I DID IT.
Proved Mary wrong, fooled them all into bringing me up to the infirmary, pausing my treatment.
Has it been two days? Three? Not sure. My mind still feels cottony, not quite my own. But even with the antiseizure medication they’re giving me through my IV, each hour I feel a little more awake. Sharper. I’ve already regained a memory from the Unit: being on the treatment table, Dr. Sherman and Nurse Wallace above me, discussing the beef stroganoff they just had for lunch as I’m prepped for ECT.
It won’t be long before the memories of Officer Worthy’s visit resurface. Then I’ll learn the truth about Paul’s lie—if there even was a lie. Could be I made up the deputy’s words and Mary just overheard my babbling. I just need to keep fooling the doctors and nurses, lie very still behind these white curtains that separate us patients here, and wait. Don’t hear much from the others. Most must be dying chronics nearing the end.
Mary warned this part’s tricky, being more awake but still regressed. Said be careful. But so far I’ve kept my blank stare, eyes pointed down when Dr. Sackler and his kindly horse-faced nurse, Miss O’Brien, check on me. He’s outside the curtain right now, dictating notes to her. “… Patient still minimally responsive after a prolonged grand mal seizure with status epilepticus. Extent of neurological damage yet to be determined.”
Guess I’m still fooling them.
Dr. Sherman hasn’t come by—and he hasn’t let them call Paul. I’m relieved. Not yet up to deceiving my husband.
I can see the doctor’s brown shoes under the curtains now. He’s checking on my neighbor, the mouth breather in the next bed. “And how’s she doing this evening?” he asks Miss O’Brien.
“She’s stable.”
“About the best we can hope for at this point. Another of Sherman’s questionable outcomes. If he wasn’t protected by his government work, I swear the man would’ve been shown the door by now. In a couple days she’ll be ready for transfer.”
“Yes, Doctor. I’ll check with G- and H-Wards, see who can take her,” she says as they leave.
Soon the night nurse comes on, turns down the lights, and goes back to her desk around the corner. Bedtime. But my woken-up mind’s had enough of sleep and waiting.
It wants its body back.
I loosen my covers and start small, lifting my butt off the bed with my arms for a few seconds, then lowering it back down. Up, down, up, down, over and over, resting when I have to, then beginning again.
During one rest, I think I hear something. Listen for the night nurse, but there’s nothing but the slow, thick breaths of my neighbor in the next bed.
And I get curious.
I swing my legs around, dangle them over the side of the bed. They’re like sticks now, all shrunken. I carefully stand on them and catch my breath, let the sick feeling from my medicine sink back down. Listen again for the night nurse. Nothing. So, dragging my heavy IV pole behind me, I go to the curtain dividing us. Peer around it.
Even in the dim moonlight, I can see the twin shiners, both eyes swollen and bruised—it must’ve been some vicious fight my neighbor was caught up in. But then I notice her hair—uneven, chopped short with complete indifference. Like a sheared sheep.
Lobotomy.
I should turn away, leave the woman some privacy, but something draws me closer. Gets me to risk leaning over her, as far as my brown rubber IV tube will allow. Till I see it: the jagged line of stitches running down the far side of her face.
It’s Betsy. Was Betsy.
So this is the more traditional route Alice said they’d take with her. The one to better address her tendencies.
There’s a medicinal smell to Betsy now—like she’s somehow been absorbed by Hanover, become part of it. But a part no longer useful, something vestigial, like an appendix or a tailbone. “Betsy,” I say, squeezing her hand. But there’s no response, only the steady in-out of her breath. How could Sherman do this to her? How could anyone think this was a solution?
My heart’s pounding away, and the purple spots begin to float in front of me. I’m about to faint. Panicked, I clutch the IV pole for support. Not smart. It teeters above me, big glass bottle swinging back and forth like a lantern in a storm. But I somehow stop both of us from crashing to the ground. I freeze, letting the faint pass. Listening for sounds of the approaching night nurse as the bottle slows its careening.
I’m lucky. There are no sounds.
When I get back to my bed, I try to smooth out my breaths, my thoughts. But smooth doesn’t come easy.
The voices wake me just past dawn. One is the night nurse, thanking the other for bringing her cigarettes. “No problem at all, Miss Jankowski. Had an extra pack and remembered you’re a fellow Marlboro fan.” I recognize the voice. Lester. “I’ve got a half hour till my shift, if you want to sneak away for a smoke. I’d be glad to watch the ward.”
There is no work Lester is glad to do, so I wonder. The nurse must take him up on it. Her footsteps are getting fainter.
But Lester’s are getting louder. Closer. Keep my eyes open? Closed? Open, I need to see, but pointed down.
He steps into my bay, draws the curtain closed behind him. The scent of his mouthwash and tobacco is overwhelming when he bends over me. “Hey, darlin’, still trapped in never-never land, eh? That’s okay. We’ll make do.”
He kisses me on the lips, then pulls the blanket down to my knees and slides in beside me.
Now I contemplate my choices.
If I fight him, I lose my gork status, sent back to the Unit before I can remember what Officer Worthy said that day. All of this for nothing. Worse, they figure out I’m a seizure faker and start to wonder about Mary.
And if I don’t fight him?
Lester takes hold of my nightgown at the neck. Yanks it downward, and I feel the stitches popping at the shoulders, thup, thup, thup, as the seams give way. Next his other hand slides past his silver key ring to unzip his pants. His movements are smooth. Well practiced. Now the hand is drifting up my leg, drawing the gown with it—
But there’s a noise.
A blessed noise—
The sound of a metal bucket crashing to the floor in the hallway, followed by the exasperated curses of Joe, the custodian.
“Son of a bitch,” Lester mutters. He jumps up from the bed and yanks the covers back over me before slipping through the curtain and out into the hall. I can hear him berating Joe for his clumsiness as I lie very still in my bed and try to sweep these last minutes into one of my drawers.
But there’s none big enough to hold what just happened, what almost happened. The tears just flow, and flow. Till I hear the footsteps of the night nurse back from her smoke—and realize I have a problem:
Gorks don’t cry.
I’ve barely blotted my tears and shut my bloodshot eyes before she pokes her head in for a bed check. She must see something off, because she comes to my bedside and lifts the loose covers, revealing my torn-open nightgown.
There’s a long pause before she gently straightens the gown, pulls up the covers, and tucks them back in extra tight.