Sunshine in the Rain (Rainy Weather Series Book 1)

by Barbara Goss

  Susannah had made her bed up fresh that morning, had laundered the few dresses she had, and wandered out to the backyard for fresh air, as her room tended to become extremely warm in the daytime.

  The little boys were playing in the backyard, and as usual, she turned away from them, and leaned against the tree. Then she heard something that made her shiver and tremble—an Indian war cry echoed through the air. She turned, saw the painted face, and screamed. She ran into the house, screaming all the while. Edwin was standing by the door, and as she flew past him, he put his hand out and caught her by the arm

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked sternly. “Are you crazy? They’re just kids playing cowboys and Indians.”

  “Indians!” she tried to shrug him off, but he held on to her tightly. She screamed as loud as she could, kicked Edwin, and bit the hand that was holding her.

  He cursed and let her go.

  She ran into her room, slammed the door, and crawled under the bed. She listened for the sounds of Indians, but all she heard was Edwin yelling to his mother, “That girl is crazy! Can’t you do something about her?”

  Martha came to her room, opened the door, and then closed it again. She came back a few minutes later with Harry. “See, Harry! She’s under the bed! She’s crazy. We have to get rid of her.”

  Susannah didn’t know if Harry answered or not, but hearing them made her realize she wasn’t in danger and she crawled out to lie on her bed to await the worst.

  Where would they send her now?

  That night, as she lay huddled beneath her quilt, she heard them talking. Martha said, “There’s a good hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri. I want you to take her there.”

  “But Martha—”

  “Family or not, she’s going. What about your family? What about Edwin and me? We can’t live with a lunatic,” Martha said loudly.

  “Shh,” Harry said. “She’ll hear you.”

  “And what if she does? She hasn’t a clue what’s going on around her. Tomorrow, Harry, or you’ll be out as well.”

  Chapter 3

  Harry’s rented wagon stopped before a large building, it was probably the largest building that Susannah had ever seen. The building was four stories high and three times that wide with a huge steeple at the top. The sign at the entrance read State Lunatic Asylum #2.

  Susannah wasn’t sure what a lunatic or an asylum was. She’d been home schooled and those two words had never come up in her lessons.

  Harry stopped the wagon and jumped down. He came around to her side of the wagon, took her hand and helped her down.

  “No!” she cried, looking up at the frightening and cold-looking building.

  “Yes,” Harry said gently. “They'll help you here and make what’s going on inside your head better. When you’re better, I’ll come and get you again and bring you home.”

  “You’ll come back for me?” she asked.

  “Of course, as soon as you’re better.”

  Susannah trusted Harry and let him lead her inside.

  Harry had left her with a man who had a kindly face, and whose name she wasn’t concentrating on remembering. He led her to a clean but sparse room with a window a clean bed, a dresser, a small closet, and a bedside table. The man dropped her valise onto the floor and she suddenly wondered if she’d had a carpetbag as well. Maybe she’d dreamed it. She shrugged. She felt so confused

  “Come, Susannah,” the man said. “I’ll show you around. You're in a wing that permits a bit more freedom than the rest, for now, anyway.” The man led her down a long, wide hall, and stopped before a sitting room in which there were sofas, tables, and a bookcase full of books.

  “You may come down here anytime you’d like,” he said. “When you hear a bell ring, that means it’s mealtime, and you then go to the dining room.” He pointed it out across the hall, where she saw several long tables with chairs neatly arranged at them.

  “You’ll like this wing—you can stay here as long as you behave, but if you cause trouble, you’ll be taken to a wing with a lot less freedom.” He studied her face. “So, are you all right with everything?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you answer me with words?” he asked, a bit sternly.

  ““Yes, I can,” she said, and then broke out in tears. She didn’t know exactly why, except that the man seemed angry with her, though she knew she hadn’t done anything to upset him. She still wondered why she was here. Harry had said she needed medical treatment. If that was true where were the doctors? Why was everyone being so cruel to her when she’d done nothing, and she still didn’t understand where she was or why.

  “I’ll walk you back to your room,” he said.

  When the bell rang for dinner, she didn’t go to the dining room. She wasn’t hungry. She curled up on her bed and fell asleep, instead.

  In the morning, she sat up in bed and was happy to see a ray of sunshine flood into her room. So her room faced the east, which was good, because she always preferred her sunshine in the morning.

  She got out of bed and walked to the window. It had bars on it, and they made her feel secure because it meant the Indians couldn’t attack. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  She felt a pang of hunger and dressed quickly in case the bell rang for breakfast before she was able to get dressed. She made her bed, sat on it, and waited. Before long she decided to go down to that nice sitting room area to wait.

  Several other people were in the sitting room when she arrived, and she froze at first, and then turned to head back to her room, but a man sitting nearest the doorway motioned for her to come in.

  “Hi, are you new? Come on in. My name is Ralph.” He smiled brightly.

  He was a middle-aged man who wore a style of clothes that was at least twenty years out of date, but he seemed friendly enough, so Susannah took a few steps into the room, and slid gingerly into an armchair. She gave Ralph a hesitant smile.

