by Tom Kavanagh
I was staring at her so intently that I forgot to avert my gaze as she made her way towards the seating area. Before I could look away, our eyes met, giving her the impression that I was inviting her to sit next to me.
There was no way to escape the situation now; she was making her way quickly towards the seat next to me. All I could do was put up my guard and hope that she wasn’t one of them.
“Hi . . .” she mumbled as she put down her tray and slid into the seat.
She was around the same age, had light blonde hair, and looked like a normal teenage girl. But then that was what a lot of people didn’t understand. We all looked like normal teenagers. We weren’t freaks to be hidden away. We just needed help.
“Hey . . .”
“What’s your name?”
“Isabelle. Yours?”
“I’m Rebecca.”
We both fell quiet and nervously pushed the food around our plates, hoping that the nurses would tell us that lunch was over.
“So why did you get committed?” Rebecca asked, trying to break the awkward silence.
“I had an ‘outburst.’ I don’t think that my dad could handle it anymore. He probably needed a break. What about you?”
“Same. Big outburst. There were lots of tears. And so I ended up here.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I’ve been here a couple of weeks. It’s my second time round, though. You?”
“This is my first.”
“How are you finding it?”
“Awful. I hate the nurses. I hate the room. I hate the smells.”
“So you’re really enjoying it then?”
“Yeah. It’s awesome.”
“You’ll get used to it. And if you get used to it, it’ll be easier to leave. They want you to find this all normal. They want you to find it normal, so then hopefully you’ll be normal.”
“It doesn’t feel normal. It feels like we’re stuck inside an insane asylum or a nursing home.”
“It’s not all bad. Some of the nurses are nice. You just have to talk to the right ones.”
“The right ones?”
“Yeah, some of them are just downright weird.”
“Them?”
“Like that nurse over there; she’s horrible. But you see that nurse over there?”
“Yeah.”
“She sometimes gives you sweets if you’ve had a good week. She’s not supposed to, but she does anyway.”
“She gives you sweets?”
Had they found another way of infecting people?
“Yeah, little sweets you suck on.”
“How do you know that they aren’t just feeding you more medication?”
“She wouldn’t do that to me.”
Her voice wavered slightly, obviously becoming unsure of the relationship between herself and the nurse.
She leant forward slightly, as if she was about to tell me a secret.
“You don’t really think she’d do that me, do you?” she asked in hushed tones, her eyes darting around the lunch hall, ensuring that nobody was eavesdropping.
“I don’t know; you’ve been here longer than I have. But if I’ve learnt anything in the past month, it’s that you can’t trust anybody.”
“You can’t?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Because they may have all . . .”
Just like Rebecca had done, I leant forward.
“Because they may have all been taken over by them.”
“Them?”
“Them. They came down during the storm a few weeks ago, maybe even before that. They’ve taken people over, and I don’t think that they will stop until everyone has been taken.”
Rebecca then spoke in a nearly inaudible whisper.
“And you think that they are here, too?”
“I think that they’re the ones who brought me here in the first place.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to try and escape.”
“Okay, everyone!” exclaimed an interrupting nurse. “Lunch is over. Could you please make your way back to your rooms, or to your counselling sessions if you have one scheduled.”
Rebecca and I both got up at the request of the nurse, both well aware of how programmed we’d become.
“Would you like to sit next to each other at dinner?” asked Rebecca in a meek and mild voice.
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
I still didn’t know whether I could trust her, but she seemed harmless enough, so I decided to give her a chance.
I didn’t have a counsellor appointment booked for the afternoon, so I went back to my room, closed the door, and got out a book that my dad had packed for me. I always used a picture of my parents, Pickle, and me as a bookmark. My mum’s beaming smile was the only thing holding me together, stopping me from completely freaking out and spiralling into a depression that I felt I’d never escape.
I grasped the picture tightly in my hands, pulled the cover over my head, and spent most of the afternoon staring at the picture, wondering how on earth I’d ended up here.
* * * * *
“Hey, again.”
I’d forced myself out of my room and had headed to the main hall. After an arduously long wait in the dinner queue, I’d collected my dinner slop and plunked down next to Rebecca.
“Hey,” she replied absent-mindedly, poking the blob on her plate. “I’m half expecting this to jump out at me and attach itself to my face.”
“I know. It’s getting worse every day, isn’t it?”
“We can only hope that this will kill us so we don’t have to eat tomorrow’s surprise.”
“We can only hope . . .”
Rebecca pursued the slop with her fork for a few more seconds before pushing the tray away from her.
“So, about what you said at lunch . . .”
“What about it?
“You said . . . you said you wanted to try and escape.”
“Yeah, and?”
“You can’t just walk out.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? There is always a nurse sitting in the office near the main door. Plus there are cameras, alarms, and a gate.”
“So what? There must be a way out. It can’t be perfect. There’s got to be a flaw.”
