteen. He peered through the small window in the center of the door after he unlocked the drawer for Brenda to put the tray on. 

All of the other rooms had patients muttering to themselves or just sitting stoically on the bed and staring at the wall. But this one had a girl who was sleeping facing the wall. She turned when she heard the clanging of metal and made eye contact with Higgins. She looked desperately sad as she sat up, not looking away from him. Brenda was already walking to the next cell and waiting for it to be unlocked, but Higgins just felt stuck. He waited there, not realizing until it was too late that he hadn’t locked the drawer again after Brenda closed it, which this patient probably noticed. He started to panic, but she didn’t make a move for the drawer, or even the tray. She just looked at him with tears welling up in the corners of her eyes and mouthed, “Help me!”

***

“Hey, have you ever patrolled corridor four?” Higgins asked Sanders. 

Sanders quickly finished chewing before answering, “Yeah, why?” 

“There’s this girl, in cell nineteen.” Sanders started laughing. “What?” 

“Nothing, you’re just not the first new guard to notice her. She’s not hard to look at, and she doesn’t seem totally insane, so there’s that.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You didn’t think she was cute?” Sanders asked. 

“What? No, I don’t know,” Higgins said while trying not to get flustered. “What do you mean that she doesn’t seem crazy?” 

Sanders barely looked up from his lunch, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she is, but she’s one of the few you can actually have a normal conversation with when you have to walk her to group therapy. You’ll see this afternoon.” 

“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to the patients, though.”

“Geez Higgins, take a chill pill. Actually, the nurses would probably give you one. Don’t worry I’m kidding. You’re not going to get into trouble talking to her. But if we ever get our patrols switched around, don’t talk to any of them.” Sanders started to laugh, but Higgins didn’t exactly think it was funny. He couldn’t quite figure out the rapport here yet. Right now they all seemed insane. “Well, I better get back to it. You shouldn’t mess around in here. You know we only get fifteen minutes for lunch, right?”

***

Higgins walked back down corridor four to get patient nineteen to take her to therapy. He didn’t like that they weren’t allowed to know the patients’ names. They were just supposed to refer to them by number. It felt really dehumanizing, even if they weren’t “with it” enough to realize. 

He knocked on her door three times and said, “Therapy session, let’s go!” He looked in the window and at first thought she was sleeping but then noticed that her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. He was about to say it again when she slowly sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She cracked her neck and then stood up. She was taller than he thought, but also super thin. He wondered if she had eaten any of the food he dropped off earlier. 

He unlocked the door to let her out and gripped her left forearm as they walked down the hall. Even though it was technically against the rules, he had to ask, “What’s your name?” 

She looked up at him. She at least had expression in her eyes. Some of the other patients he had seen when he was training looked like they weren’t even there anymore. “Rebecca,” she mumbled.

“Nice to meet you, Rebecca,” he said. She gave him a funny look. “I’m new here.” 

“Yeah, the old guards never talk to us. They act like we’re wild animals locked up in cages ready to pounce.” 

He saw what Sanders meant now, she didn’t seem like she belonged in here. Might have been a bad idea, but he decided to ask, “What are you in here for? You seem okay.” 

“I killed both of my parents. Kind of violently, so they put me in here rather than prison,” she said it so deadpan that Higgins nearly stumbled. He felt himself gripping her arm more tightly, so he loosened his hand and picked up his pace. 

She glanced up at him and smiled, “You don’t need to be scared of me. The other patients have done way worse. It’s not like my parents didn’t deserve it.” 

“What did they do?” He had a feeling she was messing with him. 

“I don’t really want to get into it. It’s already all in my file for everyone to see.” She was totally lying. Higgins bet they didn’t do anything. 

“Alright, well, I hope you have a good therapy session.”

“Oh yeah, these are the highlight of my time here,” she said with an overexaggerated eye roll. 

He let her go, but before she could get very far he whisper-shouted to her, “Hey, Rebecca.” She turned expectantly. “What did you mean earlier today, when you asked me for help?” 

She walked back over to him, close enough that he felt like she was staring into his soul. “Because I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered back. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and now-” she looked down at the floor and seemed like she was about to cry. When she lifted her head again she had reigned it back in and just said, “All I’m saying is, the guards aren’t exactly the nicest to the patients here. And I shouldn’t be in here for self-defense.” 

