THEY’VE BROUGHT ME a cup of tea and wrapped me in a blanket. My tears were legion, leaving whole swaths of darkness on the plaid of my dress.
Paul pulled Sherman away from me before things got ugly. Got him into the waiting room. They’re out there now. The door’s ajar and bits of their hushed conversation are finding their way through the crack. “… was sent here for a standard course of treatment…” I hear the doctor say.
He’s right. I should be in treatment. Down-alphabet, maybe D- or E-Ward. I need to stop running away from myself, accept that I’m Dorothy and deal with my disease head-on. Adapt. That’s what keeps you alive, right?
This isn’t adaptation. It’s capitulation.
You can’t just pretend the future away by accepting Paul’s lies.
The voice is going to be a problem. My fairy godmother’s on the side of my disease. Of Bix. Hell, she is Bix, not a source of cold-blooded wisdom, merely a symptom. It’s time to contain the schizophrenia, the paranoia. Make the voice and all the rest of it manageable—so I can leave Hanover, not end up a chronic like Lillian, doomed to a life inside these walls.
Make me manageable? Like Georgie and her fondness for women?
Good luck with that.
Shut the hell up, I silently tell the voice. I take a sip of tea and try very hard to stuff her into my deepest, darkest tansu drawer.
That’s just not going to happen, sweetheart. Ever. I won’t be silenced like some errant thought because I am not one thought but all thoughts.
I am Bix and you are me, indivisible.
Her words, what they mean for me, my future—it’s just too big to deal with right now, so I turn back to Sherman and Paul’s conversation. “I can appreciate your concerns,” Sherman says, “but in light of the recent escalation of her symptoms—the aggression, the paranoiac behavior, the delusional episodes—if we’re to avoid serious measures down the road, something more global is called for.”
Global?
I put the tea down and go to the door but run into Miss Campbell entering. She pulls it shut behind her. Waits till I sit back down before going to Sherman’s desk to retrieve something. “More tea, Dorothy?” she asks.
“I need to talk to … to my husband.” My husband. Jesus. It’ll take time to get used to those words.
“Let’s give the doctor and your handsome husband a chance to finish up their conversation,” the secretary says as she searches through a drawer. “Then I’m sure you can speak with him.”
That’s not going to work for me. When Miss Campbell bends down to search the desk’s bottom drawer, I quietly go to the door, ease it open, and slip down the short hallway.
Sherman and Paul are at the other end of the waiting room, by Miss Campbell’s desk. Their backs are to me, Paul studying some sheet of paper.
“The elimination of outside distractions,” Sherman says, lighting his pipe, “is absolutely critical to my protocol’s success, to your wife’s recovery.”
Paul says, “I don’t know about this—”
“The protocol was developed precisely for patients like Dorothy. It can address the structures of paranoid and disordered thought the disease has produced in your wife that have left her untethered to the real world. Enable me to reestablish normal, healthy behavior. Ultimately, your wife will return to you the easygoing, trusting, and happy woman she was meant to be. One who can live, even thrive outside of Hanover—”
“Dee’s not going to want it,” Paul says.
“Right now, she’s in no position to judge what’s best for her. But she’ll come around in time, trust that we made the right decision for her—partly due to the effects of the protocol itself. You saw the remarkable and rapid changes it’s capable of in those Unit patients you met.”
The Unit?
“You want to put me in the Unit?” I ask, and the men turn around. Miss Campbell appears beside me, but Sherman nods for her to leave us and she exits.
“Dee,” Paul starts, “let me explain—”
“I saw them in the dining hall, his Unit patients. Some could barely feed themselves.”
“My protocol is just one of several treatment modalities being developed there,” Sherman says, patting the air, trying to calm. “I’m sure the women you saw—”
“Don’t you mean test subjects?” I say.
Sherman takes a long draw on his pipe. “I think we can agree, given these last few minutes, that you haven’t been seeing things quite as they are for some time now—the future, with its time machines and missions, the ‘real’ Dorothy on the transport bus, even your husband, Paul. Your perception of those Unit patients is no different. It’s likely been warped by your illness.”
I hate that he has a point. How can I say the future was fiction but what I saw in that dining hall was fact? How can I know anything that feels real to me is real?
You know what you saw. Don’t doubt it.
But I recently saw Kyung and Ethan—and they seemed as real as Lillian’s electro-minefields, so I do doubt.
Paul leaves Sherman and comes over to me, still holding the sheet. I see the word “Commitment” on it. “Give me one good reason you’d sign that thing,” I say.
“You getting out of here, Dee,” he says. “Being home. Safe. I’m worried what a long stay in Hanover could do to you.” Now the guy’s sounding like Georgie. He points to a paragraph. “See this here? Dr. Sherman guarantees that after you’re treated in the Unit with his protocol, he’ll have your sentence commuted. Instead of a year or more locked up here, you’ll be home in weeks.”
“Weeks?” That is not nothing. Still …
“More importantly, the protocol might actually help you. Dr. Sherman allowed me to see some of his patients nearing the end of treatment with my own eyes. The women were completely lucid, happy—and going home. Whatever combination of therapies the doctor is using has worked for them. Maybe it could—”
“I don’t want that asshole’s protocol,” I say.
