Bellevue

Chapter 29

Thursday, July 4, 2:47 p.m.

Mitt felt his pulse pick up both speed and intensity as he paused outside a heavy fire door with the designation Building 16 displayed in prominent block letters. He already knew from the Bellevue Hospital Engineering and Maintenance Department’s supervisor, Tomás Delgado, that building #16 was the departmental designation for the mostly vacated psychiatric hospital building. He also knew that the door could not be locked by law because it was a designated fire door.

For Mitt, it had been a busy but very productive early afternoon. When he’d finally gotten into bed a bit after 10:00 a.m., he’d set his phone alarm for 1:30 p.m. He knew he’d probably still feel exhausted after only a few additional hours of sleep, but he was eager to get the most out of his day off and that didn’t include languishing in bed. True to form, when the alarm went off, he’d felt as miserable as expected until he had shaved and taken another shower. By then, he was charged up and eager to face the day, as it was his goal to make a sincere attempt to learn and face his family’s true legacy.

The first thing he’d done was walk the two blocks to Third Avenue and visit the nearest hardware store. There he’d been able to purchase a flashlight similar to Lashonda’s such that it could be placed on the floor and the beam directed appropriately. He’d also obtained a sizable but inexpensive backpack that was capable of accommodating possibly two of the bankers boxes. He hadn’t planned on getting a backpack but happened to see it while waiting in the checkout line. On the way back to his apartment to grab his white doctor’s coat and hospital ID, he’d ducked into the neighborhood Kips Bay Deli for a takeout sandwich.

When he did return to the hospital, he went directly to the information booth in the lobby-atrium, where he had to wait in line. Despite the holiday, or perhaps because of it, the booth was a beehive of activity. Mitt’s question was about the exact location of the Engineering and Maintenance Department. Interestingly enough, the volunteer Mitt asked didn’t have any idea and had to make a call to inquire. Mitt and the volunteer both learned the department office was in the sub-basement, reachable by one of the high-rise’s service elevators.

As it turned out, finding the department and then finding a person took more effort than Mitt had anticipated, but it was well worth it. The department office was appropriately located in the subterranean engineering spaces, but the supervisor’s private office was not occupied when Mitt finally was directed to it. He had to enlist the help of one of the department workers before meeting the shift head, Tomás Delgado, who was in the furnace room dealing with a problem relating to hot water.

Mitt had introduced himself as Dr. Fuller and explained that he wasn’t on duty but wanted to come into the hospital on his day off to learn a bit of what it was like to keep the place functioning and see some of the behind-the-scenes infrastructure. Mitt made it a point to specifically emphasize his appreciation for all the work that Tomás and his team did to make Mitt’s doctoring possible.

As Mitt had imagined, his interest and flattery were particularly well received, and Tomás was more than eager to satisfy Mitt’s professed curiosity. To that end, the supervisor had carried on nonstop for a good half hour, and Mitt did learn much more than he expected. What he found particularly interesting were the intricate details of the complicated HVAC system involving HEPA filters and a continuous monitoring of the ambient pressures in various parts of the hospital to guarantee proper airflow. It was something Mitt had had absolutely no knowledge about yet knew was obviously of vital importance, particularly keeping constant negative pressure within “infectious” isolation rooms so that the “bad bugs” could not escape into the hospital proper.

When Tomás had come to the end of his monologue, Mitt said that where he’d gone to medical school all the buildings in the complex were connected by passageways, which he had occasionally used in inclement weather. He then asked if that was the case at Bellevue.

“Absolutely,” Tomás had exclaimed, as if he needed to defend Bellevue.

“So, you can essentially walk to any of the buildings in the complex underground?”

“Of course,” Tomás had said as if it had been a ridiculous question. “We have to provide utilities and the tunnels provide access.”

