Bellevue

Chapter 2

Monday, July 1, 7:03 a.m.

Although it was just after seven, the rising sun already felt distinctly warm on Mitt’s face as he quickly walked east on 30th Street toward First Avenue. There was no doubt in his mind that it was going to be another summer scorcher in New York City. Yet a broiling afternoon, no matter the temperature, wasn’t something he needed to worry about. He suspected that once he entered the Bellevue Hospital high-rise, he would not leave again until tomorrow. His precognition of the night before, heralded by a trace of pins and needles on his chest, had signaled that he, and not Andrea, would be on call on their first night of surgical residency.

The traffic on First Avenue was already heavy with a surging melee of cars, taxis, buses, and trucks emitting a muffled roar, and as Mitt approached the vehicular free-for-all, he felt both his excitement and anxiety rachet upward. Luckily the excitement significantly overshadowed the anxiety, which had lessened considerably following his brief chat with his parents.

Reaching First Avenue, he had to stop at the curb to wait for the traffic light to change. Looking north while he stood there, Mitt could make out most of the NYU Langone Health complex, which stretched for three entire city blocks. Turning his head and gazing to the south, he could see most of the Bellevue Hospital complex, including the dominating twenty-five-story hospital tower. Beyond that was the veterans hospital. The view in both directions justified the area being called “hospital row.”

Directly in front of Mitt on the north side of 30th Street he could see the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, which he knew was a fancy title for the New York City morgue. He didn’t know very much about forensic pathology, having had only a single lecture on the subject during his second year in medical school, but he knew enough about it to appreciate that the building housed the largest such institution in the world. More important, from his perspective, it had its origins — like a lot of major medical advances — at Bellevue Hospital. There was absolutely no doubt he was joining a celebrated medical community with an impressive history.

When the light changed Mitt scurried across the avenue. Reaching the safety of the curb on the east side, he stopped for a moment to gaze up at the strangely impressive building on the southeastern corner of First Avenue and 30th Street. Surrounding the sizable ten-story structure was an imposing and oddly decorative rusty wrought iron fence whose granite stanchions were topped with concrete urns. The barricade was so substantial and unique that it begged the question of whether its role was to keep people out or in.

The building itself was red brick with granite highlights and lots of curious decorative architectural details that looked particularly out of date in contemporary New York City. It was the antithesis of a typical NYC glass skyscraper. But what was most glaring about the building was that it was so obviously abandoned, save for a small portion down near the East River that Mitt knew was being used as a men’s homeless shelter. The rest of the structure’s enormity was empty, and had been so for more than thirty years. The windows on the granite-encased first floor were boarded up, and a small garden area in front of the two wings that faced First Avenue was entirely overgrown with weeds and vines. And like so many New York City buildings, its first floor was partially covered by scaffolding.

Mitt was well aware that he was looking at the former Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, which had been called the Bellevue Psychopathic Hospital when it opened back in the 1930s. He was somewhat knowledgeable about the building because it was where his celebrated ancestor Dr. Clarence Fuller, who had spent most of his professional career at Bellevue, had his office. When Mitt had come for his residency interview, he’d seen the structure and had taken the time to look up its history. When the six-hundred-bed facility had opened nearly a hundred years previously, it had been the talk of the town and quickly became the most famous psychiatric hospital in the world. In many ways, it was the reason the name Bellevue had become synonymous with a mental institution rather than a comprehensive medical facility, which it had always been.

Continuing southward, Mitt walked into the cool shadow the building’s looming size provided. He paused again at the wrought iron gate that was secured with a heavy chain and weighty padlock. Looking between the rusting wrought iron uprights, he gazed at the building’s rather decorative entranceway, secured with its own chain and padlock. For a moment, he was transfixed; there was something remarkably sad about the portal. Mitt pondered the innumerable poor souls who had passed through to be essentially incarcerated in the building, and he found himself imagining what kind of painful stories they might tell.

At the same moment, he felt a surprising, transient surge of the tactile sensations that he normally associated with his prognostication abilities. The feelings were a particular surprise because he wasn’t facing a circumstance that called for a prediction. Nor was there another human being whose thoughts he could sense because he was essentially alone facing an empty structure. A few passersby hurried behind him in both directions, but for him to sense someone’s thoughts, he had to make eye contact with them, which certainly wasn’t the case.

With a mystified shrug, he forced himself to pull his eyes away from the deserted building and continue on his way. Time was passing, and the last thing Mitt wanted to do was be late on his first day. Yet he couldn’t resist one last quick look over his shoulder at the old Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, wondering how the building had managed to avoid being demolished or repurposed after the last of its psychiatric patients had been transferred over to the newer high-rise. He’d read that more than a decade earlier there had been some talk of turning it into a hotel and conference center for the NYU medical center, which would be an easy conversion with its unique letter H footprint and hundreds of individual rooms, each with windows. Yet obviously it hadn’t happened. Why, he had no idea. The building’s continued existence as a sad, empty shell made no sense. It was a total anachronism and also an affront to its illustrious history.