Paul’s head dips a moment, and when he looks up, his eyes have a tearful sheen to them. “Like you didn’t want treatment last Christmas after you stole the Dells’ hatchet?” he whispers. “Or in June after you broke into that butcher shop? Or … or … You never want treatment. And every time I say, ‘Okay, Dee.’ ’Cause I want to shield you, keep you safe at home. Everything I do, that I’ve ever done, has been to keep you safe.”
Again the shame is stirring in me. For all the forgotten hell I’ve put this guy through—even if I can’t remember the particulars.
Maybe I deserve the Unit.
There’s not one goddamned thing wrong with you that needs fixing.
You can’t believe a word he says. Paul’s a liar—
Only now we know who the real liar is: the voice, who cares only that I complete the precious, fictional mission—and will tell me anything to keep me on task.
Sherman steps closer. “The protocol truly is the best thing for you, dear. The Unit provides a unique environment, away from the hubbub of a regular ward, where the right steps can be taken to begin silencing the voices, the delusions—”
“‘Right steps.’ What does that mean?” I ask.
“You’re suffering from a serious illness, growing more intractable with each passing day,” Sherman says, eyes leveled at mine. “We are long past the point where fresh air and warm baths will tame your symptoms, arrest the disease’s development. So, there will be talk therapy in combination with adjuvant treatments I’ve found highly effective—”
“Can you give us a minute, Doctor?” Paul asks.
“Certainly, Mr. Frasier,” and Sherman steps out into the hall.
Paul waits till Sherman’s out of earshot to speak. “I can’t begin to imagine how it feels to watch some stranger you’ve just been told is your husband decide your medical care along with that pompous windbag,” he says, nodding toward Sherman.
Agreed. He can’t.
“So, I’m not going to do it,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s your choice,” he says. “If you don’t want to go to the Unit, say the word. I’ll tell the doc no. You’ll go to a regular ward, receive the standard therapies. And after a year, we’ll see what Dr. Sherman says about the possibility of you coming home.”
“You’re really leaving it up to me?”
He looks into my eyes. “Yes, it’s your life, your mind. You decide. But think for a minute.” He holds up the paper. “Maybe his protocol in the Unit will work for you like it did for those women I saw. Help you get rid of this voice in your head that’s making you see things that don’t exist, like those people in the future and their time machine. I’m sure Dr. Sherman’s protocol is no walk in the park, but it seems a small price to pay for wresting control back from the disease and being free of this place. Getting you home, back among your things—that’s what’s going to awaken your memories, reconnect you to your life. Our lives.”
But before I can even respond, Lester approaches. Sherman must’ve sent for him. “Wait, we’re not done here!” Paul shouts, but Lester doesn’t slow.
And the voice? Her orders are simple:
He’s a threat. Take him down.
Suddenly I’m roundhouse-kicking the shit out of the attendant. Lester recovers and counters with a backhand, hell-bent on repeating last week’s Timex watch knockout. But this time I’m ready for it, feint to the left, dodging the blow.
And now I intend to pause, not let this start a chain reaction of strikes my body is lured into carrying out.
Only I cannot seem to stop myself.
I watch my elbow ram into Lester’s face. See the blood, thick rivulets of it, in the spittle running down his chin. See him stumble.
I can hear the faraway sounds of Paul pleading with me. Of Sherman barking orders.
Still, I don’t stop. Start to take Lester down at the knees—
Till I’m pulled off him by Gus and pinned to the ground.
As the attendants put me in the restraint, my mind keeps circling the same question:
Why couldn’t I stop?
I replay the attack over and over, hoping each time to uncover some justification for my actions. But find none. Just the voice’s command and my violent response.
Was it the voice who drove me to slit my wrist in the first place—so I could be free of her? Was she urging me to do things I could no longer refuse? Things to Paul?
I’m sure they were necessary things.
There it is. Anything for the mission, right?
Yes.
When Lester and Gus have finished securing me, Sherman signals them to back off, give my husband and me some privacy.
Paul eyes Lester, who’s blotting his split lip with a torn piece of tissue. “I’m not blind, Dee. I can see the guy’s a bit too fond of his job. But you’re not some hero trying to save the world, and he’s not some minion bent on stopping you.”
How do you know?
“You’re a patient,” Paul continues. “He’s an attendant. What just happened, what you did to him—can you honestly say you were in control and not that voice in your head?”
I can’t meet his gaze.
“I’ve always done what’s necessary to keep you safe,” he says. “But I can’t protect you from yourself. And I’m scared, Dee, of where this disease is taking you. Where you’re letting it take you.” He pauses a moment, takes a breath. “I think you owe yourself the chance to see if the protocol can help. But the choice is still yours.”
Could the protocol work?
Don’t know.
What I do know is the voice will take over, take my identity and my sanity, if she’s able. And doing nothing about her, about the violence, the visions, will mean a lifetime as a chronic under lock and key inside Hanover. The thought of that trapped half-life terrifies me.
The voice needs to die. I tell my husband to sign the paper.