Ryan Murphy’s anthology, American Horror Stories, is back at it in spooky season. Episode 7 of season 3 is a black-and-white episode about an obsession with trying to help people. The story follows Claire, a nurse, who feels guilty for not having followed her gut at a previous job, leading her to go the extra mile at her new place after noticing something is desperately off. The question is, will Claire manage to save the day or will she get sucked into a system that doesn’t forgive anybody? The episode begins with a strange-looking woman standing at the gate of the hospital, freaking out the security guard, Malcolm, and making him call for help. By the time Malcolm makes the call, the woman disappears, sending chills down his back. This is to set the mood of the whole episode. We’ll get back to Malcolm in a bit, but for now, we move onto the hospital next, where a new nurse named Claire is trying to explain to a mom that the hospital can’t treat her dying son because she has no insurance. I suppose this is where the cycle of exploitation begins, but we’ll get to that in a bit. While Claire is trying to calm the woman down, Dr. Naustrum, the big doctor of the hospital, shows up and tells the woman that her son’s going to get a fully sponsored treatment as part of a program called the Springhill Program. Eerily, Claire has never heard of this program and decides to look into it a little bit. With that said, let’s jump into what happens in “X.”
Spoiler Alert
Who is Alice Taylor?
Later in the day, when Claire’s hanging out with a fellow nurse named Lilly and complaining about how she can’t really help people the way she wants to, she also asks Lilly if she knows about the Springhill Program. Before Lilly can really answer, they get interrupted by the same terrifying-looking woman from earlier. Claire notices that her mouth is ajar and she can’t really talk, so she decides to help her. Lilly doesn’t hide her fear of the woman and tells Claire that she shouldn’t leave Lilly alone with the patient. Claire then sends her off with the patient’s samples and does some more tests when a fellow nurse named Jacob comes to check on the sheets. Claire notices that the patient’s tag is covered in blood, and she can’t really read it to get any details. Claire leaves the scissors by the table and tells Jacob to do his thing, which is a big mistake. By the time she comes back, the scissors are in Jacob’s throat, and Claire is somewhat responsible. On the other hand, she also learns that Lilly didn’t hand over the samples. This is a sign of what she’s going to learn next.
Naustrum tells Claire to go home because of the trauma she’s just experienced, but before she can go, when she’s in the washroom, she gets visited by the patient again. This time, the woman cuts off her tag and points at Claire to check it. This is when Claire washes the tag clean and learns that the woman’s name is Alice Taylor. Alice was admitted for skin cancer and then transferred to a place called Ward X. When Claire was trying to test her earlier, Alice had tried to tell her these words, but Naustrum had paid no attention to Claire when she’d tried to tell him the same thing (already he seems very sus). However, the more interesting thing is that Lilly’s signature is on the transfer papers, which means she’s known this whole time who Alice is and that there’s such a thing as Ward X. This is probably why she didn’t want to be left alone with her.
Seeing the papers freaks Lilly out, and she says she wants to get out of there immediately. Claire follows her to the roof, where Lilly lights a cigarette. Claire could’ve never imagined what would come next. Claire had told Lilly that she didn’t follow her gut at her previous job when she thought something strange was happening in the hospital. She had just let it pass, which is why she’s so desperate to figure out what’s happening here. Lilly is going through some similar feelings because she had to pretend she didn’t know about Ward X, seeing as she was afraid of what would happen to her if she told anybody, which, is a fair fear if you ask me. Then, to Claire’s utter shock, Lilly climbs onto the edge of the roof holding the file and jumps off. It’s a mix of the anxiety of being put into Ward X herself and the guilt of not being able to help those patients that made her take such a drastic step.
What Happens to Claire?
By the time Claire gets down, the file’s gone from Lilly’s hands. She meets Malcolm, but Naustrum sends him off to tell the police exactly what he saw. At the same time, Claire decides to have a word with Naustrum to tell him she knows about Ward X. He doesn’t hide anything from her and then tries to sedate her, presumably to take her to the ward. However, Claire manages to jab him in the eye and then smack him hard enough to leave him unconscious so she can escape. Claire then gets out of the ward and saves the sick boy from earlier and takes him back to his mother, telling them to get away from there, but clearly, she looks like the “crazy” one here, so it’s likely the woman will send her kid back to the hospital soon enough.
Alice shows up again then and takes Claire to the actual physical space called Ward X. She shows her many patients who have been turned into “monsters” because of what Naustrum is trying to do. I guess the point of this episode is that most evil things stem from love. What I mean by that is that Naustrum watched his dad die from cancer and became obsessed with trying to find a cure. It didn’t matter if he ruined the lives of many people in the name of saving more later. Claire notices that Malcolm is locked up in there too, and while she’s trying to get him out, she gets stabbed in the neck with a syringe. Before you know it, Claire’s now tied down to a hospital bed, and so is Malcolm. Naustrum’s there with an eye patch on, ready to use them both for his experiments.
To Naustrum’s surprise, it is Alice who defends Claire and tries to stab him. He tries to make her see clearly, repeatedly telling her who he is, but this just makes her angrier. I suppose he thought she was happy with being a monster with her mouth agape at all times. Claire manages to unbind herself at this time and stabs the man to death; however, this leaves her unconscious too. The next thing she knows, she wakes up in a regular ward with a detective and another doctor in front of her. The doctor claims Claire is delirious when she brings up Ward X, but she says she’ll prove it to them. She also learns that they’ve “put Alice down” as a threat, seeing as she was going around killing people.
At the end of American Horror Stories season 3, episode 7, Claire takes the detective and the new doctor down to Ward X. When they enter together, she’s surprised to see Alice is there, which makes her realize what a huge mistake she’s made because this means the two strangers are also in on the whole thing. It’s already too late, and Claire sees Malcolm in one of the cells too. The detective then tells her that his daughter has cancer, and this whole operation is much bigger than she’d imagined. Since she doesn’t know when to back off, Claire ends up being the next victim in Ward X. I guess at the end of the day, you can’t really trust authority, and you can never do anything by yourself, just because your gut tells you to. Always have backup plans, kids, or you’ll end up in a dungeon like Claire.
