The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange

by Anna Ferrara

  The beeping I had been hearing changed into a persistent flat tone at once. Like someone in a hospital had died. It made my hairs stand.

  Instinct told me to get away from the sound. I flipped the blue woollen blanket off the lower half of my body and dragged my legs off the bed. I could move my legs but they felt as heavy as lead. When I tried to put my weight on them, they buckled. I managed to grab hold of the side of the bed just in time to stop myself from crashing onto the ground and that was when I noticed my outfit—a light blue cotton gown. Short sleeves at the arms and a skirt that came to my knees. Pyjamas for hospital patients. Christ. This place was most likely a hospital after all, I realised.

  There were two doors in front of me and a treadmill built into the floor. They were both made of the same light-coloured wood that made the wall panel and the bookshelves. Very subtle, very harmonious.

  I chose to try the door on the left first—a purely random choice. I hobbled over to it with legs full of pins and needles and realised it was a phrase I could now form. Pins and needles! That was the phrase I had been trying to find before! My brain was beginning to work again.

  I fell on the door’s sleek metal handle but it would not go downwards, no matter how I jiggled. It was most definitely locked.

  There was nothing else to do but try the door on the right. That metal handle turned 90 degrees easily and the door, when opened, revealed a bathroom. An ensuite bathroom that was almost completely white—white ceramic toilet, white ceramic sink, white tiles all around. The shower area was separated by a plate of clear glass and the white fluffy towels hanging just outside it looked very, very clean. The bathroom smelt like lilies in the summer and was six times bigger than the bathroom I was used to.

  The bathroom I was used to? Which bathroom was that?

  The half-bathroom that hadn’t enough space for a sink. The bathroom I showered in for five whole years. My slummy micro-apartment with its worn mattress and claustrophobia-inducing walls came to mind. I remembered my home.

  This place was not home! The exit had to be the other way. I made my way back to the door on the left by holding on to the wall because my legs still didn’t quite work. Just as I reached it, the flat tone I had been trying to escape vanished and the very door I had been heading for opened all by itself.

  A man walked in. A doctor, I presumed, because he wore a white lab coat, shirt and tie, thin-framed metal glasses and had a black tablet in his hand. He saw me, smiled, and shut the door behind him. I heard a lock within the door latch into place almost immediately, as if automatic.

  “Nice to see you awake, Miss Thompson,” the man said.

  Miss Thompson? He knew my name and all I knew how to do was gape at him.

  “I’m Dr Clark, your psychiatrist.” The man gave me a bigger, friendlier smile and stuck out his hand.

  Psychiatrist? The man looked like a grown mummy’s boy with his neatly pulled back light brown hair, freshly scrubbed, stubble-free face and gentle manner. I took his hand, shook it and let go almost at once. There was something about him that made me not dare to fully trust him. I had a feeling it had something to do with the fact that he looked extremely… kind? For some reason, I knew from the bottom of my gut it was not a good idea to trust anyone who looked too kind.

  “Please, take a seat.” He gestured at the two armchairs that were of a modern, squarish design. They looked pretty comfortable.

  And—I found out when I did sit—they actually were.

  The man took the other armchair across the side table. “How are you feeling, Miss Thompson?”

  Confused. And awkward. There seemed to be a black hole where my memories used to be. And the scent of his very masculine cologne was making my head throb. “Where am I?” I said and found my voice hoarse. I cleared my throat. “How did I get here?”

  The man smiled. Again. “You’re safe, Miss Thompson. And healthy, it seems. The Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre has been giving you the very best of care.”

  Had I not been seated, I might have collapsed. Wasn’t the Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre one of the biggest mental hospital chains in the world? Did my being here mean I was... mentally ill? My breath quickened at the thought and my fingers began to tremble.

  The man noticed and got up to go to the bar table right away. He took a glass from the stack in the corner and put it under a metal tap that stuck out from the wall. Clear water poured into the glass without him having to touch anything and stopped pouring automatically when the glass was full.