At that point Mitt had switched the conversation to the most distant building, namely the old psychiatric hospital, which Tomás immediately referred to as building #16. As if taking the cue, Tomás spontaneously went on to say that although building #16 was now mostly empty, a small portion of its northeast wing remained in use, so the tunnel connection was still functional to provide the section with power, water, and HVAC. After a bit more banter and a few pointed questions, Mitt had found himself in the tunnel system following a map hastily drawn by Tomás that brought him face-to-face with building #16’s fire door.

In preparation to pass beyond the door, Mitt first pocketed the map. He then peeled off the backpack that he’d slung over his shoulder and took out his flashlight. Although the rather dingy Bellevue tunnel system was fully illuminated by a series of bare bulbs in ceiling-mounted sockets above all the piping, he knew from Tomás’s explanation that on the other side of the fire door, it was going to be pitch-black the moment the door closed. Mitt also knew that his point of entry was going to be the psychiatric hospital’s southwestern wing, which meant he would have to walk around to the northwestern wing to reach the housekeeping storeroom. To do that, he certainly needed the light.

With the backpack returned to his shoulder and the flashlight in hand, Mitt faced the door. Now he just needed to boost his confidence. To that end he was mightily thankful that Lashonda had brought him in earlier and shown him how to deal with the slew of Bellevue ghosts who haunted the building. The key was to make a conscious effort not to look at them, even briefly. But perhaps even more important, if they seemed to block the way, he needed to pretend they were not there and merely walk through them, thereby denying their existence. This latter injunction had been the most difficult lesson for Mitt, but he was confident he could handle it from having experienced Lashonda having so effectively done it that very morning. What he had to remind himself repeatedly was that the spirits were unable to interact with him physically and could only do so indirectly via intermediary objects.

When Mitt thought he was mentally prepared, he audibly counted down from ten to zero. He then reached out, grasped the fire door’s vertical handle, and began to pull. At first the door resisted, so he increased the pressure. Finally, it cracked open, and once it did, it swung open easily. The closing mechanism mounted on the top mildly squeaked. Out of the inky darkness ahead wafted chilled, damp air. Switching on his flashlight, Mitt stepped over the threshold and let the door swing shut behind him with a hushed thump.

For a few minutes, Mitt stood where he was in a short side corridor. Ahead his flashlight beam hit up against the whitewashed wall of the psychiatric hospital’s basement corridor that extended the length of the southwest wing. He listened intently, as he fully expected to hear distant wailing or other sounds of torment from either the surgerized masses or the souls of the corpses who had been dug up from their graves, just as he and Lashonda had heard when they first entered on their recent visit. But there was none. There was no sound whatsoever. It was as if he’d suddenly been cut off from the rest of the world even though he was in New York City in the middle of a busy summer holiday afternoon. Aboveground, maybe as little as a hundred or so feet to the west, he knew that heavy traffic worked its way north on First Avenue. But where he was standing a heavy silence reigned, almost oppressively so.

Surprised but also ultimately relieved, Mitt started forward and turned to the right down the main corridor. After a short walk, he followed the hallway to the left and came to where the main basement corridor joined those of the two west wings. There he stopped again to listen as he directed his flashlight beam down the main corridor. It was then that he realized just how much more powerful his flashlight was compared with Lashonda’s. From where he was presently standing, he could see all the way down to the ornamental central stairway.

Once again, he strained his ears for sounds, but there was nothing, making him wonder if the time of day had any bearing on the Bellevue phantoms’ activity. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps they only came out at night, but then he quickly nixed the idea, remembering he’d seen both Charlene and the surgerized group in daylight hours in the high-rise building.

Progressively encouraged that his current visit was going to be even easier than he’d envisioned, Mitt pushed on. He made one more turn to the left and then soon arrived at the housekeeping supply room. Turning his attention to the door opposite, he got the key from the upper rail. A moment later, he had the supply door open. After returning the key and before entering the room, he shined his light back up the hallway, half expecting to see a bevy of ghosts, or at least Charlene or John. But again there was nothing. He listened intently, even holding his breath for a moment, but he still heard nothing. Although he was pleased, he was also mystified as to why he was being spared. With a shrug, he entered the storeroom. He didn’t bother to close the door to the hallway, as he intended to make this a short visit.