“I haven’t seen a flaw. Do you know what would happen to the staff if they lost a patient? All hell would break loose on the centre. They’d all lose their jobs and probably get sued or something. They won’t drop their guard for a second.”
“We’ve at least got to try. I’ll try and come up with a plan. Just make sure that you don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
“I promise.”
“Pinkie promise?”
“Pinkie promise.”
* * * * *
A few weeks had gone by since we’d spoken about getting out of the centre. I had begun to become comfortable in the centre, but this was probably due to Stockholm Syndrome as opposed to actually getting better. I was still refusing to take my meds but had been able to convince the staff otherwise. It was an act that repeated itself each day, as regular as a West End musical’s schedule. They’d come along in the morning, wide-eyed with forced grins, and give me a small plastic cup containing my medications. They’d open the curtains and make a comment about the weather, waiting patiently, albeit a bit awkwardly, for me to pop them in my mouth with a swig of water. But I’d trap the medication behind my teeth, swallowing with an overpronounced grimace, as if I hated being forced to take medication. On a few occasions this wasn’t convincing enough and so I’d occasionally have to swallow them, but this was rare, and so I knew it would have no real effect on me.
But I couldn’t put on an act for much longer. Cracks were starting to form, and I knew that it wouldn’t be long until I broke apart.
It was time to escape.
All of the counselling appointments had finished for the day, and so we had an hour of leisure time before dinner.
It was the perfect time to bring the plan up to Rebecca; I could only hope that she hadn’t grown more comfortable in the centre and so less willing to try to escape.
I could feel my anxiety grow as I left the safety of my room. It was just a short walk to Rebecca’s room; she was on the floor above me, where some of the more luxurious rooms were found. But even a short walk could result in an encounter with a nurse that would inevitably end in a line of questioning, which meant the possibility of letting slip that I was going to have a secret meeting with Rebecca about escaping. I wouldn’t want to tell them, but who knew what kind of nurse mind-tricks they could use to get the truth out of me?
I made it down the hallway without any problems and thought for a second that I’d get to Rebecca’s room in secret.
But then I heard it.
I heard that same menacing sound that echoed through the halls on my first night in the centre. It was Nurse Smith’s shoes, clanging their way down the hall behind me. As soon as I heard that sound, my pace quickened, like a meek and meagre animal would do when being tracked by a predator.
As the double doors closed behind me, the sound became less pronounced, and I thought for a moment that she might have gone into the room of another patient. My heart rate slowed as I took each step up to the next floor, only to quicken when the sound of the thick double doors opening and closing ricocheted off the walls around me.
“Isabelle, a moment please.”
Damn, almost free.
“Yes, Nurse Smith?”
“The nurses have told me that they’ve been having trouble administering your medication, that you sometimes pretend to swallow. Is this true?”
“Yes, Nurse Smith.”
There was no point in hiding it; she already knew what I’d been doing.
“And is there a reason for this?”
This was what I had been afraid of. I wasn’t going to tell her the true reason, but I suspected that if I didn’t give a convincing enough answer, she’d keep pushing the question until she was satisfied I was telling the truth.
“I’ve never really been good at taking my medication. It’s part of the reason I came here. But I’m trying to get better. I really am,” I replied in a timid voice, hoping that my weak demeanour would convince her that I was opening up and being vulnerable.
“Good, because I do hope that this behaviour doesn’t continue. We wouldn’t want to have to take more severe measures to ensure you’re taking your medication, would we?”
“No, we wouldn’t. Is that all, Nurse Smith?”
“Yes, I suppose it is. I’ll see you in the hall for dinner.”
“Okay. Bye, Nurse Smith.”
I turned my tail and practically ran up the stairs. Nurse Smith was following behind me, probably heading to a patient’s room. But I didn’t want to make small talk, so I didn’t even stop long enough to hold the doors open for her. It seemed rude, but I didn’t want to have to look into her menacing face any longer.
I ran down the hallway and found Rebecca’s room number. It was a haven in a war zone, and so I knocked on the door feverishly, hoping that Rebecca would let me in before another round of questioning came.
“Hello?” Rebecca said in a childlike voice through the door, probably thinking it was one of the nurses.
“Hey, can I come in?”
“Sure. What are you doing here?”
I closed the door behind me and waited until I knew that Nurse Smith was out of earshot.
“We’re escaping tonight.”
“Tonight? Isn’t that a bit sudden?”
“I know it seems that way, but I’ve been watching the staff and making notes on their rounds and when they sign in and out. It’s going to be difficult, but I know that there’s a chance of escaping; it just has to be perfectly timed.”
“I don’t know about this, Isabelle. I’m starting to have second thoughts. I mean, what if we do actually get out? Where will we go?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The most important thing is getting out.”
“And just how do you imagine we’ll do that?”