  He came back over, handed the glass to me and pulled out a clear plastic box from his coat pocket. It had multiple compartments, each with a different colour of pills.

  He opened the compartment with pink pills and took out two of them.

  “These will help you cope with your anxiety, Miss Thompson. If you take them three times a day, I promise you’ll feel a lot better eventually.”

  The pills were the pink of cotton candy, cut like a slice of chalk, but scentless. I popped them into my mouth and downed the water, only to discover that the glass when empty was a lot lighter than I expected it to be.

  Plastic, I realised, when I flicked the back of my nail against it. Plastic that looked just like glass.

  The man was back in his armchair by the time I looked up. “Does it hurt anywhere?” he asked and fished out a modish stylus pen from his front pocket. “Any pain? Discomfort?”

  I stretched my neck to the side and thought about it. “I can feel a headache coming on but... that’s about it.” Every other part of my body felt... okay. Normal. “Why am I here?”

  The man scribbled furiously into his tablet. “No pain anywhere else?”

  I checked. My skin looked fine. My limbs moved fine. “No. Should there be?”

  He stopped scribbling and looked up. “You don’t remember?”

  Remember what? Apart from my half-bathroom and micro-apartment, I had no other memory. I knew things, like what the Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre meant, what size the bed I lay on was, but I had no clue how I knew of them. I didn’t even know my first name. I shook my head.

  The man narrowed his piercing blue eyes and frowned. “Miss Thompson, you attempted suicide three years ago.”

  My heart jolted to a stop then jumped right back into action at a million miles an hour. Suicide? Three years ago?!

  “You overdosed on Zoleplax then jumped from the fifth floor of the apartment you lived in.”

  “What the hell is Zoleplax?” I whispered.

  “Sleeping pills. You swallowed a whole bottle, remember?”

  No, I did not remember. I remembered nothing. Only blackness, how my former home looked, random facts, nothing else.

  “Hmm.” The man scribbled another chunk of text into his tablet then looked up with concern all over his face. “Do you know who you are? Your name, for instance. Do you know what your name is?”

  I shook my head then gave him a nod because my name came to mind in that very instant. “Lane. My name is Lane Thompson.” That was right. That was exactly what my name was.

  The man raised his eyebrows. “Do you remember how old you are?”

  30 came to mind. I had no idea why. I just knew 30 was the answer the same way I just knew every object in the room we sat in was top of the line.

  “That’s partly right. You’re now 33, to be precise. Do you remember what you used to do for a living?”

  “I was a freelance masseuse at The Gentlemen’s Dinner Club,” I said and gasped. My memory was coming back, just very slowly, in random pieces, and for some strange reason, only when prompted.

  “You gave wealthy men massages for a living?”

  “No. I gave wealthy women massages for a living.” Because I loved women. Only women. My hand flew over my mouth.

  I remembered Arden Villeneuve. Beautiful, naked, with legs so long they nearly stuck out of the ends of the massage tables at The Gentlemen’s Dinner Club. I remembered her!


  “Are you sure? As far as I know, women aren’t allowed into that establishment.”

  Really? I looked up at the man in the white coat and thought hard. Faint bolts of pain zapped my head as I did so. “No, some are,” I said and winced. “The Gentlemen’s Dinner Club invited a select group of women to become members in 2025.” I had no idea how I knew that but I just knew from the bottom of my gut that that was most definitely true.

  Arden Villeneuve had been one of those women. She and I shared many long kisses within the Club’s dim massage suites. I was crazy about her.

  “How about your parents?” the man interrupted. “What do you remember of them?”

  My parents? An unpleasant sensation crawled over my skin and I soon realised why.

  I had only one memory of my parents. In it, they were pale, purplish, with eyes rolled backwards and mouths wide open. They were on our living room’s couch. Motionless. I was just a child when I found them and I screamed with every ounce of energy when I did—a bone-chilling scream that began to replay in my head.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. Firmly. I pulled myself out of my thoughts. I didn’t want to have to hear that scream a minute longer. It made me very uncomfortable.

