Story 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒕 | 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚

[cuzn]

Reading Her Heartbeat
An anthology disguised as a story, in which a skilled scientist - yet underqualified doctor (Jasmine Patel) is assigned as the sole caretaker of seizure-prone, anxiety-ridden, extremely ill Patient 98 (Juliet Hyde) and her D.I.D. alter-egos that coexist within her body. Lesbian pining and (PG-13) sexual tension ensues.

CW for mental illness, very unethical insane asylums, violence, implied creep behavior, and injuries of various degrees. More warnings will be added as needed.

no beta we die like men​

---

april 20th | springtime | clear weather | 5:47AM
a crisp, clear morning at the bethany institute in northern california
​

---

There was not a single person on this planet who should ever have to be awake this early.

Jasmine was sure that from where she sat in the lobby a dark black aura of hatred and contempt emanated from her very being. She seethed in dead silence, listening to the incessant ticking of the tacky triangle-shaped wall clock hung above the front desk, and internally she agonized over the receptionist's slow, sluggish typing pattern. The woman looked at a keyboard as if it was a typewriter—one finger at a time, one key after another, tap, tap, tap, tap...

Just as her vision began to blacken, she jolted awake. Tick, tick, tick, tap, tap, tap. She felt slightly nauseous. Uneasily, she lifted her mug and took a slow sip of coffee. It tasted burnt. The shitty instant coffee they had here always tasted like that, and yet it never got better, and Jasmine was always left wondering why she didn't just cough up the seven dollars and go through a Starbucks instead. Lord knows she could afford it with a job that made her get up at o-dark-thirty every goddamn morning. Tick, tick, tap...

Tick... Tap...

This time her head didn't even roll forward when she dozed off. She just sat there, wide-eyed, staring at the flickering glow of a vending machine across the room until she again shook herself awake a few moments later. She felt like she was going insane.

At last, when the seconds were beginning to last for what felt like hours, a new pair of footsteps roused Jasmine from her waking slumber, and she turned just in time for a tall figure to take a seat across from her.

His eyes were the palest, lightest gray she had ever seen.

"Dr. Patel." He addressed her in a cold, calculating voice—insincere, untrustworthy, a Transatlantic accent. "I hope this new schedule isn't too early for you. I know most find it difficult to bring themselves to such a place at five in the morning, but it really is of utmost importance that this schedule be kept."

He must have noticed the exhaustion in her eyes. Jasmine squared her shoulders instinctively, and took another sip of her coffee before meeting his gaze. The head of administration, Dr. Sebastian Knox, was a sharp-faced and oppressive man who had greyed far too early, and as a result looked odd and indistinguishable in regards to his age; he appeared at once to be both thirty-seven and seventy-two at the same time. His skin was pasty and ill, a blueish hue visible in his hands where veins ran through, and his eyes were sunken and cruel. Everything about him seemed to Jasmine to be a caricature of his ruthless personality, and even in his mannerisms—the way he held his hands on the table so that his fingertips touched, the way he looked at her as if she were a mouse caught in a trap, the slight quirk of his eyebrow—was so stereotypical of the evil mastermind that it made Jasmine want to laugh.

She could play the staring game just as well as he could, but at the moment Jasmine was rather busy with her own desire to pass out right then and there, and so she was the first to blink.

"Of course not." Jasmine wore the lie well, no matter how obvious a falsehood it was; her tone remained level and her voice smooth. An impenetrable wall of ice lay between her and Knox, held up by both sides in a mix of pride and egotistical professionalism. She finished off her coffee with a gulp. "I had looked over the patient's files last night, though I had assumed there were some matters you still wished to discuss."

"Yes, it is about this particular patient's history. I'm sure you've heard..." Dr. Knox leaned forward. His voice lowered and his eyebrows raised, as if he were sharing some type of fascinating secret, though they were the only ones present in the lobby outside of the slow-typing receptionist at the other end of the room. "...but she can be quite volatile to changes in routine. Her previous caretaker was Dr. Clarkson, though we have had to let him go following last week's incident. The patient has not yet fully recovered from the shock."

