by Claire Merle
Ana wrung her hands together until the bones cracked.
She closed her eyes and set herself the task of finding a logical answer to what was going on.
Tubes traveled in and out of the tanks. A metal frame, like a bed, had been welded to the bottom of each man-sized casing. And each one had its own control panel on a separate pedestal.
A century ago, the psychs used to strap their patients into baths and douse them with icy water. It had become baths and douse them with icy water. It had become popular again recently when a respected psychiatrist
‘proved’
it successfuly altered chemical imbalances in the brain.
Or perhaps the tubes pumped gel into the tanks and this was a new form of ECT, administering electric shocks to al zones of the body. Ana began to shake. Either way, she was totaly screwed.
‘We haven’t got al day,’ a voice said.
From the furthest end of the stage, a figure strode towards them silhouetted by the closing door through which she entered. A petite nurse folowed.
Cusher. Ana’s hope shriveled. Cusher hadn’t listened to a word Ana had said in the shower interview.
‘Hurry up,’ Cusher admonished. ‘No need for false mod-esty.’
Neither Ana nor the girl beside her moved. The door at 279
the back of the studio sucked shut. A dim red light came on at either end of the stage. Pumps skittered across the hard floor. The nurse reached them and breathlessly began to disrobe the girl beside Ana. The girl submitted at once.
When the nurse reached for Ana, Ana slapped her hands away.
‘My name isn’t Emily,’ she said, wrestling to keep her high-pitched voice steady. ‘There was a mistake. I’m not supposed to be here.’
supposed to be here.’
‘Good God,’ Cusher sighed. ‘Mrs McCavern!’
A harsh grinding sound folowed by the clatter of metal scraping across metal rang through the studio. Ana flinched. The roler-shutter ascended. Daylight poured through the jaw-like opening. The scarred orderly ducked through.
‘Mrs McCavern,’ Cusher said. ‘I told you not to leave me alone with the new one.’
‘Sorry, Dr Cusher.’ McCavern didn’t sound sorry, she sounded furious. Ana cringed.
‘Get her into tank four,’ Cusher ordered.
McCavern prodded Ana in the back with a truncheon.
Ana stifled a cry as one of yesterday’s bruises flared up.
She tumbled forward to the nearest tank, then limped up the three steps. When she reached the top, McCavern knocked her over the edge.
She fel on to the metal bed-frame, her left side crashing against the sharp rails, her knees scraping the sides of the tank and starting to bleed. McCavern clambered down the short stepladder into the narrow guly beside the bed, cursing under her breath.
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‘Troublemakers don’t do wel here. No, they don’t do wel at al. I’m going to keep a special eye on you.’
‘You’re making a big mistake,’ Ana stuttered.
‘Lie down,’ McCavern growled.
‘My father is Ashby Barber.’
McCavern’s hand twitched towards the truncheon tucked in her belt. Tears sweled in the corner of Ana’s good eye. She lay down on the metal frame, face up.
McCavern leant over her and drew a plastic strap tightly across her chest. Then she pinned Ana’s wrists with metal half-circles and fastened a second strap over her legs.
‘Please,’ Ana choked. ‘Please. My father is Ashby Barber.’
McCavern regarded her for a moment, before climbing the smal stepladder and disappearing into darkness.
Liquid gurgled. Ana heard it slosh below her, gathering in the bottom of the tank. Her chest heaved against the strap. She gasped at the air, starting to hyperventilate.
Blackness edged across the corners of her vision. She was about to pass out when a scream pierced the old film stage.
A split second later liquid oozed around the edges of her feet, calves, thighs, back and neck. She wiggled her toes.
The texture and lack of smel indicated it was only warm water. Ana grew stil, not understanding.
They weren’t going to be shocked with ice, or electro-cuted through specialy designed body gel. It had to be some sort of immersion therapy.
The tension in her limbs unraveled. She slackened her muscles, alowing the adrenalin to work its way out of her.
