WHEN I COME to, I find I’m sitting upright on the bus seat, knees together, hands neatly folded in my lap. The woman in braids has arranged me like a doll. And taken my purse.
“Up and at ’em.”
Coming down the bus aisle toward me is a sallow, doughy-faced nurse. Under her navy coat, she wears a crisp white uniform—dress, stockings, shoes, and a hat that resembles an elaborately folded dinner napkin. Her name tag reads VIRGINIA WALLACE, R.N.
But it’s her wrinkles that have my attention. Most are small, almost invisible—but there. “You’re thirty-five at least, way beyond your quarter hour. How the hell can that be?”
Nurse Wallace doesn’t answer. Too busy staring at my bloody ears. “What the devil have you gone and done to yourself?” she asks.
My eyes flick from one end of the bus to the other. It’s empty now, the patients all lined up outside in the sleet, where a nurse with a clipboard is hastily reading their tags and checking them off her list. But the woman who stole my purse isn’t among them, isn’t anywhere that I can see, and my pulse begins to quicken.
“Where did she go, that woman in braids?” I ask.
“Afraid I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the nurse says as she frees something caught behind my shoulder: a patient ID tag hanging from a string around my neck—just like the others.
Was it always there?
It can’t have been. Right?
You bet your ass that’s right.
I struggle for recall while Nurse Wallace reads the tag: “‘Dorothy Frasier.’ Well, it looks like you’ve reached the end of your yellow brick road, Dorothy. Time to line up with the other patients—”
“Dorothy? No. That’s not mine. I’m not a patient … That nutcase bitch with the braids, she must be Dorothy … Must’ve put this on me when she stole my purse—”
“Okay, time to go,” the marly nurse says, and her meaty hand grabs my arm.
This woman is not your friend. Do what needs to be done.
And as the nurse starts to hoist me up, my body finally sparks to life, and I twist out of her grasp. She comes right back at me, seizing my wrist and wrenching it up behind me till my knuckles are kissing the base of my neck.
But rather than feeling shock or panic at the pain, I find instead a strange certainty that I am in control. That part of me is letting her do this, gauging her skills, testing her capabilities.
Nurse Wallace shoves me forward, and before I can consider my options, weigh my next move, I discover the choice has been made for me—
By me.
Suddenly I’m stepping backward, closing the gap between us, then throwing my head back till it slams into her forehead with a crunnnnkkkk.
I ignore this newest, sharpest pain and seize Nurse Wallace. My movements are so smooth. Sure. In one fluid action, I pin her arm back and muscle her into a nearby row, shoving her face hard against the window. Then I grab hold of her hair bun, ready in the next moment to smash her temple into the seatback’s metal bar.
But that’s the next moment.
In this present moment, she’s looking at me with frightened bunny rabbit eyes, and I freeze.
What the hell am I doing?
Only what’s necessary to contain the threat.
What did the voice just say?
A wave of nausea now rolls up my spine and time seems to stretch as the sick hangs there, about to break. I drop the nurse and she falls into the seat, where she watches me, waiting for my next move. That makes two of us—till calls for help from the nurse outside pierce my daze: “Gus, come quick! One of the transfers is attacking Miss Wallace!”
Time to go.
I charge through the bus’s open doors into the frozen rain—and find in front of me a mammoth building, so vast it spans my entire field of vision. Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital. It’s a Gothic beast of brick and stone, all peaked roofs and turrets. A looming clock tower rises from its center, flanked on both sides by sprawling, three-story wings that turn a corner every fifty yards or so, corrugating outward into the frosty distance.
Someone’s breathing hard. Closing in on me is a bearlike attendant in all-white—Gus, no doubt. Gus’s steamy breath gathers in clouds on either side of his wet face like a locomotive. He slows a few feet short of me and holds out his hand. “Come, let’s get you out of this nasty rain, dear,” he drawls extra slow, like he’s afraid I might get confused. “It’s nice and warm inside…”
A myriad of violent options to deal with him come to mind, but I don’t want a replay of what just happened on the bus. Gus is large, but I sense a softness in him like a three-minute egg. So, I stand my ground and wait till he reaches for me, his balance dependent on success in the grab. When he lunges, I duck out of reach, and the guy tumbles hard onto the wet asphalt.
