"I think that he'd struggle without the laudanum, but fortunately the Roby family is wealthy enough they'd be able to maintain a steady supply."

"I got the impression his family was not particularly, ah, supportive of him."

"They're really not." Price sighs. "I don't like that amount of laudanum, but the way he was before he was on it-- no one can live like that."

"It sounds like an awful situation for all involved, but especially Roby."

"He's a gentle man. Not like some of the other people we have here." Price sighs. "That Val--"

"Gentle, but maybe not fit for the outside world quite yet?" (Look at him, bravely resisting the urge to be nosy about this 'Val' while tired and socially clumsy.)

"No, I think he'd do all right. As long as he has his laudanum. And he's not-- violent or anything, regardless. Just in pain."

"If we could convince his brother to fund that, he'd be fine?" (Somehow he, hmm, doubts that, both in the possibility of convincing his brother and whether that would be fine in the long term.)

"I think so? I'm not a doctor, but Dr. Aarons seems to believe so, and he's usually right about such things. He really doesn't belong in an asylum for the criminally insane."

"So the trouble is convincing his brother providing the drugs is just as good as locking him up," Sal mutters to himself.

"He definitely doesn't seem criminally insane." (With the caveat that appearances are often deceiving, et cetera.) "And there is a difference between being insane in the sense of prone to night terrors and insane in the sense of being prone to random violence. The trick would just be convincing people of that."

"Normally, people are happy to have their loved ones removed from an asylum!"

"Unless they've convinced themselves that the reason for a tragedy is their brother."

"It's such a shame," Price says.

That afternoon--

"Are you well, William? You've seemed a tad out of it all day."

Jing Yi has after talking to Nurse Price, acquired some dry white toast in the vague hope that eating food might make the nausea less bad. (He doubts that, but it's worth a shot.) So, time for a careful balancing act saying something that sounds plausible, without making anyone too worried. ...a touch of the truth is probably his best option. "I didn't sleep spectacularly last night." He dramatically stretches. "I'll probably be fine by tomorrow."

"Mm." Terrence nods. He fishes in his suitcase and offers William a wrapped hard candy.

He takes it. "Thank you. The concern is appreciated, but-- really I'll be fine." (Because at this point 'I'm fine' would be implausible.) "You don't have to worry."

"Good to hear, good to hear. I sympathize, my sleep's been rather disturbed as of the last ...while, too. Inconsequential in the long run but it's a dreadful inconsequentiality."

That night, Jing Yi has a second dream.

The cuts on his skin drip. Wet blood runs in rivulets over the dried, crusty blood from previous wounds. He smells its sharp, copper scent. He looks down at himself, blinking away the tears in his left eye. He can see his intestines, pale and glistening like wrapped sausages, half-in and half-out of his body. Incongruously, his stomach rumbles at the thought.

There’s something near it, the texture of a runny egg. He picks it up and looks at it, curiously; when he turns it around he sees that it’s his brown eye staring back at him, the color familiar from the mirror, but the expression dead and lifeless. It’s not tears that are dripping out of his socket and down his cheek. It’s blood.

Jing Yi wakes up with a horrified high pitched scream-whimper. ...it's probably for the best that he is awake now? But he would rather he had made no noise. Terrence is worried enough about him already.

The next morning, at the Red Lion, a local sits down next to the four investigators and says, "did you hear there was a murder at the asylum last night?"

"A what?"

"Really? Who died?"

"...no?" Could no murders be happening please? Could the murders please wait until he has two good nights of sleep and no getting acquainted with his own viscera.

"One of the nurses, Frederick Long." The local thinks this is the most exciting thing that has happened in his whole life. "There was another murder a year ago, you know," the local says. "They really have to have better security up there."