by Lily White
I didn’t doubt his words. Growing up, I’d heard the scary stories of abandoned asylums and mental institutions, the places that were left empty and falling apart with nothing but its ghosts to tell the story of the atrocities that had occurred there.
“There had been a policy of overmedicating the patients when Dr. Keppler was in charge. Although, for certain patients, I believe it was all he could do. Other patients fell through the cracks. I intend to start therapy for each and every one that I believe can improve…that includes you, of course.”
Warm blue eyes regarded me closely, his mind obviously processing every detail of my reaction and expression. I felt naked and exposed when he looked at me. Every sense I had was on high alert and it was like I could see, feel and hear everything around me. Every tick of the clock tightened my anxious muscles and every time the scent of Dr. Hutchins’ cologne brushed past my nose, I grew warm inside.
While staring at him, I’d lost sense of how much time passed between us. We both stood facing the other, motionless and silent. I noticed everything; the small scar that ran through his left eyebrow, and the way his skin crinkled slightly around his eyes when he narrowed them in concern.
Breathing in deeply, I attempted to shake myself of the fascination I felt towards him.
“Alex? Are you okay?” He touched my hand in attempt to pull me back to that moment.
Blinking away my stupor, I answered, “Dr. Hutch…”
“You can call me Jeremy. Dr. Hutchins is far too formal.” He smiled kindly, the light in the hall reflected in his eyes as it flashed from the electric bulbs overhead. He looked up and scowled, finally noticing what I’d been seeing all along.
“It appears we need to call in an electrician.” He looked back at me and I finally cracked a smile.
“You want me to call you by your first name?” It amused me to think that he was uncomfortable with the formality of his last name, while at the same time I was uncomfortable with the personal nature of his first name. Did we have to be so opposite: doctor and patient, man and woman, sane and insane?
“I call you by yours.” Grabbing my arm again, lighter this time, he pushed me through the halls once more.
Silence fell between us as we walked. The only sound resonating within the drab and nondescript environment was that of his shoes clicking against the ground. Pressure built in my chest, the quiet punctuated by only the beat of shoes sending me into my head. I was outside of reality and somehow simultaneously entwined within it.
Reaching a door in the center of the hall, he stopped suddenly and I pitched forward, not expecting the abrupt change in pace. Catching me with his hands, he righted me, searching my face once again. “Your balance is beginning to worry me.”
“It’s the meds,” I apologized. “I feel woozy when I’m on them, almost as if my mind is trapped behind a thin film and my body is moving on auto-pilot.
Nodding, he scribbled something in his notebook and reached to push the center of his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose.
“That’s understandable. I adjusted your medications this morning when I read over your file. You should be feeling clearer by the time we begin therapy tomorrow morning.”
“That’s the third time you’ve mentioned therapy, yet you still haven’t explained what we will be doing.”
The corner of his lip quirked. “I’m happy to see that you’ve been able to keep count.” Tucking his finger beneath my chin, he tilted my face up to his. “That shows progress, Alex. I’m not sure what’s happened with your brain in this past week, but something is definitely different.”
“I wish I knew what was going on,” I confessed.
He smiled, releasing my chin to place his hand on the knob of the door beside us. “You will know just as soon as I do.”
The door popped open and I turned my head to look in and see several patients sitting in chairs that were arranged in a circle around a person I didn’t recognize.
“This is Dr. Ali’s group room. You’ll be participating in sessions twice a week beginning today,” Jeremy explained. Stepping closer, he angled his head so close that his lips brushed across my ear when he spoke. “She’ll take care of you, Alex, or she’ll be answering to me.”
My eyes widened at the possessiveness I heard in his voice. Pulling away, I looked up at him with an obvious question written in my expression. “Why do you care how she treats me?”
He searched my eyes, smiling shyly before answering me on a whisper. “Because you are my special focus, Alex. Go inside the room. All eyes are on you.”
He wasn’t lying. By the time I turned back to the small group in the room, five sets of eyes were glued to my every move. Stepping away from Jeremy, I passed over the threshold into the room, taking a few more tentative steps before the door slammed closed behind me.
. . .
“He was supposed to love me…ME! NOT HER! Sally screamed in her seat, scaring the patients sitting immediately beside her. Tears streamed down her face that was flushed red with her pain.
Dr. Ali responded to her in a soothing manner, the calm in her voice a polar opposite against the words that she spoke. “He did love you, Sally. But what you did, how you hurt that woman…” she sighed. “…You tore her limb from limb…literally. She is gone now because of what you thought was going on between her and your husband, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”
“But I’m in here…”
“Because you were caught. People don’t go around killing other people, Sally.”
“But he hasn’t visited me…”
Dr. Ali didn’t respond with anything more than a hidden smirk. I found the fleeting expression odd. It was as if she couldn’t contain the bit of pleasure she received from the other woman’s pain.
“That’s because you’re crazy and have been locked away where you can’t hurt any more people. You’ve been tossed aside. Accept it.”
Clapping her hands together, Dr. Ali smiled sweetly and pulled the attention of the group back to her. In an unusually cheery tone, she said, “We’re all done here for today. I think we’ve made progress.”
