AN: I kind of love this chapter, but it's also incredibly long and I have no clue how it got that way wow

Two days later, Katherine got on the ferry to Blackwell's Island, and upon her arrival, marched straight up to the asylum and knocked on the door. She was determined to act as authoritative as possible, to give herself the best chance of getting them to let her speak to some doctors, and maybe a few patients.

After a few moments of waiting, the door was opened by a rather rude-looking nurse, who raised an eyebrow when she saw Katherine.

"Yes?"

"Hello, my name is Katherine Plumber, I'm a reporter, I'm here to write an article for The World."

"And have you had this approved by anyone?"

"By Joseph Pulitzer, yes."

"By anyone here, I mean?" It was clear that this woman had no patience, which actually worked in Katherine's favor - if she kept her talking long enough she'd give in and let her in.

"Not technically, but - "

"Then we aren't interested." The nurse tried to close the door, but Katherine stopped her.

"But, I'm sure nobody will mind, I just want to speak to a doctor, maybe a patient or two... maybe have a few words with you, you seem like a very respectable woman, after all."

The nurse hesitated. "What do you plan on writing in this article?"

"All good things." So, maybe Katherine had to tell a few lies to get in, she wasn't above that. "People have always been curious about what goes on here, The World wants to show them that it's a very well-run establishment, and that all the patients are well cared for." Or the exact opposite, Katherine thought with a slight smirk.

"Very well." The nurse said after a long while, letting Katherine inside and motioning that she should follow her. "Dr. Miller is seeing a patient right now, but they've only just begun, I'm sure they could spare a few minutes to speak with you."

Katherine nodded as pleasantly as she could as they walked through the asylum. She'd never been in this part of the building before, and one of the main things she noticed is that the floors and walls could stand to be much cleaner than they were. She made a note about that in her notebook.

She followed the nurse through the halls until they came to a stop in front of what she assumed was one of the treatment rooms, and waited as the nurse knocked on the door. After a minute, an annoyed looking doctor opened the door.

"What do you need?" His gaze drifted to Katherine, and, apparently she seemed too confident for someone who was in an asylum, and he seemed to mistake her as a patient. "This isn't the women's wing, you know that."

The nurse was about to respond, but Katherine jumped in and stepped in front of the nurse, slightly offended. "I'm not a patient. Hello - Dr. Miller, is it?"

The doctor nodded slowly, taken aback. "Yes. Who are you?"

"My name is Katherine Plumber, I'm a reporter for The World. This wonderful employee of yours said you might be open to me asking you and some of your patients a few questions?"

Dr. Miller glanced at the nurse, who nodded reassuringly, so he sighed. "Alright, come in. I'm with a patient right now, will speaking to him and I give you enough information?"

Katherine walked into the room with him. "That remains to be seen, it depends on what the two of you tell me. Would it be possible for me to talk to the both of you individually?"

The doctor paused, before nodding. "I suppose so." He gestured to the boy in the room with them. "You can speak to my patient first. This is Louis Anderson."

Katherine tried not to show any reaction upon hearing the name as she politely nodded at the boy. Jack had told her about Louis. Risking a second glance, she noted that he didn't look very healthy at the moment. She didn't react to this either, however, and turned back to Dr. Miller.

"Louis, this is Ms. Plumber - " Louis wasn't as good at hiding his reaction as she was, but it managed to go unnoticed by the doctor. "- she's a reporter, and she wants to ask you some questions. The room across the hall is empty, is that sufficient privacy?" He asked Katherine, and she nodded.

"That should be fine."

Katherine led Louis out of the room and into the one across the hall, not missing the warning look Dr. Miller had given the younger boy when he thought she wasn't looking. She could very easily tell that this man's professional front was just that - a front.

As soon as the door was closed behind them, Louis turned to stare at her.

"You're Jack's wife, aren't you?"

Katherine nodded. "And you're Jack's roommate."

"Yeah, I..." He seemed to be at a loss for words. "What're you doing here?"

She gestured for him to speak softly, before lowering her own voice. "I'm here to write an article to see if I can't get this place shut down, or at least get the patients released. So I'm going to need you to be very honest about how they've been treating you and Jack."

Louis nodded seriously. "Well, there's this, to start with." He pulled up the bottom of his shirt to reveal his abdomen, which was mottled with bruises.

Katherine gasped. "The doctors did this to you?" She began writing as fast as she could, determined not to forget a thing Louis told or showed her.