The incident. Jasmine doubted there was a soul in this institution that hadn't heard of it in some form or another along the gossip chain. Dr. Clarkson tried to sneak into the patient's cell after hours one night. The nurses found him the next morning laying in a pool of his own blood in the middle of the floor. He was somehow still alive, and rumor had it that they had to pull six teeth out of his throat in the operating room. Jasmine had even heard that the institution had to pay him hush money to fake his own 'falling down the stairs' shtick to the cops, and judging by the fact that there had been little to no police involvement since then, it very well might have been true.

"I'll try to keep my guard up around her." Jasmine made to leave, but a gesture from Knox stopped her in her tracks.

"Oh, I'm not here to warn you about your safety, Dr. Patel, but hers." Knox rose to his feet, revealing his unnatural height in a way that made Jasmine feel somewhat challenged. He glowered down at her. "The patient is not only a danger to those around her, but also to herself. Dr. Clarkson failed to heed my warning when he took on this position, so make sure you don't do the same. Do not antagonize her, Dr. Patel."

For some reason, his words sent a shock of ice down Jasmine's spine. After a beat of tense silence, Knox continued, "Quite frankly, nobody else was willing to step up to this position. If you fail, there's little more I can do to keep this program from shutting down. That is why it is crucial that you keep the patient calm during this time especially, do you understand, doctor?"

Jasmine stood up, and tried to hide the apprehension that had balled up in her throat. "...Yes, of course. I understand perfectly."

Dr. Knox seemed satisfied by this answer. His gaze softened very slightly, and his shoulders relaxed, prompting Jasmine to do much of the same. "Good. Drop by the cafeteria before you visit her, you'll be bringing the patient her breakfast once you wake her up."

Jasmine watched Sebastian leave, but halfway through his third stride he paused, looked back at her, and nodded.

"Good luck, Dr. Patel. Alea iacta est."

 

[cuzn]

chapter i
admire the architecture
​

---

Alea iacta est. The die has been cast.

Those words clung to Jasmine's mind like a mantra as she exited the cafeteria, with a new cup of crappy burnt coffee in one hand and a tray of equally-crappy scrambled eggs and bacon in the other. She couldn't help but notice the color of the sunrise as she passed by a barred window—pale blue faded into a pastel yellow near the horizon, powdery purple clouds lingering high above the treetops that swayed in a mild breeze. It was likely the last time she would be seeing the sky for a few hours; there were no windows in the old wing of the building, and this was only one of many very intentional choices that the architects had used when designing this place.

The Bethany Brown Institute had originally been an insane asylum, constructed by one Leonard Thorne in the eighteen-hundreds. It had been built as an ode to his illegitimate daughter, Bethany, who apparently passed in some part due to her undiagnosed mental condition. Looking at the way the building was originally designed though, one had to wonder if Thorne had ever loved his daughter at all, since every portion of the estate's architecture served to make those kept inside more insane than they already were.

For Jasmine, it was less a source of gothic eighteenth-century madness and more an annoyance to her overly-perfectionist nature.

The hallways didn't intersect at ninety-degree angles. The walls were different thicknesses throughout, there were slight inclines and declines to the ceiling that made one feel either gradually more claustrophobic or gradually more exposed without their fully realizing why... It was infuriating, really, to have to traverse a place where the stairs were all slightly different heights by multiple centimeters, and where the cells were numbered like prison rooms, and where even the type and color of bricks used in the internal walls changed depending on however the hell the person building this place felt that day. Brown brick in one room hallway, yellow tile in the next, and in the third was dark grey cobblestone...

It was an absolute nightmare to someone who spent her free time alphabetizing her childhood collection of Magic: The Gathering cards, and then sorting them all by type, and then by subtype and supertype, and then again by the time she had obtained them, and then by how often she used them in games, how much she liked the artwork, her general attachment to them... And when the hideous cycle was finally over, she would put the cards away for six to seven months until she inevitably saw something that reminded her of them, and as soon as the old nostalgia drug kicked in the obsession would start all over again. To put it shortly: this building was an absolute nightmare to someone almost exactly like her.