I run but get only a few yards before someone else grabs me.
“Gotcha.” It’s another attendant, greasier and smaller than Gus. Cocky though. “Why all the hurry to leave us, sweetheart?” he says with a grin, revealing a crooked outcropping of teeth. “You look like someone Lester’d like to see stick around.” Somewhere along the way, this creep has banked a whole lot of confidence, and Lester’s damn sure how this is all gonna play out.
But apparently, I am also sure.
Before I know it, I’m leaning in on him hard, ramming my loafer as far up Lester’s crotch as it’ll travel. As he doubles over in pain, I help his head into my rising knee, and he staggers a step or two before toppling to the ground. Again, it’s all instinct, like I have no choice in the actions my body is gleefully taking.
That’s it. You know he had it coming. Now look for your exit.
But which way?
A hundred yards to the left, under the awning at the top of the hospital’s grand main entrance steps, is a uniformed policeman in what looks like a cowboy hat handing some woman over to a nurse.
So, I sprint in the other direction, across the hospital’s sprawling lawn dotted with trees that retain just a few scarlet leaves, heading for the distant end of the building’s right wing. My penny loafers slip and slide on the icy grass as I tear across Hanover’s grounds. My dress is equally unfit for fleeing—too tight on top but too loose on the bottom, its skirt plumped up like a half-filled balloon by starched petticoats that scratch at my thighs with each stride.
A brief rifling through the two patch pockets on the front of my dress and those of my coat reveals nothing of use, just a crumpled-up ball of yellow paper and a couple sticks of gum.
“Best run like the wind, sweetness!” someone calls to me. I look up and see in one of Hanover’s windows the pale, spectral face of a woman pressed up against its bars. “Before they gets dibs on you!”
I sense she speaks from experience and pick up my speed.
Soon I’m rounding Hanover’s far corner and can see for the first time, down its long back slope, past outbuildings, hedges, and driveway, what I was hoping for: a chain-link fence. It’s at least ten feet high and topped with barbed wire—but unlike the wrought iron in front, chain-link can be climbed rain or shine. I may not recall my name, but some part of me knows this fact with absolute certainty.
I charge down the frozen hill for it but don’t get far before I hear a man’s shouts coming from a couple hundred feet back, “Miss! You need to stop!”
Fuck. I force my legs to pump faster, trying to outrun my latest pursuer. Soon, I’m passing through what must be Hanover’s cemetery. It’s filled with dozens of rusting t-shaped grave markers, each stamped with just a number. At the edge of this dismal field is the thicket of shrubs I saw from the top of the hill. I run along beside it till I spy a narrow break in the bushes. Through it I can just make out Hanover’s driveway and the chain-link fence beyond.
On the other side of that fence is a town I can hide in.
I’m about to cut through the gap when there’s another shout: “Please, miss, hold it right there.” My pursuer is extremely polite. And close. Too close.
Get the hell out of there! the voice scolds.
But I want a look at him. Not sure why I do. Curiosity? The quiet note of decency in his voice? Whatever the reason, it’s a stupid move, but I do it anyway, glance over my shoulder—and see it’s the policeman in the cowboy hat I saw turning the woman over to a nurse.
He’s less than twenty feet away and closing—
I bolt through the break in the hedges, branches full of thorns clawing at me as I stumble past, till finally I burst out onto the driveway—
And see it too late: an old car speeding down the hill toward me.
Amazing the things your mind can ponder in a split second, even as your body freezes up and betrays you. Mine, for instance, is able to gauge that the car whose license plate says 1954 VIRGINIA is traveling at a speed that will likely be fatal for me. Also, that its driver, now slamming on his brakes (too late), is wearing a hat. Fedora? I wonder idly, in that last moment before impact—
But suddenly my hand’s yanked back and I’m sailing through the air like a Chihuahua on a preschooler’s leash. We barrel-roll across the wet asphalt, me and the cowboy policeman who’s plucked me from death, and when we come to a stop, I’m looking up at a star-shaped badge that reads DEPUTY SHERIFF, CULPEPER COUNTY, OFFICER THOMAS R. WORTHY.
