by Krystal Wade
“We both know the answer to that question. My best patient will not be broken down by a couple of paper pushers with bachelor degrees.” Dr. Underwood opened the chart sitting in the middle of the desk. Rose noted the thickness of the file was not nearly as fat as the one she’d held last night. Her name was written in blue ink on the tab, but that was the only thing that matched. So he had two charts for her, and likely two for Phillip. “I’ve taken the liberty of having your chart copied for them, and I even sent one to your mother. I’m going to make sure I study all the case notes written by nurses and orderlies so that I am best prepared to help answer questions. I want you to be honest with the interviewers, open. Then, just as Nurse Judy said to you earlier, we can finally put this situation to rest.”
Meaning: I’m going to lie through my teeth and make sure they know anything you say to them is made up in your head because you’re crazy and have no proof.
Rose nodded like she was grateful when really she wanted to burst from the room and run through the double front doors with Phillip and never look back. She wanted to cry. To beg. To plead. To curl up in a ball and go to sleep, real sleep, sleep where she didn’t fear what kind of things would wake her.
And she wanted Dr. Underwood to stop pretending and just tell her what he wanted and why he wanted it. She wanted him to stop staring at her, expectantly, like she was supposed to jump up and hug him and thank him for everything.
She wanted to know why he hadn’t said anything about them breaking into his office, or being out on the rooftops. That was eating her alive.
“Why don’t you go grab some breakfast and meet me back here in thirty minutes?”
Why won’t he ask?
Rose barely managed an “Okay,” before she got up and stumbled out of the room, hands shaking. She hadn’t touched the water, but the effects of the medications seemed to have reached her anyway. Sweat covered her skin. Her heart raced. Her thoughts were everywhere but in the moment, and all the way down to Hall F she kept bumping into things. The lady in the wheelchair, Gracie, whose story she hadn’t heard but name she had somehow. Rose couldn’t remember when she learned the woman’s name. She just knew it.
And that frightened her.
Rose ran into Phillip, who was standing next to Paul, the man who always had food down his shirt. When had she learned his name?
“You okay, Rose?” he asked as tears fell down her cheeks.
She couldn’t talk to Judy. She couldn’t talk to Social Workers. She couldn’t talk to Megan or Josh because neither of them had shown up again and one of them was an ass. And Dr. Underwood must have banned Rose’s parents because neither of them had made any contact.
Phillip laced his fingers through Rose’s and broke away from the line of people waiting for soupy oatmeal and burnt toast. He entered one of his secret rooms, pulling Rose along with him, then locked the door. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Shaking her head, Rose wasn’t sure what to say. Nothing new had really happened, other than the fact she would have a sit down talk where she wouldn’t be allowed to say a thing. But it was everything. Everything about this place and the people and the treatment and not being able to get out.
What good did it do her to admit to her problems if she’d be forced to stay here forever?
Forever.
That’s what was wrong with her. The fact she knew freedom was just a dream, an illusion, something people sing about and tell stories about that doesn’t actually exist.
“Show me what they did,” Phillip said, touching Rose’s cheek and drawing her attention toward him. He was warm, and his touch left her skin tingling.
But none of this was right. This was not right. She wanted to kiss him, to grab him and run away, to cry.
She felt crazier than she ever had in her entire life.
“They didn’t do anything.”
“Show me.” He grabbed the hem of his shirt and lifted it up to his neck, and Rose gasped and snapped out of her panic only to spiral into an entirely different kind of panic. A bandage ran from one side of his chest, just above the nipple, to the other and down his stomach, resting just above his belly button. And it was stained red with blood.
Rose opened her mouth to ask how, why someone would cut the question mark into him, but nothing came out.
“I don’t know,” Phillip responded as if he’d read her mind.
She reached out to touch a piece of the tape, to make sure this wasn’t some drug-induced nightmare. Lately she had to use more of her senses before she could believe anything. “But we remember what they do to us. We’re aware. How could you not know how this happened?”
Phillip lowered his shirt and said, “I woke up, heart pounding, covered in sweat. My chest was on fire, and I panicked. If something was happening to me, it was you too. The door was locked for the first time in weeks. Locked, and I saw them in your room, the cloaked figures, around your bed. I screamed and shouted and banged on the door. Next thing the lights flicked on. You were alone, asleep. They tried to tell me I did this to myself, but I—”
“Know better.” Rose rested her hand on part of his wound and felt his heart racing. She couldn’t bear to have him go through more suffering. He’d already been through enough. “We have to escape.”
Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “Where would we go?”
“Our parents?”
Pounding rattled the door on its hinges.
“Come out of there right now,” Nurse Judy shouted.
“Our parents put us here,” Phillip said, unlocking the door and quickly stepping back to avoid being hit.
Judy barged in, nearly falling over herself, her eyes wide and face and neck prickled with red splotches. She kicked the door closed with her white sneaker and then straightened, tugging at her scrubs while she looked directly at Rose. “Don’t you think you’re in enough trouble after the stunt you pulled last night? Locking yourself in this room isn’t going to make anything better.”
