by ML Gardner
Sometime later, we lay tangled, groggy and warm in the afternoon sun. Suddenly she let out a laugh and snuggled into my arm. “Now you’re going to have to bathe me again,” she said teasingly.
“That would be my pleasure,” I said. “Especially if your baths end like this.” I rolled toward her, grabbing a handful of her bottom. She giggled and squirmed under my hands.
“We might get stuck in a vicious cycle,” she said with a false pout of disapproval.
“And the problem with that?” I asked before kissing her again. The kiss, while deeply passionate, didn’t progress to anything more, and I rolled her away from me and snuggled in close behind her.
“Let’s get some sleep before tonight,” I whispered. She nodded, and I felt her body slowly relax in my arms. “I love you,” I said quietly just as she drifted off.
“I love you, too,” she mumbled sleepily.
I woke to the dim glow of evening, both excited and scared to set out on our journey. As the bags were mostly packed, we would eat a light dinner before. I was eager to go. I woke her slowly with a smothering cascade of kisses on her face, neck and shoulders. She smiled as her eyes slowly opened and she stretched, arching her back with a sleepy grunt. I looked her over, very tempted to enjoy one last encounter before leaving the comfort of the cabin. I thought better of it, though, and rolled out of bed, gathering our clothes.
We readied ourselves with a growing sense of anticipation and ate ham sandwiches together, standing against the short kitchen counter. We dressed in all of our layers, and I filled the canteen with water and set our bags by the door. There were three now, and I lifted each one, finding the lightest one and handed it to Elizabeth. I helped her fit it onto her back and gave her a quick kiss and a nervous smile. I opened the door and she stepped out before me. I hoisted the heavy bags up, adjusting them.
Three steps away from the door, we heard them; the deep aggressive growling and barking of a dozen search dogs in the distance. I looked up and realized the dim haze was not that of early evening, but of a sunless sky. The light was mostly blocked from a wall of black roiling clouds that barreled towards us. A sudden gust of icy wind slammed into me, stinging my eyes, and making my lungs ache.
Elizabeth shot me a panicked look, and I scanned the landscape quickly. I saw two cars with single red flashing lights atop, racing toward us. The dirt plumes billowing behind them told me they were in a hurry to get here. I saw Elizabeth’s mother out of the corner of my eye, standing silent and straight faced, staring at me from a safe distance. Elizabeth saw her and clung to my arm, terrified.
“Run!” I jumped off the porch, dragging her behind me. We were slowed down by the heavy bags, and I took hers off her back, mid-run, and slung it over my shoulder. We dashed into the woods, whose small dead trees and short shrubs provided little cover. Jumping over fallen logs and deep pits, we dodged thorny bushes and ragged stumps until we came to a dead stop, seeing three men one hundred feet ahead of us–one on horseback, the other two holding the reins of the pack of dogs. They spotted us, and I jerked her arm and ran to the east, and I dropped two of our bags, so we could pick up more speed. She looked back at them nervously, and I pulled her along, commanding her to move faster.
As we came out of the woods, there was a clearing and her house lay beyond. Several cars were parked in the yard and I could hear her father yelling in the distance. We ducked back into the woods and I stopped again, listening. It sounded like we would be running straight toward the snarling dogs, and my mind raced, trying to figure out which direction to go. I felt all turned around in my panic and started running blindly. After just a few moments, the cabin came into view, and I held back a fear-stricken scream. We had made a full circle. I could see them closing in on three sides.
