The Psyching: A Short Thriller by Freida McFadden Page B

those are definitely the
words you least want to hear during, say, a brain surgery in which
you’re the patient, you also don’t want to hear it when you’re
locked on a psychiatric ward for the night with a bunch of crazy
people.
    “ What’s wrong?” I ask
her.
    Sally gives me the same look she
would give a fly that was buzzing in her face. It’s a special look
that seems to be reserved for us medical students. The lines on
Sally’s narrow face tell me she’s been a nurse long enough to have
perfected that look. “The phone lines seem to be down.”
    I stare at her. “That’s not good.”
    “ No kidding.”
    “ We’re on a locked unit,” I say
nervously. “Isn’t it dangerous if the phone lines are
down?”
    Sally looks at me for a minute, then her face
breaks out in a smile. “Oh right, you’re worried about being
murdered tonight!”
    And then she wanders away, chuckling to
herself.
     
     
    7:45 p.m.:
     
    The psychiatric unit has one room that is
reserved for the residents to use, basically as a hang out. There’s
a couch and a computer, and a few chairs, but not much else.
Nothing fun, like a foosball table. I head over to the resident
room, and find that the door is shut, but not locked. I open the
door and discover Jack sitting inside, working at the computer. He
seems to have Microsoft Word open, but quickly minimizes the window
when I come into the room.
    “ Mrs. Klein has a headache,” I
tell him.
    “ Mrs.
Klein is a
headache,” he says. Which is mean but also kind of
true.
    “ What are you working on?” I ask,
nodding at the computer.
    “ My novel.”
    He was actually serious about that. He really
is writing a novel. “Can I read it?”
    “ Nobody reads it until it’s
finished,” he says rather solemnly.
    I shrug. “Okay.”
    “ By the way,” he says, “you didn’t
go into Room 237, did you?”
    I get butterflies in my stomach at the way
Jack is studying my face. Why does he keep asking me about the
room? I almost forgot about it until he brought it up. Now it’s
going to drive me crazy again. “No.”
    “ Good.” He stands up. “Let’s go
see Mrs. Klein.”
     
     
    8:10 p.m.:
     
    I’m standing in the hallway when I hear
footsteps behind me.
    “ Lick ,” someone hisses in my
ear.
    I turn my head just in time to see Johnny
walking away.
     
     
    8:30 p.m.:
     
    I walk by Room 237.
    The door is closed. I don’t hear anything
going on inside. Nothing suspicious. Nobody being murdered in
there.
    I want more than anything to see what’s going
on in that room. This is going to drive me freaking crazy, isn’t
it?
     
     
    8:40 p.m.:
     
    “ So it turns out,” Jack says,
“they shut off the phone lines because several of our patients were
calling 911 with bomb threats.”
    “ Why were they doing that?” I
ask.
    “ Because they’re psychiatric
patients,” Jack says like I’m an idiot.
    “ Well, when will the phones start
working again?”
    “ Right after I kill you and
Danni,” he says.
    Sigh.
     
     
    9:15 p.m.:
     
    Sally tells me that our youngest patient,
Mike, wants to talk to a doctor. She supposes that I will
do.
    Mike is 19 years old. If you watch
enough movies and TV, you forget how young an actual 19 year old
really looks, since most teenagers are played by 30 year olds. He
looks maybe 12 years old. A real 12 year old would probably look
like a kindergartner to me. And a kindergartner would probably look
like a fetus.
    Mike doesn’t seem particularly thrilled by my
arrival. He hasn’t shown much in the way of emotion since he came
here. He was brought in by his parents and is being evaluated for
his first schizophrenic break.
    “ What’s going on?” I ask him, in
my “cool voice” reserved for younger patients.
    Mike points to the earring going
through his left eyebrow. “I think I have an infection,
Doc.”
    He calls me “Doc,” despite the fact that I’m
not a doctor, and am only five years older than he is. But at least
I don’t have