by Michelle Cox
Nervously, Henrietta glanced up to make sure Nurse Harding was still nowhere in sight and then carefully continued flipping until she found the first page that listed Liesel and noted her admission, dated October 12, 1935. Henrietta then began quickly skimming the columns to see what this poor woman had been given. During the first week of her confinement, “salts of bromine” seemed to be the only thing listed next to her name, administered three times a day for what looked like ten days.
Henrietta kept turning pages, looking for the date when the dreaded “EST” began for poor Liesel. Finally, she saw it listed on October 25, and despite a quick flutter of triumph, she felt her heart sink a little. Slowly, her finger traveled down the rest of the medication column on the following pages, and each time she saw “EST” listed next to poor Liesel’s name, she felt a little blow. If she was reading the ledger correctly, it looked as though she had been given EST twice a week for nearly four weeks. Wasn’t that excessive? Henrietta wondered with a shudder. The last page that listed Liesel was dated December 1, 1935. Next to her name on that day was written “DECEASED,” and after “CAUSE OF DEATH” was scrawled “heart failure.”
Henrietta let out a tired sigh and stood up straight, glancing once again down the hallway. Something didn’t seem right, but she couldn’t figure out what. She gazed back at the ledger and reread the information again and again. Eventually, she saw the problem! According to this log, anyway, Liesel had been given her last electric shock treatment on November 15, but she hadn’t died for another six days! which isn’t what the staff had told them. If she remembered it right, they had said that Liesel died of heart failure as a result of an electric shock treatment, but a whole six days after the last treatment? Perhaps she had more treatments and the nurses didn’t record it? Henrietta wondered.
Henrietta flipped back and confirmed that the last EST to be recorded for Liesel was November 25, after which, “salts of bromine” had been listed for each day up until her death. They had taken the time to record that medication, Henrietta reasoned, so more than likely, had Liesel had any more shock treatments, it would have been recorded, too, since it was merely a matter of writing a quick three letters. Laziness or a recording error due to haste or apathy did not seem likely. Henrietta went back again and counted. In total, if the log was correct, Liesel Klinkhammer had been given eight doses of electric shock. Surely, if she were to have had a “bad reaction,” which is what Dr. Ingesson had told Clive, it would have occurred after the very first administration, wouldn’t it? Not after the eighth one. And not six days later. It didn’t make sense.
Henrietta jumped when she suddenly heard the booming voice of Nurse Harding, who was barreling down the hallway toward her.
“What are you doing back there?” she barked. “Don’t you know that’s confidential? You can’t go reading the ledgers!”
Henrietta stepped back, her mind racing to try to think of something to say.
“I’m sorry . . . I . . . I just wanted to know more about what happened to Liesel Klinkhammer,” she said nervously.
Nurse Harding had reached the desk now and took up the open ledger Henrietta had been perusing and shut it with a loud snap. “You already know everything there is to know,” she huffed. “So get out from behind here!” She attempted to tidy a few of the ledgers, or perhaps she was trying to assess how many Henrietta may have read.
Henrietta slowly moved from behind the desk, trying to decide if she should confront the hulking nurse in front of her. She took a deep breath and decided to proceed, as this was probably her only chance. “You . . . you said that Liesel died after her shock treatment,” Henrietta ventured, trying to keep her voice even. “But the log says she didn’t die for six more days after that,” Henrietta said, feeling more confident with each word spoken. “How . . . how do you explain that?”
Henrietta braced herself for what she was sure would be Nurse Harding’s angry response, so she was utterly surprised when it turned out to be a burst of laughter.
She looked at Henrietta dismissively. “Playing detective, are you? Trying to keep up with hubby? Well, guess away all ya want. Every so often we get do-gooders like you in here. Always the same, never what we’re doin’ is good enough. Why do you care, anyway?” she asked seriously. “She was an immigrant kraut, barely spoke English, mentally ill, poor as a church mouse. Seen hundreds like her. We tried to help her. Didn’t work. She died. End of story. Why can’t you leave well enough alone?” Nurse Harding’s tone was bitter, all trace of amusement now gone from her demeanor.