She tried to ignore the other girl’s screaming and focused on relaxing her feet, then her legs, her thighs, her buttocks, 281
al the way up through her body until she’d almost regained a sense of calm. In a few more seconds, the water would fil her ears. Then there would just be the sound of the pump and the liquid slopping back and forth against the tank wals.
The average person couldn’t hold their breath for anywhere near sixty seconds, especialy not when they were panicking. As Cusher surely didn’t intend to drown them
– Ana hadn’t noticed any resuscitation gear – she would be fine. Stiling her mind, she did her best to evoke herself at home, sitting at her piano, fingers running up and down the keys. But as the water closed over her head, instead she imagined herself descending a curved staircase. It was strange, she could actualy feel her hand trailing along a banister. A door stood at the bottom of the stairs, blocking her way. She reached out. It felt solid, even though she knew it couldn’t be. She twisted the handle. The door swung back and an infinity of stars greeted her. In the distance, suspended on the edge of the horizon, lay a spiral galaxy.
She almost gasped and swalowed water. It was so vivid and beautiful, it seemed impossible that it was only in her mind.
Entranced, Ana floated through the door, feeling as though she’d hopped across the folds of space and time to the most magical place in the universe. Young stars swirled around the spiral galaxy’s golden centre. Silvery-blue light trailed behind them, as though the galaxy had just been stirred by a giant spoon.
Cool air blew across the tips of Ana’s face. She blinked, 282
was back in the tank. Water gurgled as it drained. The young nurse jumped down beside her prostrate form.
Water splashed around the nurse’s waist, but she didn’t seem to care about her uniform getting wet. She laid two fingers on Ana’s windpipe, checking for a pulse. When she felt one, she grappled for an oxygen mask attached to a long hose wound along the side of the tank.
‘No,’ Ana said.
Startled, the nurse’s finger shot to her lips, signaling for Ana to be quiet. She attached the mask over Ana’s head. Just as it snapped on, Cusher loomed over the side.
‘Wel?’ she said.
‘The pulse is faint,’ the nurse answered, looking at Ana warningly.
‘Once you’ve checked her vitals, bring her to my office.
I’l see her first.’
The nurse nodded, then began to undo the strap across Ana’s shoulders. The stage echoed with the click-click of Ana’s shoulders. The stage echoed with the click-click of Cusher’s shoes and the sound of the other girl coughing and retching. Ana strained to sit up, but the nurse gently put a hand on her chest and shook her head. She began to rub Ana’s legs with a towel.
As Ana lay there, an icy feeling of anger and power coursed through her. When a far-off door banged shut, she puled herself up. The nurse stepped back. Ana swung off the metal frame into ankle-deep water, then climbed the stepladder. At the top of the tank, she jumped the five-foot drop on to the stage floor. Her hair and gown dripped water everywhere. The nurse appeared behind her at the top of the tank.
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‘Give me that,’ Ana said, snatching the towel. She stormed over to the next tank where the girl she’d come in with now lay curled up in a bal on the floor. Puke dribbled down the girl’s lips and around her cheek, which pressed flat against the concrete. Gently, Ana lifted her blonde head of hair and began mopping up the vomit.
She moved the girl away from the puddle of sick, puled tight the towel already drap
ed over the girl, and began to rub. The girl burst into tears.
‘What’s your name?’ Ana asked.
‘Helen,’ the girl cried.
‘How old are you, Helen?’
‘Thirteen.’
The stench of vomit twisted up Ana’s nostrils and seethed down her throat. She’d done nothing as boys seethed down her throat. She’d done nothing as boys took advantage of an unconscious girl, nothing as McCavern cuffed her and led her here, nothing as Cusher drowned them.
The anger grew so dense, she thought it would choke her.
*
Ten minutes later, Ana sat on Cusher’s tweed sofa in a bland room, short hair drooping over her eyes, gown clinging to her damp skin.
‘Tel me, Emily,’ Cusher said, after a drawn out silence.
‘What was going through your mind while you were trapped under water?’
‘Tel me, Dr Cusher, do you enjoy drowning your patients?’
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Cusher’s left eye twitched. ‘Let’s stick to me asking the questions, shal we?’
