Blackhurst Asylum: a Serialized Story
Part II
Blackhurst Asylum is a serialized short story. You can read Part I here. Read the second and last installment below. I hope you enjoy the story! If so, could you please restack or share it with a friend?
Blackhurst Asylum: Part II
The train whistle woke her with a start. The steady sway of the car had changed since she’d dozed off. Now it was a wider, gentler rocking. She sat up, hands clutching at her purse. She’d left it on, strapped over her shoulder and across her chest. She’d closed her eyes with her hands wrapped around it.
“Ten more minutes, folks, to Grand Central Station,” the conductor said as he walked through the car. He glanced at her and nodded. She nodded back but looked quickly away. Her back ached from the hard seat and from sleeping in the cramped space. She pressed her shoulders down, trying to relieve the discomfort.
She glanced around then. The car was only about half full and there was no one in the seat across from her. Still, she turned her body so that she was facing the window before opening her purse. She pulled out the ticket stub which had been punched at the Swanton station, and then her wallet filled so plump with bills that she’d barely been able to fasten the clasp. Her fingers poked around the bottom of the bag. Relief spread through her limbs as her hands closed over what she’d stolen, carefully folded at the bottom of the small satchel.
Had she really done it? A mixture of awe and horror at her actions washed over her. She bit her lip between her teeth, trying to keep the smile from forming. She wasn’t safe yet, though there were now hours and hours and hundreds of miles between her and Dr. Delmar. The medicine she’d given him would have worn off by now of course.
Had he discovered the records she’d taken from his private cabinet? If so, would he have realized why she’d taken them from the files and what she intended to do?
Finally, blessedly, the train slowed and then stopped. She’d never been to Grand Central Station before, and when she departed the train, she stared in wonder for a full minute. The stone looked golden in the afternoon light.
Smartly dressed people moved this way and that in quick groups. There a pair, a threesome close behind, then a family of five, no six—the little boy at the back was lagging—and single people hurrying this way and that. Many had travel cases.
There were men dressed in suits lined up against the exit and she realized that these were drivers for hire. The money she’d brought with her would have to last a long while, but her mission was too important to dither over transportation prices. A young man approached her. He was dark-skinned with deep-set eyes nearly the color of his coffee-brown hair.
“You need a ride, miss?” She nodded and he swept his arm to the side, motioning toward his car.
“No luggage?”
“No.”
“All right.” He opened the back door of the waiting car. He smelled of bay and cigarette smoke. Not an unpleasant combination. She climbed inside and arranged her skirt beneath her, clutched her purse with her free hand.
“Where to, miss?” He settled behind the wheel.
“New York Times office, please. And take me straight there, no sidetracks.”
He whistled. “New York Times, eh? Gonna get a job as a secretary?”
She didn’t respond. She was paying for transportation, not an interview. She’d save her information for someone who could do something with it.
“So, that’s when you ran?” the reporter asked her. He looked at her over glasses that kept sliding down his nose. Every other sentence or so, he’d jab at the nosepiece with his finger. But seconds later, the glasses would again begin their descent.
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me that you’ve got proof that this doctor, this Dr . . .” He paused, searched his notes for the name, “Dr. Delmar was abusing patients at the asylum?”
“Yes.”
“Well, miss, that’s quite a tale you’ve got.”
“It’s not a tale if it really happened, is it?”
The reporter chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Point taken.”
“These are records that were taken from the doctor’s files yesterday.” She opened her purse, pulled out the small packet, and pushed it toward the reporter. He unfolded them, worked out the creases with the flat of his palm.
There were comb tracks in his well-oiled hair. The newsroom was hot and crowded, the loud banging on typewriters and the sound of papers being jammed into or jerked out of them was incessant. Smoke lay like a thick fog in the air, but no one seemed bothered by it.
The reporter read in silence for several long minutes. Then he sat up straight, looked at her, and removed the slippery glasses.
“This is good stuff.” He pointed the folded eyeglasses toward the papers. “How’d you get it?”
“Does it matter?”
He nodded, then shook his head. “Guess not. Just so long as it’s legit. How do I know it is?”
She smiled and retrieved something small and hard from her purse. She held it in her hand and kept it covered with her fingers. Then she leaned toward him.
“How do I know that you’ll run the story?”
“Oh, I’ll run it,” he said. “You have my word on that. If you can prove that it’s legitimate, that is, I’ll run it in tomorrow morning’s edition. I think my editor will approve.”
“Good.”
“I’m assuming you want a cut off the top?”
“Pardon?”
“A cut. A payment. Part of my earnings for bringing this to me and tossing it into my lap.”
“Oh, well, I didn’t expect—”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. I’ll see you get something. May not be big, but it’ll be something. Maybe you can splurge and buy yourself a new hat. I think you need one.” He chuckled at this. She didn’t think it was amusing, but smiled back, and leaned toward him.
“Actually maybe instead you could put in a good word for me here. I need a job. I’m good at typing and work quickly.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But first we’ve got the little matter of proving these.” He tapped the stack of papers with a finger.
She nodded, hesitating only briefly before she slid the thing in her hand across the desk to him. He glanced at it, then looked at her, his mouth partially open.
“Are you kidding me? You’re—” He paused, looked at her, then back at what she’d handed him. The enamel pin from her uniform. “You’re a nurse at the asylum?”
“Was. I was a nurse there, yes. A charge nurse.”
He whistled through his teeth, then grinned at her. “You’re a bearcat, lady, I’ll give you that.”
She said nothing. A wave of fatigue washed over her from head to heels. Her mind felt like a plucked chicken. It was the shock and the excitement wearing off, she knew, leaving behind reality. But she’d done it.
Dr. Ralph Delmar would soon gain greater notoriety than he’d ever dreamed possible. Only instead of it being due to his medical savvy, his wisdom, and cutting-edge psychiatric therapies as he’d dreamed, it would be because of his unmasking. The abuse of the patients he was treating would end.
And she would read every single delicious word of the story that the New York Times reporter wrote about it.
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