  “I hope they don’t have waffles again,” he said. “I have a bad tooth and the syrup hurts when I eat them. I’d love it if they had eggs today. What do you hope for?”

  She shrugged.

  “Can you talk?” he asked, kindly.

  “I prefer to be quiet.”

  “That’s fine. Ethel’s always quiet too. She’s over there, in the red.” Ethel turned around at the mention of her name and Ralph waved to her.

  The dinner bell rang and everyone dashed for the dining room. Susannah waited until the sitting room was empty before venturing into the dining room. Everyone had already grabbed their seats. She spotted an empty chair and slid into it. A young man took the seat beside her. The servers laid plates of food on the tables, one platter for every six people, and the people at the tables passed the platters around. When the young man beside her passed her the egg platter, he smiled.

  “Eggs, today,” he said with a smile.

  Susannah liked the man, instantly, because he looked a bit like her brother, Jeremiah, though this man was much older. Jeremiah had been only fifteen. Tears formed in her eyes at the thought of Jeremiah and his fate.

  “You don’t like eggs?” he asked.

  She wiped at her tears quickly, as the man held out the platter, and seemed to be growing a bit impatient.

  “Are you all right?” he asked after she’d taken the platter from him.

  “Yes. You just reminded me of someone,” was all she said. She put a spoonful of scrambled eggs on her plate, and passed the dish to the woman sitting on her other side.

  “Ham?” he asked.

  She nodded, took the platter, and put a piece on her plate before passing it on.

  A serving woman filled their glasses with orange juice, which Susannah tasted, and thought it was horribly watered down.

  “My name’s Ben,” the pleasant man beside her said.

  “Susannah,” she said.

  “I love that name,” he said. “Did you arrive yesterday?”

  She nodded.

  “How about I challenge
you to a game of checkers after breakfast in the sitting room?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t think so.” When she saw the hurt look on his face, she added, “Maybe another time. I’m still too confused to think straight.”

  “I understand completely. I felt like that at first too,” he said. “They treat you pretty good here, as long as you don’t cause a ruckus. If you do, then they put you in the south wing and that’s bad. They give you the works up there.”

  “The works?”

  He nodded. “The tranquilizer chair, the electric shock treatment, or they lock you in the box,” he said, as he ate.

  Susannah shivered.

  “I don’t mean to frighten you, I just want to let you know so you don’t end up there. Always stay calm.”

  “Have you ever been to the south wing?” she asked.

  “Just once, but it was a mistake.”

  “I feel like I’m in a daze, so I don’t think I’ll be causing any trouble,” she said.

  After breakfast, she went to the sitting room and selected a book, thinking that if she could concentrate on something she might feel better. She grabbed a book called Jane Eyre, and hurried back to her room, where she propped the pillows against her headboard, and tried to sit and read, but her mind refused to focus on the words. All she wanted to do was cry, so she threw the book aside, and decided to take a walk.

  She paced up and down the long hall, several times before Ben stopped her as she walked past the sitting room.

  “You’re allowed to go outside if you get a pass,” he said. “If you get one, I’ll walk with you.”

  “Where do you get a pass?” she asked.

  “At the desk around the corner.” He pointed. “Come, I’ll take you.”

  He led her to the desk, where a man with spectacles was giving out passes to go outside.

  “Is this your first pass?” the attendant asked her.

  She nodded.

  “I’m stamping the time on it. You’ll bring this back to me when you come in. You have only two hours.” He stamped the piece of paper and handed it to her. “You are allowed anywhere on the grounds, but if you try to leave the grounds, you’ll be put in the south wing.”

  Tears formed in her eyes and she blinked quickly in an effort to stop them from falling.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asked, gently.

  “Everyone is so brusque and rude, and for some reason, it makes me cry.” She took her last clean handkerchief from her pocket, and used it to wipe her tears.

  Ben took her hand and patted it. “I’ll look after you,” he said.

  She smiled up at him. He was the first person in so long that had shown her sincere compassion.

  He dropped her hand and flashed his pass to the man who operated the door that led outside. Susannah followed, and before long, they were finally outside in the sunshine.

  Ben led her to a bench beside a pond with a fountain. The atmosphere was quiet and serene. Susannah felt relaxed for the first time since sitting in the yard at Harry Boulanger’s house. She closed her eyes, and let the sun shine upon it. It felt so good.

  “Where are you from, Susannah?” Ben asked.

  “I...I...” Her serenity sphere had been invaded, and she raised her hands to her face and cried. She stood and began to run, but Ben caught up to her.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Honestly, I don’t care where you’re from. Why don’t you come back and sit down, and I’ll do all the talking, all right?”

  His voice was kind and soothing, so Susannah let him lead her back to the pond.

  “I’m from Independence, Missouri. I joined the army when I was sixteen, and fought in the Civil War. I was injured at Fredericksburg, and have had problems ever since. You know, nerves, depression—war leaves scars that no one can see. I’ve been here, at number two—that’s what everyone calls this place—since I was twenty. I’m twenty-six now.”

