Everything felt blurry, all the edges felt soft. Nancy wasn’t sure whether time was moving very slowly or very quickly or whether it was moving at all. But the next thing she was aware of was the sound of footsteps and a key in the door and there were people around her dressed in green and white. She was grasped on both arms and both legs, so that she couldn’t move.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried out.
‘Turn her over,’ said a female voice.
The room seemed to rotate. Instead of looking up at a fluorescent light screened with metal mesh, she was now face down against the rough surface of a mattress. Something hard, a button, was jammed against her nose. She could hardly breathe. Something heavy was pressing down on her back, someone’s knee maybe.
The same female voice now spoke close to her ear.
‘We don’t like it when you fuck us around and you’re not a good girl. It’s very, very boring and we hate being bored. If you don’t take your medicine, then we’ll make you take it, and it might teach you a bit of a lesson.’ Her voice became a little more distant but also louder. ‘Okay, pull her trousers down.’
She felt hands on her waistband and her trousers, and her knickers were pulled down to just above her knees. She could feel the coldness of the air. She knew she was being looked at. She knew there were men in the room. Her mouth was jammed against the mattress, so she couldn’t speak. She just screamed and groaned like an animal. There was a jab in her buttock and a sensation of cold spreading into her and her trousers were pulled up again.
She was pulled round and saw a blurry face looking down at her.
‘You mess us around and we’ll put you in solitary for a week. Got it?’
Nancy felt a tiredness so great that it was like a liquid she was submerged in. She drifted between a sleep that felt like being awake and a wakefulness that was like being in a dream. Gradually she became aware of her surroundings. She was in a room alone. The door was closed. Sometimes a little slat opened, and she saw eyes looking at her. The walls were a dirty green and they were bare except that high in the wall opposite the door was a small, barred window, too high for her to look out of or even to reach.
There was nothing in the room. A few times – she couldn’t remember how many – a heavily built nurse led her out of the room and along a corridor and helped her onto a toilet. The door opened and she was given a tray with a plastic mug of tea and piece of toast covered with strawberry jam and an apple. Breakfast, she thought dimly, it must be morning. She had to sit on the bed with her back to the wall and balance the tray on her thighs. Even after she had finished, she was ravenously hungry, but the food did something to cover the horrible taste in her mouth, dry, sour and metallic.
The door opened again, and the nurse took the tray.
‘You’ve got an appointment,’ she said.
Nancy was led along a corridor lined with rooms like the one she had slept in. It felt partly like a high school, partly like a prison. The nurse led her through a common space where a group of people were watching a daytime chat show, then took a bunch of keys from her pocket and unlocked a door. The atmosphere felt suddenly different, like an office, newly decorated with pot plants and pictures on the walls. The nurse knocked on a second door and in response to a voice from inside, opened it, steered Nancy through and shut the door behind her.