After putting his flashlight on the floor of the main part of the storeroom, Mitt first opened the toilet-room door and then the closet. He then spent a minute gazing at the stack of records. His original plan had been to take at least one box and maybe two back to his apartment. But since his visit inside the psychiatric hospital was turning out so different from what he’d expected, he reconsidered his plans. There was a definite downside to going all the way back to his apartment as part of a multiple-visit plan, including traveling back and forth. There was also the risk of raising suspicions by appearing on multiple occasions in the engineering spaces to access the tunnel system. Suddenly it seemed much more sensible to remain in the psychiatric hospital. He could simply take the boxes he wanted to study upstairs to the first floor. He distinctly remembered seeing some furniture in one or two of the offices. He also assumed there would be more than enough ambient light coming in through the windows even though most, if not all, were boarded up.

“Let’s do it,” Mitt said out loud to encourage himself. He knew if the circumstances changed and a problem arose, he could always go back to plan A. With that decided, he moved quickly. First he took one of the top boxes, which he assumed were mostly Clarence’s lobotomy cases, and put it aside. He then separated out the three lowest boxes to evenly represent the one-hundred-year interval when Homer, Otto, and Benjamin were professionally active.

Since he now planned to remain in the building, he figured he could manage four boxes without difficulty by squeezing two boxes in the backpack and carrying two with one arm, leaving his free hand for the flashlight. All he had to do was walk the length of the basement corridor and up one flight of stairs, hardly an impediment.

Five minutes later, he was ready to go, and he slung the now-full backpack over his shoulder and put his arms through the straps, cinching them snugly. He then picked up the last boxes and held them against his chest with one hand and the flashlight in the other. Moving to the door, he hesitantly leaned out into the hallway, shining the light first in one direction and then the other. Seeing nothing amiss, he listened intently. Hearing nothing, he was reassured. He then started out for the central circular staircase, leaving the storeroom door ajar. After only a few steps, he jumped in fright and sucked in a lungful of air when he detected sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. Quickly redirecting the flashlight beam, he caught sight of the source and relaxed. It was a rat, a real rat, which swiftly scampered out of sight into a side room. After taking a reassuringly deep breath and acknowledging how tense he was for obvious reasons, he continued on.

The moment Mitt reached the main basement corridor, he was able to see a bit of welcome daylight ahead, which was flooding down the circular staircase. Encouraged, he quickened his pace, and the closer he got, the brighter it became. When he finally entered the tiled, cabinet-lined area at the base of the stairway, he turned off his flashlight. Moving to the center of the space, he looked up and could see all the way up ten stories to a skylight that was bright enough with direct sunlight to make him squint. When he held his breath and listened, he could now hear a slight variable hum, which he interpreted as traffic out on First Avenue. Most important, there were no distant cries of anguish or distress. Nor was there any horrid, sickening smell. At that moment, the psychiatric hospital was just an empty, sad, derelict building with a long and involved history of troubled residents, nothing more.

Without the need for the flashlight, Mitt readjusted the two bankers boxes he was carrying and started up the stairs. He was feeling progressively at ease with ever-increasing confidence that the sizable Bellevue Hospital spirit population was taking the Fourth of July holiday off, for which he was decidedly thankful. When he reached the ground floor, he even stopped for a moment to appreciate the high-ceilinged, architecturally decorated lobby, all of which was significantly more impressive in daylight. He also noticed something he’d not seen on his previous visit, namely an information booth off to his left behind the reception desk. Within the booth he could make out a glass-fronted directory hanging on the wall, which he assumed listed the various professional and departmental office locations, as if the building were still in use.