We were trapped. I grabbed Elizabeth and hugged her tight.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, with a hard lump in my throat, and I watched them inch closer, now only a few hundred feet away. “When we get out again, we’ll meet here,” I gasped frantically and held her head so she couldn’t look away. “I’ll find you, Elizabeth. I promise.” I kissed her, hard and desperate, and then began rattling off everything I had seen, fragments of visions I didn’t understand. “You’re going to be home soon. You’ll be free and I’ll be with you, eventually. There is going to be a man. I’m going to bring him to you, and, somehow, he is going to bring you back to me.” I took a few gasping breaths. “I don’t understand how, but…” I looked over her shoulder. They were so close now. I hugged her so tight she could scarcely breathe. I couldn’t think in my panic and kissed her one last time. “I’ll come back for you, Elizabeth. I swear, I’ll come for you.” I held her eyes as hands grabbed my arms, wrenching me away from her. She began screaming and crying, fighting off the orderlies. They pulled me in one direction and her in another. I watched her, writhing and screaming. They dragged her past her mother, who took two steps back as they passed to the waiting car.
“I hate you!” she screamed, repeatedly at the top of her lungs. She coughed violently, gagging, and spit blood on the ground in front of her before resuming screaming hateful things at her mother.
I hung my head in defeat, sadness, and fear, and I stopped fighting. They threw me in the back of a small truck with metal bars between the driver and the cold empty compartment. I sat on the protruding wheel well with my head in my hands, reliving the last few surreal moments. Lifting my head, I saw the orderly on the passenger side eying me cautiously, and I turned away to hide the anger and frustration I was choking back. Out the small windows of the back doors, I saw an identical black truck close behind us and, through the windshield, I could see Elizabeth thrashing around violently; enough to make the truck often swerve a few inches to each side. My mind raced, trying in vain to find a solution, but there was none to be had. We would go back, they would keep us apart until they transferred me and knowing what we would have to do, bide our time, play their game and endure a hellishly long separation, sent one last surge of anger through me.
The truck took a hard right turn, and I went sprawling off the wheel well, scraping my arm and slamming my head. I scrambled to my knees, holding it, growling and cursing while the goose egg formed under my hands above my temple. Adding pain to anger and frustration, I let loose and pounded the metal wall with both fists in rage. The driver turned and yelled something at me, but I didn’t hear him and wouldn’t have cared if I had. Only ten minutes separated me from my Elizabeth, and my whole body ached; my fingers to touch her, my lips to kiss her and my arms to hold her. I’m glad I didn’t know, as the tall iron gates to the hospital grounds opened, just how long our separation would be.
Illusions
I recognized the two orderlies who pulled me out of the truck. They walked me through several locked doors, and I could hear Elizabeth’s screams, echoing behind me. The last door opened to the wing I was all too familiar with. I saw Ronnie huddled against the wall, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and a few others stared at me in what seemed like a mix of awe for escaping and pity for getting caught.
Passing the nurses station with the orderlies iron grips on each of my arms, I saw David’s head bent over his paperwork. I could tell he struggled to compose his expression when he looked up at me, and he did a good job. Except for the eyes. It was indescribable, that look, but it was enough to make a grown man cry, and I looked away quickly. They had sedated her, or so I guessed, as her distant screams became weaker and further apart. We turned the corner and I stopped cold. The doctor stood with his hands behind his back, looking none too happy. A cold ball of dread formed in the pit of my stomach. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that a treatment would most certainly be in order.
The doctor gave a sharp nod toward the treatment room. With nothing to lose, I fought and kicked with all my strength, growling obscenities through clenched teeth. Two more orderlies aided in the submission, and they strapped me to the table. I prayed they would sedate me, so at least I wouldn
’t feel the first white hot jolt. No such luck, though, as the doctor stood at my head, trying to strap the prongs on, cursing under his breath as they slipped off the blood-filled lump on my head.
He leaned over my face, letting one prong slip over my ear. “We’ll just talk about all this when you wake up, Simon.”
And then he flipped the switch. The first shuddering pain didn’t knock me out, and I vaguely remember screaming through it. The second made me feel as though my head were detached from my body, and the third brought vivid hallucinations and visions of past, present and future events. I felt like my head was being ripped in half as one vision after another flashed in front of me, pictures passing by too fast for me to grasp their meanings or details. The last sensation before blessed unconsciousness, was that of my whole body being turned inside out, from the bottom up. My eyes dissolved, and the hallucinations continued in vivid colors and bright flashing lights as I saw myself squeezing through the sockets where my eyes had once been. My body went limp, and the voices around me were distant and garbled. I welcomed the darkness with open arms.