The deputy looks down at me. “Are you okay? Your ears, they’re bleed—”
But he’s interrupted by the driver of the car. “Tell ’em to get a tighter leash on these lunatics before someone gets hurt,” the guy shouts before driving off.
“He’s wrong. I’m not a mental!” I say. “This is all a mistake. She switched places with me on the transport bus.”
“Who?”
“A patient. Dorothy Frasier. Complete mental, obsessed with blood and atonement … and trains. She must’ve put her ID tag on me after she stole my purse,” I tell him. “They think I’m her, but I’m not!”
Officer Worthy’s blue eyes survey mine a long moment, trying to appraise my sanity.
“Then who are you?” he asks. Such a simple question. For which I have no answer. I can feel the existential panic in me rising again, and I look away from the deputy to shake it off. But this only quickens his interest. “Do you not know your name?” he asks.
Stop answering this guy’s questions and get the hell out of there!
“You’ve got to let me go,” I tell him, trying to squirm free.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, miss.”
You know what you need to do.
I quietly reach for a nearby stone. Won’t hit him hard, just enough to stun so I can make it over the fence. It’s no more than fifteen feet away. But Officer Worthy must sense my plan. As my hand grabs the rock, his comes down on mine, pinning it to the asphalt inches from my face. On his fingers I see a wedding band and a second ring whose elaborate engraving says VIRGINIA TECH, CLASS OF 1950.
Something about those words addles me a moment, long enough for him to flip me onto my stomach. Bits of wet gravel dig into my cheek as it meets the ground. Then I feel something cold enclose my wrist, followed by a series of clicks as he locks the handcuffs on.
“The year, what year is it?” I ask as he helps me to my feet.
He looks at me a quizzically. “It’s 1954.”
1954. I guess that’s right … It’s just something about it feels off. Then again, my brain’s taken a big hit sometime in the last hour. Everything’s feeling a little off. I need out of these cuffs. Time to beg.
It’s not pretty. The words tumble out in a shameless heap meant to draw sympathy and/or woo. “Please, you’ve got to believe me, I don’t belong in that place. You could still let me go,” I plead as he picks up his sheriff’s deputy hat that fell off during our tussle.
“Sorry, miss,” he says, putting his cowboy hat back on, “I just can’t do that. It’s for your own good—”
“So, you’re just going to hand me over to them, no questions asked, Lone Ranger?”
He cocks his head, surprised by my cowboy crack. “If a mistake’s been made, I’m sure the doctors at the hospital will straighten things out—”
“Go to hell,” I say. Wooing is officially over.
A moment later, Lester, the attendant, emerges from the nearby bushes, still pale from our last interaction. “Thanks for the assistance, Deputy, we’re having a little trouble with Dorothy—”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap back.
“One of today’s transfers from County,” he says to Officer Worthy.
“He’s wrong. I told you, I’m not a patient!”
“She’s a bit unsettled by the new surroundings,” Lester says as he takes me from Officer Worthy. Then the asshole whispers in my aching ear, “But I knew when you thought it over, you’d decide to stay. Make some new friends.”
“Someone at Hanover should double-check her identification,” Officer Worthy says to him. “She said a woman on the bus—”
Lester laughs. “You’re not falling for her story, are you, Deputy? They all got one, ’bout who they really are. Why they don’t belong at Hanover. They believe it, too. Can’t help themselves. But don’t you worry, we got things well in hand up on the hill. Haven’t misplaced a patient yet,” he says, winking, and he’s starting to pull me away when I hear that distinctive urr-creeeeeek!—the transport bus, heading back down the driveway to the front gate.
It takes a couple of tries, but I wrench myself free of Lester just in time to glimpse the bus as it rumbles past—and there, in the vehicle’s steamy, rain-spattered rear window, I swear I see the ghostly contours of the woman in braids.
I point to the departing bus, about to ask Officer Worthy if he saw her too, when his eyes flick to Lester. “Hey, what are you doing?” he shouts at the attendant.
I turn in time to catch the word TIMEX on Lester’s watch just before it contacts my face. Can feel my whole body fly in the direction of his backhand as everything dissolves in a blur.