Even though the power has returned, things are not back to normal yet. I can still feel something in the air, some echo of fear. As we pass the first-floor nurses’ station, I see that it’s empty.
“Where is everybody?”
“Of course you’d notice. I knew you would. You notice everything.”
“That’s why I’m your favorite.”
“That’s right.” He rubs my head, and I wince when he accidentally presses down on the bandage covering the loose halo insert. “Whoops. Sorry about that. You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
He leans over me and whispers, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, because the doctors don’t like us to say anything that might worry the patients, but we’re expecting a big blizzard tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. They’re sending people home. Last flight out’s in thirty minutes. Down to a skeleton crew tonight. But don’t you worry. You’ll still be in good hands.”
Last flight out. Something about that idea makes me jumpy.
“Did the storm cause the power outage earlier?” I ask.
“Which power outage?”
“There’s been more than one?”
“Yeah. Three or four, mostly in areas of the compound we don’t use much. If you ask me, it’s all this fancy equipment they got here. Wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal whatnot. I’m telling you, the least little problem and it’s on the fritz.”
“Where are we, Steve?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“We’re so far from civilization they can’t use electrical cables to bring us power?”
“I’ll tell you this much: We’re off the grid. Way, way off the grid!”
“I hear helicopters a lot,” I say. “That’s how you guys get to and from work, isn’t it?”
He ignores me and starts whistling again.
“I get it. It’s a secret. How about I just guess what state we’re in? It’s somewhere with a lot of snow. And mountains. Maine? Montana? Some other state that starts with an M?”
“Hawaii. We’re in Hawaii.”
“Ha-ha.”
He walks on with his big, canoe-length steps. I keep my fist tight around the little plastic bag.
“Have you seen Jori lately?” I ask.
He gives a cough and waits a moment before answering. “She’s fine.”
“Is she?”
“You just worry about you, Miss Nosy.”
Jori is another patient here, and I haven’t seen her in weeks. I’m worried that something happened to her. People have a way of vanishing from this place. One day they’re here; the next day they’re not. I don’t know if it’s because their treatment is completed or because something else happened to them. Something potentially “upsetting” to the rest of us. All they’ll say is that a patient is “gone.” That could mean anything from transferred to released to dead. You don’t mess around with people’s brains without losing a few, but they don’t want to come right out and tell us when people die.
Except Nurse Jenner. She doesn’t mind sharing bad news.
I have trouble believing Jori’s been cured and released. She’s a terribly limp thing, short and skinny, with skin the color of undercooked fish. She’s always hunched over, with her hands clutched in front of her chest like she’s trying not to crush the wings of a butterfly she’s managed to catch. She’s fragile, nervous, and more than a little weird, even by the standards of this place. And though no one on staff will admit it, I’m pretty sure girls like that don’t go on to live happily ever after, no matter how many bad memories are cut out of their brains.
Steve steers me toward the elevators and presses the button. We wait, but no car comes. He keeps pressing and pressing the call button. Still nothing.
“Maybe it’s out because of the storm?” I say.
“Yeah. I bet that’s it.” He yanks the wheelchair back. “We’ll go around the other way.”
Going around the other way means cutting through the main lobby to get to the north bank of elevators, which takes a few minutes of backtracking. As we pass the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows, I see that the mountains in the distance have been erased by heavy gray sky.
Just then the wind kicks up. At the harsh, skittering sound of icy snow against glass, Steve starts taking longer and longer strides across the marble floor. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him move this fast before.
We pass the entrance to the first-floor ward, which is unused. From deep inside the pitch-black hallway, there’s a rumble and crack that sounds just like a thunderclap. It’s followed seconds later by the creak of hinges.
Steve stops.
I tip my head back and look up at his face as he stares into the darkness. A strong draft blows toward us, and then the unmistakable scent of “outside” hits me.
“Smells like snow,” I say.
Steve sucks his teeth. “Yeah. One of the doors must’ve blown open. I’ll have maintenance look into it.”
I don’t know how a door could have possibly blown open. This whole place is locked up tight. Plus, they built this hospital complex into the side of a hill. First the main building, where we are now, and then the smaller building next to it—South Wing. As Steve wheels me past the walkway that connects the two buildings, my eyes are drawn to it. Something strange goes on in there. No one ever talks about South Wing.
Steve yanks the wheelchair abruptly, and steps up the pace even more. I turn around in the chair, staring at the walkway. I’ve always wondered why the letters E and C are etched into the glass. The staff only call this place “the Center.” Or sometimes, when they refer to the two adjoining buildings along with the grounds themselves, they’ll say, “the Compound.” But the E.C. has to stand for something.
“Steve?”
“Eyes in front, Miss Sarah,” he says, gently turning my head back around. “And don’t be asking any more questions. You just think about getting better.”
Getting better. That’s what I’m here for. And getting better means forgetting the past. Because the past is bad. Very bad. Worse than very bad. So much worse than very bad that I might not get over it otherwise.
Drastic measures. These are them.
