Yorkshire, 1940

Rosemanor Sanatorium loomed over Sable, its marble pillars forming a strange cage above her head. She stalked up the front stairs, her white frock bunching around her waist as her knees lifted and leaves, brown and fallen already in September, crunched under her feet. She crossed into the shadow of the roof overhead, the pillars crowding her as she made her way to the front doors. Heaving a heavy wood door open, she stepped into a grand foyer.

Around her, nurses and caretakers crossed the foyer, busily carting files and trays of medical items to and fro. The darkly stained wood creaked under their feet, the spiny chandelier bathing the foyer in warm light. Archways branched off from each side, leading to different wings of the building. Twin staircases wrapped along the far edge of the foyer, leading up to a second floor where more archways sat. The high ceiling made the nurses’ footsteps echo on the wood.

Sable approached the large desk across the foyer, dodging nurses intent in their paths. A nurse behind the desk, bent over papers and a telephone, looked up.

“Name?” she asked.

“Sable Clark. I’m—”

“Ah, our newest caretaker,” the nurse said. She stood, straightening her frock. “Wait here, eh, and I’ll get Birdie to show you around.” The woman’s northern drawl made Sable’s London dialect seem short and clipped. The nurse disappeared into a room behind the desk, leaving Sable to look around the foyer by herself.

She’d expected to be stationed in a hospital in London, tending to the wounded from the war. Her meager training as a nurse qualified her just enough to assist the more experienced; her mother had trained as a nurse herself and mended soldiers sent home from Germany. Instead of being assigned to the same hospital in London where her mother worked, Sable was sent to the rolling moors of the northern countryside. Dismal, she’d reread and reread the name of the institution to which she’d been assigned. Rosemanor Sanatorium. She’d been sent to a loony bin.

A few moments later, the nurse from behind the desk returned, a tall, severe-looking woman in tow. The nurse sat back down behind the desk, and the woman walked out into the foyer to join Sable. She had a number of manila folders in her arms.

“Are you Birdie?” Sable asked, wary. The woman, to her surprise, smiled warmly.

“That I am, dear,” Birdie said. “This way, I’ll show you around.”

Birdie led Sable past the desk, through an archway cast in shadow by the staircase above.

“These are your charges,” Birdie said, handing Sable the stack of manila folders. “Your job here is to take care of them, get them anything they need, escort them to therapy sessions, all that. The nurses take care of the rest.” Sable nodded, tucking the folders snugly in her arms. She’d read them later to get to know the patients she’d be caring for. She followed Birdie through the halls of Rosemanor Sanatorium, almost jogging along with the older woman’s quickened pace. She was a tall woman, evidently harsh only in her appearance, her graying hair pulled back into a tight bun behind her head. Her nose, thin and pointed, looked much like a beak like her name suggested. When she spoke, slowing to drop next to Sable, her tone was soft and even motherly.

“Our patients here at Rosemanor have a strict schedule,” she said. “Stability is best for them, you see, among other therapies.”

“Like what?” Sable asked.

Birdie waved a thin hand “Oh, hydrotherapy, counseling, medication, electroshock therapy if it’s needed. We do have more, ah, intense treatments for the patients who are particularly afflicted. But the doctors are responsible for those, you and I are here to assist them and the patients the rest of the time.”

They passed many rooms, one with a number of bathtubs for hydrotherapy, and a few offices meant for patients to meet with therapists. The rooms were clean but worn, the occasional bed sheet torn and mended over, the occasional scratch or scuff marking the creaky hardwood floors. Every now and then Sable caught the whiff of ammonia, evidently scrubbed over the floor in an attempt to clean it more thoroughly. Nurses milled about, seeing to their business in their clean white shifts.

“Where are the patients?” Sable asked, noticing the halls were empty of them.

“The common area,” Birdie replied. “They spend a few hours socializing every day before supper.”

They rounded a corner to a large room, with cathedral ceilings and large windows, though the bottoms of the glass panes were blocked with crisscrossing bars. Nurses tended to patients, who filled the room and wandered about.

Sable suppressed a frown. The patients were clean enough, but some of their plain clothing was stained and the room smelled faintly of sweat and urine. Some of the men had patchy facial hair, the women’s long locks tangled. Most wobbled on plush sofas and antique armchairs, absently fidgeting. Certainly not the soldiers Sable had been expecting to treat as a nurse in training.

Sable ran her fingers over the open ends of the folders, quickly leafing through the patient files. Grainy photos showed the faces of half a dozen people, all looking distant or confused. She recognized a few of them from a distance. Only one photo stared back at her, his fair hair matted to his head and shadows smudged under eyes that focused intently forward.

Before she could ask Birdie about the man, an attendant jogged up behind them from out in the hallway.

“Mrs. Nelson, you’re needed upstairs. Mister Torell,” he said. He frowned, all but ignoring Sable. His eyes shone blue in the afternoon light of the common room, and his glossy black hair was pulled back into a messy knot behind his head. Birdie nodded, her lips pursing into a thin line.

“Thank you, Julien,” she said as the man jogged away. Birdie turned to Sable.

“Come along, Sable,” she said. “You’ll want to be a part of this. This is one of your charges, after all.” Sable blinked, surprised. As she followed Birdie to the foyer and up the stairs, she thought again of the man with the focused eyes, his patient file tucked in her arms with the others. Where the stairs continued to curl upward, a landing held a set of doors to another hallway. Painted above the doorway was Solitary Confinement. Sable felt a shiver run up her back.