  He went on and on about his interests, his family, and friends, but all Susannah heard was that he had fought in the war. The rest she tuned out, as she stared out into space.

  As they sat there, with Ben content to do all of the talking, one of the female patients, nearby, saw a spider and started screaming at the top of her lungs. Susannah stood, covered her ears, and started to tremble.

  Once again, she saw the Indians and their war painted faces, and heard her family’s screams, and covered her mouth so a scream wouldn’t escape.

  Ben reached out and pulled her down onto the bench. “Susannah, hush. Stop crying or they'll put you in the south wing. Stop. You're all right. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

  The woman continued to scream. Ben got up, walked over to the bench where the woman was screaming, stepped on the offending insect, and walked back to Susannah. “It was just a spider.”

  Ben held onto Susannah’s hand and rubbed the back of it. “There, there. Easy, now, you can’t let the people hear you, or see that you're upset, or they’ll take you off our floor.”

  Susannah took her hand from her mouth and tried to breathe normally. Ben put his arm around her to soothe her further.

  She felt comforted. She sat there with her head on Ben’s shoulder for several minutes, and then she sat up.

  “Thank you, Ben.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked with concern.

  “I’m fine now.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, if you ever do, I’m here to listen.”

  Chapter 4

  At dinner that evening, Susannah took the time to study Ben. He looked to be in his late twenties, with dark brown hair, and brown sympathetic brown eyes. She hadn’t noticed him much before, but since he'd consoled her, she felt compelled to measure him. She felt he might be a good man, a trustworthy man. Maybe, someday, she’d relate her fears to him.

  Every morning, a middle-aged man visited all the patients in their rooms; he may have been a nurse or orderly. He did not introduce himself and merely asked a few questions of them, wrote things down in a folder, and then went down the hall and on to the next room.

  Every day, Susannah and Ben went outdoors together, and Ben always put his arm at her waist when walking, in an effort to assure her she was protected and to make her feel safe.

  To date, Susannah had managed to keep her nightmares fairly silent, though one woman from the next room claimed she had heard screaming in the night, and Susannah was sure it must have been her. She put a handkerchief in her mouth before she went to sleep in the evening to stifle the noise, should she scream, just in case; she didn’t want to be sent to the south wing.

  A few days before Thanksgiving, some of the counselors were practicing with selected patients in preparation for a performance they'd planned during the Thanksgiving Day celebration dinner.

  Both Susannah and Ben had refused a part in it. They sat together in the sitting room, Ben playing solitaire with a deck of cards, while and Susannah half-watched him, half-watched the leaves falling from the trees outside the window.

  She turned to Ben. “Why are you here?”

  “I guess you might say I suffer from shellshock from the war and I kept having flashbacks. War is not something a person can ever forget,” he said, shuffling his cards. “My family couldn’t deal with me, so they sent me here. They used to visit me all the time, but lately, I’m lucky if I see them once a year. I’m afraid they've forgotten about me.”

  “At least you have a family,” Susannah said.

  “Are you ready to tell me about it?”

  Susannah shook her head. “No.”

  Ben dealt out the cards in preparation for another game of solitaire. “Want to help me win a game? I’ve been trying all afternoon and haven't had any luck so far.”

  Again, Susannah shook her head. “I can’t concentrate.”

  “I was like that once. I’m getting better, but no one seems in a rush to let me out of here, though. Once you’re put in here, y
ou pretty much have to stay.”

  Susannah shrugged. “I’ve no where else to go anyway.”

  “I’m going to talk to the head doctor and see if I can get out on my own. I’m pretty sure I'd be okay living amongst people now,” he said. “I haven’t had an episode in over a year.

  “If I do get out, we could get married, and I could take care of you,” he said kindly.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Ben, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to leave here. I'm still having the dreams, the flashbacks, and the tremors,” she said.

  Ben gave her a sympathetic look, “Those awful things will disappear eventually, and I can still visit you until you're ready to leave.”

  Susannah gave him a pleasant smile. “Thank you, Ben.”

  On Thanksgiving, everyone filed into the dining room where a stage had been set up at the far end of the room. As they sat down to eat, a few of the patients, with the help of the counselors, put on a short play about the first Thanksgiving dinner.

  Susannah didn't pay much attention to the play, but she did happen to glance up at the stage, and she stood up so fast, she knocked her chair over.

  She'd seen an Indian! Here. In the hospital.

  Her body trembled in fear, from her head down to her toes, and the only thing she could think of doing was to scream for help at the top of her lungs. She continued to scream, over and over, until her voice was hoarse, and her body was numb.

  She was vaguely aware of Ben at her side, trying to soothe her, but nothing could erase the sight of that Indian standing only a few feet away from her, in the dining room, from her head. She just knew her life, and the lives of everyone in the hospital were in danger.

  They’d followed her.

  They would kill all of them, just as they had done to her family.

  At one point, men rushed into the dining room, lifted her between them, and carried her out of the room, rushing through the corridors, only to plop her into a chair in a different room.