by E. C. Bell
She knew very well what his name was. I’d been going to her for eight frigging months, and James was a huge part of my life. I nodded, suddenly so furious I couldn’t trust my own voice.
“With James,” she continued. “And honestly, you’ll see that you will feel better. More relaxed. At peace. And you’ll be able to sleep. Don’t you want to be able to sleep, Marie? I believe that most of your symptoms will disappear once you are able to sleep more.”
“Yeah, so you said.” I turned away from her, because I was afraid if I kept staring at her I’d end up leaping over the too-soft bed and throttling her, which would do nothing but prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was a danger to others. “Fine. Bring on the meds. But I better be able to see James right after. Understand? I want to be able to talk to him before this crap you’re going to feed me kicks in.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said. She glanced down at the file in her hand. My permanent record, I guessed. Flipped a page and frowned. “It says here that you have dietary requirements,” she said. “That you are vegan. Is that true?”
“I’m not vegan!” I yelled. “I just didn’t want the food that the nurse brought me. Jesus!”
“All right,” she said, and that patronizing, mock-soothing sound was back in her voice, and all I wanted to do was keep screaming incoherently at her until she finally left my sight. “Calm down. I’ll make note of it.”
I heard her pen scratching on the paper, and then heard the doorknob finally turn.
“Everything will be fine,” she said. “Just trust the meds, and everything will be fine.”
“Sure,” I said, and was pretty sure the acid in my voice was going to drip all over the linoleum floor and scar it forever.
Then the door clicked shut and I was alone.
Only then did I cry.
Jasper:
Marie on Drugs
I LEFT MARIE alone while she was settling in and meeting with Dr. Parkerson.
I wondered how long Dr. Parkerson was going to leave her in lockdown. Marie didn’t seem volatile to me. Just upset that she was in this place, which was understandable. However, I hoped it would be for a while. It would be easier for me to talk to her alone, if she remained in lockdown.
It was pretty wonderful to have someone alive to talk to, even if she was here against her will. And it didn’t hurt that she was cute. Well, kinda cute. She was frightened and angry, so her colours were mostly yellow and red. She also had a greyish haunted look about her, but I liked her long curly hair, and when she did smile, it was endearing.
Yeah, look at me being a poet.
The first thing I needed to do was figure out a way to explain why I’d lost it in front of her, so she wouldn’t be scared of me. That was going to be tricky, but I dearly wanted to see her again. I figured Dr. Parkerson’s first interview would be short and sweet, so I headed over to Building Thirteen to see how orientation was going.
MARIE DIDN’T LOOK good. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at the rough plaster that was a quickie repair for the damage done by the occupant two before her. She was barely breathing.
Staff had obviously drugged her. Dammit, how much had they given her? And what? Fear went through me. Had she eaten something that had done this to her? Dammit, I’d warned her.
I stood in front of her, trying desperately to get her attention. It did my ego no good when she stared right through me like she couldn’t see me. “Are you all right?” I asked.
She didn’t respond, past frowning a bit, but that gave me hope. She’d heard me. I was sure of it. It would just take a bit to push through the drug-induced haze and get her to focus.
“Marie,” I said, a little louder this time. “Can you hear me?”
She shook her head and ran her hand through my midsection, and then stared at it as though she expected to see bits of me still stuck to her.
“Marie!” I cried. “Look at me! Now!”
She blinked a few times and sighed, as though she was exhausted. But slowly, her eyes drifted up to my face, and then held there.
“Hi Jasper,” she whispered, and smiled. Then she looked around the room. “Look!” she said, to nothing as far as I could tell. “It’s Jasper the friendly ghost.”
“What did they give you?” I asked. “You are seriously wrecked.”
She blinked, and her smile shifted to something that looked a lot more like fear.
“Did you say something?” she asked. “I—I saw your lips move, but no noise came out.” She tapped her right ear a couple of times, and then shook her head. “Have I gone deaf?”
“I did speak,” I said, even louder, this time. “Marie, what did they give you?”
“But I can hear myself,” she said. “So that means I’m not deaf. Right?”
“I guess,” I said.
“Come on,” she said, her smile disappearing. “Talk to me. This isn’t funny anymore.”
“I am,” I said.
She blinked. “Well hell,” she said. “You are talking, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“And I can’t hear you,” she continued.
I nodded again and felt like crying like a little girl.
“So, you know what this means,” she said.
I shook my head, because I didn’t have a clue what her not being able to hear me meant.
“This means that I’ll be able to see James soon,” she said.
Who the hell was James? And why did I feel another horrible drowning wave of possessiveness wash over me when she said that name?
Then I knew, and felt sick. I was falling for this girl. This living girl, who apparently couldn’t hear my voice any longer. And she was probably going to see her husband, who was named James.
Perfect.
Marie:
The Drug Regimen and All It Wreaks
ALL RIGHT. ALL right all right all right. I had to pull myself together, come hell or high water. I really did.
James was coming to see me. My bitch doctor who had drugged me to the frigging eyeballs had told me. No, check that. She hadn’t. She’d sent one of her minions. The nurse who’d decided I was vegan or vegetarian or something.
