But I don’t care anymore because I’m floating into a gray nothingness.
• • •
“Nell’s sister. Wake up! Hey, wake up!”
My head is throbbing, and it takes every ounce of strength to open my eyes—not that it does much good once I do. I’m surrounded by dark and shadow. It smells like metal. Or maybe that’s the just the taste in my mouth.
“Are you awake?”
I groan in response. I don’t quite know how to articulate that I don’t know. I can’t tell if I’m asleep and having a strange dream or if I’m awake.
“I’ll take that as a yes. You’ve got to stop. You’re not doing what I told you to do.”
This voice is familiar. Have I dreamt it before?
“You’re letting him get to you. That’s exactly what I told you not to do. Are you listening to me?”
“Go away,” I grumble, wishing the voice in my head would stop. When I reach for my temple, I realize there’s no tugging. I put my fingers to the inside of my elbow, and I’m rewarded with another dull pain to match the one in my head. It feels like a bruise that reaches to my bone. My ankles and wrists feel the same way. And my shin itches, though I can’t remember why.
“Go away? Not a chance. Look, I’m going to help you whether you want me to or not, because frankly, you’re probably the last chance we’ve got.”
The voice is a little louder now, like it’s forgotten to whisper.
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. I know it’s totally crazy. I’m now talking to some voice I’ve probably conjured myself. There’s no other explanation for it. Unless I’m dreaming again. I don’t know what’s real anymore. All I know is talking hurts more than anything else at the moment, so I’ll do whatever it takes to make it shut up.
“They’re going to take us out to the courtyard tomorrow. They want to see what happens when they put the two of us together. They want to see if we can, you know, make something happen. Like we’re goddamned wizards. We can talk more then. But not if you’re high as a kite.”
“I don’t do drugs,” I say automatically, like I’m talking to a teacher.
“Well, maybe you don’t, but that’s not really your choice anymore. Sounds like you’re coming down right now. Here’s what you’re going to do. Listen to me carefully. Are you listening?”
“Yes, yes, I’m listening.”
“Tomorrow morning, they’re going to give you two pills in a cup with your breakfast. Take the pills. They’re sugar pills; they won’t do anything. They just want to see if you’re done fighting them, which by the sound of it, you pretty much are.”
This is the first hint of real anger I’ve heard in the voice, and it gets my attention. If this voice is just my imagination, does that mean I’m mad at myself? I keep listening.
“Take the pills so they think you’re not going to give them any trouble, but don’t drink the juice. Got it? Take the pills; don’t touch the juice. Pour out the juice. Anywhere you can so they don’t find it. But make sure you pour it out so they think you drank it. Got it?”
“Okay,” I say. Why not? The things the voice is telling me are no crazier than the fact that I’m hearing voices in the first place. I might as well go along with it.
“I hope for both our sakes you’re not just bullshitting me,” the voice scolds, and then I’m left in silence.
“Hey, you still there?” I ask tentatively. I’m met only by the sound of my own breathing, and I feel strangely alone all of a sudden.
“Best not to get used to that,” I tell myself. It’s not a good thing to start missing the company of your own delusions.
Not in a place like this.
18
* * *
MY HEAD IS POUNDING BEFORE I even open my eyes. The room is bright. I can tell by the way my eyelids feel semitranslucent. I ease them open to a squint, and when I decide my head can handle a little more, I open them to see where I am.
Another gray room. This one looks much the same as the others I remember . . . that I sort of remember . . . assuming I didn’t dream them. But in addition to the glaring fluorescent lights, this room has a window high in the wall. It’s covered by mesh and out of reach at about nine feet, just below the ceiling.
My wrist and ankle restraints are tied tight. I seem to recall being free of them, even if for a short time. I shift my gaze to the bend in my elbow. It’s red and purple with a tiny lump and a little perforation at the top of it where a needle should be, but for once it’s not. And though my head is still thumping behind my drooping eyelids, I am glad to be free of the IV. My brain feels whole for the first time in . . . a day . . . a week? I have no idea how much time has passed.