The upstairs was a cacophony of muffled shouts. Behind closed doors, Sable heard people crying. Birdie hurried further down the hallway, paying no mind to the agitated patients in their rooms. As they went, the shouts became clearer.

At the end of the hall, Sable found the source of the shouting; half a dozen nurses restrained a patient, trying to wrestle him into a straightjacket. Julien, the attendant from earlier, wrapped his arms around the patient, pinning his arms to his sides. The patient screamed, his voice rough from disuse, and Sable realized she knew him—the man in the patient files with the deep, focused gaze. His hair, light but dirty, was matted like in his photo, curls sticking to his forehead with sweat. Blond scruff covered his jaw. Julien grit his teeth, muttering something into the patient’s ear, but it didn’t seem to make much difference.

Sable froze in the doorway as Birdie went to work, the nurses struggling to hold the patient still. Birdie went to a first aid kit set on a side table, making quick work of a syringe filled with clear liquid. She tapped the syringe a few times with a thin finger and held it at the ready.

“Hold him still!” she squawked. Julien tightened his grip, and the other nurses tried to hold on as the patient screamed and thrashed his legs. Bare feet struck the walls as the patient screamed again, a guttural sound that ripped through him. Birdie lunged and stuck the needle into his neck, driving the clear liquid into his veins. Slowly, his kicking subsided, and after a few moments, the patient slumped in Julien’s grip. Birdie straightened her hair as the nurses set the patient back in his bed. He was unconscious, but they secured him in a straightjacket anyway. The nurses left like they hadn’t just wrestled a man into bed, taking the first aid kit with them. Julien smoothed his hair back, shoving loose pieces of the black locks from his face, before following the nurses out.

Sable let out the breath she’d been holding. The man lying in the bed scared her. How was she supposed to be in charge of him if she could barely move when something like this happened? And on her first day on the job?

“What—what was that about?” Sable stammered. Birdie seemed unaffected by the altercation, and the older woman gestured to the files in Sable’s arms. Remembering them, Sable nodded and set the stack on the side table where the first aid kit had sat. She picked the man’s file out of the stack and opened it. Inside, his picture stared at her.

“Cristofer Torell,” Birdie said as Sable’s eyes scanned the words. “He’s Swedish, attending university in Yorkshire at the start of the war.”

“‘Admitted for selective mutism,’” Sable read aloud. That explained the grain of his voice, like he hadn’t used it for a long time. Birdie nodded, looking forlornly at Cristofer unconscious on the bed.

“He’s been here for, ah, three years now. Never spoken more than a word in all that time,” Birdie explained. “A priest brought him to us, claimed he was babbling on and on about all sorts of demons, God forbid.” She performed the sign of the cross, her long fingertips touching her sternum and each shoulder in quick succession.

Sable read more of the file; Cristofer suffered psychotic outbursts like the one she’d just seen fairly often. Sometimes he became violent. He’d been in solitary for two and a half years out of the three he’d spent at Rosemanor, after he’d injured another patient in an episode. Sable felt sorry for him for a moment; she couldn’t imagine living in solitude for close to three years like he had. Even so, she wasn’t looking forward to taking care of him, given his apparently volatile nature.

Sable looked up from the file as Julien appeared in the doorway. He spared Sable a brief glance but looked to Birdie. Sable hurriedly scooped up the other patient files.

“The nurses need some help in the kitchen,” he said. “They insist no one makes minced beef pies like you do.” Birdie sighed, exasperated.

“Alright then,” she said, stalking past Sable. “Stay here, would you? Make sure he wakes up all right. I’ll be back in a moment.” Sable opened her mouth to protest, but only nodded as Birdie left with Julien. Sable hurried out after them, quickly pushing the door closed behind her.

Beyond a slot in the door roughly the size of the manila envelopes in her arms, the room was plain, the walls smudged with stains and the drywall cracking in a few places. Beside the bed with its dully-shining brass frame was a small nightstand bolted to the floor, where the nurses had put the first aid kit and syringe to put him to sleep. Otherwise the room was empty, meant for its inhabitant to ponder in silence.

Watching Cristofer through the slot in his drug-induced sleep, she was able to study him more closely. The stubble covering his square jaw was thick and blond, his wavy hair the same pale yellow as it curled around his ears and the back of his neck. He was fair, his sandy lashes casting thin shadows across the tops of his cheekbones. If Sable looked closely, she could see a small mole dotting his cheekbone under one eye. The dark circles were there too, same as the photo in his patient file. His chapped lips were slightly parted in sleep, his stomach steadily rising up and down under the thick canvas of the straightjacket.

Sable flinched a little when she heard a sharp inhalation. On the other side of the door, Cristofer shifted, waking up. She watched tensely as his eyes slowly opened. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, but then his eyes shot to her. She froze, his eyes icy blue and staring at her just like in his photo. She felt a shiver skitter along her back as he stared at her.

After a moment, Sable stepped back from the door. She slid the cover over the slot, blocking her from his view. Somehow, she could still feel his gaze on her, his eyes blue as ice and just as cold. Something about him made her skin crawl, and it wasn’t just his eerie silence.

Sable looked up as Birdie approached. She glanced toward the closed door to Cristofer’s room.

“How is he?” Birdie asked. Sable nodded, plastering a smile on her face.

“Fine,” she replied.

Birdie didn’t seem to notice Sable’s shaken expression, and led her down the hallway the way they’d come, returning to the main halls of Rosemanor and leaving solitary confinement behind them.