  The man adjusted his glasses thoughtfully and scribbled into his tablet again.

  “What about your uncle? The husband of your father’s sister? Uncle Tim?”

  Uncle Tim? Another unpleasant sensation appeared on my skin so I shook my head quickly and stopped myself from thinking further about him.

  “Hmm.”

  “When can I be discharged, Dr... Clark?”

  “When you get better, of course. When you stop wanting to kill yourself. When you stop having attacks of anxiety.”

  “I... don’t think I want to kill myself anymore.” I frowned. Do I? I thought doubly hard to make sure. The answer in my gut was definitive. “I really don’t.”

  “Why did you jump before?”

  Good question. Why did I jump? I tried to think of an answer but nothing came to mind this time. Just more zaps of pain in the head but no thoughts. My brain was just… blank.

  “You don’t remember?”

  I took a deep breath and shook my head.

  “We’ll need to observe you further, Miss Thompson. We’ll need to make sure your mind is working as it should be before we can let you go. It’s just a precaution.”

  “How long will you take?”

  The man put down his tablet and smiled. He looked like he truly cared about me. “We will take all the time we need.”

  I laughed because I suddenly remembered something else. “Thing is, I can’t afford all this time. I doubt I’ll ever be able to pay off the last three years as it is.”

  His smile never wavered. “You don’t have to pay a cent, Miss Thompson. Wonderdrug has a scheme that covers all costs for needy patients like yourself. So, relax. Take all the time you need to heal.”

  Right after he said that, the panelled wall in front of the bar table groaned mechanically and rose a little. A drawer-like tray slid out and stopped in the middle of the table, right in front of the lone barstool. On it was a steaming bowl and a plate that held a fat roast beef sandwich. The smell of piping hot chicken soup filled the air and felt like the promise of warmth after a long, harsh winter.

  My stomach growled. That man kept on smiling. “Life can be overwhelming, Miss Thompson. Needing a little professional assistance from time to time is perfectly normal. The experience doesn’t have to be unpleasant.”

  Me, getting to stay in a place as nice as this and eat food as good-looking as that for free? For as long as I needed? Without having to work for it?

  I stared at the perfectly-browned crust atop the fat roast beef sandwich and I felt as if I had won the lottery.

  Chapter 3

  6 May 2033

  I dreamt about the falling incident the next time I fell asleep, except, I wasn’t seated on the fifth floor like Dr Clark said but on a weather-worn roof, miles above ground.

  I was there sometime before 5am. It was quiet. The sky overhead was dark and pinkish. I was all alone, surrounded by a jungle of low quality housing blocks in which I knew the working poor lay exhausted. My calves hung down the edge and the heels of my sneakers grazed the building’s grimy facade. There was wind on my face and in my hair. Puffs of whiteish smoke from my mouth formed abstract swirling patterns right in front of my eyes.

  I felt calm and in control. I felt no pain, no anger, no helplessness, no sadness. Nothing bothered me—

  —until something soft landed on my back.

  By the time I felt it there, it was already too late. The force it sent forth disrupted my centre of balance and propelled me and my cigarette forward. My head went beyond the edge of the building and dragged my body along with it.

  The view changed right away. Instead of buildings, I saw cement and tarmac. Then, it was sky and buildings all over again. A head of a person stuck out from one of those buildings—the one closest to me, the one I had been sitting on. Man or woman I could not tell but he or she had short platinum blond hair and lips that looked as if they were covered in a bold red lipstick.

  My eyes opened the moment my back hit the ground in my dream.

  I found myself back on the queen-sized bed at the Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre, all tucked in and safe. The lights were on now. They had been turned off before I went to bed, I remembered. I tried to sit but an excruciating pain in my left thigh made me collapse.

