by Kip Nelson
“Are you okay, Mack?” Luis called out, not taking his eyes off the woman.
It seemed strange they would take such measures against an unarmed woman, but they had been through too much already to not be on their guard when they were threatened. They also knew that even the most innocuous person could prove to be a threat.
“I'm fine,” he said, never taking his eyes off the woman who was trembling at his feet.
He felt even sorrier then, for she was obviously at her wit's end. Given her likely past, she may not even have been able to comprehend exactly what was going on. He tried putting himself in her shoes. She was thirsty, dirty and tired, and had managed to make her way to the river for some much-needed water. Then two strangers approach, claim they are not going to hurt her, but then come out with guns. It must have been very confusing, even for someone who was in a rational state of mind.
He knew, though, that he had nothing to fear from her, and that there was no need for weapons. Yes, rushing at him had been a startling act, but he didn't think she meant anything by it. Unless she was feral, he doubted she would be able to inflict much harm. As he looked into her eyes, he sensed she was intelligent. All she needed was a little bit of time and patience to be able to talk to them and tell them what had happened to her.
“I think you can put your guns down now. I don't think we have anything to fear from her,” he added.
“Are you sure?” Saul asked, the barrel of his gun still pointing directly at the woman's head.
She looked around once more at the others and then tilted her eyes up at Mack, looking at him with teary eyes. It was difficult to tell, given the state she was, in but Mack would have put her age as either late twenties or early thirties.
“Yes, I'm sure. There's no need for them. I think she just was trying to get my attention, that's all,” Mack said.
“Besides, I think she knows now not to make any sudden movements around us.” As these words left his mouth he looked down at her and smiled.
Then, he leaned down and took her hand, which still had been clutching his jacket. Her grip was strong, and she clutched his hand so tightly that her skin was drawn white. At first, Mack tried helping her up, but she would not budge. So then he leaned down to place himself in her line of sight. Now that he was closer he could see the faint freckles that were hidden underneath the remnants of the dirt, and he almost could hear the frantic beating of her heart. Her entire body was trembling, so he took her other hand and bore the pain.
He couldn't imagine what this woman had been through, but it definitely had been traumatic. He was certain now that he wasn't going to leave until she had shared her recent past with him. If he was able to help this one person, then that would make him feel as though he was fulfilling his purpose and doing his duty, even if that duty was a personal one rather than one bestowed upon him by the government. As he had told Luis, everyone needed to feel as though they had a purpose in their lives. Otherwise, they would lose the drive to continue living.
Looking directly at the woman, and speaking in a gentle voice, Mack asked a simple question that no doubt had a very long and complicated answer. “What's wrong?”
The woman's lower lip began quivering and she had to choke back some sobbing as she looked at Mack, ignoring the others for the time being. Grace, Saul, and Luis waited patiently and quietly, still a little anxious about the woman, for they were not as trusting as Mack, nor did they share his instincts. But finally, with tears in her eyes, she did speak. Her voice was tremulous and high-pitched, but the words were unmistakable.
“Please, please, you have to help me.”
Mack pursed his lips and raised his eyes to the others. They all gazed upon the woman with interest, wondering if this was a genuine need for aid or if it was some kind of trap. She said nothing more for the time being, the emotion of the moment evidently overwhelming her, but Mack and the others had much to consider.
CHAPTER SIX
“WHAT DO you need help with?” Mack asked softly after the woman had asked him for help, but she was mumbling incoherently on the ground and had withdrawn her hands from his. With a sad look on his face, Mack rose to face the others.
“Are you okay?” Saul asked again.
Mack nodded. “Yeah, I think she just was panicked more than anything. I don't know what could have happened to her.”
“Maybe nothing if she's from where we think she's from,” Saul said. “Maybe it's better if we just leave her some food and get on our way.”
“I've already told you I'm not going to turn my back on people who ask me for help,” Mack said sharply.
“She can't even tell us what she needs help with. Maybe it's better if we leave her. She might find her way back to wherever she came from.”
“She'll die if she stays out here, even you can see that,” Mack said. Luis and Grace remained silent while the two of them discussed their options.
“I know you'd rather just focus on getting to the city, but I've told you before that you can't live like a lone wolf in this world anymore; it's just not going to work out for you. What do you think is going to happen when we get to the city? There are going to be other people there, and chances are some of them are going to need our help, and what about when we need help? Are you going to be fine with people just walking on by and not going out of their way to lend us a hand? I don't know who this woman is, but she's just asked us for our help. It's pretty clear she's in a bad way. I don't know how anyone with a conscience could walk away from that.”
“Oh, so now I don't have a conscience? Just because I don't share the same happy outlook on the world as you, doesn't mean I don't have a heart. Sure, we should give her supplies and things, but we're trying to get to the city and the longer we stay in this forest the more we're in danger. I'm just trying to keep us alive. Our first priority has to be our own health. I'm sorry if that sounds selfish to you, but sometimes we have to be selfish if we're going to make it through this.”