By the time Jasmine had reached the patient's cell, she was mentally debating whether to risk a serious burn from the scalding hot cup of coffee in her hand just for another caffeine hit to satiate her. She had barely started her morning and she was already on her second cup—a testimony to how oppressive this institution was on the psyche of even those who worked there. Or, maybe she just had a problem.

Jasmine was half expecting a scene from a horror movie to lay waiting for her on the other side of that door, but when she entered the cell and quietly slunk inside, it all seemed perfectly innocent. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor were all covered in old white padding, and mostly everything else in the room was the same shade of white, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as she had imagined it. In the far corner of the room, the patient slept on a mattress on the floor, curled up under a thick duvet and surrounded by stuffed animals. A pair of glasses lay on the floor beside her, and all that was visible about her was her long, straightened black hair that hadn't been brushed in multiple days. Otherwise there was a short white coffee table that had—funnily enough—been baby-proofed so that a plush lining lay over every corner and edge. Books upon books piled themselves on that table, along with a few board games and a children's xylophone.

Jasmine couldn't help but notice the various themes in genres of books chosen. Jekyll and Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Phantom of the Opera... Gothic classics. Then, there was a second pile—Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and The Age of Innocence juxtaposed harshly with all six books in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. The third little collection was a more intellectual sort, with the dystopian nightmare-scape of George Orwell's 1984 set right above multiple philosophical books of the existentialist teaching. A gorgeous picture book of the entire Peter Rabbit collection by Beatrix Potter lay open at the center of the table.

Moving as quietly as she possibly could, Dr. Patel set the tray of poorly-cooked food on the coffee table and made her way over to the patient. For a moment, she didn't quite know how to proceed; did she shake the girl awake and risk getting a black eye, or would it be a better idea for her to take the blanket off and hope for the best? Before she could pick her poison though, the patient roused on her own, rolling over on her back with a drowsy yawn. Quickly seizing the opportunity, Jasmine lowered her voice to what she hoped was a soothing murmur. "Good morning, Patient 98. I brought in your breakfast."

Slowly, steadily, onyx black eyes blinked open, and then fixated on Jasmine, who found herself suddenly frozen to the spot under the attention of what was a decidedly dangerous inmate.

"Mm..." The patient inhaled deep, and then breathed out a huff, before turning away in indignance and cuddling deeper into her blanket cocoon. "...Come back later, please. Sleeping now."

The patient had an oddly... Gentle voice for someone who had nearly beat a man to death a week ago. With a strained clear of her throat, Jasmine steeled herself and persevered, trying to remember how she used to wake her younger niece up for school whenever she would babysit. Jasmine gave the patient's shoulder a small shake, and tried very hard to smile. "Come on. It's bacon and eggs, and I got you some milk, too."

Silence.

Her resolve now beginning to waver, Jasmine swallowed hard and tried again. "It's time to get up..."

Thankfully, the patient had much less tolerance for this than Jasmine remembered her niece having, because the patient seemed to give up on sleeping and finally sat upright. Now that Jasmine had a good look at her, she was slightly shocked at how skinny the girl was—her collarbone was clearly defined above and below, and her brown skin was slightly paler than it should have been, dark circles clearly visible under her eyes. What else was clearly visible were the white stains of dried tear marks that had run down her cheeks, and under the sheer fabric of her nightgown, the patient's arms were bruised black and blue all the way down. It was honestly quite difficult to look at—Jasmine averted her eyes instantly.

"I'm Jasmine Patel, I've been assigned as your main caretaker from now on." Jasmine watched the patient slowly rub her eyes and look around, and then wipe the lenses of her glasses with the blanket before putting them on. The poor girl looked like an absolute wreck, and although Jasmine knew better, she couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for her. Seeing the state of her room and the state of her person had done something to Jasmine's mind, and it wasn't until the patient spoke again that the reality of the situation came rushing back to her like a bullet train.

"...Where's Dr. Clarkson?"

