“You’ve stopped seeing them as people, Thornhill. To you, they’ve become mere bodies to maintain and control, nothing more.”

“Believe me, I see them as far more. Which is precisely why I operate this asylum as I do.”

“How can it possibly be best to—”

“Because it is!” The snapping words echoed down the hall. His jaw was taut. “Someday you will stand back and survey the wreckage of what was, the utter devastation caused by a patient who only the day before seemed perfectly sane and deserving of every liberty he’d been given. Then you too, Doctor, will question your instincts and each drop of compassion you ever showed, and you’ll start to look at them the way every other alienist has learned to do—as broken and beyond repair. Disease to be mitigated and contained.” He was trembling as he spun and marched back down the hall, disappearing into the stairwell at the end.

Mitchell pictured again, like a flash of lightning, the trapped creature fighting her captors. Yet she’d seemed so slight in his arms when she’d collapsed there. These piles of stone and grayness were crushing her as they’d crushed Dahlia, extinguishing her beautiful life without a thought to its immense value. He shivered. “I don’t think I’m capable of seeing them the way you do,” Mitchell said to the empty corridor where Thornhill had stood, and left the boards in place over the first two chambers. Sunlight streamed down onto the gray floor from the high window, a single bright spot in a cavern of shadows.

22

Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

~Ludwig van Beethoven

“A message for you, music lady.” Bridget marched by in the laundry with a basket of wet clothing balanced on her hip. “From the slop boy. He says to tell you, ‘End of the year at the earliest.’”

I lost my grip on the crank and stumbled back. “December?” It was only June now. Perhaps early July. I clutched my gown, counting the weeks. Months. Panic rose like the tide, swirling around my neck. I’d sent Lew Wiggins back to Marcel Beauchene’s house to find out from his staff when he was expected back, and this wasn’t the response I’d hoped for.

I’d been counting on his rescue. Waiting for it. Marcel Beauchene had rescued me once before, and it had been, as everything he did, a memorable affair. Because of a misunderstanding, I’d been left shivering and alone at the age of eleven on the steps of Théâtre du Palais-Royal on a gusty, rainy night. The driver believed I would be returning with Marcel, and the second cellist had mistakenly told Marcel he’d already seen me leave with the driver for a celebration afterward, so there I stood, wondering why no one had come for me.