MY HANDS.
Like nautilus shells, fists clenched in tight spirals that rest in my lap. Only the left will open. Use it to uncurl my right’s frozen fingers, and now I see it—a bandage taped over my palm spotted with old brown blood. Did I fall again? Cut my hand?
“Heh … how did I get this? Was there a fight?” I ask the doctor. My words sound weak, raspy. Voice worn down to a whisper. Have I been screaming?
“Let’s try not to get so worked up this time,” he says.
And now my heart begins to race, fear rising like floodwater, threatening to engulf—
Something’s happened. Something bad I can’t remember.
I pull up the bandage and see letters cut into my skin. Wounds scabbed over. “Why’re there letters—”
“Dorothy, please put the bandage back in place,” the doctor says. But I need to look at the letters. Figure them out. Remember what’s happened. “Dear, when I instruct you to do something, it’s because that’s what’s best for your recovery. So you can go home with Paul. You want that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must cooperate every time, like we’ve talked about,” he says. “Not just here with me now, but long after you’ve left this hospital, always doing what’s asked of you by Paul and others in charge of your care. Trust that we know what’s best for you and comply. Living outside of Hanover depends on it. Do you understand?”
I nod and feel the calm spreading through me like warm honey …
“Good,” the doctor says. “Then say the words as best you can, dear. You remember the words?”
“Yes.” I’ve repeated them for him many times. I close my eyes, say them slow to get it right. “Freedom depends on my cooperation.”
“Very good. And again,” he says.
“Freedom depends on my cooperation.”
“One last time.”
“Freedom depends on my cooperation.”
“Excellent,” he says, and picks up my file. It’s thick now, my file. I must’ve been very sick … “The protocol’s truly done a remarkable job breaking down those bad thought patterns in you these last few weeks.” Breaking my thoughts? “Done it so well, in fact, that I’ve already been able to initiate your repatterning. Begun laying the foundation for healthier habits of thinking and behavior, along with instilling new interests in you that we’ll strengthen and build on in phase three—”
“Interests?”
“Yes, a greater concern for things like hygiene, dress, and appearance, for cordial manners and the state of your household. A woman’s enthusiasm for these things is a sign of her healthy engagement and connection with the real world.”
My household? “I … I need Paul now. Please can I—”
“Soon, dear,” he says, and squeezes my hand. “Once phase three is complete, Paul will take you home and help you with all those new ways of thinking and being, those new concerns of yours. Make them so strong in you they never go away. So you can be a new, sunnier, calmer Dorothy. Then you’ll see just how much easier life can be.”
“When I’m new? Th … that’s not right—” I start to say, but the doctor’s hand goes up, so I know to stop talking.
Miss Wallace is here. “Despite the recent upset, she’s progressing well,” he says to the nurse. “There’s now a clear disruption of intellectual faculties—comprehension, learning, abstract reasoning. And a far greater level of compliance. It won’t be long before she’s at full regression and can begin stage three.”
“The husband’s still begging to visit,” the nurse says as they look at me.
Paul is trying to see me.
“Nothing that man should witness,” the doctor says. “I’ll call later, reassure him.”
The fear waters are rising up, about to choke me. “I want to go home now,” I say. “Please, please let me go!”
“Dear, what do we do when we feel ourselves getting anxious?” the doctor asks.
“Focus on good?”
“Precisely, Dorothy! We don’t linger on our bad feelings. Instead we focus on all the good in front of us, like seeing Paul soon and going home. Can you do that?” I nod and feel more calm filling me, forcing the fear down. “Good girl. Now let’s continue. You were about to tell me about the voice in your head. About Bix…”
Thoughts that used to be just mine. Ones I sat shiva for. Never thought I’d give them up, but the voice is dead, and to become the best version of me, the one they’ll set free, I need to share it all.
So I start.
“Come on, sweetie, open your mouth.”
Nurse won’t let me sleep. Wants to put more green soup in me. I’m her last patient to feed. The other moths are asleep, except Mary, staring blank across the circle.
The big lamp above me is sizzling again, flickering light bouncing off Nurse’s big, shiny bowl. “Just a couple more spoonfuls of soup, then you can rest,” Nurse says, “and I can go home, get ready for my date. Lord, let him be a decent kisser…”
She holds the spoon in front of my mouth. I shake my head, but she just waits till I remember about cooperation and freedom and open up.
“That’s it, sweetie,” she says, and slides the spoon up against my lip till soup dribbles warm and salty onto my tongue.
Feels like I’m almost there—that moment Alice said when you know you’re changing …
“This time you need to swallow, like we talked about,” Nurse says. “Can you do that?”
Swallow. Yes.
Now Nurse is smiling. “You did real good, sweetie. Just one more—”
But before there can be more, there’s a CRASH somewhere. Nurse leaves her big bowl on the chair’s fat arm and disappears.
Alone. I uncurl my fingers to look at the letters—but the bandage is gone. Letters too. Just a couple scabs left. I drop my useless hand—and it hits Nurse’s bowl, flipping it into my lap. Now a pea soup river is flowing down my gray gown to my knees, spilling over the gap between them like a waterfall.
I feel the splashes hitting my ankles, see the green river running past my feet, heading for the lamp cord’s sizzling silver wires like a Road Runner cartoon.
I know this cartoon is bad. Fatal even. But if I can just rest my eyes a little while, I know I’ll come up with a plan to stop it—
But then something makes me forget the soup about to electrocute me like I’m Wile E. Coyote:
Mary Droesch, looking at me.
Really looking, face all alive—and angry.
Her eyes flick to the soup. To the buzzing cord. The sleeping moths. The door. Back to me.
“Goddammit,” she says. No slur. No stutter. She pushes off her blanket and creeps over to me. Pulls out the towel Nurse has tucked in my collar and wipes the soup away from the sizzling wires.
Now her face isn’t so angry. She wipes all the green off my chin, and I start to ask, “How’d you—”
But she pinches my arm hard. “Not a word, or you’ll get us both killed.” That’s right, Mary’s crazy like me. Put a man in the hospital, Betsy said.
Now there are voices in the hall. Getting louder.
Mary drops the towel by my feet. Gets under her blanket just before Nurse comes back.
“Dammit,” Nurse says, and starts to clean.
I look over at Mary, full of things I want to know, but she’s back to her stare.