“Get back! They’ll see you!”
Bernard looked back into the room. The moonlight shone through the open doorway and onto Clooney’s wrinkly, uneven face.
Clooney was still strapped into the ward-issue bed. He contorted his neck in an effort to witness Bernard’s first free steps out of the room.
“There’s no one out here,” Bernard said. “The guards are all in their lounge.”
Bernard stepped out of the door again. This was the second time in five years that he had exited the room on his own volition. The first time was moments before.
Bernard looked back into the room.
“Clooney, now’s your only chance to break out of this place. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”
“Me?” Clooney asked. “No, no. At my age, I’ll only slow you down.” He paused, and then he sighed. “What are you, thirty?”
Bernard nodded.
Clooney continued. “I have faith that you’ll make it outta here, and you’ll have a whole life ahead of you out there. You’ve got a wife to get back to. I got nothin’. Besides, sometimes I think I really am crazy. But you? You seem more sane than the people who run this place.”
“Clooney…”
“Go on, kid. Just promise you won’t forget me like everyone else did. And know that I’ll miss seein’ your handsome face around here. You know, you remind me of me when I was young. I used to be strong like you. I used to have the same waves in my hair. Always blonde, not brown like yours.”
“You always felt like a father to me, Cloon.”
Clooney nodded his head in appreciation. “Thank you.”
“I won’t forget you.”
“Goodbye, Bernard.”
“Goodbye.”
Bernard moved away from the door, ready to leave it far in his past.
“Bernard, wait!”
Bernard stopped in his tracks, closed his eyes, and turned back toward the room.
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget to take out the door jamb. I don’t want the guards thinkin’ I was in on this when they find out you’re gone.”
“Good call.”
Bernard bent low and leveled his gaze with the door’s deadbolt hole.
The broken-off end of yesterday’s plastic fork was still lodged in the deadbolt hole. There was an impact in the shiny white plastic where the deadbolt had tried to lock in, but failed. With the long¬ nail of his pointer finger, Bernard reached in the hole and pulled out the plastic.
“Bernard,” Clooney said, “don’t you get mixed up with The Doctor. You know as well as I do that that man isn’t the righteous man he says he is. There’s somethin’ off about him.”
Clooney shook his head, then looked up to Bernard with desperate eyes. “If he catches you, he’s gonna try to cure you the way he tried to cure Franky…the brain stuff…and you know how that went.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Thank you, Bernie.”
Bernard whispered one last goodbye before closing the door for good. The clank echoed down the hallway.
Bernard stuffed his hand into his deep pajama pocket. His pant leg flared out and danced around as he searched inside. His hand finally resurfaced holding a used and tattered napkin with deep-blue-ink plans etched in. With the napkin came a note, as well as a black and white picture of a woman in her late twenties standing next to a brand new 1951 Cadillac. Bernard took a moment to look at the picture. As he did, his eyes watered.
He smiled.
“I’m coming home to you, darling,” he whispered. He flipped the photo over to read the lines he’d memorized from the back.
Shelley, with Shelley and Bernard’s new car. September 21, 1951.
He unfolded the tear-stained note and read it to himself.
Dearest Bernard,
The Doctor has once again denied my request to see you. He says you are very sick. I don’t believe him. He seems, to me, like a liar. You were never truly sick. I regret ever asking for you to start therapy, and I regret letting your therapist recommend a stay at the asylum. You are not crazy. Your seizures do not make you crazy. They shouldn’t hold you on the same ground as the schizophrenics, the mad and the dumb.
I know as well as the Doctor that the seizure medicine, the Epilim, is working well for you. So why can’t you come home to me? Why can’t I come see you? Why does the Doctor need you to stay for “research and evaluation?”
Regardless, you are perfect. I love you and long to see you soon.
Yours,
Shelley
Bernard sighed with relief. He stuffed the note and photo back into his pocket. He was finally on his way home—on his way to freedom, to his wife.