She’d rammed a bunch of pills into my mouth and forced me to swallow them without a word. Then she left me alone for a while. It didn’t take long for the pills to take effect and then she reappeared, as if by magic.
“You’ll want to prepare yourself,” she’d said to me. “Your young man is coming to see you.”
Honestly, I tried to move. To look at her. To respond in some way remotely akin to a person with her faculties together, but damn! It was hard. And that patch on the wall was trying to tell me something. Something important.
Or not. Hell, I didn’t know. It didn’t look like whoever patched it knew what they were doing. Maybe there was nothing important there. Maybe it was just a crappy job. Then I realized I hadn’t responded to the minion. Which meant I was being rude.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I barely recognized my own voice, and nearly chortled drugged-out-of-my-mind laughter when I thought that it sort of sounded the way the wall looked. Like a really crappy patch job.
The nurse stared at me for a long, long moment, and I did my best to keep my eyes on hers, even though I could feel the patched wall calling me—calling me!— from across the room.
“My name’s Nurse Melodie,” she finally said. That caught my attention, and the calling of the wall receded appreciably.
“Is Melodie your first or last name?” I asked.
“First,” she replied. She squinted her eyes at me as though I’d suddenly gone fuzzy on her. Maybe I had. I wondered briefly if I could tighten my molecules up so she’d be able to see me better, then realized I needed to say something more to her or I would never get an answer to the question that was burning a hole in my brain.
“So, what’s your last name?” I asked. That question surprised me. It was definitely not the one I’d been certain I was going to ask.
“It’s better if you call me by my first name,” she said. “It’s more friendly. You know?”
“Aww, come on,” I wheedled, my drugged voice aggravating even me. I actually sounded more drunk than drugged—but I didn’t feel drunk. Not at all. I definitely felt drugged, and this minion of Satan had done it. Why did I care what her name was?
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have cared less, but it looked like drugged me was terrifically interested in the minion’s last name. And I didn’t have much control over drugged me, at the moment. Not much at all. “You can tell me. I won’t even laugh or anything.”
“And why would you laugh?” she asked. She was trying hard not to let my drugged stupidness affect her, but it was. It was pissing her off.
Interesting. Almost as interesting as the talking patch on the wall.
“I don’t know,” I said. I glanced at the patch and was suddenly pulled into the whorls of the plaster. “Seemed like a thing to say.”
“Ah,” she said, and her voice warmed. “Sometimes the drugs can be a little overwhelming.”
“Feels like I got run over by a truck,” I said. The patch mocked me, and it was right to. I had no idea what it felt like to be run over by a truck. “Any chance you can lower the dosage? I can’t even think.”
“Sorry, dear, that’s up to Dr. Parkerson,” Nurse Melodie With No Last Name said. “The effects will level off after a few days.”
“Jesus, I hope so,” I mumbled, wishing the stupid drywall patch would quit laughing. The noise made it hard to focus. “I can’t even hear Jasper anymore.”
“Who?” the nurse asked. If she’d been a dog, her ears would have pricked up. Dammit, what had I done? I’d mentioned Jasper the overly friendly ghost was what I’d done. And that was the wrongest thing I could have said.
“Nobody. Just forget it,” I slurred. I took a shambling step backward and fell awkwardly on the bed. “Why’s the room spinning like this?”
“Oh dear.” The nurse’s voice sounded like she was suddenly speaking into a well. A really deep well, with me at the bottom. “I think your young man should come back tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to acclimate to the drugs just a bit more.”
“No,” I said, scrabbling on the bed like a turtle on its back until I finally pulled myself to sitting. “No, I’m fine. Just lasted a second. I can see James. Really, I can.”
“If you think you can handle it,” she said. “Would you like a housecoat? I’ll be taking you down to the rec area and it might be just a bit cold down there.”
“All right,” I said, hoping that my eyes didn’t give away the fact that the room was still spinning. Horribly. “Sounds good.”
It took me two tries to get the stupid housecoat on, and then there was the moment of humiliation as Nurse Melodie tied the tie for me.
“There,” she said when she finally, finally finished. “You look all put together, now.” She pointed at the door. “You ready to go?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. I followed the nurse out of my room, trying to ignore the stupid patch screaming out hysterical laughter behind me.
THE HALLWAYS WERE wide and the floors were highly polished, making it almost impossible for me navigate them. Nurse Melodie finally grabbed me by the left elbow and steered me like a highly drugged ship. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she said. “It would be perfectly fine to get him to come back tomorrow, or maybe the next day.”
I thought about her words for a moment, trying to put them together logically in my head.
“No,” I finally said. “He’s here now. I’ll see him today.”
Then I tried to remember why it had seemed so important to see him. There was something I wanted to talk to him about, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I could feel my brain trying to chase down my errant thoughts like a black lab chasing a squirrel around a tree. Hilarious, but with no real effect. Then I gave it up. James would help me figure out what the hell I needed to talk to him about. He was good at stuff like that. He was a real helper.