The blood instantly froze in Jasmine's veins. Unwittingly, the image of Dr. Clarkson's dark beard and his narrow rectangle glasses and his pronounced beer belly flashed in her mind. And the sound of his voice, the way he would greet her in the morning, always so cheerful when everyone else was absolutely miserable—a thick wave of nausea overcame the doctor instantly, and in that moment she could only stare, gaping, most likely looking as if Lucifer himself stood before her with the way her face paled.

First was reality, and then, realization. She doesn't remember. Jasmine very slowly shut her mouth. She nearly killed him, and she doesn't remember it. Oh, God, he nearly choked on his own teeth and she...

"He's..." Jasmine could barely hear herself over the sound of blood pounding in her ears when she spoke. "He's... Been r-released from the program. He..." He's got a severe skull fracture. It's likely he'll be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life. Internal bleeding, the leaking of cerebrospinal fluid, teeth in his throat, jaws wired shut, blood, bone, brains, hush money, violent assault, attempted murder... Jasmine bit her tongue to keep from keeling over. "He... H-Had an accident..."

"Oh, is he okay?"

"No." She blurted it out before she could stop herself, and was left to dizzily piece together some form of white lie before the patient caught on. Don't antagonize her. "No, no- I- we aren't... We don't know. He's... He- He's still recovering, w-we don't know how it'll... H-How it'll turn out."

"Oh..." The patient seemed to catch the illness in Jasmine's gaze, though her conclusion was one that sent the doctor into a mental somersault. "I'm sorry, were you two close?"

"No..." Jasmine swallowed, hard, and somehow found herself breaking a pathetic little smile in spite of it all. "No, I... I really, really hated him."


Breakfast between them was uncomfortable.

Jasmine was required to supervise the patient's every meal, just in case she decided that plastic utensils were good enough tools for murder, and throughout it all the patient was extremely quiet. The silence was awkward, though not entirely unwelcome—it gave Jasmine ample time to collect her bearings about herself, and to properly survey a situation that she suddenly seemed very wholly underprepared for. She had read up on the patient's conditions. One of them, in particular, was Dissociative Identity Disorder, something that Jasmine had never witnessed in person before this very moment, but had done her research on for hours the previous night.

While the patient had multiple physical and mental ailments, this one in particular was the most painstakingly documented; of her active 'alters' there were currently three that had appeared within the past seven years. The host, twenty-two year old Juliet Hyde, had only recently been made aware of the fact that she wasn't both narcoleptic and an amnesiac, but that her body was shared by multiple different people aside from herself. Or, 'people' with quotation marks, as there was a note under one of them that had stuck with the doctor even hours after reading it: Zodiac, non-human, has referred to herself as both a demon and an angel on separate occasions, but most commonly simply as a 'creature'.

She had managed to glean from the very minimal amount of conversation between them that she was currently speaking to the host. Juliet got the worst of the physical condition, it seemed. Prone to strokes for completely unknown reasons, no diagnosis that would properly explain this, stress-induced fevers that would turn into migraines that would occasionally turn into non-epileptic seizures of all things, extreme anxiety, frequent panic attacks, chronic nightmares... Again, there was that pang in Jasmine's chest as she began to realize what Dr. Knox had meant. She can be quite volatile to changes in routine. An ache in Jasmine's chest began, and she couldn't quite swallow it down. Juliet must have cried herself to sleep last night, with the amount of stress she's been under.

It was a bizarre experience, to in one moment be paralyzed by the horrific realization that the weak and scrawny girl in front of her had nearly killed a man and forgotten the entire event a week later, and in the next to feel sorry for her pitiful and painful existence. Jasmine had never felt sorry for anyone, it was actually a rather large vice of hers—constantly she was getting written up for failure to cooperate, for failure to obey pointless orders, for failure to smile at her patients when she worked with children... And yet here she was, feeling sympathetic for an attempted murderer.

When Juliet had her fill of gross food, there were an awkward two minutes where Jasmine had her back turned as the patient changed clothes, and then the two were out of that pleasant little prison cell and making their way through mismatched patchwork hallways towards the nearest examination room.

There was a lot of testing to be done, though whether or not Juliet's meek temperament would remain throughout every poke and prod, Jasmine would have to see.