“I care because she was that little girl’s mother,” Henrietta said, pointing to where Anna still lay curled up in Elsie’s arms.
“Well, nothing can bring her back now, so I advise you to get over it. Some things shouldn’t be looked at too closely, if you know what I mean. So stop yer snoopin’. Or else you might find yourself in your own kettle of hot water; understand me?”
“Yes, I understand you,” Henrietta said slowly, thoroughly convinced that Nurse Harding really was hiding something.
“Go on,” the tank said with a wave of her thick hand. “Go wait over there. You make me nervous, hanging about here. You’re like a fly before the rain. Annoying as hell.” She made a show of writing in one of the logs.
Henrietta walked back to where Elsie had scooted against a wall. Elsie looked up at her questioningly, and Henrietta gave her a halfhearted shrug. She looked around for a chair but there was none to be had except one in a far corner next to a woman in a crude, old-fashioned wheelchair. She had sores all over her face and was one of the patients who had a shaved head. Henrietta wondered if it was perhaps a requirement for the electric shock treatments, or maybe it was due to lice, remembering how her brothers had to have their heads shaved many times for just that reason. She tried not to stare, but she couldn’t help looking at this woman, who sat looking at the floor in a sort of catatonic trance. Something seemed different about her, besides the shaved head, and after several sideways glances, Henrietta finally began to suspect that it wasn’t a woman at all, but a man! But why would a man be on this floor? Henrietta wondered, dismayed. She had assumed this was a women’s floor . . .
“Why is there a man on this floor?” Henrietta called to the tank, deciding to test her suspicion.
Nurse Harding looked up from what she was doing to where Henrietta was inclining her head and took a moment to understand the question.
“No room anywhere else,” the tank said simply and looked back down at the log she was writing in.
“But isn’t that against some sort of policy or something?” Henrietta asked.
“I don’t make the decisions, Hoity-Toity. You just leave my patients alone. Lou ain’t gonna hurt nobody,” Nurse Harding replied, still scratching away at the ledger.
Henrietta’s eyes went to “Lou” again, and she gave a little start when Lou’s gaze suddenly left the ground and connected with her, giving a small, wicked sort of grin in the process. Henrietta quickly looked away. She looked back at Elsie, still cradling Anna. Her heart beating a little faster, she anxiously glanced at her wristwatch and wondered where Clive was. Why was it taking so long? She was getting tired of standing, but she did not want to sit on the filthy floor next to Elsie. She finally squeezed into a place nearby on the wall to lean and tried not to look at Lou.
Instead, she looked around at the other patients, milling about or sitting in chairs, either slumped over or visibly shaking and staring off into space. She tried to imagine their stories and how they found themselves in this wretched place. What horrors had they seen that were somehow worse than the horror of being here, if that were even possible? Mrs. Wojcik was there, sitting along the wall in a doze, her doll held so loosely in her arms that it threatened to drop to the floor any moment. One woman stood in a corner, talking in a low whisper to the wall. Another was pacing back and forth in precise steps, seven this way, seven back, and had no eyes for anything but the floor in front of her.
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p; Henrietta looked around for Mrs. Goodman, but she was nowhere to be seen. Henrietta felt an unnatural desire to speak to her again, though her previous conversation with this woman had left her more than a little unnerved. She was tempted to walk down the hallway and look for her in one of the rooms, but she was pretty sure the tank would not allow this. She wished there was a window; it made her feel claustrophobic to not be able to see out, and she was feeling dizzy again. What was taking Clive and Gunther so long? she wondered again. She desperately needed some air . . .
“Can’t we take Anna outside while we wait?” Henrietta asked Nurse Harding, who had meanwhile stood up, her charting apparently done for the moment. She was now in the process of dragging a small cart out of the stock room, which was laden with pill bottles and tonics. “It’s not as if we can escape out in the yard,” Henrietta pointed out. She had begun to feel desperately like a patient herself.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays is when we go outside,” the tank said, pulling the cart behind her to the first patient in the row along the wall, closest to the nurses’ desk. Roughly, she tilted the nonresponsive woman’s head back and with a wet cloth, wiped the crust out of her left eye, which had the definite look of being infected. “Since this is Wednesday, then no,” she concluded, not even looking over at Henrietta.