Every patient was held still in shocked silence, even Sally’s tears had subsided and anger was the apparent emotion now plastered across her face. I hadn’t spoken once since being in this room, choosing instead to observe as I’d been instructed was my right to do. I’d known just by looking at her that Dr. Ali was cruel in some manner. But to witness the sadistic joy she took from telling us we were all lost? It was enlightening to say the least.
More accurately, it was frightening.
“Everybody shuffle off to your room or the rec room, I don’t care which…” Her head swiveled in my direction and I swallowed the rising anxiety inside me. “Except for you, Alex. Terrie will be here soon to take you back to your room.” She kept her eyes locked to mine until every other patient had left.
“I see you like Dr. Hutchins more than you did Dr. Keppler.”
I watched the door slam shut behind the last patient and noticed in the emptiness of the room the soft flicker of the electric bulbs in the ceiling. I felt juxtaposed against myself, not understanding the fog that surrounded my thoughts and the bouts of fear that came with the knowledge that nothing was as I remembered it to be.
“Excuse me?” I turned in her direction finally, my head slowly moving over my shoulders with the speed of a snail.
“Dr. Hutchins. You don’t recoil away from him like you did Dr. Keppler. Or don’t you remember?” She smirked again and I felt heated with rage. “Don’t get any ideas, Alex. You’re only a patient here and a man like him wouldn’t use you for anything more than a midnight snack…”
“Alex?” Terrie’s voice filtered into the room as she opened the door. “Oh good. Session is over. I was hoping I wasn’t early.”
Dr. Ali smiled brightly once Terrie had entered the room, her entire demeanor changing immediately the moment we had company. “Terrie, I was just asking Alex how she
was liking Dr. Hutchins.”
Eyeing Dr. Ali as she crossed her path, Terrie stopped when she reached me. “How nice.” Her voice carried the intonation of woman who knew she was being lied to. “Well, I’m sure Alex is exhausted after her day, so I’ll be taking her to rest and have lunch.”
Dr. Ali’s smile fell. Simply nodding her head, she excused us from the room, her eyes burning two holes in my back as we left.
“I don’t like her, Terrie,” I confessed once we were safely out of hearing range of Dr. Ali. “She’s mean…”
Patting my shoulder as if I were a child, Terrie chuckled sweetly. “Alex, I’m sure it’s going to take time for you to adjust to everybody here. It’s only recently that you are aware of who we are. The first couple of months you were with us, I had to reintroduce myself every day. It seems like it’s only been a week since you’ve started recognizing me on sight.”
Reaching my room, she opened the door and sat down with me on the side of the bed. Her hand smoothed up and down my back, soothing me by the slow and steady motion. “There’s nothing to be afraid of here. You’re safe.”
The words had barely left her mouth by the time I saw a shadow pass the light from the hall. My eyes shot up and Joe stood just outside the room. He sneered in my direction, flipping his keys around and around on the loop he held in his hand. Fear flooded me, the sudden surge of adrenaline slowing down time and somehow boosting the effects of the drugs in my system. All I could hear was the jangle of those keys. The motion of the spinning metal forced me into a trancelike state.
“Alex?” It was hazy, the word echoing in my head like a record that had been slowed to a point of distortion. The room spun and I wanted to lie down, but I was too afraid that Terrie would leave me if she thought I was falling asleep.
Rapidly blinking my eyes, I brought the small room back into focus before looking up into Terrie’s concerned expression. Slowly, I turned my head to notice that Joe was gone. Reality snapped back like a rubber band and what had been slow moving was now crushing into me with the speed of a runaway train.
“Alex? Are you okay?”
I nodded my head yes, opening my lips slowly to admit, “I think you’re wrong, Terrie. This place isn’t safe. Nothing here is safe.”
Chapter Six
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the
darknesses of other people.
- Carl Jung
“Oh yeah, baby, I love it when you’re dripping over my dick.”
The whispered words crept through the empty halls outside my room door. I recognized Joe’s heavy breathing, the sick and twisted encouragement he gave to whatever girl it was he was using tonight. She moaned loudly and I sat up in bed, wondering how the other nurses and orderlies couldn’t hear the same thing as me.
Skin could be heard slapping against skin, the slick suction of two bodies coming together only to be forced apart. Pulling the covers up to my chin, I shuddered to realize that he was in the cell next door. Perhaps that’s why I could hear every small part of the attack. The other nights, it had been a quiet warning, but this one left me with no doubt of what Joe was doing.
“Don’t fuck her too hard, man. Save some for me.” Emerson’s voice whispered out, dark and hoarse. It was evident that whatever he was watching was turning him on. I cringed. They were both willing players in the abuse.
“Man, fuck off. This little bitch likes me. Maybe you can try her neighbor next door. I haven’t had her yet.”
“Maybe I will.”
Shuffling sounded behind the wall where I was listening and I shot out of bed, standing in the corner with nothing at all that I could use to protect myself. With my eyes locked to the window, I kept to the shadowed corner waiting for Emerson’s face to appear in the window.
