She came awake in gradual stages. She had to struggle to open her eyes, which felt as though they had been glued shut. She blinked hard. But her vision refused to clear.
She vaguely recalled a series of bad dreams. Worse than bad. Catastrophic.
Her entire body hurt, like she had laid in the same position for so long her every muscle had locked solid. She realized she was curled into a fetal position, her arms wrapped around her legs.
Straightening proved as hard as opening her eyes. Harder. As she tried to raise up, she discovered that she was tied to the bed.
“Ah, signora, finalmente. You are awake. And not screaming. Wonderful.”
She dragged a hand over her face, trying to clear her eyes. Her mouth felt gummed shut. Everything hurt.
She had no idea where she was.
“Can you speak Italian? No, we thought not. All your screams were in English. Wait, signora. You wish to rise? Here, let me help you.”
A figure hovered over her bed. Hands reached over and untied the belt. “The restraints are there only because we were so worried, you see. You wanted to run away and you could not see. You cried of attack dogs and so many other awful things. I hope this is over now. You frightened me so much.”
Rising to her feet proved extremely painful. Agony. But there was a good flavor to the pain, as though it meant she had finally returned from wherever she had been. Her feet touched the cold floor and she jerked them back. Where were her shoes?
“Ah, yes, the floor, it is freezing, no? And this is August. You wait until you touch the floor in January. Then you will know cold. Here are slippers. Wait, I will help you.”
Her thirst was a raging force. Her throat and mouth burned with the need for water. She gripped the woman she could not actually see and pushed herself upright. Suddenly it was as important for her to stand as it was to drink.
The woman both supported and guided her. They passed through a door that groaned as it opened. They entered a hall. She saw figures silhouetted against sunlight coming through a window at the hall’s far end.
Then she saw the cart. It was parked against the wall. She recognized the form on its top tray as a water pitcher. She whimpered and reached with a hand that to her fractured vision resembled a claw.
“You are thirsty, yes? Of course, signora. Here. Lean against the wall. Good. All right. Here, take this cup. No, signora. Slowly. Drink slowly. More? Of course. Wait. Here you are.”
She drank three cups, drenching the front of her clothes with the liquid that she could not take in fast enough. Her throat felt swollen and raw. The woman had said she had been screaming.
“Please, signora. The nurses, they do not speak English. This is why I was placed in your room. So that I could ask, who are you?”
She held out the cup. The woman refilled it. She wanted to shape the word nurse. But when she tried to speak, the only sound that emerged was a tight little whine.
“Your name, signora. It is important, you see. Because you cannot be committed unless they know who you are. It is the law. But the police, they keep coming by, asking questions the doctors and the nurses cannot answer. When they found you, you had nothing with you. No identification, no money. Nothing. And you were screaming. So they brought you here.”
The woman’s words were a confusing jumble. They pressed at her. She felt panic rise up inside.
She did not know her own name.
She wet her fingers in the cup and wiped her eyes. Again. Gradually her vision cleared.
The woman standing before her was a hag. Her grey hair was in wild disarray, wreathing a shattered stick figure with red-rimmed eyes. The woman wore a tattered bathrobe over a stained nightdress and ancient slippers.
She looked down at herself. She was dressed in a similar nightdress, stained even worse than the woman’s.
A figure shuffled past her. A young woman. Her gaze was utterly vacant. Her hands twisted in a manic dance before her face.
She looked farther down the hall. Other women limped and writhed and moaned and sang.
The window at the corridor’s end was tall, the glass frosted. The sunlight turned the bars into dark shadows.
She opened her mouth and screamed as loud as her damaged throat allowed.