‘Contrary to popular belief,’ Ana said, ‘they actualy drowned more women for witchcraft in the age of Enlightenment than in the Middle Ages. Trials by drowning.’
‘Tel me how you felt, Emily.’
‘The Age of Reason.’
Cusher bristled with irritation. Her finger curled back the short hair already combed behind her ear.
short hair already combed behind her ear.
‘Why don’t you tel me about the last time you were institutionalised?’
‘Because you don’t listen.’
‘I’m listening.’
Ana held Cusher’s gaze. Cusher smiled, dropped her eyes and began shuffling through the papers on her desk.
‘I was never institutionalised.’
‘Realy?’
‘My name is Ariana Barber. My father is Ashby Barber.
He won the Nobel Prize for identifying the mutated set of genomes responsible for schizophrenia. When he finds out I’m here, you’re going to lose your job.’
Cusher sniffed and pinched her nose. She noted something down while stifling a yawn.
‘Wel, let’s see if you’re stil feeling that way tomorrow, shal we?’ she said.
As though on cue, the door opened and McCavern entered with a wheelchair. Seeing Ana, surprise flickered across her gaze, quickly folowed by contempt. She groped for her cuffs, obviously not used to needing them after the tanks.
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Ana got up and stood looking down on the psychiatrist.
Cusher stopped tidying up and met her gaze, trying to appear amused, an effect that was undermined by the spasm in her left eye and the lip tremble when she smiled.
Ana turned, strode to the wheelchair and plumped down.
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23
Shockers
McCavern wheeled Ana alongside the river, over the cattle bridge, and past the empty car park. They roled to a halt outside the wash-block door to the compound.
Ana waited.
McCavern’s eyes driled into the back of her head. Ana clenched her jaw and sat up straighter. The tight manacles gnawed at her wrists. But she sensed any effort to aleviate the pain would be taken as a sign of weakness. Perhaps exactly what McCavern was waiting for now.
She held her hands stil in her lap. Finaly, the orderly produced a chain of keys from her belt, unlocked the wooden door, and pushed Ana into the grey building.
The stink of excrement assaulted Ana’s senses. She’d been too scared to notice on her way out, but faeces smeared the corridor wals and piles of vomit rotted in dark corners.
Resisting the impulse to gag or cover her nose with the sleeve of her gown, Ana focused on the square of yard beyond, bathed in daylight. Only one day in Three Mils, and she was actualy glad to be returning to the compound.
compound.
In the main yard, patients miled around, twitching, fidgeting, arguing with each other, or themselves. A group of girls fought over blankets. Registering Ana, they quietened and shushed each other, though most didn’t dare look over.
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McCavern removed the cuffs. Ana stood up without prompting, ensuring the three inches she had over McCavern were felt. McCavern didn’t move. She was obviously stil thinking about taking matters into her own hands.
Such an unruffled countenance after a trip to the tanks couldn’t be good for morale.
Ana held her head high. She felt the orderly’s presence behind her and was determined not to flinch or duck away.
The wind tugged at her flimsy robe and swept through the damp strands of her cropped brown hair. She breathed in, letting the cold burst through her lungs, noticing Tamsin, who was leaning against Studio 8’s brick wal.
The wheelchair creaked. Rubber roled across tarmac.
McCavern retreated.
Ana remained stil and poised, taking in her audience.
Tamsin met her roaming gaze with a fixed, appraising stare.
Ana gave a smal smile and strode towards her. The yard sprang back to life.
Tamsin frowned. ‘You had hydrosynthesis this morning,’
she said.
‘So that’s what they’re caling it?’
Ana had heard of narcosynthesis, where patients were given narcotics and then put through analysis. But hydrosynthesis was a new one.
A hush fluttered over the yard. Ana turned to where everyone was looking. Someone else was being wheeled out of the wash-block. The male patient’s head draped over his body.
‘Most people don’t have your stamina,’ Tamsin said.
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Ana gripped Tamsin’s arm, scrunching her good eye to see better.