Rose glanced at Phillip and then back to the nurse and then let it all out. “What does it matter? I won’t be alone with the social workers. He’s made sure of that. So I won’t be able to tell them how he abuses us at night.”
“He what?” All the color and cheery disposition drained from the nurse’s face and neck and stature. She stood there just as helpless as Rose and Phillip, mouth opening and closing without making a sound.
“What’s Ket—”
A knock at the door cut Rose off before she could finish.
“There’s never enough time.” Judy cast a cautionary glance over her shoulder and then turned back. “Listen: The man shot wasn’t anyone I’d ever heard of before. I checked. He’s not on any patient rosters. I can’t confirm that anything’s happening to you, but I’ll admit I don’t know what’s going on here. Let’s meet outside later and you can tell me everything. Just . . . Stay out of trouble in the meantime, okay?”
Phillip met Rose’s eyes, brow raised. His expression spoke more than words ever could. He clenched his jaw and fisted his hands, almost like he blamed Judy for what Dr. Underwood put him through, but that couldn’t be right. Judy was a friend, more so than anyone.
“Can I trust you to do that for me?” The nurse backed toward the door as whoever stood on the other side pounded again.
Could they trust her? Rose wanted to. She also knew they didn’t have very many options. “Yes.”
“Good.” Judy smiled, her lips quivering slightly, then slipped into the hall without giving the person on the other side an opportunity to see inside. She raised her voice and indicated that she’d thought she saw someone sneaking in but had been mistaken.
After a few moments of waiting in tense silence for the hall to clear, Phillip and Rose stepped out and raced toward breakfast.
“Why’d you look at her like that?” she asked, not sure she’d be able to eat a thing. “Judy could help us.”
He pointed to his chest and traced along the lines where the mark had bee
n etched into his skin. “She’s the one who bandaged me up this morning. She knows something all right. Maybe it’s how to convince us she’s on our side. I don’t know.”
“Or maybe she’s too afraid to say anything, or they told her you did that to yourself so she repeated it to you?” Rose refused to accept that Judy could have anything to do with the abuse in the institute.
Phillip grabbed a bowl and sat at the table, not making eye contact. They sat quietly through breakfast and even quieter on the way back to their corridor. Rose hated the idea of meeting with Underwood and the social workers, that she’d have to lie through her teeth and pretend everything was okay so as not to make herself look nuts. She hated how much she had to question everything, even her own intuition, how she felt nuts. She almost hated Phillip for not trusting Nurse Judy.
When they stepped into Hall A, they found a man and woman in black suits entering Dr. Underwood’s office. He motioned for Rose to join them, and, momentary anger aside, she squeezed Phillip’s hand and then walked to her demise with her head down.
19
A metal folding chair had been placed behind Dr. Underwood’s desk, next to his brown leather seat, and the paper pushers with bachelor degrees occupied the space there while the doctor stayed at the back of the room with his arms crossed over his chest. Rose took her usual seat and quietly waited for the social workers to finish reading through her chart.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” Dr. Underwood cleared his throat. “We have an institution to run, one that suffers when detours impact our normal routines.”
“Yes, sir,” the man who’d occupied the metal chair said. He was a squat young man, maybe late twenties, and probably stopped for milkshakes and burgers on a too frequent basis. His hair was thinning and cropped short, his bulbous nose a little red at the tip. A few more years and he’d be playing Santa in the mall, for sure. “We’re not used to speaking with patients in an open environment like this. We’re looking through her chart to determine how best to ask questions.”
“I understand,” Dr. Underwood said, as if he didn’t understand or care or want them here. “By all means, take your time. Miss Briar is only missing free time where she is allowed to socialize with other patients. Very important time for her.”
The woman had to be in her late forties, judging by the smile lines surrounding her chocolate eyes and pale lips and the little patches of gray sprouting through her long blond hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. She stopped looking at the charts to focus on the doctor and appraised him—and not at all kindly—while her partner finished skimming. This woman looked like she believed Dr. Underwood guilty until she could prove him innocent.
Rose liked her.
Once the man found what he was looking for, he met Rose’s eyes and said, “All right. Rose, my name is Mr. Walker, and this is Mrs. Bennington. We’re here to investigate the conditions of the institution as it’s come to light recently there might be a few things a little less than comfortable. At any time, if you feel a question is an invasion of your privacy, just say skip it, and we will.”
Mrs. Bennington tore her eyes from Dr. Underwood and added, “And don’t worry about your advocate at the back. He’s only here to help us differentiate between your answers and your health issues. Please feel free to speak your mind, okay?”
Rose nodded. She couldn’t speak freely, but with the doctor at the back of the room, maybe she could use her eyes, mouth HELP, something. Mrs. Bennington would believe any claim against the doctor. Rose knew she would.
Mr. Walker pulled out a yellow pad of paper and a pen, then sat forward so he could use the desk as a writing surface. “According to your chart, you’ve been here six months. In that timeframe, have you noticed anything wrong with the facility? Leaky pipes? Bugs? Small animals?”
Eyes widening, Rose wasn’t sure she knew how to respond. Six months? She’d been here six months? Suddenly she wanted to run to the window. Look out to see if the first signs of spring had sprung. If the trees were full of buds, or even leaves. To see if the white trillium blooms had popped out yet. Or even if the grass was a darker green. She turned toward the left, barely able to stay seated.