The rec area had windows on all the walls, including the one that connected it to the over-wide hallway. Through the smoky looking glass, I could see James sitting at one of the tables in the middle of the crowded room. He looked serene. At peace. He didn’t even flinch when one of the residents walked up to him and pulled open her housecoat. She had nothing else on, just the housecoat, but James kept his eyes on her face and smiled at her gently until a staff member scooped her up and scurried her away, tightening the tie of her housecoat as he moved her from the rec area through the double door to the hallway where we were.
“Jesus,” I slurred. “That place is full of crazy people. Why do I have to talk to him in there?”
“We don’t use that term here,” Nurse Melodie said tightly. “Please try to remember that.”
“Sorry.”
She held the door for me, but I hesitated. James hadn’t seen me yet. It would be easy enough to tell Nurse Melodie to walk me back to my room and wait until I felt better. He wouldn’t appreciate it, I was pretty sure, but it would probably be better for all concerned if I just went back to my room.
Jesus. I didn’t want him to see me this way.
“Are you all right?” Nurse Melodie asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just a bit of vertigo. It’s passed now.”
I took a step into the room, and James saw me. He smiled and waved, but the smile froze as he watched me try to navigate around the tables, chairs, and milling patients. And it disappeared completely when Nurse Melodie took my arm and helped me. Again.
“Marie,” he said as I finally shambled up to the table and dropped into the chair opposite his. “Marie, are you all right?”
“Everybody keeps asking me that,” I said, and tried to smile. It didn’t work out so well, if the look on James’s face was any indication. “I feel just fine. Thanks for the help,” I said to the nurse.
“I’ll be over there when you want to go back.” She pointed at the far wall where a line of orderlies stood, probably waiting for hell to break out. “All right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds good.”
I turned back to James, and the world momentarily whirled around me in psychedelic chaos. “Wow,” I mumbled. “That’s wild.”
“What is?” James asked. His voice had gone all pointy, which it did when he was getting pissed about something. “What’s going on? Have they drugged you?”
“Damned straight they have,” I said. I tried to pull an errant strand of hair from my eyes, but kept missing. “You have a hair tie on you?” I asked. “I seem to have lost control of my coif, here.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. What drugs do they have you on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “A bunch of stuff. Dr. Parkerson said it would help.”
“Help what?”
“Help me sleep.”
“And have you? Slept?”
“Hell, no,” I said, and giggled. “I’m high as a frigging kite. I can’t sleep like this.”
I tried to focus on his face, but the damned strand of hair was in the way and I could feel my eyes cross as I focussed on it. James snorted impatience and reached over, moving the strand and tucking it behind my ear.
It took me a moment to uncross my eyes, and when I did I could see that James was still angry. Maybe more than before.
“Don’t be mad,” I said. “They say they’re doing it for my own good. That it’ll be easier in a couple of days. When I acclimatize, or something.”
“Did you want this?” he asked. “Did you want to be drugged?”
“No,” I said. Glanced over at Nurse Melodie, who was chatting with another orderly, to make sure she wasn’t paying any attention to us. “No, I didn’t. But I decided not to fight them, because I don’t think I’ll be able to get out of here if I do.”
“Jesus, this can’t be legal,” James said. He clenched his hands two or three times, like he was readying for a fi
ght. “They can’t just make you take drugs against your will.”
“You’d think,” I said. “But then, here we are.”
He clenched his hands a couple more times, and I could almost feel his impotent rage flowing out of him like a flood.
Patients sitting at nearby tables slowly turned and stared at James, and then went back to their puzzles and whatnot, voices high and agitated. A middle-aged woman moved a puzzle piece, then burst into tears and rammed the pieces in her mouth. An orderly ran toward her, to keep her from choking herself on the tiny bit of the Eiffel tower she had in her jaws, and another patient at the table screeched and knocked the puzzle to the floor.
“They can’t do this to you,” he said. Clench clench clench, like he wished Dr. Parkerson was in front of him so he could squeeze the life right out of her.
I watched his anger run from table to table, infecting everyone. Across the room a fight broke out between two old men playing cards. One of them screeched “Cheater!” and slapped the face of the other old guy, knocking his false teeth right out of his mouth.
I wanted to laugh, to be honest, and if I’d seen it on YouTube or something, I probably would have. But the situation in that room was rapidly spinning out of the control.
“I think you’re doing this,” I said.
“Doing what?” he asked.
I gestured vaguely around the room. Wished I could think of something else that I could say to him, but nothing came. “They’ll throw you out. And we need to talk.”
I did my best to focus on his eyes. To look at least nominally straight, so that he’d relax. He glanced over at the card table fight, then back at me, and it seemed that he finally understood. He unclenched his hands and blew out a long breath.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll try. But Jesus, Marie . . .”
“I know,” I said. “It’s a crap deal, and I need to get out of here.” Then I remembered what I’d been so desperate to say to him, when I saw him. I was going to hug him, and lean in and whisper, “Get me the hell out of here.” Remembering that made me feel like I was suddenly going to cry, so I looked down at my hands until I finally had myself back under some kind of control. “What did Vinnie say?”