THE PATIENT IN ROOM 13
THE FALL
Tuesday, October 17th – 11:47 PM
The rain was coming down in sheets, thick and relentless, turning the streets of Ravenwood into rivers of black glass. Dr. Sloane Vance stood at the window of her corner office on the fourth floor of the Meridian Psychiatric Hospital, watching the storm lash against the glass, and felt something she had not felt in years.
Unease.
Not fear. Not yet. Just a low, persistent hum of wrongness, like a note played slightly off-key in an otherwise perfect symphony. She had felt it all day, ever since the call came in at 6:00 AM, dragging her from a dream she could not remember.
“Dr. Vance. You need to come in. It’s Patient Zero.”
Patient Zero. The name they had given him because he was the first. The first to die. The first to carve that word into his flesh. The first to jump from the roof of the psych ward.
But he was not the last.
Sloane turned away from the window.
Her office was small but meticulously organized – bookshelves lined the walls, filled with journals and case files and texts on abnormal psychology. Her desk was clear except for her laptop and a single photograph in a silver frame: a woman in her sixties, gray-haired and smiling, standing in front of a lighthouse.
Her mother.
Six months since the funeral. Six months since the cancer had finally won. Six months of burying herself in work to avoid the hollow space where her mother’s voice used to be.
She picked up the photograph.
“I’m not avoiding,” she said to her mother’s frozen smile. “I’m investigating.”
The smile did not answer.
She set the photograph down.
The call from the night administrator had come at 6:00 AM. A woman named Corinne Hale, who sounded like she had not slept in days.
“Dr. Vance. I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s been an incident.”
“What kind of incident?”
“A patient. He’s dead. He… he threw himself off the roof.”
Sloane had sat up in bed, her heart already racing.
“Which patient?”
“He didn’t have a name. Not a real one. The staff called him Patient Zero. He was admitted three weeks ago. Catatonic. Non-verbal. No ID, no history, nothing. Just a John Doe who never spoke a word.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“And now he’s dead.”
Sloane had dressed quickly, driven through the rain, and arrived at the hospital by 7:30 AM. The scene on the roof had already been processed by the time she got there – the body was gone, the blood was being cleaned, and the police had come and gone.
But she had seen the photographs.
The man had landed on his back, his arms spread wide, his eyes open to the rain. His face was unremarkable – middle-aged, white, nondescript. He could have been anyone. A banker. A teacher. A father.
But his left forearm.
His left forearm had been carved with a single word, cut deep into the flesh, the edges already beginning to heal.
“REMEMBER.”
The other photographs were on her desk now.
Three of them. Three dead patients. Three bodies found on the pavement behind the hospital, their arms carved with the same word.
The first had been Marcus Webb, forty-two, admitted for paranoid schizophrenia. He had been found on a Tuesday, just like Patient Zero. Same time of night. Same method.
The second had been Elena Vasquez, thirty-one, admitted for severe depression with psychotic features. She had been found on a Tuesday. Same time. Same method.
The third had been Clara Bennett, twenty-seven, admitted for dissociative identity disorder. She had been found on a Tuesday. Same time. Same method.
And now Patient Zero.
Four patients. Four Tuesdays. Four deaths.
But the police had ruled them all suicides. No evidence of foul play. No witnesses. No connections between the victims – except one.
They had all been patients on the third floor. The psych ward.
And they had all spent at least one night in Room 13.
Sloane leaned back in her chair.
She had requested the file on Room 13 when she first noticed the pattern, but the hospital administration had denied her access. The room was sealed, they said. Off-limits. It had been closed for forty years.
“Why?” she had asked.
“That information is not available.”
Not available. Not classified. Not confidential. Not available.
The phrase had burrowed into her brain like a splinter.
She picked up her phone and dialed the night administrator.
Corinne Hale answered on the second ring.
“Dr. Vance.”
“Corinne. I need you to tell me about Room 13.”
A long pause.
“Dr. Vance, I can’t—”
“You can. You just won’t. Four people are dead, Corinne. Four people who spent time in that room. And I need to know why.”
“I don’t know why. No one knows why. That’s why the room was sealed.”
“Who sealed it?”
“The previous administration. Before my time. Forty years ago. There was…”
She stopped.
“There was what?”
“An incident. A patient. He… he was in Room 13. And he… he wrote something. On the walls. In his own blood.”
Sloane’s heart pounded.
“What did he write?”
“The same word. ‘REMEMBER.’ Over and over again. Thousands of times. Covering every inch of the walls.”
“And then?”
“And then he died. They found him in the morning. His wrists were… he had carved the word into his own throat. And he was smiling.”
Sloane closed her eyes.
“Who was he?”
“His name was Arthur Vance. He was your father.”
The phone slipped from Sloane’s hand and clattered onto the desk.
She stared at it.
“Dr. Vance? Dr. Vance, are you there?”
She picked up the phone.
“My father died in a car accident. When I was seven.”
“That’s what you were told. That’s what everyone was told. But the truth is, he died in Room 13. Forty years ago. And the room has been sealed ever since.”
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“Your mother. She… she didn’t want you to know. She said it would destroy you.”
Sloane looked at the photograph of her mother. At the smiling face. At the lighthouse in the background.
“What else don’t I know?”
“Everything. That’s the problem. That’s always been the problem.”
The line went dead.
Sloane sat in the dark of her office, the rain still lashing against the window, the photographs of four dead patients spread across her desk.
Her father had died in Room 13.
Forty years ago.
And now, four other people had died the same way.
She stood up.
She walked to the door.
She needed to see the room.