Drawn to the building’s directory and wondering if he’d recognize any of the names, Mitt stepped over to it by skirting the reception desk. To his amazement, Dr. Clarence Fuller’s name was still on the board, listing his office as 303! At first it didn’t make any sense, since he knew the Psychiatric Department didn’t move completely into the high-rise until 1985 and his great-grandfather had retired in 1975. But then, giving the issue a bit more thought, Mitt assumed that during that decade, the staff knew they were moving and were probably doing so on a piecemeal basis because the high-rise was available beginning in the early 1970s. During that interim transition period, the building’s directory was probably just ignored and forgotten.

Mitt pondered the coincidence of discovering his great-grandfather’s office number and that thought led to another. Since he needed a place to look at the records, including Clarence’s records, what better spot than Clarence’s office? It seemed to him as if a bit of poetic justice was involved, especially considering the stress he was under. In fact, the surprising circumstances so moved him that he put the boxes of records he was holding on to the information booth counter along with his flashlight and took out his phone. He had a sudden urge to share the unexpected discovery with Andrea, if she was available.

As the call went through, he leaned against the information booth, letting his eyes take in more of the hospital lobby’s details, including gazing up the west corridor. As he did so, its unique yellow-and-tan coloration was an unpleasant reminder of his recurrent nightmare.

“What’s up?” Andrea answered with no preamble.

“Are you busy?” Mitt asked.

“Not at the moment,” she said. “I’m in the on-call lounge schmoozing with some of the other residents. Where are you?”

“Don’t tell anybody, but I’m in the old psychiatric hospital as we speak, standing in its lobby.”

She lowered her voice. “So, you made it in?”

“I did.”

“How did you manage it? Through the homeless shelter?”

“No, something better. Remember how we used the tunnels at Columbia on occasion in bad weather? They have the same tunnels here at Bellevue, and it brought me into the basement, no problem.”

“What are you doing up in the lobby? I thought the records were down in the basement.”

“They are, but I’ve had a change in plans. Instead of going back and forth between here and my apartment, I’m going to do my reading here.”

“I don’t like that. I think you should get the hell out of there. I’m worried about you.”

“Oh, come on! You don’t need to worry. I’ll be fine. It’s a perfect place to read old Bellevue records. For one thing, I can assure you that it is understandably quieter than any library.”

“Very funny,” Andrea said insincerely. “Excuse me for not laughing, and I suppose I should be pleased for you getting in and all, but I’m not. I don’t like you being in there, period. Don’t get caught!”

“I’m not going to get caught,” Mitt said with mild irritation. The conversation was starting to remind him of talking to his mother. “But listen! Let me tell you something rather amazing that I just learned.” He went on to describe how his ancestor’s office was still listed on the building’s directory and that he was planning on using it to read through the man’s records.

“That’s interesting,” Andrea said, but hardly with the surprise or excitement Mitt was expecting.

“I’m getting the impression you don’t think this coincidence is quite as interesting as I do.”

“That’s not the point. I don’t like you in that building for a host of reasons. I thought you were going to be taking the records home.”

“Going back and forth from here to my apartment would take too much time and effort,” Mitt said simply, since he couldn’t tell her about the surprising apparition situation.

“All right, get to it and then leave! But listen! Call me the moment you get out of that place. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mitt agreed. “I’ll call you when I leave, but don’t hold your breath. It might take me an hour or two. There’re a lot of records, although I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of repetition.”

“Whatever,” Andrea said. “Just get your butt out of there ASAP, and I want to hear from you the minute you do.”

“You got it,” Mitt said, and he disconnected. He couldn’t believe that Andrea didn’t share his amazement about Clarence’s office. With a disappointed shake of his head, he readjusted his backpack and picked up the boxes and his flashlight. He then returned to the grand circular staircase and started up.