Joe chuckled, “Yeah, good luck with that.”
The door to the cell next to me creaked open and snapped close quietly. Footsteps squished across the linoleum floor and every muscle in my body tensed with fear. Praying that someone was on the floor that could stop Emerson and Joe, I clenched my hands into fists in preparation to fight, holding my breath in hopes that he would pass by.
He didn’t and the breath that I’d been holding shot out of me as soon as I saw his eyes in the window.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping, little girl?”
Spoken low, he antagonized me; the mocking tone to his words a subtle promise that there was nothing I could do to stop him.
“God damn it.”
I heard a body dropped against the springs of the mattress in the other room, the door creaking open once again.
“If she’s awake, move on asshole. We don’t need screaming to alert the other nurses.” Joe whispered down the hall and I held Emerson’s stare until he was suddenly gone.
In tandem, the door to the cell to my right clicked closed as the one to my left opened. Anxiety rushed into my head, infusing every brain cell with panic. Tears slipped from my eyes as my back slid down the cold cement wall of my room. I was surrounded by their abuse. From Joe’s cell, the woman had grown quiet even though his pounding had sped up and intensified. And from Emerson’s…well that girl was only just waking up and when she spoke, I recognized the voice immediately.
“Michael? Is that you?”
The springs on Sally’s bed screamed out and I knew that Emerson had climbed on top of her. Michael was her husband’s name, the one she’d spoken about in group that afternoon. I wanted to bang my hand against the wall, scream for the nurses to come help the poor woman or scream to her that it wasn’t her husband that crawled in bed beside her.
“Yeah baby. But you have to be quiet, they don’t know I’m here.”
She was crying suddenly. “Oh Michael! I knew you’d come!”
“Shhhhh…”
I was angry for her. Not only was she being raped, but she was also being given the false hope that her husband had finally forgiven her for what she’d done. Listening to Emerson’s sick laughter, I closed my eyes to expel the torrent of tears that now blinded my eyes. They raped in time with one another and I was trapped within a symphony of pain and indignity, helplessly listening to the men as they finished themselves off.
When they were done, they left the rooms quietly, zipping up their pants as they moved along and laughing between each other as they walked farther down the quiet halls. What was left was the sound of silent crying, two women who had been used and tossed aside, left to suffer alone in their cages.
I couldn’t crawl back into my bed that night. Instead, I chose to curl into a fetal position on the cold floor. They cried and I sat with them, offering them my company without having the strength to voice a single sympathetic word.
. . .
“I assume the mattress would be more comfortable, Ms. Sutton.”
Cracking open my eyes, I squinted against the flickering light in the room. The profile of a man stood in the doorway, his features disguised behind the fuzziness of my sleep-hazed eyes. My body ached as I pushed up off the floor, the skin tingling on my leg, hip and shoulder where they’d previously been pressed against the floor.
Reaching up, I wiped away the fog that held me trapped, blinking quickly to reveal that it was Dr. Hutchins who stood in the doorway.
“Good morning. Our therapy will begin today and I wanted to come by and ask you to be sure to eat this morning. The new medications I’m starting you on will make your stomach upset if you don’t eat beforehand. Therapy will do neither of us any good if you’re sick.”
After climbing to my feet, I absently rubbed at the sore places on my body. My eyes peeked up at the doctor from beneath my lashes and I noticed how he watched me, paying close attention to every place I touched.
“Why didn’t you sleep on your bed?” He spoke cautiously, the promise of evaluation and judgment of my answer ingrained in every word.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
The door clicked shut behind him and I stepped ba
ck afraid to be alone in the small room with him. “Try me.”
Shivering, I pulled my arms up to wrap them across my chest. “Joe and Emerson…” When I started, my voice was strong, but doubt that he’d believe me set in and lowered my voice to a forced whisper. “They – they raped the women in the rooms next door to me. If I hadn’t been awake, they would have…”
“What?” He looked concerned, his eyebrows narrowing between his eyes, dipping down until they touched the frame of his wire-framed glasses.
I didn’t want to answer him, didn’t want to admit that I knew what they would have done to me if I’d been asleep. Shaking my head, I dismissed his question. “Nothing…”
He grinned. “At some point, you’ll need to learn to trust me. I might be the only friend you have inside this place.”
“They were going to rape me too!” The words fell out before I could stop them and I brought my hands up over my mouth as if I could shove them back in.
He scowled, saying nothing as he pushed down on the door handle, letting it shut with a bang behind him after he’d stepped back into the hall. My knees rattled together in fear and I was sure that I’d just said enough to get me dosed heavily for the day. When he returned, I was positive that Joe and Emerson both would be with him, ready and willing to hold me down while he administered whatever it was that they kept in those emergency needles they carried in their pockets.
Forcing myself to walk to the bed, I sat down on the thin mattress and cringed at the sound of the bedsprings screeching from my weight. The door was my only focus. I’d memorized every small blemish and scratch across the white surface. I was so entranced that when it finally clicked open again, I startled and jumped, pressing my back against the wall.