My heart skitters in my chest as I try to fill the empty spaces in my mind.
What do they know about me? What have they been doing to me? How long do they think they can keep me here? Can they keep me here at all?
The restraints on my wrists and ankles seem to answer that question for me.
Then a memory—or what I’d like to believe is a memory because I have no real basis for reality at this point—of Mom’s voice and Aunt Becca’s seeps in. They’re talking to Dr. Keller, or rather he’s talking to them, and they accept what he says like chicks eating worms from their mother’s beak. They swallow every last word. After that, the only voice I remember hearing is Dr. Keller’s.
I want to curl into the smallest human ball. I tell myself I’m fine on my own. I don’t need Mom or Aunt Becca or anyone else to rescue me. Then my mind scurries to the image of another face, and then I’m thinking about Evan, his calloused hands gripping mine. I want to feel his hands on my wrists instead of these straps. I want him to steady me. My throat closes over fresh sobs, but if I focus on what I want rather than what’s in front of me, I really will lose my mind. I may have more questions than answers, and my brain may not be entirely whole, but at least I know that for the first time since they put me in blue scrubs, my brain is mine. And I intend to keep it that way for as long as I’m here.
This is what I tell myself to keep the panic that’s begun burbling in my chest at bay. Maybe the drugs weren’t so bad. Is a Swiss-cheese memory better than this reality?
Shoes squeak outside my door. My stomach reacts with an involuntary grumble. I feel like I haven’t eaten in years.
There’s a swipe, then a click, and the Pigeon emerges from behind the door in a freshly starched uniform pushing a metal cart with a yellow plastic tray on top. Separate compartments in the tray hold scrambled eggs, a slice of slightly burnt toast, and a cup of fruit cocktail. Not typically my idea of a tasty breakfast, but I’m so hungry, I’d eat just about anything they put in front of me. And at least I know by the meal that it’s morning.
“Rise and shine,” the Pigeon sings, and I immediately know that she has never been a mother. She’s unpracticed in that brand of cheeriness.
I try to sit up, but my restrained wrists only allow me to get up on my elbows.
“Oh, dear. Let me get those for you,” she says, that mock soothing tone already grating on my nerves.
She pulls a plastic device from her pocket that looks like a pin and pushes it into a hole on one wrist restraint and then the other. She does the same for my ankles, and once I’m mobile, my limbs feel strangely light.
“Now, eat up,” she says, her singsong voice chilling me.
“And don’t forget to take your medicine,” she says, gesturing to the little paper cup in the corner of the tray with one of her talons. “That’ll help with the headache.”
I don’t like anything about this woman, least of all her ability to divine the pain that I’m in. Suddenly I feel completely naked in front of her.
She leaves me to my breakfast, shutting the door behind her. I look at the food in front of me: The eggs are underdone and runny, the fruit cocktail is heavy on syrup and light on actual fruit, and the toast isn’t just kind of burnt but practically charred. The pills in the paper cup are enormous and turquoise, a
nd I’ve been given a giant glass of orange juice to take them. In fact, the juice is the only thing that looks semi-edible on the tray.
Something flickers at the back of my mind, like a projector trying to play a movie that’s gotten stuck in the reel.
“Juice,” I mutter to the tray of food.
My head is starting to pound harder, and I suspect it’s because I need to eat something. I’m also so thirsty I feel like I’m going to turn into a prune. The juice is looking better and better.
But for some reason, my hand—feeling lightweight and not quite my own in the absence of the restraints—reaches for the blackened piece of toast instead. I eat it fast, almost choking on the charred crumbs. Then I turn to the eggs, which taste excessively salty, and shovel them into my mouth with the spoon they gave me (no sharp objects, I suppose). I move on to the syrupy cocktail before I’ve even finished chewing the eggs. I drink the syrup, and wouldn’t you know it, my headache really does start to subside. The only things left untouched are the cup of pills and the juice.
