In her determination and pride, she’s walked herself right into the trap, and now it’s ready to snap closed behind her. It’s too late. One more step, and Wendy crosses the threshold. The air changes immediately, heavy and dim. Wendy feels the loss of the sky overhead like a stolen breath. She hadn’t realized how much comfort she’d been drawing from that perfect stretch of blue.

She glances to the ceiling, pressed tin, hung with a chandelier. Rich carpets in patterned jeweled tones cover the floor of the entryway, lovely but worn. A few steps in, and the ceiling gives way to a high, open space. Curved staircases at either end of the foyer sweep up to a balcony that overlooks the ground floor. A stained-glass window lets through light, but its quality tells Wendy it doesn’t look onto the outside. Everything here is enclosed, safe, but false.

Dr. Harrington leads her past a reception desk without even a glance at the woman in a nurse’s uniform seated there. The woman doesn’t glance up either, and Wendy suppresses a shiver at the coldness of it all. She is merely a transaction, one of how many patients marched through the doors because they are inconvenient to their families, or worse, actually sick. Is there anything in this place to heal them?

Wendy tries to take in more of her surroundings, but Dr. Harrington speeds his pace, taking her past a common room with large windows overlooking the garden, and a smaller interior room where two nurses rest their feet. They turn a corner. The air changes again, and Wendy feels it immediately—a transition from the old country estate house to a newly constructed wing.

Fresh panic gnaws at her, and this time it refuses to be tamped down. The hallway stretched before her is plain, and there is nothing hospitable about it—all pretenses dropped. This is not a country estate, a place where people come to rest and get well. It is a place where people are locked away. Where patients scream and no one answers.

Doors line the hallway, set with small glass windows. More twists and turns carry her over gleaming checkerboard tiles. Wendy feels numb, dizzy. They pass larger doors spaced further apart. Medical facilities, treatment rooms. The size of the building eludes her; she can’t hold a picture of the whole in her mind.

“Please, Dr. Harrington—” Wendy’s voice emerges breathless, a weakness she would rather not admit but can’t help. Something in this place presses down on her, and she gulps for air.