“DOROTHY, ARE YOU with me?”
Dr. Sherman’s wondering where I’ve drifted off to. Drifting is easy in these sessions after the shocks. His office down here in the Unit is dull and dark, just a desk and chairs. No butterflies … busty clay figures … spiral shells …
See? Drifting is easy.
Especially now that the voice has gone quiet. I can still feel some of her in me, lying low, hoping to outlast Dr. Sherman’s protocol. But it won’t work. Each time the lightning strikes me, I can feel it scrubbing more of her out. Making room. Every bit of Bix, her trips to the future, her nerds with their links and lost tethers—most of all, her raging paranoia—will be scoured clean till nothing remains.
Then I’ll be free. And I’ll leave Hanover with all the marbles left to me.
So it’s worth it, this feeling, like someone’s reduced my voltage, cut power to all noncritical circuits. Only essential portions of my mind running while Dr Sherman rewires the system. The nurses promise my brownout will soon be over, most of its damage temporary. They say it’s best not to fight it. Fight them. Just let go.
Surrender, Dorothy.
So I’m mostly calm. The drifting helps.
“Would you like me to repeat the question, dear?” the doctor asks. “I know the regression can make it difficult to remember things.”
Regression. What’s been trickling in, as Bix trickles out … urging me not to get so worked up, have faith in those trying to make me better. Its simple message of trust is making more and more sense.
“I’m talking about that day in my office,” Dr. Sherman presses, “when you told Paul you didn’t care what the voice in your head was saying, that you knew he was the man in your memory. Tell me about the voice.”
“I don’t want to talk about her,” I say, worried he’ll be mad.
But Dr. Sherman just smiles and writes his notes. “That’s fine, Dorothy, plenty of time for that when you’re further along in your recovery. I can see the protocol’s getting you where you need to be. That’s what matters most.”
“What do you mean, ‘getting me where I need to’—”
But Miss Wallace is at the door. “Now it’s time for you to go with the nurse. All right?” he asks, and I nod back, feel the pleasant glow of contentment in the agreeing.
Miss Wallace takes my good hand and helps me out of the chair—my coordination’s not great these days, muscles doing things I can’t predict.
In the tunnel hall I start to turn back to the Unit, but the nurse stops me. “Not yet, sweetheart,” she says, and guides me the other way. “We’re going upstairs.”
Upstairs.
Almost forgot about upstairs. I wonder what Georgie’s been up to in A-Ward. If she’s still making up things to confess to Dr. Sherman.Does she know I’m down in the Unit? How long have I been here, anyway? The questions are piling up, trying to break through my drift.
Halfway down the long hall, I see a man walking toward us: the doctor with eyes like bits of coal who I saw that first day in the Unit. The one the voice thought might be the doctor with the virus sample. When we get close, I see the man’s eyes sweeping over me like a searchlight and I start to slow down.
“Come, Dorothy, let’s not tarry,” Miss Wallace says, pulling me past him.
“Why upstairs?” I ask her.
“You have a visitor. Unit patients aren’t normally allowed visitors, but an exception’s being made for you today.”
I’m hoping it’s Paul.
I’ve been wanting to tell him about what they’re really doing in the Unit. But maybe it’s better he doesn’t know. Don’t want him stopping them from killing the voice.
It’s hard keeping up with Miss Wallace. The walls are spinning, screwing with my balance, making me wobble. Finally, she unlocks a door with a big key, and we wait for an elevator.
That’s when I see my reflection in some glass.
I’m a ghost.
Thin and pale, almost powdery, like someone’s blown chalk dust over me. My face is gaunt, full of deep shadows that make my eyes look too big. Nocturnal.
And my head: it’s tilted slightly to one side, mouth gaped open like a bass on a hook.
Is it always that way now? I shut the thing. Stand straight as I can.
But I still scare me.
When the elevator doors open, the light from the first-floor windows is blinding after so long underground. Feels like it could burn a hole right through me. Miss Wallace gives me a moment to adjust so I don’t fall again before walking me out. I don’t remember my tumble, but the nurses told me about it. Showed me the bruises down my leg.
The hallway’s busy and loud, crowds of patients, staff, and too many strangers shouting “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas.” I can just make out the gate to A-Ward in the distance. I hear Christmas music coming through the scratchy hallway loudspeakers:
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos …
Suddenly a scene flashes into my head—
I’m standing in a living room, next to a Christmas tree, breathing in its pine smell. Wrapped presents lie on the floor by my feet.
In the background, Nat King Cole is singing, trying hard to make the season bright, but the Guest has arrived, and the world is turning …
And now my heart’s pounding away. I try to calm it, tell myself the world didn’t really turn, that a virus called “the Guest” isn’t real, just another imaginary figment of my schizophrenia. Like this made-up memory.
“Let’s go, sweetheart,” Miss Wallace says, tugging on my arm to get me walking again.
Soon teenage boys in long, red robes are passing by us.
The St. Aloysius Boys’ Choir. The concert. My escape plan.
I remember.
I know it’s for the best I didn’t break out of here. That I need to be at Hanover to recover. But knowing something and feeling it are such different things. My eyes begin to fill, and the crowd feels like it’s closing in on me, cutting off my exits. But I set my sights on the visitors’ room and put one foot in front of the other till we reach it.
“Stay right here, Dorothy,” Miss Wallace says, seating me on a bench outside its door. “I need to check if your visitor’s meeting you here or in the conference room.”
“Okay,” I say, and watch the choirboys go by, their eyes darting round the hall, looking at us patients—I think we’re maybe their first lunatics. A couple boys whisper and point as they pass by.
“Would you like one, sweetie?”
An old lady in a reindeer apron is holding a basket out to me. It’s filled with cookies in different shapes. Drums, Christmas trees, gingerbread men. She places a cookie in my good hand, a star topped with red sprinkles. It’s beautiful.
How long has it been since I ate something not from a spoon?
A long time, I think.
I’m about to take a bite when I hear, “Well, look who’s here—Wonder Woman.” It’s Norma, the woman I beat up in the dining hall to help Alice.
Norma seems bigger. Or maybe I’m just smaller.
“Just another Unit gork now, eh, pretty?” she says, laughing, then takes my cookie and walks away.
All of a sudden anger’s cutting through the drift, making my thoughts so much sharper: Give it back, you bitch! But “Give it” is all I get out before the crowd swallows up Norma.
“Holy smokes!” I know that voice—Georgie. I turn around, and there she is.
“So good to see you, Georgie. I’ve been getting better in the Unit downstairs,” I say.
But she just stares at me, mouth open wide in the shape of an O. I think my night creature looks have surprised her. “Bix?” she says, stepping closer.
I shake my head. “Not Bix. You were right, my name’s Dorothy Frasier. My husband, Paul, he’s visiting—”
“Georgie.” It’s Miss Wallace back from the visitors’ room. “You know you aren’t supposed to be near the Unit patients. Why don’t you return to A-Ward and take your seat for the concert.”
But Georgie doesn’t move. “They’ve done something to her,” she says to Miss Wallace. “What did they do to her?”
“I said you should return to A-Ward,” the nurse tells Georgie. But Georgie still won’t go. Takes my hand instead. Her eyes are glassy with tears now. “Georgie,” Miss Wallace says, the nurse’s stern voice full of threat.
Georgie squeezes my hand, gives me a final look, then walks back down the hall.
“Come,” Miss Wallace says, and guides me around the wet patch of floor Joe’s mopping, into the visitors’ room, where people are sitting at tables. I check all the faces, looking for Paul.
Then I see him.
Not Paul. The sheriff’s deputy, Officer Worthy.