When traditional therapy, drug therapy, and behavioral therapy all fail, you land here, and they drill through your skull and pull out the bad memories like they’re pulling weeds.
Everyone at the Center is being treated for severe post-traumatic stress disorder. At first, I thought that meant something traumatic had happened to me. But then one day I realized that assumption might be wrong. Probably around the time I noticed that my ward seemed to be the only one with round-the-clock security guards and a bank of monitors that displayed every inch of the floor. And there’s this feeling I get from the staff, like they’re all wary of me but pretending not to be. I asked my therapist if maybe I was the cause of whatever traumatic event I was supposed to forget. She just sniffed, pushed her glasses up onto her nose, and said, “Of course not.”
Of course not.
Then there was the time—after my third injection series—when a new orderly was wheeling me back to my room. He smirked at me and asked, “So which kind are you?”
“Which kind of what?” I didn’t know what he meant.
“Victim or perpetrator,” he said.
“What do you think I am?”
He looked me up and down and laughed. “You ain’t no angel, that’s for sure.”
I’m bored. All the time, horribly, horribly bored. I’m also filled with this sense of unease that I can’t ever shake. It’s like, even though my mind can’t remember why, my body is straining to get back to whatever it was doing before I came here.
At some point I started counting the doors, the light fixtures, the floor tiles. Anything and everything, until I could visualize this entire place in my head. I know the layout of every floor and every ward—well, everywhere I’m allowed to go. And I do all this to stop myself from dwel
ling on “unproductive” thinking.
As Steve wheels me down the hallway, I look at the floor. I know there are eighteen black tiles between the elevator and the rec lounge, and as I count the final tile, I lift my eyes and see that that’s exactly where we are.
The rec lounge is one of the few places I’m allowed to go without supervision. I’d much rather go to the gym and burn off some energy, but they won’t let me do that anymore. Not since I pushed myself as hard as I could for as long as I could, just to see what I was capable of. I did seventy-four push-ups in a row and went up the climbing wall like a monkey. After that they rationed my gym time. They told me I was at risk for a treatment setback.
As we move past the glass partition between the hallway and the lounge, I sit up tall in the wheelchair to see if there’s anyone inside.
There is. Jori.
I wave to her, and she waves back with twice the enthusiasm. I have to say, even if she does sort of give me the creeps, I’m glad to know she’s not dead.
“Can’t we stop a minute?” I ask.
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“It’s not good for either of you.”
I guess they must have found out what Jori and I were talking about last time I saw her. We were watching Bugs Bunny, and she whispered to me, “Quick. Tell me what I look like before the nurse comes back.”
So I did, even though we’re not supposed to.
“You’ve got blue eyes, a high forehead, a small nose with kind of a ball on the end of it.”
“Really?” She pinched the end of her nose, trying to feel it. “Am I pretty?”
I lied. “Sure, I’d say you’re pretty.”
“Good. How old do you think I am?”
“Fifteen?” I was being generous. She really looks like she’s thirteen, twelve even.
“Maybe. I think I’m older than that, though. I think … I just have a feeling. I think I may have had a baby.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I had a memory of touching my tummy. And it was round and kind of hard.”
When I asked her what I looked like, she smiled and said, “Strong.”
That’s when the nurse appeared and shooed her away from me. I didn’t get a chance to ask her what color my eyes are, but I guess they’re probably brown. Most people in the world have brown eyes. Like seventy-five percent. I’m not sure how I know that.
When Jori sees that Steve’s not stopping, she rushes toward the glass, putting her fingertips on the window like a lizard crawling up the sides of a terrarium. I turn toward her and raise my hands like, What can I do? Jori’s face falls as Steve whisks me around the next corner.
We’re halfway up the hall when a nurse trots after us.
“She’s very agitated right now,” she says, looking back over her shoulder. “Could I borrow Sarah for a few minutes? She’s the only one who can calm the girl down.”
Steve rubs his chin. “Doc said not to.”
“Come on. I’ve been dealing with her outbursts all day. I need a break.”
He takes his hands off the wheelchair. “I’m gonna get a cup of coffee. You get caught, it’s on you.”
A moment later I’m doubling back toward the lounge, and as I get closer, Jori starts clapping. The nurse opens the door and nods toward me. “Five minutes, Jori. That’s it.”
“Thank you, Nurse Lemontree!”
As soon as she’s gone I say, “Your nurse’s last name is Lemontree?”
“Oh, no. It’s something with a lot of s’s and z’s, and I think there’s an icki at the end. I thought Lemontree sounded much nicer.”
I get up from the wheelchair and walk toward the couch. As soon as I sit down, Jori slides in next to me, pushing herself up under my arm and pulling her knees to her chest. She always does this. I must remind her of someone who once made her feel safe.
“I’ve been wanting to see you, but they wouldn’t let me,” she says in a whisper.
“Yeah. I know.”
The nurse wasn’t kidding. Jori is agitated. And twitchy. She keeps looking toward the observation window to make sure the nurse’s back is turned to us.