“I get what you're saying, but we can't just focus on our physical well-being. We have to think about our souls, too, and mine can't handle turning my back on people when they need our help,” Mack said.
The two men had squared up to each other and their frustrations were threatening to spill over. When they first had met, Mack had been aware that the two of them were on course to exchange blows. He had hoped their experiences in the camp, and Saul's guilt about putting them in harm's way, would have quelled his antagonistic personality. Yet it only seemed to make him more irascible and more prone to losing his temper. On this occasion at least, Grace prevented them from coming to blows.
“Guys!” she said, and gestured towards the woman, who was rocking back and forth on the ground.
Grace swung her pack off her back and pulled out some water and a blanket. Even though the woman had been drinking from the river she seemed grateful for the water. Grace wrapped the blanket around the woman's shoulders then pulled out a few biscuits, which were gone almost in an instant as the woman was so hungry. The woman reached up and wiped a few crumbs off her face, then licked them off her thumb. Then she looked at Grace with a hopeful look in her eyes and, although their supplies weren't limitless, Grace gave her some more food, and she munched on it for a while.
“We agreed before we approached her that we'd help her. So we can't very well go back on that now. If you two need to argue, then do it another time, but right now we have bigger things to think about, like how we can help her,” Grace said.
“We can't do much until she talks,” Luis said, putting his gun back where it rested in the small of his back.
“She just needs to calm down, that's all,” Mack said, and slung his pack on the floor where he took a seat near the woman.
The others followed suit and they sat there while the woman finished the food, drank the water, and felt the soft comfort of the blanket. After a little while she looked around and appeared a little ashamed. Sniffling, she composed herself and began to speak
.
“I'm sorry about all that, it's just...I've been through a lot, and I wasn't even sure if I would find anybody again,” she said, offering a crooked smile.
“It's okay,” Grace said, smiling back.
“So, you're Grace, you're Mack, and you two are...?” she asked.
“I'm Luis, the grumpy one is Saul,” Luis said. Saul scowled and looked away. He drew his knees up and folded his arms over them, then looked away, acting disinterested in the proceedings.
“And you are?” Mack asked.
“I'm Miranda Cotton, Doctor Miranda Cotton...Thank you for the food and blankets. I...I really can't apologize enough for my appearance and how I acted. I just...I don't think I was made for living out here like this. I haven't eaten for days, and I think it was dumb luck that I found the river. I knew there was one around here, but I can't say I knew the lay of the land that well. I've always been a woman of science rather than of nature, but I'm regretting that choice now,” she said, smiling weakly.
By the way she spoke now that she had had some food and a chance to calm down, it was almost impossible to believe she had been in a near-feral state just moments before, drinking from the river like a wild, desperate animal, barely able to bring herself to speak coherently.
“A doctor, so you worked at the mental hospital around here?” Mack asked, trying to not sound like he was interrogating her.
“Yes,” she said bluntly, and cast her eyes downward at the ground as though a great sorrow was upon her.
“No offense, but you don't look much like a doctor,” Saul scoffed, and the truth was that she didn't. She looked more like a patient than anything else.
“Saul!” Mack said sharply, for he didn't want to put Miranda on the defensive and make her stop talking about whatever it was that had happened, or whatever fiction she was going to make up.
Mack had to keep in mind that she could well be lying and suffering from delusions. So anything she said had to be taken with a grain of salt, even though he wanted to believe she was telling the truth because that seemed the altruistic thing to do. Miranda sighed, ran her hand through her greasy, tangled hair and groaned.
“It's okay, I can't deny the truth. I look like an animal, and I suppose some people would claim that, deep down, that's what we are. You all look to be in good shape, though. Maybe things aren't as bad as I first thought?” she said with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. Mack was sad to have to be the one to tell her the truth.
“Actually, they are worse. We've just, well, we've been luckier than some, I guess, but tell us more about what happened to you. If you're a doctor how did you end up out here dressed like this?”
Miranda took a deep breath before she launched into her story. “That is a long story, and I really wish I didn't have to tell it because it's just...I'm still coming to terms with what's happened. It's hard to believe that it's really real. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up from this nightmare, but I never do.”
“We've all felt that way, Miranda, but this is the way the world is now and, believe us, you're not the only one to have been through something terrible. Why don't know you start from the beginning?”
“Okay,” she said, although it evidently was taking a lot of effort for her to talk about it.
“How much do you know about the institution?” she asked. The others shrugged and shook their heads.
“Not much really, we only know there is one,” Mack said.
“Right,” Miranda continued, “well, it's an old building, built in the thirties, but it's had some work done to it since then. It's called the Archer Institute and it's one of the oldest in the country. Because of that it's quite prestigious to work there, and given the location some of the most severe cases of mental illness are treated there, and some of the most dangerous. You see, there's also a prison nearby. So, often when a prisoner or a criminal exhibits signs of mental illness they're brought over to us for a diagnosis.
