The Psyching: A Short Thriller by Freida McFadden Page A

nothing to be scared of,”
I tell her. I avert my eyes because Danni’s short white coat is so
clean and white that it’s giving me a headache. “Jack isn’t going
to murder us.”
    “ He might,” she says.
    “ He won’t.”
    “ I never told you this before,”
she says, “but I’m actually really psychic about
things.”
    Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.
    She reaches out and grabs my arm with her
skinny little fingers. “I just have this feeling that something
terrible is going to happen tonight. Just like 10 years
ago.”
    Danni blinks her big eyes at me again. She’d
actually be really pretty if she weren’t so annoying. Annoyingness
always overshadows prettiness.
    “ Nothing is going to happen,” I
say firmly.
    “ Dr. Sadler is worried too,” Danni
tells me.
    I can’t help but frown. Dr. Sadler
is our attending physician, a middle-aged man with a big doughy
face and receding hairline who rarely cracks a smile, much less a
joke during our morning rounds. He seems like an eminently
practical person, not someone likely to believe in dumb
superstition.
    “ He told you he’s
worried?”
    Danni nods solemnly. “Yes. He did.” She lowers
her voice a few notches. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but
Dr. Sadler and I actually share a psychic connection.”
    “ You’re kidding.”
    “ It’s true,” Danni assures me. “He
says he doesn’t have this type of connection with anyone else, even
his wife.”
    I cringe. “Oh, Danni…”
    “ Anyway,” she goes on, “he said
that if we feel in danger at any point, even a little bit, I should
text him and he’ll come right over to save us.”
    “ Very reassuring.”
    Danni beams at me. “I thought so
too.”
    It just occurred to me: Dr. Sadler must’ve
given Danni his cell phone number. I can’t even begin to deal with
that one.
     
     
    5:00 p.m.:
     
    Lockdown.
    The psychiatric ward at our hospital is
arranged in a circle. If you start at the entrance and keep
walking, you will eventually end up where you started. (This comes
in handy if you are a psychiatric patient who wants to go around in
circles the entire day.) There’s only one entrance/exit to the
ward, and it is now locked. With a key. A key that only Jack and
one nurse have in their possession.
    “ Okay, guys,” Jack says to me and
Danni. “Why don’t you two hang out at the nurses station? You can
read if you’d like. Just give me a page if you need me.”
    “ Can we call loved ones to tell
them goodbye?” Danni asks him.
    “ Absolutely!”
    Jack starts to walk away chuckling, but then
he stops midway down the hall. He turns around, looking
thoughtful.
    “ By the way,” he said, “whatever
you do, don’t go in Room 237.”
    I stare at him. “What’s in Room
237?”
    “ Don’t worry yourself about that,”
he says quickly. “Just don’t go in there. Okay?”
    “ Okay!” Danni says
cheerfully.
    As Jack walks down the hallway, I turn to
Danni and whisper, “Don’t you think that was weird?”
    “ What was weird?”
    “ That there’s some room that we’re
not supposed to go inside. Don’t you think that seems
suspicious?”
    Danni’s eyebrows shoot up. “Do you want me to
text Dr. Sadler?”
    I see her reaching for her phone, so I quickly
say, “No.” God, no.
    A patient that I know only as “Johnny”
stumbles down the hall at that moment. Johnny is a big guy, with a
moon face and a gray sweat suit, and drool perpetually in the
corner of his mouth. He walks towards us, his gray socks padding
against the floor. He stops right in front of us.
    “ Lick,” Johnny says to us, as
spittle flies out of his mouth.
    He watches us for a moment, waiting for our
response, which is obviously complete horror and disgust. Then he
turns away from us and continues on his circle around the
unit.
    This is going to be a long night.
     
     
    6:30 p.m.:
     
    “ This isn’t good.”
    My stomach flips slightly as I hear a nurse
named Sally mumbling into a phone. While