THE PATIENT IN ROOM 13
THE THIRD PATIENT
Wednesday, October 18th – 1:15 PM
The third patient was a young woman named Iris Delaney.
She was twenty-two years old, admitted just four days ago, transferred from another facility that could no longer handle her. Her file was thicker than the others, filled with reports from psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and case managers. She had been in and out of hospitals since she was fourteen.
The diagnoses were a litany of despair: borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and eating disorder not otherwise specified.
Eight years of treatment.
Eight years of medications.
Eight years of doctors who saw her as a collection of symptoms rather than a person.
But Iris was not her diagnoses.
She was a survivor.
Sloane stood outside Iris’s room, reading the file, the voices in her head murmuring.
“She has been buried for a long time,” Marian whispered. “Not in a grave. In a system. A system that was supposed to help her but only made her worse.”
“She is not forgotten,” another voice added. “She is hidden. Behind layers of medication and diagnosis and hopelessness.”
“You can help her. You can remember for her.”
Sloane closed the file.
She opened the door.
Iris’s room was different from the others.
The walls were covered in drawings — not on paper, but directly on the plaster. Images of trees and flowers and birds and faces. Some of the faces were smiling. Some were crying. Some were screaming.
Iris sat in the center of the room, cross-legged on the floor, a box of colored pencils in her lap. She was drawing on a piece of paper, her hand moving quickly, her eyes focused.
She did not look up when Sloane entered.
“Iris,” Sloane said softly.
No response.
“My name is Dr. Vance. I’m a psychologist here at the hospital. I’d like to talk to you.”
Iris’s hand stopped moving.
But she did not look up.
“I’m not going to medicate you. I’m not going to diagnose you. I’m not going to put you in a box. I just want to talk.”
Iris’s hand started moving again.
Drawing.
Faster now.
“Iris. Please.”
Iris looked up.
Her eyes were dark, ringed with shadows, but they were not hollow. They were full. Full of pain. Full of fear. Full of something else. Something that looked like hope.
“You’re different,” Iris said.
“What makes you say that?”
“The others. They come in here with their clipboards and their prescriptions and their labels. They don’t see me. They see a problem to be solved.”
“And what do you see?”
Iris tilted her head.
“I see you.”
Sloane pulled the chair to the center of the room and sat down across from Iris.
“Can I see what you’re drawing?”
Iris hesitated.
Then she turned the paper around.
It was a drawing of a door.
An iron door.
Covered in symbols.
The door to Room 13.
“How do you know about this door?” Sloane asked.
“I’ve seen it. In my dreams. Since I was a child.”
“What happens in the dreams?”
“I walk through the door. There’s a tunnel. Dark. Cold. At the end of the tunnel, a tree. A tree made of flesh and bone. With bodies hanging from the branches.”
Sloane’s heart pounded.
“What else?”
“There’s a child. A little girl. She’s sitting at the base of the tree. She’s crying.”
“What is she crying about?”
“She’s crying because she’s alone. She’s been alone for a very long time.”
Iris set down the drawing.
“You’ve seen her too, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you’re different. You’ve been to the tree. You’ve seen the child.”
“I am the Keeper,” Sloane said. “I hold the memories of the forgotten. The ones who have been buried. The ones who have been erased.”
Iris nodded slowly.
“I thought so.”
“How did you know?”
“Because I can see them. In your eyes. The memories. All of them. They’re in there, aren’t they? Thousands of them. Millions.”
“Yes.”
“Do they ever stop? The voices? The memories? The pain?”
“No. But you learn to carry it. You learn to hold it without breaking.”
“Can you teach me?”
Sloane looked at Iris’s drawing.
At the iron door.
At the tunnel.
At the tree.
At the child.
“I can try,” she said. “But first, I need to know your story. Your real story. Not the one in the file. The one you’ve been hiding.”
Iris set down her colored pencils.
She pulled her knees to her chest.
And she began to speak.
“I was born in a small town in upstate New York. My parents were young. Too young. My mother was sixteen. My father was eighteen. They didn’t want me. They couldn’t afford me. They gave me to my grandmother.”
She paused.
“My grandmother was not a kind woman. She was old. Tired. Bitter. She didn’t want me either. But she took me because no one else would.”