“Anyway, many of the doors have the type of locks on them that were used in the old days, but over the years, different standards have been brought to it and much of the main building was changed to run electronically. So the locks were automatic, which meant the staff didn't have to carry around huge sets of keys, and this was good. In the old days, there was more than one example of a patient getting their hands on the keys. It was more common than you'd think. The locks were timed and there was a master board where you could open all of them at once, lock them all at once, or open them one by one. And all of the patients were in these types of rooms.
“Well, when the electronics went out the whole system went haywire and then everything shut down. Once the electricity was gone there was nothing to power the locks and everyone could just walk right out. The patients outnumbered the staff almost three to one. We managed to get some of them back in their rooms and bolted them in, for their own protection, of course. But there were some dangerous men and women in there, and once they were out, well, they were intent on getting their revenge on us. After all, they didn't think they belonged there in the first place. Even the more docile patients were riled up, and because of the panic we couldn't get organized quickly enough. It was complete chaos, and I didn't know what was going on.” As she said this she began shaking her head and wringing her hands. Mack's heart went out to her as she relived the trauma.
“Were you able to get to any of your colleagues?” Mack asked, trying to remind Miranda that she was in the present and that whatever had happened to her was all over now.
“Some of them, but we all had different ideas on what we should do. Some wanted to make sure that nobody escaped; some wanted to round them all up; others just wanted to leave and let everything be damned.”
“What did you want to do?” Grace asked.
“I didn't know,” Miranda replied with a vacant stare.
“I really had no clue. I was so...frozen. It was all happening so quickly. I heard a commotion in the hallways as we were discussing what was going to happen. Then there was yelling and the sounds of fighting. I looked out and saw a group of the patients marching toward us. I knew it was the end but I... I couldn't help but feel like I was betrayed. I had tried helping these people, and a lot of them knew that what we were doing we were doing for their own good, but the first chance they got they turned on us. It was like nothing we had done even mattered.” She swallowed after she said this and exhaled deeply.
“What happened then? Did you put up a fight?” Mack asked.
“No, I'm not a violent woman. We all were doctors and nurses, and we just wanted to help them, that's all we wanted to do. Why couldn't they see that?” she said, her words getting more emphatic as the emotion seeped into them.
“We were supposed to take care of them, but we failed. We should have been prepared for this. We should have known it was coming.”
“Nobody could have known,” Mack said, “and it sounds like you did all you could in those circumstances.”
“I guess we did, but even now it all still seems like a blur. We tried to lock ourselves in the office to stay safe, but they kept shouting at us and saying they were running the asylum, and that soon we would know what it felt like to be labeled as ill when there was nothing wrong with us. They called us monsters. They said we were torturing them, but we weren't. We only wanted to make them better! They got into the office and they dragged us all out,” she said, her voice becoming hollow.
“They stripped us of our clothes and put us in these gowns, then pretended to diagnose us before putting us down below, down in the rooms with the bolts on the doors. Since then they've been running the place, medicating us, treating us like their patients when they're the ones who need help.”
“It sounds like you've been through a lot,” Mack said, trying to imagine what it would be like to have those you gave your life to helping betray you without a second thought, “but how did you escape?”
Miranda sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “It wasn't easy. They
let us out sometimes. One of the guards was one of my patients. We had a good rapport. I convinced him that I had left something in the cellar and I managed to slip away from him and out the back. I wanted to go back in and try making them see that what they were doing was wrong, but I just ran out and never stopped running. I scavenged some food and things and made my way here, and now I've met you, but I must go back. Those people are dangerous and I can't let them stay there like that. My friends are locked up in there, being held captive, and there are innocent patients who aren't fully aware of what they're doing. Please, I need your help, they need your help.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
AFTER HEARING Miranda's story the group gave her some more food and allowed her to rest while they went off to the side and discussed her plea for help. It was a lot to ask and a lot to take in, and to think all this had happened while they had been dealing with everything else. It made them wonder about what else was going on in the world.
“Okay, so what do we think?” Mack said.
“I know what you think,” Saul began, and Grace rolled her eyes.
“Let's not turn this into another argument between you two. There's a woman there who is obviously traumatized, and who can blame her? I can't imagine what it must have been like to see all those patients turn the tables on them, and then to be imprisoned like that? I think we must help her. I hate to think of all those innocent people being drugged and kept in those rooms,” she said.
“But we don't have an obligation to meddle in every situation we come across,” Saul said. “This situation doesn't involve us, and we don't have any stake in it. There's only four of us, and from what she said it sounds as though there's a whole army in there. What does she expect us to do? Go in, guns blazing, shooting down all the bad ones? How do we know who they are?”