He nodded. "When I don't give them the answers they want, or if we ask for something I'm not supposed to. I guess they've stopped hitting me where people can see because I'm so young, don't want anyone knowing what they do to me. The older guys aren't as lucky though. I think the doctors are trying to make an example of them."

"By older guys, you mean... around Jack's age?"

Louis hesitated. He knew Jack wouldn't want him to worry Katherine, but he knew he needed to tell her. "Yeah. He's got a pretty bad black eye right now. He's not exactly a rule follower."

Katherine grimaced. "No, he's not." She shook her head and moved on. "What about your treatment, how's that?"

"That's where I get most of the bruises." He told her. "They're trying this therapy-type thing with me, I uh... I used to, y'know hurt myself." He looked at her as if he was expecting a horrified reaction, but she just nodded. "So they keep asking me the same questions, and sometimes I don't like giving them the same answers, so they..."

"Hurt you?" Katherine asked gently, and he nodded. "Seems a bit ironic to me." She commented, and Louis smiled slightly. He already liked Katherine.

She asked him a few more questions about his treatment before she began, albeit reluctantly, to ask about Jack, and what his treatment was like.

Louis shrugged. "Don't know much, they won't tell him what they're doing. All he knows is they make him lay down on a metal table, and they stick what he thinks are wires on his head."

Katherine felt a knot in her stomach at the description, realizing that Davey was right. It sounded exactly like electric shock. The thought of her husband going through that made her want to shudder.

"And is... is it helping, at all?"

"I think the doctors might think it is, but he seems worse. He doesn't sleep except maybe an hour or two every few nights, and he's more distant and irritable. He still has nightmares, and I think now he's seeing... whatever his mind makes him see, a little bit during the day, too."

Katherine nodded and took a deep breath, trying not to let her emotions show on her face. "Okay. Thank you Louis, I think you've given me more than enough information."

He looked relieved, and he was surprised when, a few seconds later, Katherine pulled him in for a quick hug. "I'm going to do everything I can to get you out. Just hang in there for a little longer."

Louis nodded gratefully. "Can I tell Jack you were here?"

"You can, just make sure you don't talk about it around anyone else. Oh, and, would you tell him that I love him?"

Louis agreed, and she gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze before leaving to go back across the hall to talk to the doctor.

Dr. Miller looked up when she came back in, looking bored.

"You're done with him?"

Katherine nodded, acting like she didn't find his disinterest highly disrespectful. "I'd like to speak to you in private to, so you can get him when I'm finished speaking to you, if that's alright."

"Fine. What do you need to know?"

"I'd first like to ask you what you have to say about rumors that you're using electric shock therapy on some of your patients?"

At this, the doctor showed his first sign of real emotion in the form of surprise and concern. "How do you know about that?"

"So you do use it?"

Dr. Miller seemed incredibly flustered. "Yes, we use it. Is there a problem with this?"

Katherine could tell she was getting to him, and she was glad for that. He clearly wasn't used to dealing with reporters, and she knew how to make it very hard for him to lie to her.

"The staff members who perform the procedures, are they properly trained?"

"Well, I mean we haven't been doing it for very long."

"But have you been trained correctly?"

"I don't know if you would call it trained... we had a three day seminar on it several months ago."

"And it only took you three days to master an incredibly complicated new form of treatment?"

"Not all of us had the skill mastered entirely..."

Katherine quickly changed the subject after that, in an effort to both keep him from catching on to her successful attempts to manipulate the truth out of him, and to hide her own anger.

"How would you describe the way that you handle the patients outside of treatment? Are you and the nurses interactions with them generally pleasant?"

"I'd say so, though we often have to discipline them."

"In what way?"

"If they're disobedient, we'll sometimes resort to physical disciplinary measures."

"And would you say that happens often?"

"Depends on the patient."

Katherine nodded, going through her notes. "Alright, I think I have enough for my article, thank you Dr. Miller. The article should be published sometime next week, you'll want to look out for it."

"Thank you, Ms. Plumber." The doctor nodded.

Katherine turned and walked out, wanting to get out of this horrible building as quickly as she could. She hadn't been expecting to find out anything good about this place, but she'd had some hope that the things happening here weren't as horrible as she and Davey had expected. As it turned out, it was much worse.

As she boarded the ferry back to Manhattan, she had already begun to write the article in her head. She was going to get that article written as quickly as possible. Those patients were in trouble.