The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

rusting mail slots, some still locked, and peered into an open closet. On the floor lay a sheet of paper titled ***Hospital Patients in Seclusion Rooms.

He shuddered.

From his research, he knew there were isolation units above him. By the time the facility’s construction had ended, a vaccine for tuberculosis had gained traction, and local hospitals could more safely treat infectious diseases. The building had never been used for its originally intended purpose. Instead, from 1952 through 1963, Riverside had served as an experimental rehabilitation clinic. The clerks who’d worked in this suite had processed admittance paperwork for juvenile heroin addicts.

And his grandfather had been one of their doctors.

A decade ago, Sylvia had whispered to him that his grandpa had been stationed at Dachau. At first, Finn had been shocked. An apple-pie-loving patriot, Grandpa had donated to the local VA and driven his antique Model T in the Port Jefferson Fourth of July parade every year. He’d even given Finn his collection of vintage American flags the day Finn had signed up for Cub Scouts. And he’d regularly stated that the immunological breakthrough they were so close to achieving would help “every single American, no matter how black or dirt poor.”

A Nazi past hadn’t seemed possible.

Yet his grandpa did have a cruel streak. Most Sundays after church, Rollie had taken Finn on the Long Island Rail Road to visit his grandparents. Kristian, who’d often met them there, would join their father and grandfather behind closed doors, leaving Finn with two choices: find Grandma in the kitchen or head outside. More than once, Finn had wandered too far from their property or “accidentally” smashed one of the little clay gnomes in his grandmother’s garden. It had been Grandpa who’d dealt the punishment, with his leather belt.

When Finn broached his grandfather’s past with Rollie, his dad hung his head in shame. “Why do you think he’s so obsessed with eradicating disease?”

Finn shrugged.

“It’s the only way he’ll ever forgive himself,” Rollie said and changed the subject.

To Finn it sounded like just another outlet for his grandfather’s fanatical drive and discipline, but the respect in his father’s tone had warned him to keep that view to himself.

Trying to stymie creeping visuals of lobotomies and electric shock therapies that had surely occurred here while the facility had treated drug-addicted teens, Finn squared his shoulders and stepped into the main corridor, his eyes widening. The decaying plaster and flooring, patches of blue wall tiles, and streaks of sunlight created a kaleidoscope of human-made and natural effects.

The last time he’d felt this sense of awe he’d been fifteen. His mother had taken him to a cut-paper shadowbox exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. For hours, he’d stared into the three-dimensional, intricate scenes, each backlit with an LED light. A humpback whale breaching the sea, a boy lost in a haunted forest, a Chinese pagoda atop a mountain.

That day, he’d realized that by studying physics, he could contribute an expertise needed for research at a facility with no access to power. Rollie had approved the plan, and for a while Finn had felt like he might live up to his father’s expectations.

With his knife and flashlight in hand, Finn entered what must have been the medical wing. From the doorway to an operating room, he bounced his beam from floor to ceiling, where it landed on a framework of lamps hanging like meat racks, their incandescent lights broken.

The odor of antiseptic filled his nostrils, and his stomach contracted. Just as it always did when he entered his mother’s hospital room during one of her stays.

Lily, too, detested that smell. After her bone marrow transplant, she’d remained confined to a sterile hospital wing for eight weeks because of life-threatening complications with graft-versus-host disease.

Finn continued down the corridor, halting in front of a closed metal door and turning its knob. Locked. The room on the far side of that steel might contain boxes of medical records. Or something far more sinister.

Throughout Finn’s childhood, Rollie would bring home patient charts to update while Finn completed his homework. Each file’s top right corner had a name scrawled across it that didn’t match the patient’s. The first time Finn noticed the pattern he’d asked Rollie about it.

Smiling, Rollie set down his pen. “I try to chat with all my patients, and then record the name of the person they each love most.”

To an eleven-year-old, the practice sounded lame. Finn grimaced. “Why?”

“To help me see them as people, not just a collection of organs. Your great-grandfather’s early records show he did the same. He shouldn’t have dropped the habit.” He squeezed Finn’s bicep. “Make sure I don’t.”

Now Finn worried that that’s exactly what had happened.

Glancing down the corridor, Finn decided that if the woman were on this floor, she would have made her presence known by now.

He climbed the central staircase to the second story and studied a faded, peeling mural adorning the hall. He could just make out a poem, written in cursive:

I hate Riverside

Its workers too

Though some of the

Nurses will fuck for you.

Appalled that his father had grown up in this environment, Finn shook his head.

The heat trapped within the pavilion was starting to get to him. He swigged his water and continued up the stairs, which led to a dayroom invaded by vines. They’d slithered in through the broken windows and strangled the radiators.

Softly, he trod down a hallway plagued with debris. Even on this floor, the smell of antiseptic lingered.

The scent had to be in his head, he decided. Ahead, every other door was sheathed in metal. Finn inspected one. Below a small, eye-level slot, a deadbolt had been retrofitted to the door. He’d reached the isolation rooms.

Pausing at the first doorframe, he peered into the room. Sunlight, filtered through the fenced-over windows, cast an eerie glow. One sidewall contained a window covered in mesh. Beyond it had to be a nurses’ station, from which a junkie could be supervised during detox. Penciled graffiti adorned the cell walls. From the