He straightened out the napkin to the best of his ability and mouthed the words written in blue he’d printed some time ago. Many of the words were smudged and smeared from the times he had pretended the napkin wasn’t a map and list of plans. The words read:
1. Get out of room. Try deadbolt block.
2. Get the Epilim.
3. Get out of the building. Avoid Doctor’s Quarters: Left side of third floor.
4. Front door is guarded. Use activity room window.
Under the words were five small renditions of hallway maps, one for each level of the building he’d have to move through to get out. The left side of level three was scrawled with small X’s: the Doctor’s quarters.
*
Bernard moved from shadow to shadow as he crept toward the small room—Room 501a—where the nurses kept the medicine cart. At each room window, he peeked in and saw silhouettes of sleeping patients, some naked and uncovered, some strapped in to their beds. He whispered goodbyes to the shapes of people he recognized. 
Up ahead, light shined out of Room 502’s window. This room was the nurse’s break room. He became nervous. He stepped back, looked back down the hallway, and then looked to his feet.
Do I turn around now? If I get caught, what will the Doctor do to me?
He slowly made his way to his room. As he passed by the patients he had just said goodbye to, he felt like a coward.
What am I doing? Giving up already? What would Shelley think of me for this?
With that, he turned around and snuck back to the outside wall of the break room. He avoided the window and slowly moved past.
Room 501a, the medicine room, was unlocked. Bernard pushed the door open quickly.  It creaked loudly and he grabbed it to slow it down.
He paused. Shuffling came from the break room next door.
A muffled voice drifted through the hall. “Ya hear somethin’ out there?”
“You’s jus’ paranoid, Rodney. They ain’t nothin’ goin’ on out there. It’s three in the ------- mornin’. All the doors were locked hours ago.”
Bernard breathed out slowly, his hand still grabbing the door. He cautiously let it go.
Just inside the door, the medicine cart waited.
Bernard rolled the cart out of the dark mini-room and into the moonlit hallway. Glass bottles on the cart clinked together.
“Okay, Rod, I’ll give it to ya this time, I heard that. I heard somethin’.”
Footsteps and objects shuffled inside the break room. Bernard’s nervous hands danced over bottles, trying to decipher the blurry, dark labels into something he recognized.
Chlorpromazine. Lithium Carbonate. Methylphenidate. Caffeine.
Epilim.
As his hand closed around the full bottle of Epilim, the break room door opened.
“Hey!”
The floor nurses, Rodney and Andy, stepped out into the hall. Rodney’s tall, lanky silhouette towered over stumpy Andy. They were moving toward Bernard.
Adrenaline pumped through Bernard’s veins. He had a decision to make, and quick.
Fight, or flight.
Flight.
Bernard ran wild—like the boy he once was—toward the STAFF ONLY stairwell door, Epilim cradled in his arm like a pigskin.
The muscles in his legs fully awoke for the first time in years. He hadn’t run like this since his youth. The energy flowed out of him, right from his core, down his legs, through his feet and to the floor. The energy became noise as the floor rumbled below him.
The guards yelled to each other behind him. 
“We got a runner! We got a runner!”
“How the f***’de get free?”
The fifth floor night nurses—two sane men surrounded by thirty insane ones—were taken aback when Bernard let out a loud cackle.
Even Bernard was surprised. He wasn’t scared like he expected he would be. He was exhilarated. He hadn’t felt a thrill like this since his youth—since the days he had played rugby with his brothers and friends.
Bernard ran straight through the stairwell door and fell head over heels down the first set of split-level stairs. He briefly recovered on the stairway’s middle landing. In no time, he was back up on his feet, running down the next flight toward the fourth floor door.
As he reached the fourth floor landing, its door burst open. The two fourth floor night nurses—still waking up from their late night rest—immediately took cover as Bernard barreled toward them.
Bernard effortlessly plowed through the two fourth floor night nurses and headed for the next flight of stairs, leaving the nurses incapacitated. His long steps cleared the first stairway easily, only touching three of the twelve steps. He made it down the next half-flight to the third floor door.
There wasn’t another flight of stairs.