Before he could say anything else to her, she was already halfway to the chairs set up in a circle. He didn’t have to stay for the therapy session, they had separate guards for that, so he walked down the maze of hallways to see if he could find his way to the file room again. It took him a few tries, but he eventually got there. 

Surprisingly, it was unlocked. The patients wouldn’t be down here, so the only people who would go in there would be the staff. He walked in and quietly shut the door behind him. Then he realized he didn’t even know her last name and would have no chance in hell of finding her file, but after checking the first drawer he realized it was organized based on corridor and room number. He found corridor four, rooms sixteen through nineteen and saw her file. “Rebecca Livingston.” He opened it up and instantly shut it again. He slowly opened to the first page again and saw what he could only assume were pictures from the crime scene where she killed her parents. 

He scanned the rest of the file as quickly as he could, he had to escort Rebecca back to her room in 30 minutes, and saw a lot of police reports and testimonies about the murders. Then he came across something he didn’t expect. She wasn’t lying. There were dozens of pictures of injuries all over her body with “clear signs of domestic abuse” written along the bottom. The thing was, that a lot of the pictures were dated after she was placed in the mental hospital. 

He checked the clock on the wall. He still had ten minutes, but knew it would take him a while to find his way back, so he carefully replaced the file and headed to the room he left Rebecca in. 

When he got there no one was talking. They seemed to be meditating or something. He waited a few more minutes and tried to figure out what he was going to say to her. By the time she was walking over to him, he still didn’t have a clue. 

He held onto her right forearm like he was supposed to and started walking back to her room. More slowly this time. He just blurted it out, “I read your file.” 

All she did was nod her head and look down at the floor. He took a deep breath and said, “Was it really self-defense?” 

“Of course it was. I’m not a total psycho.” 

“Say that again and look at me.” He had been trained to tell when someone was lying, so he stopped in the hallway and turned to face her. 

“Yes, it was self-defense. I swear on my life.” She was looking him straight in the eye. She wasn’t fidgeting or looking to the left or doing any of the other tell-tale signs of lying. He was the first to break eye contact. 

He didn’t know what else to say, he just turned back around and walked her back to her room. He locked her in, and she didn’t say anything. He almost expected her to, but she just looked resigned as she went back to bed. 

His shift was done for the day, so he went to the break room to grab his stuff and go home for the night. 

***

Rebecca never slept. She must have, otherwise she would probably actually go insane, but she never remembered falling asleep. She figured she just drowsed off when she got exhausted enough everyday. 

So she wasn’t woken up with a start when she heard the soft knocking on her door. It was that new guard, Higgins. She always made sure to check the badges. She never knew when it would be useful information. 

He kept looking from side to side, so she went over to the door. “What?” she asked him quietly. 

He seemed to be making some decision in his head right there on the spot. She tried not to get her hopes up, but she watched him carefully. He stared at the floor for seventeen seconds before she saw his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, and then he unlocked her door. 

She hid her grin as best she could and asked, “What are you doing?” 

“I’m helping you escape. We have to hurry. The sun will be all the way up soon, come on.” He didn’t grab onto her arm this time, so she just followed quickly after him. 

“Why are you doing this?” She tried to get a good look at his face, but he was walking so fast she couldn’t get at the right angle. 

“I don’t know, but I don’t think you should be in here. Your file seemed really shady with how you ended up in here and the whole case just felt off.” He said it all in a rush. 

“Well, thank you.” Then he gave her a quick glance and just curtly nodded his head. 

“Almost there.” She had never been to this area of the facility before. Then she saw it, the exit sign, all lit up in bright red letters. She tried to stay calm and not run straight for the door. He stopped a few feet short and turned to her. “There aren’t any guards at the gate or anything, so just walk alongside the highway, but don’t hitchhike or anything.” 

“Yep, got it. I plan on getting as far away from here as possible.” He gave her an odd look, and she swallowed. But then he opened the door, and he let her go. 

She smiled at him and touched his arm, “Thank you,” she said genuinely. 

“No problem. Just hurry up, my shift starts in an hour, so I gotta get back.” She nodded and gave him a final smile before walking out the door and hearing him let it close behind her. 

As she stepped out into the early morning sunshine she took a huge breath of fresh hair. She hadn’t been outside in over three years. It felt even better than she imagined. 

The new guards are always so gullible, she thought.