Mitt didn’t waste time. He took the stairs in twos all the way to the third floor. There, he quickly determined which direction was 303 and then found the office. In the process he was again reminded of his recurrent nightmare, since the main east — west corridor had the exact same unique coloration and architectural details as the main corridor on the first floor.

Visually there was nothing special about 303. It was a nondescript office that was still furnished with very basic, old office furniture. It comprised an outer office for a secretary, where there were a number of aged side chairs and a metal desk, and an inner office for Clarence, with a larger, wooden desk and an ancient, black faux-leather executive desk chair. There were absolutely no personal objects whatsoever in either room, although there were pale rectangles on the walls as evidence of pictures having hung in the past. The inner office had two good-sized but dirty windows looking south, both of which afforded a direct line of sight out over the Bellevue Hospital complex, which was now dominated by the high-rise tower soaring twenty-five stories into the hazy summer sky. Mitt pulled out several of the desk drawers. All were empty, save for a few errant paper clips.

Taking Andrea’s advice, Mitt got right to work. He took the boxes out of the backpack and, along with the two he’d carried by hand, he arranged them chronologically on the desktop. He then sat down in the old-fashioned desk chair, which faced the door to the outer office. From not having been used for decades, it loudly squealed in protest, momentarily shattering the heavy silence of the abandoned building. For a fleeting moment, Mitt marveled at the idea that he was occupying the very same desk and chair as Clarence Fuller, a man who’d been his idol since Mitt was a teenager.

The first box Mitt opened was Clarence’s. As soon as he looked at the stack of medical records, he could see how Lashonda had found Charlene’s so quickly. It was tagged with a yellow Post-it note. Although he’d already skimmed the record once and then attempted to read it more carefully, he took it out again to go over it once more with adequate light. He wanted to be absolutely certain he hadn’t missed even a brief medical explanation of why the child had been lobotomized. But the moment he started the very first paragraph, he sensed a presence emanating from the direction of the outer office that raised the hackles on his neck. Glancing up, he jolted and caught his breath.

Standing in the doorway to the outer office no more than about eight feet away was Charlene Wagner. The shocking aspect of her sudden appearance was twofold. The first was that from where he was sitting, he had an unobstructed view through the outer office all the way out into the central corridor, making him wonder why he hadn’t seen her coming. The second was that she radiated a totally different vibe, despite being clothed in the same dress with the same bloodstains and with her hair being as blond as ever and her skin as pale as Mitt remembered. Contrary to all the other times he’d been confronted by her, she wasn’t exuding the all-consuming anger and resentment she had in the past. In point of fact, although she was holding the orbitoclast, she wasn’t pointing it menacingly at Mitt as if it were a weapon. Instead, she was merely holding it in her left hand while, with her right hand, she was actively gesturing Mitt to follow her. Perhaps even more compelling from Mitt’s perspective was that she was smiling as if she were deliriously happy. In fact, Mitt sensed she might even be happily laughing even though she was emitting no sound.

Immediately intrigued at what might possibly be making Charlene’s spirit so contented, Mitt stood up. Although he could hear in the back of his mind Lashonda’s warning about ignoring the ghosts, he couldn’t think of any reason he shouldn’t at least see what Charlene had in mind. Stepping around the desk, he watched her reaction. She was visibly pleased and began backing up toward the door to the hall, all the while gesturing for Mitt to follow.

Ever more intrigued, Mitt first ended up out in the main corridor and then at the circular stairs. There Charlene started up, and as Mitt approached the first step, he saw something he thought was both fascinating and, in retrospect, predictable. When Charlene moved through a ray of sunlight streaming in a north-facing window, it passed through her unencumbered, attesting to her immaterialism.

Mitt followed Charlene up to the fifth floor as she continued to urge him on. Once on the fifth floor, he followed her all the way down the east portion of the building’s central corridor and finally almost to the end of the southeast wing. There she gave him a particularly broad smile and gestured for him to follow her into what Mitt guessed had been a VIP patient room with an open but lockable door. Mitt hesitated at the threshold. From where he was standing, he could see that the room had a single window with a view that included a small slice of the East River as well as the Bellevue high-rise building. The furniture consisted of a single bed with a thin, heavily stained mattress and nothing more.