The orderly tipped up the wheelchair. The patient flopped forward, smacking face-down on the tarmac, one arm twisting around his back. Ana broke into a lopsided run. The orderly quickly turned and disappeared back into the wash-block.
Ana knelt beside the sprawled figure. She stroked back the tangled, sandy hair. ‘Jasper?’ she whispered.
‘Jasper?’
His name stuck in her throat.
He groaned. She looked up helplessly. A huddle of girls stood several metres away, watching.
‘Give me a blanket!’ Ana ordered. The girls clung to the precious covers around their shoulders. Ana jumped to her feet and hurtled towards the group. She snatched the nearest blanket, meeting no resistance. Returning to Jasper, she wrapped the cover over him and lifted his head on to her knee. He moaned when she moved him, hands protectively coming up over his ears. She stroked his hair, hummed his favourite Miles Davis jazz piece. He dropped his hands and slumped against her. He smelt awful; unwashed, metalic, a faint trace of chemicals sweating through the skin.
After a couple of minutes, Ana became aware that the persistent background clamour of the yard had not resumed. If anything the murmuring had grown quieter.
She looked up. A hundred faces stared at her. Boys and girls crowded into the main court from the games room.
Tamsin lingered among those who stood closest. Ana gazed at her imploringly.
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‘He needs to lie down,’ she said, wrapping an arm under his shoulder. After a moment’s hesitation, Tamsin stepped forward and took up the other side.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘Where I can keep an eye on him.’
They staggered across the yard to Studio 8, Jasper’s torso flopped over their hunched shoulders, his legs dragging behind. The crowd parted with looks of dragging behind. The crowd parted with looks of amazement, confusion and fear.
Inside Studio 8, they lowered Jasper on to a mattress.
He groaned again, barely conscious.
‘Why isn’t he wet?’ Ana asked.
‘He didn’t have hydrosynthesis. He’s a shocker.’
‘Shocker?’
‘Electric Shock Treatment. One of their better ones.
Wipes out memory, messes up the neurological system, causes permanent brai
n damage. Your difficult patient syn-drome is totaly cured. ’Course there’s no future in being a vegetable, but at least it’s not a corpse, right?’
The dust from the mattresses, coupled with Jasper’s odour scratched the back of Ana’s throat.
‘Shock Treatment is safe,’ she said feebly, repeating the advertising slogans she’d heard again and again growing up but knowing as she said it, she didn’t believe it.
‘Ninety per cent successful. Immediate relief for depression.’
‘Yup,’ Tamsin said. ‘I suppose that’s one definition of relief, an actual inability to have a clear thought about anything.’
Ana sank on to the mattress by Jasper’s feet. It would be 290
her father’s fault if Jasper wound up brain damaged. She had to get them both out of there.
She spent the next hour by Jasper’s side in the dim half-light of the studio. At lunchtime a bel rang and girls began to trickle out into the yard. Tamsin, who’d gone off, now reappeared in the doorway.
‘You need to eat,’ she said.
‘I can’t leave him.’
‘He needs to eat, then.’
‘We can’t carry him al the way up there.’
‘No, we can’t. But you can come with me and sneak him back your bread rol. He’l be OK. No one bothers the shockers.’
Ana rubbed her swolen eye, which had started to itch, then got up reluctantly. She stretched her stiff legs. Her stomach grumbled at the thought of food.
‘He’l be fine,’ Tamsin repeated, retreating.
Narrowing her good eye against the brightness, Ana folowed.
Only a handful of patients stil loitered in the yard. Ana drifted towards the main building where they’d eaten supper the previous night. Six bodies now lay heaped in front of the wash-block, like debris tossed ashore. Three covered their heads with their arms, two were curled into bals, one lay lifelessly. Ana stopped, thinking one of the baled-up girls was the thirteen year old from the tanks.
‘Hurry up,’ Tamsin shouted over her shoulder. Ana edged towards the girl, but it wasn’t Helen.
‘There isn’t time,’ Tamsin said, coming back and yanking her away. ‘Move it!’