When I woke, I was still on the treatment table. I was unstrapped, covered and the door had been left open. I didn’t feel the pain in my head and legs until I thought about it, and, even then, it wasn’t as bad as it usually was. I swung my legs off the table, took a deep breath and stood up. Peeking outside the room, the place looked deserted.
Glancing at the clock, I could see why. It was after eleven at night. I made my way down the hall to my room, passing David, who said nothing to me as I passed. I found my room locked and yanked on it in frustration. I wanted nothing more than to lie down and see Elizabeth’s face behind my eyes. I walked back to the nurses station and plopped my arms down on the counter to get his attention.
“David, can you let me into my room, please?” I asked. He shook his head slowly and didn’t look up at me as he spoke. “Afraid I can’t do that, Simon. They filled your room.”
“Filled it? What am I supposed to do?”
“You can wait in the commons area,” he said with a nod, and I caught sight of his tired red-rimmed eyes. I walked into the darkened commons room and could make out the couch in the moonlight. I sat back with my arm over my eyes and summoned my images. I heard a faint sniffle and a soft moan, and my eyes popped open. I sat up, looked around, but could see nothing in the darkness. Taking long frightened strides to the door, I flipped on the light and saw her. Not my Elizabeth, but another girl with stringy light-brown hair. I could see bony shoulders sticking through the thin hospital gown, and rail thin arms hung at her sides. She hung her head and her hair fell around her face. Outlines of the knobby bones of her spine protruded out grotesquely.
“Are you new here?” I asked. She made no acknowledgment as she lifted her emaciated hands, paper-thin skin, and blue fingernails, dropping them on the table silently. “I’m Simon,” I said with a shaky voice, walking slowly around the table.
Her face shocked me; sunken eyes ringed in black, skeletal cheekbones jutting out beneath tightly drawn skin and gray lips. All of the bones of her sternum and ribs protruded out from her flat chest. She stared at me with dark, hollow, hate filled eyes. I ran out of the room, blindly through the men’s hall, but couldn’t find David and doubled back. I shot through the commons area, blinding my eyes to the frail terrifying girl at the table and bounded down the women’s hall, calling for Loretta. She sat at a small table, bent over a book and ignored me. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and followed it into a dark room at the end of the hall. I peeked in and saw another woman clad only in a surgical gown standing in the middle of the room, staring at me while clutching her stomach.
“Have you seen my baby?” she asked in an airy voice. Her eyes were sunken so deep into her skull that I couldn’t see the whites of them. She cried, but no tears fell from her eyes. I stood motionless, terrified. I knew her.
“You’re dead,” I whispered, shook my head and stepped back into the light of the doorway. “When they took you away and sterilized you, you died during it, months ago.” She watched me as if she couldn’t hear me, shook her head, then slowly looked down .
“My God,” I whispered. “Were you pregnant when they…”
She nodded, her face crumpled in anguished pain, and she let out an unearthly cry, bending at the knees as dark blood began to seep through the front of her gown and dripped to the floor, a thick and sticky splattering sound, forming puddles on and around her feet.
I turned and ran.
I nearly threw myself on the desk, gasping for air, trembling with fear. “David, you gotta help me,” I panted. “This last treatment…it did something.” I held my head in my hands and took a deep breath. “I’m seeing things. Not…not like before,” I pleaded, holding my hands out for emphasis. “I’m seeing–”
“You’re not seeing anything I wouldn’t expect you to see, Simon,” he said, finally looking up at me. His eyes were bloodshot and slightly swollen, and it dawned on me that it might be for some other reason besides lack of sleep. “Hurts like hell to come through the eyes, don’t it?” he asked.