He looked left and right frantically. Just next to the third floor door, a map hung on the wall. Bernard slammed his finger onto the map, tracing hallways and rooms until he found where he was standing. His eyes followed his finger across the third story’s layout—across and through the Doctor’s quarters—to the flight of stairs that would get him to the first floor.
A deep, primal fear arose in Bernard’s gut.  He stepped back from the map and looked at the third floor door as the remaining nurses ran down the stairs. The idea of what lay behind that door threatened him more than the men closing in on him.
He looked to the stairs, then to the door. He knew what he had to do.
*
The crevice Bernard had shoved himself into left his body squished and contorted. The bottle of Epilim was jammed into his ribs. His chest didn’t have enough room to expand and take in a full breath of air. His hands and legs fidgeted in the little room they had, panicking to be set free, panicking to be able to breathe again.
Just down the wall from Bernard’s hiding place was the stairwell door. As he peeked out of the crevice, the door swung wide open and covered him in his hiding spot. Bernard could see the nurses through the small glass window on the door.
The nurses from Bernard’s floor held the door open and looked left and right down the Doctor’s quarters of the third floor.
“You see ‘em?” Rodney said as he looked back and forth down the hallway.
“Nah!” Andy stood on his tippy toes to get a better view down the long corridors.
“Should we tell the Doctor?”
“You wanna get fired?”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah. I say we tell ‘em he died in ‘is sleep.”
“Which guy was it? What we gonna do about showin’ the Doct’r a body?”
“It was 515. We gonna tell him he was infectious or somethin’, tell ‘em we went ahead and sent ‘em to the cremmie. How’s that sound?”
Rodney shook his head. “Doc knows he wasn’t really sick. He ain’t gonna buy that.”
“We gonna get caught, but it’s better than facin’ it tonight. Let’s go check on the boys from four.”
The stairwell door creaked shut and Bernard was left all alone in the Doctor’s quarters.
He slid out of the crevice and looked left and right down the hallway. To the right, in the direction of the other stairwell, artificial light flooded the floor. The light stretched from the left side of the hall, covering the floor nearly all the way to the right wall.
The air was cool and tense as Bernard snuck toward the flood of light on the floor. He scooted his back flat against the tile wall. Light shone through the window just ahead. The window was on the same wall that Bernard was pressed up against.
The long silhouette of a man interrupted the patch of light that spread on the ground before Bernard.
Muffled sounds of metal drawers and metal instruments clanked from the direction of the light and silhouette.
Bernard froze. His breathing picked up, compensating for the oxygen he’d lost while lodged in the crevice.
The light refilled the floor as the figure moved away from the light source. Bernard waited until the last of the noise settled. Then he ran across the hall to the opposite wall.
He scooted along the wall, his eyes firmly fixed on the window in front of him.
In the middle of the room, a naked male patient Bernard faintly recognized from Art Activities was stretched out on a medical table. His arms and legs were cuffed down. A cone-shaped lamp that spread an intense light—including the light cast out into the hallway—hung above the patient.
The far wall of the room was lined with metal cabinets, drawers and sinks. The tiled floor of the room was slightly concave with a drain near the center, next to the round metal base of the medical table.
Crimson puddles coated the tile floor. The substance ran in the grout toward the drain. Bernard could almost hear the drip, drip, drip of the substance in the drain.
He traced the stream back away from the drain. He trailed the shiny red syrup through the grout, toward the large puddle at the head end of the medical table. He followed the drops as they dripped from the patient’s ears and from a hole in the patient’s head.
Bernard’s limbs locked in place. He stood and stared on, bewildered.
After a few minutes of taking in the sight of the patient on the table, Bernard took a few steps, exposing his feet in the puddle of light.
Both of his feet were fully lit when a gargantuan man in a suit and tie, slicked hair, glasses and a pointy chin stepped into the surgical room.
The Doctor.
Bernard was trapped in the dark, feet caught in the light. Cold sweat seeped from his pores, puddled up on his brow, and dripped down his face.
The Doctor retrieved an unusual, pointy stick-like tool from a drawer by the sink. He ran a rag over it and walked over to the patient.
