“Alexa,” he whispers.
I attempt to focus my eyes.
A blurry Daniel and two vaguely familiar nurses wearing white tunics are standing beside me. One holding a big fuck-off needle that only moments ago was injected into my left arm.
My useless eyes slide around the alabaster room. Placed by the window next to me, violet ranunculus sit in a turquoise vase, their scent a sweet perfume. Outside, Glendown’s residents wander the lawn. Hats and scarves covering soft parts of their bodies. A woman sits on the bench and stares at the sky, awaiting its weather or wildlife. The hazy view caught like an impressionist painting. Thin and visible brushstrokes accentuating the passage of time.
Daniel leans closer and places his hand on my shoulder, adjusts a scratchy smock covering the Body.
I am fatigued. Battle fatigued. I hear him order one of the nurses to fetch another blanket, and my brain, very slowly, realizes it is Nurse Veal. The stern nurse who gave me the medication after I’d smashed the glass in Daniel’s office.
She returns with a white cellular blanket and swaddles it around my chest as if I’m a baby. In the distance I hear Dolly’s cries fade, the medication already taking effect. Its liquid entering my thin, reluctant veins. The swell of drugs races to greet my brain, shooing away the Flock like a scarecrow.
Please let them stay. I need them.
Thrashing the Body is useless. Soon I will lose control of the Body, the Flock. And as much as I want to think I’m fighting the numbing medication, opposing its controlling force, I know it will always win in the end.
The Body lets go. Curling up like a coral shrimp.
Daniel smiles, an unblemished jawline smelling of expensive scent, clean and woody. He rests his hand on my cheek, and my eyes pull down like two garage doors. My mouth dribbling out a warm, dewy moisture. Eyes half-open, I glimpse Charlotte standing at the door, her stunned mouth covered by her chubby hand.
“Bring her to my office when she wakes up,” Daniel says, his words giving way like forgotten snow. “I have to talk to the police now.”