I stared at him with my mouth hanging open. “How did you know what I felt?”
“The eyes are the windows to the soul.”
I waited for him to say something that made sense.
“You’re dead, Simon,” he said finally, his voice breaking slightly over my name. My stunned gaze didn’t change, and I waited for him to say something more. He stared at me in all seriousness.
“No. No, David, I can’t be dead. You can see me. You’re talking to me for Christ’s sake!” I took a step back, shaking my head. “That last treatment messed up my head, but–”
“That last treatment killed you, Simon.”
I was right. He had been crying.
He pointed down the hall to the treatment room.
I walked slowly and heard his footsteps behind me, surprisingly light for a man so formidable.
I looked inside without entering the room and saw my sheet covered body on the table. I turned and threw my back against the wall, hyperventilating. Slowly, I slid down the wall in a heap, cradling my head, trying to make sense of it all.
“You can see me,” I repeated. “I’m right here, I can’t be dead.”
“Only by the grace of God am I not strapped to a bed in a place like this myself, Simon. If they knew about my gift, I’d be slapped crazy and locked away,” he said in a low voice.
“Your gift?”
“That’s what I prefer to call it,” he said as he sat against the wall next to me. He pulled one knee up and laced his fingers around it. “Why do you think I was the only one here who knew you weren’t crazy?” he asked, rolling his bald head toward me. “We’re not so different, me and you. I can just hide mine better,” he said apologetically.
He was silent for several moments and as the shock and disbelief began to settle, I felt a thick swelling in the center of my chest; grieving for myself. It crept up into my throat and I wanted to cry, but seemed to lack the ability.
“How could I possibly be dead and not know it?” I asked.
“It’s the ones that stay who don’t know for a bit,” he explained. “I take it you saw some of our former residents that have also chosen to stay?”
“The one that starved and the one that died in surgery,” I said with a shudder. “God, I’ve never been so scared,” I said with tightly shut eyes.
“They can’t hurt you, you know,” he said. “A few of them might act like they will, but you can’t feel pain.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he continued. “You’re remembering the pain. There are emotions connected with painful moments, and that’s what you feel. All you’re capable of feeling now, are emotions. Fear, anger, happiness, love.”
Elizabeth’s face flooded my mind with a fresh deep ache, stronger than when I realized I was dead.
“Can I see her?” I asked, my eyes still closed.
“You can see her anytime you w
ant now, Simon.”
I sat on the side of her bed and stared down at her sleeping face. “Does she know?”
“No. She’s been asleep since shortly after she got here.”
I reached out to touch her and then hesitated.
“You can,” David said. “Though she can’t feel it. Most she’ll feel is a light breeze or a tickle, like when a fly lands on your arm.” She was lying on her back with her arms at her sides, tied at the wrists to straps on the bed. I tried to touch her, but my fingers went through her hand, leaving a trail of faint golden sparks like the last traces of fireworks.
“You’ll learn,” David said softly.
“I’ll learn what?”
“How to touch her. How to let her know you’re still here.”
I felt the urge to clear my throat and blink hard. I leaned forward, ran a finger over the back of her hand, watching the shimmering light scatter and gracefully slide down the contours of her hand until they disappeared.
“I thought you said I couldn’t feel pain,” I said in a quiet, choked voice.
Later I sat in a chair next to David at the desk. I watched the second hand do a slow, circular sweep several times before I asked my next question.
“Are there many who chose to stay?”
“Five or six.”
“Why?”
“They all have their reasons.”
“And the ones who don’t choose to stay?” I was curious if he knew what came after this.
“They leave. Though, not right away.” I looked at him, confused. “It’s hard to explain. It’s better if you see it,” he added.
“Can she hear me?” I asked after a moment.
“Not how you think of hearing. When you say something to her, it simply registers as a passing thought or a memory. Sometimes, it’s a warm feeling that washes over a body when they think of something they love.”