My mouth has a vaguely metallic taste, and I would give anything to kill that with a little bit of juice. And I’m thirstier than I was before I ate. I feel like my tongue is going to shrivel up and fall out of my mouth.
But I reach for the pills instead. I swallow the first one dry, then the second, producing meager amounts of saliva to slide them to my stomach, a sensation I unfortunately feel due to the ridiculous size of the capsules.
I eye the orange juice again, warily, as if I expect it to do something.
I could leave it untouched, pretend I just didn’t want it. But the same feeling that’s been propelling me all morning tells me that I need to conceal it. I need to look like I’m playing along.
Let them know you’re not going to fight them anymore.
I search the small gray room for convenient hiding places. There are no drains, no potted plants, no holes to pour it down that I can see. It’s liquid, and it’ll smell if I don’t pour it someplace where it’ll get absorbed easily. The cot I’m sitting on doesn’t have thick enough material. The only other thing in the room is the cart the Pigeon rolled in with breakfast.
A few minutes pass while I hold the giant glass of juice in my hand and contemplate what to do. The longer it takes me to find a hiding place for it, the heavier it seems to get. Before long, I can hear squeaking from what I’m assuming is the far end of the hallway. A swipe and the ping of the releasing lock announce my visitor.
Without much thought, I dump the entire contents of the juice on my chest and lap, the sticky, pulpy liquid soaking my cheap cotton scrubs.
“Oh!” the orderly fails to contain his shock. I guess I can’t blame him. I can’t even begin to imagine how ridiculous I look right about now.
“I spilled,” I say, deciding to go with the obvious.
“Uh,” he says, looking around, then behind him, then back at me, then behind him again.
“You got a towel or something?” I ask him, for once feeling like I have the upper hand in this place. It’s sad that it took me being on this side of its doors to feel that way. I’ve never seen this orderly before, and it’s a shame that I haven’t. I get the sense that I could have gotten a lot more information from this guy than from the likes of the Pigeon.
“I don’t . . . you were supposed to drink that,” he says.
“Yeah, that’s typically the idea with juice,” I shoot back, then try smiling. To my surprise, he smiles back, then catches himself.
“Can I get cleaned up somewhere?” I ask, and he looks behind him again.
“You’re supposed to be in the courtyard in ten minutes,” he says, like I’m supposed to know what that means. He seems to catch himself again, and his face screws in on itself like a button sewn to a shirt too tightly.
They want to see what happens when they put the two of us together.
“Well, I can’t go outside like this,” I say, then try smiling again. “And honestly, I don’t know when I’ve last showered. I can’t really remember how long I’ve been here, you know?”
He sighs impatiently, then signals for me to follow him.
He looks to his left and his right, his left again, then points a nicotine-stained finger toward the end of a long, gray corridor, and I quickly locate the sign that says WOMEN.
“There are showers in there,” he says. “I’ll find a female worker to go in there with you.”
“I think I can figure it out on my own,” I say, a little taken aback.
“Rules,” he says.
I start to head down the hallway, then turn back to the orderly. “Can I get a clean set of clothes?”
“I’ll find some new ones,” he says, looking more agitated now that he’s taken a peek at his watch.
“Shit,” he mumbles. “Just hurry up.”
He scurries down the hall in the opposite direction, and my heart races the moment he leaves my sight.
Because I’m alone.
I know there’s no way I’ll make it very far unattended. But I creep after the jittery orderly just the same. Sadly, all I find when I round the corner is another gray, nondescript hallway with its own set of unmarked gray doors. I jiggle one handle, then another. None budge.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Isn’t there anything here that isn’t locked?”
But I already know the answer to that.
I’m just about to retreat back to the showers when I hear the familiar swipe of a keycard and ping of a lock undoing itself. It sounds like it’s coming from several doors down, but I’m too far away from the corner to duck around it without notice.
“Come on, let’s get you out to the courtyard,” a woman says impatiently.
