I LOOK OVER MY shoulder at the figures of Paul and Dr. Sherman growing smaller as Gus and Lester escort me away.
You can still undo this. Tell them you’ve changed your mind, that you don’t want the Unit. You’re there for an important reason!
Yes, to erase all traces of you. Cheers.
Once in the basement, we pass through a locked door into the East-West corridor, the dim tunnel-like hall I saw the first day. Pipes running along its wall emit steam in periodic belches.
Eventually we come to an entry gate sheathed in steel mesh. The sign on it reads UNIT. NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY. Lester quietly shoves me up against the wall while Gus presses the nearby buzzer. Soon a door opens in the shadows behind the gate. “Here with Dorothy Frasier, ma’am,” Gus says to someone on the other side. I peer through the metal webbing and see an approaching figure in white: Miss Wallace.
There’s a calm, almost beatific smile on her face as she unlocks the gate. Like a drab Mona Lisa. She eyes Lester’s bloody lip, then says simply, “Welcome to the Unit, Dorothy.”
The attendants escort me into a vestibule whose far wall contains two doors: one marked W-UNIT, the other, M-UNIT.
“You can take off the restraint,” Wallace says, then turns to me. “It won’t be needed here.”
Cocky. That could be good. Her overconfidence could present an opportunity if you can find a weapon …
I don’t have the energy right now to fight the voice. I let her plot away. Maybe she’ll tire herself out.
When they’ve removed the straitjacket, Wallace secures a new ID on my wrist: “Patient W8209, Dorothy Frasier. Schizophrenic. Suicide risk. Dr. Eustace Sherman. W-Unit.” Then she unlocks the door marked W-UNIT. The lock’s a brand-new Titan mortise—the Unit’s security is on a whole other level than A-Ward’s. We follow Wallace down the ward’s main hall, which, like A-Ward’s, is lined with benches.
But that’s where the resemblance ends.
A-Ward was a constant buzz of women talking. To each other. To themselves. To their deities. It was a hive.
This is something different.
The hall is empty. No sharp-tongued ladies pacing around, getting in your face, telling you their nutter version of the way things are. And no one under the benches, hiding from the way things are. It’s all deathly calm, the only noise the jangle of Wallace’s keys and the clean squeak of her shoes.
“Where the hell are all the patients?” I ask, but Wallace doesn’t answer. Soon we reach an open door marked DAYROOM. But it’s more cave than dayroom. The windows running along the top of the far wall have been covered so that no daylight can enter.
Below them I finally spot patients, a half dozen of them with their backs to us, seated in a semicircle between two tall reading lamps that tower over them like streetlights. On the wall in front of them is a large, awful painting of a barn in a blizzard. White paint laid on thick in a desperate attempt to depict snow.
So you’re just going to seek oblivion here instead of facing up to the mission? Don’t do this. You’re not like the others!
Not like the others—precisely the kind of thinking that’s brought me to this moment.
We follow the nurse down the hall, passing an imposing, white-coated doctor. His coal-black eyes under a looming brow briefly scrutinize me before he opens a door marked WU-3. For just a moment, before the doctor shuts the door behind him, I can see the legs of a patient in there—male, I’d swear—squirming slowly on an exam table, trying to resist the ministrations of some unseen staff member.
Gus nudges me to follow Wallace and Lester into a room farther on marked WU-6.
Christ, it’s even darker than the dayroom. While I wait for my eyes to adjust, I catch the faintest fuggy whiff of unwashed human, and squint for its source.
That’s when I see them. The women.
A couple dozen lying in three rows of beds. And even though it’s three in the afternoon, all are sound asleep.
Two nurses pull the covers of a nearby bed down, laying bare a patient with long, dark hair and a unibrow rivaling Frida Kahlo’s. They take hold of the woman and expertly rotate her onto her stomach, smooth her arms along her sides, then re-cover her before moving to the next patient. Despite being flipped like a pancake, Frida never so much as stirs. Georgie was right about Sherman using the severely impaired as test subjects for some of his studies. Women too far gone to defend themselves.
Wallace walks down the aisle and I pursue. “What the hell is Sherman doing to these women?”
“Doctor Sherman, Dorothy,” Wallace says, pausing at some shelves stacked with linens. “You are to call him Doctor Sherman. Addressing people by their proper titles, using ‘please,’ ‘may I,’ and ‘yes, ma’am,’ and above all not using profanity—these are the ways we show courtesy and appreciation for those taking care of us here in the Unit.”
I’ve definitely entered Wallace’s realm of respect now.
Nurse Gibbs appears with my meager belongings from A-Ward: my cardigan and books. Puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll make sure they’re all safely stored away till the day you need them.”
“Why wouldn’t I need them now?” I ask.
“Let’s get you more comfortable, Dorothy,” Wallace says, and pulls something gray off the shelf. Lays it on an empty bed nearby. It’s a nightgown, basic and faded with wear, like those worn by the zombies in the dining hall.
And each of these sleeping women.
I can’t explain why it took me so long—Sherman would say I’ve once again been in denial. But the thought finally registers: Wallace intends for me to join these women in their collective coma. Now.
Run! Get the fuck out of here while you can!
Now the purpose of my double escort becomes clear. Before I can even turn, Lester and Gus have me by the arms. Objects like cotton balls and vials suddenly make their appearance and things start happening fast—Wallace lifts my sleeve and swabs my arm with rubbing alcohol while Gibbs fills a syringe with amber-colored liquid.
“I never agreed to sedation!”
“That decision was never yours, sweetheart,” Wallace says. “You’re here because it’s what your husband and Dr. Sherman agreed is the best treatment for you. It won’t be long before you’ll begin to see that for yourself.”
“No! Paul gave me the choice!”
She calmly exchanges the used cotton ball for the syringe. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that.”
“Ask him, he’ll tell you,” I yell, but she just flicks the syringe, squeezes a couple golden drops out of the tip of the needle, then sinks it into my arm.
The drug hits before she’s even driven the plunger home. My legs turn to warm honey and give way, but Lester and Gus hold me up, swing me around, and deposit me on the bed. The room is beginning to spin, and I try like hell to raise my arms and stop its rotation but they’re too heavy to lift.
“You boys can go,” Wallace says. “We’ll take it from here.”
“You sure? She can be a handful,” Lester says, looking down at my dress, hiked up to my hips in the process of getting me on the bed.
“I’m aware,” Wallace says.
The men turn, and I watch their retreating figures fade to blurs.
Now it’s just me and the sisterhood. There’s a tugging on my feet—Wallace and Gibbs taking off my socks and shoes. They roll me on my side, and I feel the cold metal zipper on the back of my dress being pulled down. I try to speak—to protest the taking of my dress and free will—but my tongue feels leaden, and I lie mute while they raise my arms above my head and lift my torso.
The scratch of the dress fabric as it’s pulled over my cheeks is the last thing I feel before I slip down into the black.