“I need to tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“They were talking about you,” she says quickly, lacing her fingers together in front of her chest.
“Of course they were. They talk about all of us.”
“This is different. It’s that woman from New York. The one with the red hair.”
“Ms. Hodges?”
“Is that her name?”
“Yeah.”
I close my eyes and see her in my mind. A fiery hatred engulfs me, but once again I force myself to ignore it.
“She doesn’t like you. I think she … I think she’s up to something, Sarah. Something really bad.”
I can’t help but shift myself away from Jori. Yes, I had similar feelings about that Hodges lady not even an hour ago, but hearing Jori say it makes me feel like Jori and me, we’re the same, and I don’t like that idea one bit. Even in a place like this, you want to believe that you’re not the worst off.
I cock my head to the side and try to smile. “Jori. Come on. You know what the doctors tell us. Sometimes we have these feelings like people want to hurt us, but it’s not true. All that stuff is just in our heads.”
“I know, I know, but I’m telling you, this is different. You need to stay away from her. Get out of here, even.”
“Where would I go? Down to the corner to wait for the next bus in my hospital gown and slipper socks?”
“I don’t know, but I’m really worried about you!”
I know this is nothing but crazy Jori talk, but it still upsets me. Paranoia is usually a pretty selfish thing. I, for one, have never been paranoid about anyone else’s safety. Only my own.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Really.”
“You won’t. I heard her talking on her cell phone with Dr. Buckley, getting impatient. She was spinning her bracelets. Then she started pacing in her fancy shoes.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. I’m not so good with time.”
Neither am I. A day is as a week is as a month. I used to scratch little hash marks on the wall next to my bed. I counted them every day to remind myself how long I’d been here. But then they switched my room and I lost track.
“Are you sure it was Dr. Buckley she was talking to?”
“I’m sure.”
“But why would she be on the phone with him when she could just talk to him in person? And besides, I don’t think cell phones work here.”
“Satellite phones work here. Maybe that’s what she had.”
I’m surprised by this. I wouldn’t expect Jori to know what a satellite phone is. I’m not even sure I do.
“Sarah, if you’d heard her, you’d believe me. She said to Buckley”—and here Jori uses a different voice, with a Southern accent—“ ‘This is not what we agreed to. You’ve got one more chance to get rid of our little problem before I take care of things myself. And if I have to do that, you’ll be drumming up research funds running a lemonade stand, because I’ll make sure no one gives you another penny. Ever. Again.’ ”
The details of the story make me nervous, but I try not to show it. “Okay, Jori. I promise I’ll be careful.”
Jori squeezes me around my waist. “Good. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to me, either. Or you.”
I rub her arm and put my head against hers. We sit for a moment, baldness to baldness, silent.
“Sarah?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to leave here?”
Do I? I know I should want to leave. I should want to embrace this brand-new future, my clean slate free of trauma, anger, and pain. But it’s not that simple.
“I don’t want to be here,” I say, “but I don’t want to be out there, either.”
“Yeah. Me too. I w
ish there was a better here or a better there to pick from.”
Jori’s nurse returns. Seeing us—and, more to the point, seeing Jori calm—pleases her so much that she smiles at me. I’m not often on the receiving end of smiles. I mean, I’m sure Larry smiles at me, but I’ve never seen his face, so that doesn’t count.
I get back into the wheelchair, and the nurse thanks me quietly, almost reluctantly. Before I go, Jori rushes me again.
“I almost forgot.” She reaches into her bathrobe pocket and then opens up her palm, revealing a handful of jelly beans. “Nurse Lemontree gives me these if I don’t make any trouble.”
She picks up a red jelly bean and holds it up. I know what she wants. She wants to see me do my trick. I wink at her.
“Ready?” she asks.
“I’m ready.”
“Anywhere?”
“Anywhere.”
She tosses the jelly bean into the far corner of the room. She thinks she’s thrown it out of my reach, but I put one foot on the coffee table, then another on the arm of the sofa, and I hop into the air, twist, and catch the jelly bean in my mouth, landing softly on the cushions, sideways.
“Amazing!”
It’s a silly, worthless talent, but I never miss. I think I might have been a seal in a former life.
Jori hugs me. I put my arms around her tiny frame. It’s like hugging a marionette.
I’m eager to get away. Five minutes of Jori is all I think I can take right now. I wave good-bye to her just as Steve reappears, huddling for warmth over his coffee mug like it’s a campfire. The poor guy is freezing.
I guess I am, too. That must be why I’m shivering.
Once I’m finally back in my room, Steve helps me into bed and then dims the lights. He hovers for a moment, and I wonder if he’s waiting for a tip.
“Try to get some rest. They’ll get you fixed up next time. As soon as this storm blows over.” He puts his hand on my head, gently this time. “Someone will bring your dinner tray in a little while.”
“Thanks.”
He winks and points at me. “I’ll see if I can pull some strings and get you two pieces of that key lime pie.”
“That would be great. Thanks, Steve.”
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