An orderly emerges from one of the rooms, and I immediately recognize her as the woman who was operating the admittance doors the day I came to pick up Nell’s box of things. She’s a pucker-lipped lady roughly my mom’s age, and she’s pulling a thin arm in her tight grasp. On the other end of that arm is a petite blonde with enormous eyes whom I also recognize; she’s the girl who shot down the hallway screaming and had to be restrained by the Pigeon when I came to see Kenny—the day he gave me Nell’s poem.
“What are you doing out here?” the pucker-lipped orderly asks. “And where’s Robbie?”
“I don’t know who Robbie is, but I can’t take a shower before I have new clothes to change into,” I say, knowing instinctively that my defiance isn’t going to go over well with this one.
She has a similar huff to Robbie’s. Then she turns to the blond girl whose arm she’s still grasping.
“Courtyard,” she commands with a look that conveys the consequences for not following directions. “You know the drill. Ring the bell and someone will meet you on the other side of the door.
The blond girl responds by blinking her giant eyes and turns to go.
The orderly ducks into a room to our right and, with one foot propping open the door behind her, leans toward a shelf stacked with blue scrubs, sorted in piles labeled small, medium, large, and extra-large.
While the orderly is busying herself with choosing the right size for me, I hear a hissing whisper at the end of the hallway.
“That’s one way to get rid of it,” the girl says, then winks one of her giant eyes at me.
The orderly emerges with a folded pair of pants, shirt, and towel.
“Make it quick,” she says, giving me a slight push toward the bathroom.
But I barely register the orderly’s command. Because my memory has suddenly awoken from its drugged haze. I haven’t been imagining that whispering voice. And now I have a face to go with it.
19
* * *
THE “COURTYARD” IS ANYTHING BUT. It’s essentially a rock garden, and really not even that considering it’s composed of maybe two types of gravel—one red and one brown. The yard spans half the length of the building’s back wall, probably the length of three houses squished side by side in a typical Phoenix neighborhood. And the court
yard is longer than it is deep. It reaches maybe twenty yards back before it’s stopped short by a forbiddingly high cinderblock retaining wall. Concrete sidewalks weave through the garden, and weeds and cacti sprinkle the empty spaces in between. I can’t help but wonder how dangerous a place like this might be for someone with actual psychological problems. So many sharp objects.
It’s chilly out. Winter has finally arrived. Goose bumps prick my arms, but I’m not about to ask for anything warmer to wear. Something tells me the Pigeon would be more than happy to fit me with a straitjacket to keep my arms warm.
There’s a fog of cigarette smoke in the air. A cluster of about five orderlies stand around chuckling and grumbling, some smoking. They’re all in matching white uniforms, which are creased at bellies and knees—all except for the Pigeon’s. She looks perfectly in order, not a single hair unpinned, not a wrinkle marring her uniform. There’s no sign of Dr. Keller.
I scan the rest of the “courtyard” and almost miss the blond girl altogether. She’s at the corner farthest from the orderlies, the shadow of Oakside’s exterior wall swallowing her in its shade. She sits on a backless concrete bench, her knees making a shelf under her chin. Her wide eyes find me and signal for me to come and sit beside her. After another look at the distracted orderlies, I do—but not without first noticing the Pigeon noticing us. She stays where she is, but her eyes never leave me. I angle myself on the bench so I can talk to the girl while keeping one eye on the cluster of orderlies in the distance.
“You’re going to have to find a better way of getting rid of your juice,” the blond girl says in a voice so low, I almost can’t hear her. Up close, I see her giant eyes are a brown so light, they’re almost yellowish. “They’re going to catch on if you keep spilling on yourself. Nobody’s that clumsy.”
“What are you talking about? Exactly how long do you think I’m going to be stuck in this place?!”
“Shhh!” she scolds, shifting her gaze toward the orderlies. The Pigeon’s got her laser-tight focus on me.
The Murmurings Page 17