White Space

“Those girls? I’ll thank you to remember that you’re speaking about my ward. Of course, Emma.” Arms open, Jasper’s already stepping past Kramer. “You’ll come to me, won’t you? No more fuss, eh?”

Oh, just watch me. “No more fuss,” Emma says, and then she darts forward, her left hand reaching for the walking stick. Startled, Jasper flinches, but he’s too slow.

“No!” Reaching for Jasper’s shoulder, Kramer tries to pull the other man back. “Emma, stop!”

But she won’t; they can’t make her. Wrenching the stick from Jasper’s fingers, she whips it around like a club in a fast, high, whirring backhand. She feels a jolt in her wrist as the heavy ivory head connects, and then Kramer’s head snaps back, a spurt of blood jumping from a gash on his jaw. Stumbling, Kramer falls into Jasper, who tries an awkward catch and misses. The two of them go down in a tangle. Behind them, she sees Weber start with a rough exclamation, “Oi!” and then recover, gathering himself to charge.

“Restrain her!” Kramer shouts, a hand clamped to his jaw. He is struggling to find his feet. “The door! Don’t let her off this ward!”

Thank you. He’s just told her: the door is open. Still clutching the walking stick, she sprints to her right, sweeping porcelain bowls and the stuffed toucan from its low table in a clash of glass and metal. Weber makes a lunging grab, but she is smaller and faster, and dodges. She feels the drag of his fingers, and her scalp gives a yelp of pain, but then she’s dancing past, with the fleeting thought that whoever said girls with long hair would never survive the zombie apocalypse probably had something there.

“Miss Lindsay!” Flanked by the other two attendants, Graves is stepping to block her way. “Stop this at on—” Graves lets out a breathless grunt as Emma rams the cane’s ivory head into the woman’s belly. Staggering, Graves takes an attendant down with her as she falls, and then Emma is sprinting for the exit in a swirl of white flannel. The hall is enormous, infinitely long, and alive with the muffled cries and catcalls of patients, the slap of hands on stout wood. Like feeding time at the zoo. Behind her, she hears heavy footfalls coming closer and Kramer’s shouts: “Miss Lindsay … No, Jasper, stay here … John, no, please remain on the ward and let me attend to this … Miss Emma! Emma, wait, wait!”

Dead ahead, she spots an arched entryway, but … is that a curtain, or …? Oh shit. Her heart sputters as she realizes what she sees is a floor-to-ceiling iron grate, like the bars of an ancient jail. Which is exactly what this is: a prison for nuts, lunatics, the mad. I’m trapped.

Then she remembers: Kramer didn’t want me to get to the door. Her eyes fall to a heavy wooden door set in the grate on iron hinges. Of course. You wouldn’t swing open the entire grate; there had to be a separate door that would allow doctors and nurses and patients to get in and out.

Without pausing, she stiff-arms the door at a dead run—and screams as a lightning bolt of pain shoots up her arm. Gasping, she reels, her right hand singing, and nearly falls. The door is very heavy, nothing she can easily smack open. Hit that thing at the wrong angle or any faster, she might have broken her wrist. Blinking away tears, she staggers back and shoulders her way through. The door gives by grudging degrees, groaning open six inches, a foot. Wide enough. Plunging through onto a large stone landing, she turns, plants both hands, and muscles the door shut. It claps to with a loud bang.

Through the open grate, she can see the others coming, Kramer in the lead. There is blotch of bright red blood on his white linen shirt. Got to stop them, slow them down … Across the landing stand identical iron grates and doors at nine and twelve o’clock, closing off yet more patient galleries, and the same to her immediate left. In all the corridors now, there is movement: the flow of long skirts and clump of heavy boots as the night nurses and attendants hurry to see just who has gotten loose.

Got to get out of here. She should block the door behind her, if she can. Throwing a frantic glance at the large cast-iron square lock, with a keyhole directly beneath a brass knob at the upper right, she feels a sudden kick in her chest. Whoa—her eye fixes on that bright brass knob—wait a second.

Attendants are shouting at her from the other galleries; there is the muted tinkle and shake of keys, but she barely hears. Staring at the knob, what she feels is recognition, a sense of something clearing in her mind, as if all the pieces to a tough physics problem are beginning to click.