“But can’t you make an exception, seeing as we’re here now, as her visitors?” Henrietta urged.
“Nope. Rules is rules.”
Henrietta wasn’t sure how much longer she could endure standing there, locked up as it were, no better than an inmate herself. Where was Clive? Why did he not return?
“You don’t have to stay here, you know. Go if you want; I can let you two out. Just leave the girl here until yer finished with your dillydallying.”
“We can’t leave her here alone!” Henrietta persisted.
“She was here three days by herself. Didn’t kill her, as you can see. But suit yerself,” the tank said and took the cloth she had used to wipe the woman’s infected eye and used it now to roughly wipe the accompanying crust from the corners of the woman’s mouth.
Feeling sick, Henrietta decided she had to move. She would walk up and down the hallways, if nothing else. “I need to walk a bit, Elsie,” she said in a low voice so as not to wake the sleeping Anna.
“Are you okay?” Elsie whispered.
“Yes, I just need to walk,” she answered.
Elsie gave her a nod and whispered, “Be careful.”
Henrietta crept slowly toward the hallway, which contained the patients’ rooms, hoping that the tank would be too distracted to notice. She was not in luck, however.
“Where you going, Hoity-Toity?” Nurse Harding called from where she was holding out a pill to another of her patients, though they more accurately seemed to Henrietta to be her victims.
“I . . . I need to stretch my legs,” Henrietta fibbed, guessing that if she said she felt dizzy, the tank would make her sit down. “I’m getting a cramp in my leg,” she said weakly.
“Oh, all right,” the tank said. “No funny business, though,” she called out after her.
No funny business? Henrietta wondered. Like what?
Carefully, Henrietta made her way down the hallway, occasionally poking her head into some of the bedchambers as she passed by. The patients left back here were mostly in bed, lying in the dark. No lights were turned on, and the few windows afforded each room were covered with thick wool curtains, which allowed only a muted amount of light to penetrate. The air here, too, was really quite thick, and Henrietta was obliged to again place her handkerchief over her nose. She was about to return to the common area, which seemed like heaven now compared to the dark, close bedchambers down here when she happened to catch sight of what appeared to be none other than Mrs. Goodman in the second-to-last room. Henrietta poked her head in farther and determined that it was indeed Mrs. Goodman, lying, fully dressed, on top of a perfectly made bed. Henrietta knocked on the doorframe—there being no actual doors on the rooms—but Mrs. Goodman did not seem to hear her.
Gingerly, she stepped in. The room held five other metal-frame beds, a small chair beside each one, and a single sink at the far end. There were no bedside tables or lamps or mirrors, or ornamentation of any kind. Likewise, the room held no occupants at the moment except Mrs. Goodman, all of her roommates presumably up and out and sitting in the common area. Maybe the more ambulatory patients were given the rooms farthest from the sitting room, Henrietta surmised, but then wondered if that much thought had really been put into room assignments, given the little she already knew about Dunning.
“Hello,” Henrietta called out softly. “Mrs. Goodman?” She tiptoed across the tiled floor. For a moment she wondered if the woman was dead, so still was she lying there, her hands folded on her abdomen as if indeed in death, her eyes peacefully shut. Henrietta stood over her, studying her chest to see if it was moving, alarm quickly stealing over her, when Mrs. Goodman’s eyes suddenly sprang open. Startled, Henrietta gave a little gasp.
Mrs. Goodman, however, did not seem surprised or startled in the least by Henrietta’s odd presence beside her bed.
“Where have you been?” she asked Henrietta without moving a muscle, her hands still perfectly folded across her abdomen. “I’ve been waiting for you. We found the door; it lies beneath the sphinx. From there we will travel beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Are you ready?” she asked Henrietta, looking at her closely. “Did you bring the bag of requirements?”