With Charlene’s continued encouragement, Mitt hesitantly entered the room but stopped a few steps from the door. At that moment, Charlene was standing alongside the bed, pointing down to it repeatedly. Mitt was confused, not understanding what she was doing. “What is it?” he asked. He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands, palms up, to indicate his bewilderment. Suddenly he had a flash of insight and immediately spoke up. “Is this the room where you were lobotomized?”

Charlene nodded yes and her happy expression faded. But she continued gesturing down at the bed, even more intensely. It was at that point that Mitt gathered that she wanted him to lie down on the bed, which he had absolutely no intention of doing. Instead, he took a step back, deciding it was time to ignore Charlene and get the hell out of the room. But before he could, she quickly rounded the end of the bed and approached him. Although his mind was shouting at him to turn around and flee, he somehow couldn’t do it, as he was momentarily transfixed by her unblinking, intensely blue eyes.

And then the worst possible thing happened. Without warning, she reached out and grasped his arm to pull him back toward the bed — worse still, he shockingly, terrifyingly felt it! There was actual physical contact and a tug, which was impossible with her being an apparition without physical presence. After all, he’d just seen sunlight pass right through her! How could she touch him? But she did!

With a sudden overwhelming sense of panic, Mitt yanked his arm free from Charlene’s grasp, spun around, and fled from the room. Once in the hall, he began running full tilt back toward the central stairway. As he did so, it occurred to him that he was at that moment living his recurrent nightmare. He was being chased down an arched, two-toned yellow-tan corridor by unknown forces whose presence had been announced by the shocking reality of physical contact with Charlene’s ghost.

With his breath coming in gasps, Mitt first turned right and then left. He was now in the building’s central corridor, racing toward the circular stairs. His plan was to rapidly descend the central stairway to the first floor and then dash out the door that he and Lashonda had used. At this point, he didn’t care if he was apprehended by Security. In fact, he hoped he would be.

But he didn’t quite make it to the central stairway. All at once, he came to an abrupt stop. Suddenly appearing directly ahead of him was a dense crowd of surgerized ghosts. But this gruesome horde was not carrying amputated limbs or excised tumors and organs. Instead, they were carrying all manner of old-fashioned hay forks, knives, and axes that appeared to be all too real, and they were coming toward him.

Unwilling to test whether these ghosts and their weapons could touch him or not, he changed direction, and in an utter panic fled back the way he’d come. After the first turn, he saw Charlene directly ahead, obviously pursuing him. But as he rapidly closed on her, he didn’t stop. Instead, at the last second he closed his eyes and kept running, unsure of what was about to happen when he collided with her. An instant later and still running, he reopened his eyes. She was no longer there.

Running to the very end of the southeast wing, he rushed into what had been a locked, disturbed ward housing violent mental patients. Once inside, he spun around and slammed the heavy metal door shut. He then took several steps backward while staring at the door, praying it would be a barrier to the swarm of nightmarish phantoms chasing him.

He didn’t have long to wait. The entire horde including Charlene came through the door as if it wasn’t there. And once they had, the awful cacosmia Mitt had suffered previously enveloped him like an olfactory shock wave. For a few seconds, the angry mob halted with all of them staring daggers at Mitt. But then they quickly recommenced bearing down on him, threateningly brandishing their weapons, including Charlene with her orbitoclast. Mitt backed up, feeling terrified. When his back hit against the far wall, he closed his eyes and desperately tried to think of something else, something decidedly more pleasant, like walking in Central Park or riding a bike along the Hudson River. Anything! But the mental ploy of actively trying to ignore the apparitions didn’t work. Nor did it affect the cacosmia. A moment later he felt a hundred hands seize him and lift him off his feet.