“Okay. Here’s how it’ll go. After everybody goes to bed, we’ll wait until the nurse does her final rounds, and then meet under the main stairwell. And then from there, we get out the front door, down the gravel path, and over the gate.”
“But the front door gets locked after eight o’clock.”
“We’ll get the key from the front desk.”
“But the keys are all behind the receptionist—how do we get to them?”
“The receptionist always goes for a coffee at the same time each night. That means we’ve got just a few minutes to get the keys and get out the door.”
“I don’t know about this.”
“What’s the worst that can happen? We get caught? And then what? We’re already trapped in here. If they take us back, then we’ll just be in the same position as we were in before, right?”
“But they’ll keep us in here for longer.”
“And? You don’t know how long they’re keeping us in for now. For all we know, we’re in here for good anyway. So, we might as well try to escape.”
“I guess we could try. Like you said, I have no idea when I’m getting out. They keep pushing back the date of my final review.”
“Exactly. We need to make it now before we end up growing old, stuck in this shabby old building, eating the same slop we do now.”
“I really do hate that slop. Let’s do it.”
Nine
Letting Go
From morning through to night, the centre was awash in activity. Nurses would rush from room to room checking on patients and dispensing medication. The food hall would fill and empty with each passing meal, filled with chatter and the clatter of plates. And the repetitive sound of the meeting room doors opening and closing would continue throughout the day as other patients went to seek help from the counsellors employed by the centre.
But there was a moment, around nine o’clock at night, when everything stopped and a calm pervaded the halls and rooms of the centre. Nurses would make their final checks, and then the lights would begin to switch off, letting the patients know that it was time to either go to bed or to become very quiet.
And this was when we were going to try and escape.
I had told Rebecca to wait until the nurse on her floor had finished the rounds, and then to meet me on the staircase. We would then have around a five-minute gap during which the day nurses go home and are replaced with the night-shift nurses.
We would need to be quick, because if a nurse caught us on the gravel driveway after hours, we would have some explaining to do.
I had decided to leave all my stuff behind save for the picture I had been using as a bookmark. If we needed to make a quick escape, I didn’t want to be hauling clothes and books on my back.
Rebecca had taken a different approach. I had left my room and was standing on the stairs waiting for Rebecca when I saw her hobble down the stairs with everything but the kitchen sink. She had put all she could fit in her backpack and was also carrying a few books in her arms.
“What are you doing with all that stuff?” I whispered harshly, knowing full well that it would slow us down and put us in danger.
“It’s all my stuff. You can’t expect me to just leave everything here.”
“I did.”
“Well, all of this stuff is very precious to me. I don’t want them throwing it all away just because I decided to run away.”
“Fine. But you have to be willing to drop it if we need to make a speedy getaway.”
“I can’t see that happening. But fine, if we need to make a speedy getaway, I’ll throw it away and then come back for it when I can.”
“Okay. Let’s get going; the night staff will be here soon.”
We made our way down the stairs, ensuring that we didn’t step on the creakiest boards, which were sure to alert the last nurse on duty. There were a few close calls
when steps that hadn’t been loud suddenly decided to whine in defiance of our feet, but we got down the stairs without any unwanted visits from the nurse.
The difficult part would come when trying to get the keys. In the five-minute interval when the day nurses were gone and the night nurses were arriving, there was still a nurse stationed at the front reception desk. She was the guard dog that we desperately needed to evade. If we couldn’t evade her and get the keys, this whole plan would fail.
“You said she was going to get a coffee?”
“That’s not the same one. She must be filling in for the other nurse.”
“Then how are we going to get that nurse away from the keys?” asked Rebecca, thinking aloud the same things I was considering in my own head.
“How about I pull the cord in the toilet? It’ll set off the alarm, and she’ll have to go and see. While she’s doing that, you get the keys, and I’ll meet you outside.”
“How are you going to meet me outside? Won’t the nurse see you as you get out of the toilet?”
“After I pull the cord, I’ll climb out the window. It’s only about a three-foot drop.”
“I guess there’s no other way of doing it. Be careful.”
“You, too.”
I crept towards the downstairs toilet, wondering when my heart would burst out of my chest. It was the type of fear that makes it feel as if there’s a sledgehammer beating the inside of your veins. My pulse quickened as my hand wrapped around the cord. Whenever the alarm went off, the nurses would waste no time in getting to the scene of the accident. It could be the difference between life and death, and so I knew I would only have a minute to climb out the window and escape.
I counted down from five and then pulled the cord. A shrieking sound came from the speaker above me, probably waking up the whole building. The cord was still swinging back and forth as I lifted myself up and over the windowsill, using the toilet as a footstool. And that’s when I saw how badly I had misjudged the height of the toilet window. Instead of being a measly three-foot drop, it looked closer to five or six. The ground sloped away from the building, giving me an uneven ground to land on. But uneven ground was the least of my problems. I could hear the nurse hurrying down the hall towards the toilet, and so I held my breath and jumped.