He stuck the tool into a hole in the patient’s forehead and dug around. When he brought it back out, the end held small grey pieces of brain.
Bernard managed to tear his eyes away from the horror behind the glass. He moved away slowly, unable to witness what he was seeing any longer. Back still against the wall, he stepped toward the far stairwell door at the other side of the light. He closed his eyes, too scared to see if he would make it.
He had two steps until his feet were completely out of the light when a tap, tap came from the surgical room’s window.
Bernard whimpered. He turned his head toward the glass, keeping his eyes closed, too scared to look.
He could hear his own heartbeat pounding strong in his ears.
He opened his eyes.
The Doctor stood at the window, looking out into the hall. When Bernard got the courage to look the Doctor in the eye, the Doctor smiled a sinister, ugly smile.
“Well, well. Is somebody lost?” 
Bernard pushed away from the wall. He tripped over his own feet as he tried to run.
The Doctor ¬¬was fast. He was already halfway through the door from the surgical room to the hallway. Bernard ran for the stairway door.
He burst through the door and went flying over the stairway ledge.
Bernard groaned as he came back to reality. His back was sore, his thoughts blurry. Stomach to the air, he could see the many flights of stairs above him, a broken wooden rail coming out of the top flight. Wood chips covered the floor around him.
He scrambled to his feet and frantically searched for the Epilim. He looked all around the floor, only to realize it was still in his hand. He sighed in relief.
He swirled around the small space he found himself in, looking for some sign of where he was. Just in front of the flight of stairs that lead down to his location, he saw a door. He dizzily walked over to it.
BASEMENT.
He was too far down. The only way out was the first floor.
A voice echoed from above. “Where are you going, 515?”
Bernard looked up. The Doctor leaned over the broken third floor banister.
Before Bernard could think about what he was doing, he was running up the stairs, making his way to the first floor door.
The Doctor ran down, aiming for the same destination.
As Bernard made it to the first floor door, the Doctor closed in from the second floor’s landing. Bernard’s sweat-drenched hand slipped over the doorknob, unable to twist it open.
The Doctor grabbed Bernard by the back of the shirt and yanked him away from the door.
“Not so fast, 515. You have medicine to take.” The Doctor held up a large syringe. He jabbed it into Bernard’s neck.
Before the Doctor could push the plunger, Bernard kicked him away. The Doctor stumbled backward, leaving the needle in Bernard’s neck.
The Doctor fell against the wooden banister and fell down into the basement’s landing. A smash and a guttural groan resounded through the stairway as he hit the ground.
Bernard pulled the needle out of his neck and held onto it as he pushed through the first floor door.
To his surprise, no guards were waiting for him on the other side. He ran toward the front door.
*
Bernard ran through the giant columns that supported the ceiling of the first floor’s elegant hall.
He didn’t think he would make it past step one. But now, he was on his way to breaking step four. He remembered the guard he had earlier noticed at the front door.
Behind him, the Doctor broke through the first floor doors. In front of him, at the very last row of columns, a guard appeared without warning.
Bernard held the needle in front of him and ran into the guard. The violence of their collision emptied the plunger of the syringe straight into the guard’s bloodstream. The guard dropped immediately.
The Doctor screamed after Bernard. “515! Get back here! You are unfit for the world out there! You’re better off here, with me. I can make you normal. We have new procedures! That man, the one you saw in my surgery room? We were practicing for you. The man you saw. We were practicing. Just…for…”
The words trailed off, unable to reach Bernard in the outside world. Epilim in hand, he continued to run, straight out of the front doors and into the woods that would carry him straight to his old backyard—right back to his wife.
*
An hour after Bernard’s escape, he and Shelley drove their overstuffed 1951 Cadillac out of town. Shelley’s eyes were wet with joy. Clothes, relics, pictures and personal records filled the back seat.
Shelley sniffed and choked out, “I can’t believe you are back. I had a feeling you would be with me soon, but I just didn’t know.”
Bernard reached for her hand, then grabbed it tightly. “I’m out for good, honey. What went on back there, it’s all in the past now. It’s time to start anew.”