  I looked down at my thigh and realised stains of blood were on the blanket right over it. I flipped the blanket over and saw, to my horror—

  —a clump of flesh, shaped like a small but thick piece of steak, next to a matching hole in my thigh. The hole was so deep, I could see my own bone! Blood was all over the sheets like a murder situation had occurred. Whatever it was that took a bite out of me didn’t swallow!

  Once I saw the hole, I could feel it more and it stung more than anything I had ever experienced in my life. It was so bad I truly thought I might just die from the pain. I screamed till tears came gushing out of my eyes, till my lungs grew weak. I screamed till Dr Clark and a nurse barged in and injected me with something they said would calm me down.

  I have no words to describe how grateful I was when whatever they injected me with knocked me out of my senses.

  “Wake up, Miss Thompson. It’s time for therapy.”

  The next time I opened my eyes, I found Dr Clark smiling at me with his hand on my shoulder. The lights in my ward seemed much brighter than before.

  I found myself still on that queen-sized bed, minus the murder-like patches of blood. Somebody had changed the blanket and sheets. They were clean now. As was my left thigh. Somebody had wrapped it in a thick cream-coloured bandage. I couldn’t see the wound or blood any longer and it no longer hurt.

  “What happened to my leg?” I asked.

  “You don’t remember?” Dr Clark crossed his arms and watched my face carefully.

  I frowned and thought hard.

  I remembered my dream. Me, smoking on the rooftop of my apartment. I remembered walking away from Arden Villeneuve at a cemetery. And how we kissed. Her roses. My job. My rent. All the women I ever loved before. The day I moved out of Aunt Mary’s apartment. The day I dropped out of high school. Uncle Tim! My parents’ death!

  My memory was back, I realised. “I didn’t attempt suicide, Dr Clark,” I said quickly. “Somebody pushed me. Somebody with short blond hair and lipstick. I remember now.”

  Dr Clark inhaled sharply and frowned. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. But I didn’t fall from the fifth floor. I fell from the roof!”

  He licked his lips and looked away. “Miss Thompson, the police checked all security cameras in your apartment’s building after the falling incident. You were most definitely on the fifth floor and there was no evidence of any foul play.”

  “No. I was most definitely on the r
oof that night.”

  “The roof is fifty storeys above ground, Miss Thompson. There is no way you would have survived.”

  “But that’s what I remember!”

  I was on the roof telling myself to forget Arden Villeneuve. I was reminding myself that a nobody like me would never ever get to be with a person like her in the natural order of things and I had come to terms with that. I had accepted my lot in life on that very rooftop, on that very night, right before someone pushed me!

  “The police told us about your financial situation and your lack of stable familial or romantic connections, Miss Thompson.”

  “Fine, I’m broke and live alone, yes, but—”

  “We also know of your Hyperpro habit which could—”

  “Who the hell doesn’t have a Hyperpro habit? Everyone who works has a Hyperpro habit! It doesn’t mean I would want to kill myself, does it? Come on!”

  Dr Clark left my side without a word and came back with a glass of water from the tap in the wall. He reached into his coat pocket, took out his plastic box of pills and opened the compartment with the pink ones again. “Miss Thompson, I am not judging you. I just want to talk this through with you, to help you get better. Please.” He offered me both the glass and pills.

  Great. Just great. I sank back. I hated talking about my feelings. Talking always left me vulnerable and self-conscious, in a state that didn’t fit the image I wanted to project to the world. I would have preferred never to talk about my feelings if it were up to me.

  “Miss Thompson, when people fail to meet popular milestones or keep up with their peers, a sense of failure can sometimes set in.”

  “I did not—”

  “Just let me finish, Miss Thompson. Please.”

  “Fine.” I heaved in frustration and snatched the glass of water from him but left the pills behind. The water quenched my parched throat beautifully and made me feel that little bit better. “Say what you need to.”

  “Thank you.” He took a deep breath and sat himself next to my legs. “Miss Thompson, we suspect your brain might have been affected by the overdose of Zoleplax and also the long duration of your coma. That would explain your persistent anxiety, agitation and confusion right now.”