“Miss Briar?”
How could she have missed even more time? Just last night Gordon said something about it being a cold winter and him believing it for once. Did he say that because winter was already over? Or had Rose been here longer than she first believed? Had she arrived before October and couldn’t remember?
“As I explained to you, Miss Briar has difficulty answering questions. She loses time, drifts into outer space. It’s made treatment quite difficult,” Dr. Underwood said, beside her with his hand on her shoulder.
Rose cringed and tried to turn away, frustrated that she used to welcome his touch, used to welcome his presence and now she just wanted him to go away. Wasn’t that how it always was with her? She loved her mother, wanted nothing more than to spend every evening with her, and then pushed her away for friends and parties and hanging out.
“Seriously, Rose, why don’t you ever go out?” Megan had asked once after Rose said no to going to a movie. “I mean, what’s the last film you saw? And if you say something with your mother, I’m going to stage an intervention.”
Truth was, the last movie she had gone to was with her mother, and it involved puppets with crazy voices and shaggy fur and wild adventures, but Rose wasn’t about to share that with Megan. She’d only laugh, and she probably would stage an intervention. They were in seventh grade, and one of the school counselors had recently talked with their class about drug addicts and recognizing signs in friends and family. Interventions were mentioned, briefly, and that’s what Megan seemed to focus on more than anything else. One of the many brilliant things she wanted to do with her life before committing to stay in one place forever.
“I saw that movie with the guy chasing kids through the woods with a chainsaw. He had on a white mask . . . I saw it with Josh.” Rose hugged her textbooks closer to her chest and walked toward her locker. Hiding lies then had been difficult. She knew if she made eye contact, she’d bust out laughing. So she hid.
If only Rose had told the truth to Megan then, she would have eventually stopped asking Rose to do things, their friendship wouldn’t have grown, and the fights with her mother never would have taken place.
And when Josh went along with the lie, Rose should have known he wasn’t trustworthy.
“Yes, well, I can see we’re getting nowhere,” Mrs. Bennington said, snapping Rose out of her latest memory. She hadn’t touched the water thanks to Phillip’s warning, so why were her thoughts spiraling out of control?
“I’m sorry.” Rose shook her head. “I haven’t seen any of those things. Well, there’s a small water stain in one of the ceiling tiles in my room, but it’s not an active leak. Or at least not that I’m aware of.”
Mr. Walker scratched down Rose’s response, then asked, “Do you feel the staff treats you well? Listens to your concerns?”
The two social workers waited for a response, their eyes fixed on Rose. She wanted to mouth help now. She wanted to widen her eyes, hold out her hands in surrender, but since she spaced out a moment ago, Dr. Underwood hadn’t moved from her side. He faced her, kept his hand on her shoulder. She felt his fingers flex, like a warning: you better keep your mouth shut or you’ll pay. Or maybe that was all in Rose’s head. Maybe nothing was real. If she couldn’t keep track of time, how could she keep track of anything else?
No. She had Phillip—and that kiss. And she knew. Rose made mistakes in her past. She could even admit to being sad, depressed, lonely, but she hadn’t lost gaps in time, woken with bruises she couldn’t remember how she got, and she certainly didn’t have nightmares that blended with reality. That all started here. So what if Dr. Underwood denied everything she said, made up some reason for it. Maybe Mrs. Bennington would take Rose seriously, and maybe they’d investigate the institute further.
The risk was worth t
he potential reward.
“Not all the time, no. Before coming here, I didn’t have nightmares, not like the ones I have here. And I’ve told Dr. Underwood several times”—his grip on Rose’s shoulder loosened—“and he thinks it’s all part of my disease. But why would that start while I’m here? I feel awake and aware during them, and beat up, tortured. I’m forced to draw, even though I’ve been afraid of drawing for so long because my mom stopped seeing me and somewhere in there I stopped seeing myself. And when I wake up, I find I’m bruised in all those same places that people kicked me or punched me in my dreams. And I swear these dream people sound just like people who work here, people who scare me even in the day time. But he doesn’t listen. He straps me down to my bed and pumps me full of drugs, drugs that when I don’t take, I stop losing time. I stop seeing things. I stop feeling crazy.”
Tears streamed down Rose’s cheeks, and she wiped them away as fast as she could. She didn’t want the social workers to think she was crazy emotional. She just wanted them to listen to her, to make things better, but Rose knew their attention was lost when both workers looked beyond her and up to Dr. Underwood.
Rose turned around in her seat and saw no hint of fear on the doctor’s face. His eyes were full of pity as he watched her, as if he’d practiced this and expected her to say exactly that.
“As I explained to you earlier, Miss Briar’s grip on reality is fragile at best. You’re more than welcome to interview my staff to see if any merit to her claim exists. In fact, I encourage it. Let me know when you’re available, and I’ll arrange a meeting.”
Mrs. Bennington held up her hand. “Don’t worry about it. Rather than doing that, we’ll just make a few surprise visits over an unspecified period of time, and we’ll check in on Miss Briar.”