“I . . . I . . .” Henrietta began, not knowing whether to be amused or frightened. Actually, she felt a bit of both.
“No matter,” Mrs. Goodman rushed on. “We will have to go without them. We leave tonight at midnight. Be ready. The angel of mercy will lead us.”
Henrietta was utterly baffled. How could this woman utter such nonsense and yet sound perfectly rational? She certainly didn’t seem “crazy”—raving and mad, that is—and yet she made no sense. Henrietta was vaguely aware that she probably shouldn’t encourage her delusions by engaging with her, and yet she was irresistibly drawn to her . . .
“All right, you,” Nurse Harding barked behind her, causing Henrietta to nearly scream with sudden fright. How had she not heard her approach? “Time for Mrs. Goodman’s treatment, so you go on back up to the front.”
“What . . . what treatment?” Henrietta managed to ask as she obediently took a few steps back from the bed.
“That ain’t none of your business, Hoity-Toity,” she said as she pulled a glass syringe out of her pocket.
Nervously, Henrietta looked back at Mrs. Goodman, who had still not moved an inch since Henrietta had come into her room. Henrietta was reluctant to leave her in the hands of the tank, and yet, Mrs. Goodman did not show any signs of distress at Nurse Harding’s presence. Henrietta saw no choice but to obey the tank’s direction.
“Can you at least tell me what’s wrong with her?” Henrietta asked.
“What’s wrong with her?” Nurse Harding barked out, not sparing the volume of her voice in any sort of respect for Mrs. Goodman. “Batty as a fruitcake, this one,” Nurse Harding said. “Don’t you mind what she says. Now, get going. Back to the dayroom where I can keep an eye on you. Ain’t nothin’ for you to see back here.”
Henrietta made her way back to the dayroom, still feeling trapped and claustrophobic but not nearly as bad as she had before. At least she had Mrs. Goodman’s odd story to keep her distracted, and she wondered, at one point, if that was all it was for that poor woman as well—a distraction from the reality of this horrible place and the sinking despair that covered it like a gray, polluted fog.
Henrietta leaned up against the wall for what felt like hours, though it was probably no more than thirty minutes. She was acutely aware of every irritating noise that had somehow gone unnoticed by her before: The tick of the clock on the wall, which was surprisingly loud and annoying, the repeated sniffling from a woman two seats over, and the unending muttered utterances, not to mention the occ
asional outburst of those poor souls around her. At one point, she even put her hands over her ears to block it all out, but to no avail. She supposed she could talk to Elsie, but neither of them seemed to have anything of note to say, at least not with the tank just a few yards away and Anna asleep in Elsie’s arms. Neither seemed to want to risk waking her and so remained silent, merely looking at each other from time to time for comfort until—finally—the welcoming sound of a key scraping in the lock was heard.
Hurriedly, Henrietta quickly moved to the door and felt her heart clench with relief and joy at the sight of Clive (never had she been so happy to see him!) stepping quickly through with Gunther not far behind. He had a grim smile on his face, which told her they had been successful. She took his arm and tried to hide her distress and her dizziness.
“Darling, I’m sorry it took so long. It was quite a mess, as you can imagine. He was a bastard to weed out.”
“Did you use the badge?” she asked in a low tone.
“In a roundabout way; I’ll explain later.” Clive looked around. “Was it too terrible?” he asked. “We should have all gone. I should have realized it would take an ungodly amount of time.”
“It was terrible, actually, but I did find something interesting . . .”
“I can imagine,” he said wryly.
“I was—”
“Back, are you?” the tank called loudly from farther down the hallway.
“I’ll tell you later,” Henrietta whispered, as Nurse Harding approached the little group.
Elsie had stood up when Clive and Gunther had come in, causing Anna to awaken, and upon seeing Gunther, she flung herself into his arms. Gunther stood holding Anna now, stroking her back and whispering to her in German, while she lay her head on his shoulder and wrapped her dirty legs around him. Elsie stood quietly beside the two of them, brushing Anna’s fine, blonde hair with her fingers.