Iris McGivern never envisioned spending her twenties locked up in a psychiatric hospital, but there she is. Stuck with bad food, rude staff, and rules, rules, rules. The place is interminably dull. At least, it is until the murders start. Oh, sure, management claims the deaths are accidents, but Iris knows better. How? Because she can speak to the victims.
Newly qualified psychiatrist Marcus Hastings never aspired to work in a secure unit, but his rent won't pay itself. And he hates to back away from a challenge, even if that challenge is a delusional blonde who talks to birds, squirrels, and occasionally thin air. Fascinating, in a purely clinical sense, of course.
When fate throws them together, will Iris escape with her life? And will Marcus escape with his sanity?
Demented is a standalone paranormal romantic suspense novel in the Electi series.
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Excerpt – The Beginning…
A Wednesday.
Day 1,892 of my stay at Lakeview Secure Hospital.
Or perhaps day 1,893… I tended to lose count, and what were a few days between friends? The cocktail of drugs I took turned my brain to mush and made every thought an effort. Sometimes so much of an effort that I didn’t even bother.
And just lately? They’d upped the dosages.
Probably something to do with me biting an orderly’s ear off, but I wasn’t given a lot of choice in that. I didn’t want to do it, okay?
Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t.
And afterwards, as I sat fastened into restraints for the inevitable bollocking, the hospital director had told me I was never getting out. Never. I was stuck in this little corner of paradise until I took my last breath. Locked in a room that was really a cell except we weren’t allowed to call them that.
Rules.
Rules, rules, rules.
Take your meds, Iris. Quit talking to pigeons, Iris. Get dressed, Iris. Put your damn feet on the floor, Iris.
The orders never stopped.
Sometimes, I wished I’d been a good girl. Wished I hadn’t killed a man. The judge had called it murder. I said I was just doing my job.
And Leland Baker had deserved his punishment, just like the orderly.
Maybe it was Thursday?
Footsteps sounded in the tiled corridor outside my room, keys jangled, and the door slammed back against the wall. Oh, fantastic. It was Bobby. Bobby ate salami for breakfast and never brushed his teeth. I held my breath as he got closer.
“Don’t start with this nonsense again,” he muttered. “You can’t suffocate yourself. Do you want to go back on suicide watch?”
No, I didn’t, and I wasn’t even suicidal. I’d only torn a strip off my bed sheet to make a wrist support after I hurt myself doing handstands, and some idiot had panicked and told the director I was trying to hang myself.
Now they didn’t let me do handstands anymore either.
Lakeview was the pits.
Excerpt – Meet Marcus…
My second patient in my new job, and much as I hated to admit it because his phrasing was distinctly unprofessional, Doug Calvert, my new boss, had been right. Iris McGivern was a whole lot of crazy wrapped up in a pretty package.
Dammit, I should not have been thinking of a patient that way.
And now she folded her arms, glaring at me across the table with big blue eyes, her long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. Twelve years of medical training, and this was where I’d ended up—fresh meat at a medium-security psychiatric hospital, and not a particularly well-run one upon first impressions.
Considering the cloud I’d left my last job under, I knew I was lucky to land the position at all. I hadn’t thought I stood a hope. But at the end of my interview, which had lasted a whole twenty minutes, Calvert had surprised me and said I’d fit right in. That every man deserved a second chance. And there I was.
So… Iris.
Her previous psychiatrist, Greg Tillis, had asked to be reassigned after an incident last week. Well, what he’d actually said during our brief handover was, “There’s no getting through to that girl. She’s delusional, she’s dangerous, and she’s got deep-seated issues I haven’t even begun to touch.”
Calvert had suggested we restrain Iris for the session today, but I didn’t think that would be a great start to our relationship. No, I was just keeping a very close eye on her, as was Bobby in the observation room next door.
“Let’s go back to the gymnastics. Did you participate? Or watch it on TV?”
I’d barely had time to glance at her file, but I did recall a note near the end. She’d tried to hang herself, apparently, then claimed when she got caught that she’d only been trying to do a handstand. In the margin, someone had scrawled the words “history of lying.”
She hadn’t made another attempt on her life since, just somebody else’s, apparently. According to the report, an orderly had bent over her to rearrange her blankets and she’d reared up, latched onto his ear with her teeth, and refused to let go until she spat the bloody lobe onto the floor. Doug Calvert was worried about the guy suing the hospital for damages.
Iris didn’t answer, and instead of looking at me, she turned her gaze to the table. Still, it could have been worse. My first patient had flicked snot at me.
What else had Iris’s file said? Something about ghosts? Ah, yes—she’d come to Lakeview after she ran a man down with her car, then backed up and drove over him again, and when she got caught—after a police chase that took in two counties—she claimed she’d done it to avenge the spirit of her dead mother. That clearly fitted with her diagnosis of schizophrenia. The case had made the newspapers because, in a twist, her victim had been the man who killed her mother three years earlier by hitting her with his car while intoxicated. The media billed it as “an eye for an eye,” and some hailed Iris as a modern-day Hammurabi, but no matter—it was still wrong, and she’d ended up where she belonged. In a place where she could get help for her illness.
But I realised I faced an uphill struggle to convince her to accept that help.
And also a battle to give it. A new wing had just opened at Lakeview, and when it filled up, I’d have thirty patients to look after. Daily sessions just wouldn’t be possible in the long term.
“I really do want to help you, Iris. Can you tell me how you’re feeling today?”
Silence.
“What would you like help with?”
Silence.
“I understand that staying here at Lakeview is difficult for you.” Hell, I’d only been at the place for a few hours and I already wanted to run screaming. “But if you’ll talk to me, I can try to make things easier.”
Silence.
Was this how our sessions were going to be? Me asking questions while Iris ignored every word and picked at her fingernails?
“Do you want to talk about the weather again?”
Nothing.
“Well, I’ll tell you anyway.” My phone had a weather app. I’d only used it once or twice, mostly to curse when I’d left the washing out as a shower passed over, but now I was glad I hadn’t pressed the delete button. “Looks like we’re in for a cold, windy week—you were right. But it’s not due to rain until next Tuesday.”
Zilch.
“Would you rather start at the beginning? I took a look at your file, and I understand you see ghosts?”
“I wondered how long you’d take to go there,” she muttered.
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