Chapter Text
She said she came from the past.
It raised a few eyebrows, truth be told. It drew a few coughs from throats and made a few officers grumble. Another Friday night, another drunken kerfuffle. But there was something earnest about the girl in the gauzy bridal gown. There was something believable in her tears. So the superintendent sighed, pitied the poor fool and whatever she was going through that brought on such a breakdown and called out to the bullpen.
“Blythe! Wright! You’re up!”
“Of course, we’d get lumped with Miss Victoriana,” Gilbert grumbled as he steered the station car into what wasn’t technically a parking space but could be deemed one in an emergency, and he considered escorting around a supposed Victorian an emergency.
He’d been assigned to a task force intended to follow a series of fraudulent cheques which were being banked in the area. He’d been following the scent of dirty money for months now and they were close. They were so close he could almost grab it between his fingers.
But then came Anne.
She was shouting when she’d entered the station initially, spooked by the cars she’d been wandering between, and then by the woman that found her, who was wearing breeches like a boy. She’d protested entering the elevator that let her out on Gilbert’s floor, and she’d almost leapt out of her skin when a pager sounded, and Gilbert had to admit he’d rolled his eyes like the others when she’d pleaded that someone just believed her, for goodness' sake!
She’d refused to climb into the tin wagon when they’d led her to the car, was astounded when they didn’t need to use horses to propel them forward in it, and stood open-mouthed as the automatic doors to the hospital slid open upon her arrival.
It would have been almost comical if Gilbert hadn’t been the one needing to coax her forward at each step.
“I’m not insane, you know,” she said beneath her breath as they waited for her to be called. “I know what you’re planning on doing to me here. Lock me away like I’m some sort of lunatic. But I won’t be broken. Not by you. ”
She eyed him with venom as Gilbert lazily looked up from the magazine he was thumbing through. He licked his thumb, turning the page.
“We don’t say lunatic anymore,” he replied before returning to the stale gossip that was now months out of date.
He should have detected the rustling of her dress to mean that she’d moved, but it didn’t register until the magazine was roughly torn from his grip.
“That should be all the more proof that I’m telling the truth,” she hissed as she tossed the magazine back onto the coffee table. “I don’t belong here, Officer Blythe! All this.” She gestured around, at the television flashing on the wall, the radio crackling, and the phone trilling. Fluorescent lights and beeping pagers and crutches that didn’t cause splinters. “This… modernity. It’s not where I’m meant to be.”
Gilbert’s face barely contained its horror as she grasped his hands, slipping to the floor before him.
“I’m meant to be getting married, Officer. I’m not meant to be here with you.”
“Do you reckon she’s a drunk?” Fred asked as he and Gilbert watched Anne be examined through the window to the doctor’s office.
“I don’t think she’s drunk,” Gilbert replied. He frowned as Anne winced, blood draining from the pale skin of her arm. The doctor capped the lid on the sample.
“High?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t think she’s telling the truth, do you?” Fred asked disbelievingly.
“What?” Gilbert laughed. “That she’s a time travelling Victorian that’s just happened to fall out of the sky and land in the middle of Charlottetown? Unlikely.”
But he paused, watched her movements. The stiff set to her shoulders and how she held her chin. She was beautiful in that timeless sort of way, and there was no doubt that her clothing was true vintage. Either that or it was an extremely good replica. But there was no possible way…
“Well, Doc, what’s the diagnosis?” Gilbert asked as Anne’s bloodwork returned.
“She’s as sober as a judge,” Dr Stacy replied.
“You’re kidding,” Fred said.
Dr Stacy shook her head.
“If anything, she’s a little anaemic. Her blood pressure is also slightly low, but I would say that’s due to the shock.”
Gilbert chewed his lip thoughtfully as the doctor spoke, hands slung low in his pockets as he watched Anne tentatively press a button on the keypad of a vending machine, squeak and jump back as the screen flashed green, prompting her to insert a dollar. He huffed a laugh as she crouched behind a chair, focused intently on a woman that walked up to the machine to make a purchase.
“Of course, there is the prospect of the delusion being caused by some form of physical trauma. We can only diagnose that with more tests. Do you reckon our girl is up for it?”
Gilbert blinked, turning his attention back to the doctor.
“I think she’s just as confused as why she’s here as we are,” he said. “She’ll be up for it.”
“You’ll be in for a long night, boys,” the doctor called over her shoulder as she approached Anne once more.
“Well, no sign of trauma,” Dr Stacy said sometime later, tossing Anne’s medical notes onto her desk. “In fact, her brain activity is perfectly healthy. See this?” She pointed out a section of grey matter that looked much like the rest of the scan to Gilbert. “It’s beautiful. She has a gorgeous brain. And seems perfectly sane in all this. She even asked for a female attendant to help her undo the buttons of her dress.”
Gilbert felt his mouth quirk, imagining the haughty upturn of her nose as she’d requested assistance out of her dress.
“What do we do with her, Doc?” he asked.
“Well, she isn’t sick. My thoughts are that she’s undergoing some form of psychosis, but what’s caused it and who she really is will only be revealed through treatment from a psychiatrist. For now, she’s going to need constant surveillance and some home comforts.”
“Meaning?” Gilbert asked. “Do you have a bed for her here?”
“We have beds, Officer Blythe, but we have no home comforts.” The doctor bowed her head, scanning her eyes over the image of Anne’s brain once more as she bit back a smile and said, “But word on the street is that you do.”