Free Exit Light by Megan Hart

she came in. It was the quietest she’d ever seen the common room.
    She saw Dr. Goodfellow right away. He leaned over the puzzle-makers, a hand on one woman’s shoulder, and spoke into her ear. He moved to the couch, pausing to speak briefly to each of the patients sitting there. They acknowledged him with smiles and nodding heads, which told her a lot. They liked Dr. Goodfellow. They trusted him, she thought, watching one of the men pat the hand Dr. Goodfellow had put on his shoulder. In a ward for paranoid schizophrenics, trust was hard to come by, yet all these patients smiled and looked serene in his presence.
    “Dr. Goodfellow.”
    “Miss Connelly.” He looked up, smile arrested by surprise. “How did you get here?”
    “I…drove?” Tovah laughed a little to show she was being silly.
    Dr. Goodfellow didn’t laugh. He smiled after a long moment and moved toward her. “Of course. That was a stupid question. Hi.”
    He was dressed as neatly as the first time she’d seen him, again in dark trousers and a deep blue shirt. He had a clipboard in one hand and, remembering his previous hesitation at shaking her hand, she didn’t offer it.
    “Hi,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”
    “You too. I was just finishing some rounds.”
    “I’m here to visit Henry.”
    “I know,” he said.
    Duh. Of course she was. They stared at each other until heat crept into her cheeks. Dr. Goodfellow stuck his pen into the clipboard’s metal clip and tucked his free hand into a pocket. The sound of a laugh track punctuated the too-warm silence.
    She shrugged off her embarrassment. “How’s he been this week? Any changes?”
    Dr. Goodfellow shook his head, the corners of his mouth turning down a little. “No. I’m sorry. But I’ve been looking into some new treatments for him. Old treatments, really. Just not used so much any longer.”
    “Really? You’re not going to give him shock treatment or anything, are you?” She hadn’t meant to sound so suspicious, but Henry’d had it all before. Shock, cold water, restraints. Some of the things he’d told her about were barbaric but had once been considered cutting-edge psychiatric care. She counted herself lucky that when she’d done her time it had only been drugs and therapy sessions.
    Dr. Goodfellow blinked, then shook his head. “No. Of course not.”
    He said it so mildly she felt silly for jumping to a conclusion like that. “Sorry. It’s just—”
    “I know.” He took his hand from his pocket and hooked the fingers into claws. “Shrinks are the big, bad bogeymen.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    “Witch doctors?” He grinned, bouncing a little on his toes.
    “Not that, either.”
    From down the hall came the soft, muted sound of talking and the thud of a door closing. Dr. Goodfellow turned to look over his shoulder. When he looked back at her, his confident smile had become a little strained and he passed a hand over his forehead, brow crinkling.
    “You okay?” Tovah asked.
    “Fine. Just a little headache. It’ll pass.”
    The blare of the television became suddenly loud enough to make her jump. One of the people at the puzzle table muttered an invective and tossed the box lid to the ground, earning complaints from her companions. One of men who’d been watching TV got up and began to pace in front of the windows.
    “So much for the peace,” Tovah said with a small smile.
    Dr. Goodfellow looked around the room and gave a somewhat weary shrug. “I can’t make it last. Nothing ever does.”
    The people at the puzzle table erupted into a frenzy of squabbling and throwing puzzle pieces. Tovah took that as her cue to leave as Dr. Goodfellow went to deal with the problem. She found Ava at the nurses’ station and stopped, though she’d already signed in.
    “Dr. Goodfellow might need a hand,” Tovah said.
    Ava looked up with an expression Tovah’d never seen on her before. Confusion. “Tovah? When did you get here?”
    “Fifteen minutes