“When I was four, my grandmother started locking me in the basement. She said I was bad. She said I needed to be punished. She said I needed to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“I don’t know. She never told me. She just left me there. In the dark. For hours. For days.”
“How long did this go on?”
“Until I was twelve. That’s when my grandmother died. The police came. They found me in the basement. They asked me questions. I told them everything.”
“What happened then?”
“They put me in foster care. I was moved from house to house. Some of the families were nice. Some were not. I learned to keep my mouth shut. I learned to pretend that everything was okay.”
“But it wasn’t okay.”
“It was never okay. I started having nightmares. The door. The tunnel. The tree. The child. I started hearing voices. Not like the ones you hear. The bad ones. The ones that told me I was worthless. That I should kill myself. That no one would miss me.”
“Did anyone help you?”
“A therapist. When I was fifteen. She was kind. She listened. She believed me. But then she moved away. Her replacement was not kind. He put me on medications. Lots of medications. They made me feel numb. Like I was underwater. Like I wasn’t real.”
“How many medications have you been on?”
“I don’t know. Dozens. They kept changing them. Adding new ones. Taking old ones away. Nothing worked. Nothing helped.”
“Until now?”
“Until now.” Iris looked at Sloane. “You’re the first person who has ever looked at me and seen me. Not my diagnoses. Not my history. Not my pain. Me.”
“I see you,” Sloane said. “I see all of you. The parts you’ve hidden. The parts you’ve buried. The parts you’ve tried to forget.”
“Can you help me remember?”
“I can help you remember. But it will be painful. You will have to face things you have been running from for years.”
“I’ve been running my whole life. I’m tired of running.”
“Then let’s start.”
Sloane reached out.
Iris took her hand.
And Sloane remembered for her.
The basement was cold and dark and smelled of mold.
Iris was four years old, sitting on a dirt floor, her knees drawn to her chest. She was crying. She had been crying for hours. No one came.
She heard a sound.
Scratching.
In the corner.
She looked.
A rat. Large, gray, its eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Iris screamed.
No one came.
The rat ran toward her.
She kicked it.
It bit her ankle.
She screamed again.
The rat ran away.
But more came.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds.
They covered the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Their eyes gleamed. Their teeth gnashed.
Iris closed her eyes.
She wished for death.
But death did not come.
The memory shifted.
Iris was twelve, standing in the doorway of her grandmother’s bedroom. The old woman was lying on the bed, her face gray, her eyes closed.
Iris walked to the bed.
She touched her grandmother’s hand.
It was cold.
She looked at the pills on the nightstand.
She looked at the empty bottle.
She looked at her grandmother’s face.
And she felt nothing.
No grief. No relief. No joy. No sadness.
Just emptiness.
The memory shifted again.
Iris was fourteen, standing in the bathroom of her foster home. She was holding a razor blade. Her wrists were bare. She had not cut herself. Not yet. But she was thinking about it.
She heard a voice.
Not in her head. In the room.
“You don’t have to do this.”
She turned.
A child was standing in the doorway.
A little girl, with dark hair and dark eyes and a face that was too pale.
“Who are you?”
“The one who remembers.”
“What do you want?”
“To help you.”
“How?”
“By reminding you that you are not alone. That you have never been alone. That I have always been with you.”
“In the basement?”
“In the basement. In the foster homes. In the hospitals. I have always been there. Watching. Waiting.”
“Why?”
“Because you are like me. Forgotten. Buried. Alone. And I need you to help me remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Remember that I was once a child. Like you. That I was buried alive. That I was forgotten. That I am still here.”
Iris set down the razor blade.
She walked to the child.
She knelt in front of her.
“What’s your name?”
“I don’t have a name. I am the Watcher. I am the Keeper. I am the memory.”
“Iris.”
“What?”
“My name. Iris. You can use it. Until you find your own.”
The child smiled.
And then she was gone.
The memory faded.
Iris opened her eyes.
She was back in the hospital room, holding Sloane’s hand.
“I remember,” she whispered.
“What do you remember?”
“The child. She came to me. When I was fourteen. She told me I wasn’t alone.”
“She has been with you your whole life.”
“She said I was like her. Forgotten. Buried. Alone.”
“You are not forgotten anymore.”
Iris looked at Sloane.
“Neither are you.”