by Astor Penn
But that’s the strange part; Barlett didn’t just remove her glove and touch me—she physically held my hand for a prolonged period, and it’s not just her. Several of the hazmats let their guard down around me. It’s not so much that they remove their suits, but I see them fidget underneath them. They maneuver their arms through the spaces to scratch at something, and the way the plastic stretches, I know it is vulnerable. These suits are thinner than the ones they wear outside; those are built for rugged conditions. These are not. What do these people do besides torture immobile victims?
These people want to get themselves infected and killed, and I will be happy to oblige them. Except my symptoms are varied and inconsistent. My body is often prone to spasms; even though the restraints don’t hold down my middle body, one day, one hour, or one minute from the next, I realize I can’t move at all. Everything aches like the gunshot wound has traveled down my body; in reality, my shoulder looks much better than it did. It doesn’t change the alarm I feel; I’m sure this is it. I’ll get a nosebleed soon, then I’ll cough up blood. It won’t be long.
THE FEVER doesn’t come, although I do suffer a small nosebleed. It lasts only minutes, but the hazmats all gather at once to watch and monitor me. It’s the first time I’ve seen them all together—Barlett, Ringley, Jackson, and the two I don’t know by name. One’s Goliath—he makes Jackson look like a baby, and I’m not sure how they found a suit to fit him—and the other I call Ripper, for while the others look at me with scientific curiosity or indifference, Ripper looks at me like a butcher does meat. I’ve actually seen him once weaving a scalpel expertly between his fingers, the metal catching and flashing the harsh light in my room. It’s clean, but I wonder when it was last used, or if it might be new and saved for me.
I think about what I could probably do with that scalpel.
The muscle spasms and nosebleed end. I feel horrible after. Even though I can move, I won’t. They know it too; instead of constantly locking and unlocking my cuffs for checks, they start to leave just my one wrist cuffed. It’s my good side, the side not affected by a bullet, and they know that. On the other hand, that’s one thing I can thank them for—they give me pain meds for my injuries, so the near constant throb fades into a stiffness, and I can almost forget about my shoulder.
It must be a few weeks now. Gunshot wounds don’t heal overnight. It’s difficult to tell, because now they really don’t want me to sleep.
“Headache? Nausea? Double vision?” I’ve memorized the order of things they ask, but the spasms and nosebleeds don’t return. These things are all I have to wait for, and I know they’re coming.
“How long?” I croak. My voice isn’t used as much as I think it is.
“You’ve been here four weeks,” Ringley replies. I don’t hear him right away because I’ve stopped listening.
“…what?” I try to sit up, but don’t get very far, of course. My back feels like it’s snapped right in the center. I yell and fall backward.
“Careful,” Barlett mumbles, sliding a hand under me to straighten me out into a more comfortable position. I see through it—she’s no more caring than she is matronly. Her voice keeps its chill; the cold, scientific edge that plagues all of them, but hers the worst. Ripper at least can be roused into anger or Jackson into depression. They feel. Barlett doesn’t.
“Are you talking to me today?” I ask. My voice falls flatter than I intend.
Ringley almost smiles; it’s too crooked to be called a smile. “Things are changing.”
Barlett stands close to him, and even though in hazmat suits they can’t stand closer than a foot apart, I can sense the closeness they share. I wonder if they are together.
“What’s happening?”
“Hope, we think.” They’ve got files in their arms stuffed full of papers and charts. Colored tabs form a spiderweb.
“What do you mean?” I ask. Have they found a cure? Will it be too late for me? Every day I feel weaker, and even though the symptoms I know don’t show, I can’t imagine I’ll live much longer in here. All I dream about are the woods, the open air, the birds that sing, and the wind that howls. I would give anything to be there again, even my own life.
“You’re going to be moved soon,” one of them say, but I’m having problems concentrating. I’m just so tired. “Things will be better for you.”
“Why? I won’t live.”
“We’ll see. You’re doing better than we expected.”
I might have imagined this last part, I’m not sure. “Do you even know my name?”
“It’s Brianna, isn’t it?”
I smile. “No, it’s Brie.”
“Well, Brie, you should just try and relax for now. Tomorrow will be a new day.”
“But how long?” I ask. “How long do I have left?”
Don’t worry, they tell me. Don’t worry about that right now.
Chapter 12
THEY COME back probably the next day, although I can’t be sure. It’s Jackson and Ripper with Barlett supervising from the doorway as they strap me into the full-bodied straight jacket. They lift me up on the board and carry me through the doorway, just barely squeezing through, and I have my first glimpse of the building outside my room. Not even a camp, I see now, just a building standing on its own. A decaying building instead of a fortress or a castle.
The hallway is even longer than I imagined with doors, doors, and more doors on each side. All shut up. All quiet. We reach the end of this hallway and turn right. More doors. More tiled floors and standard fluorescent lights. Everything looks average, a veneer of forced normality with sterile highlights.
Then they push their way through swinging doors, and things aren’t so quiet. There are moans drifting through the doors and the plaster. There’s something else, something less than a scream but more than a whisper from multiple voices, and it makes the walls seem like they’re pulsing, almost like a heartbeat. I’m thankful to be lying down, because when they took me, I already felt dizzy. Now I feel like the walls might swallow me up, and I’m grateful for once for the hazmats. They won’t feed me to the voices; they just carry me through.
Maybe the voices are in my head. Maybe that’s part of the illness. Just when you’re sinking so low the worst might be over, there is a complete descent into madness. Maybe I’ve just gone mad trying to count the seconds in that room. I’m not sure which is scarier; my mind is the last resort I have, the only refuge left. My memories of the woods, of school, of my childhood home—these are all the comforts I have. When they are gone there will be nothing left of me. I might as well be dead.
This hallway must be as long as the last, longer even. We go through more doors—swinging doors, broken doors, and then the biggest doors yet. These don’t simply swing open; these are a sheet of steel, impenetrable unless you have the right codes and ID. Barlett is in front, so she swipes a plastic card dangling from a cord by her hip through the door. Types in some numbers. I hear a faint beep, then a hiss that drowns everything else out, including the awful voices that follow us from some distance. When we pass through the heavy doors, both opened and closed on their own, compressed air shoots down against my body, enough that it feels like someone has sat on my chest. Despite my constant sluggish movements these days, I can’t help the full-bodied shiver.
That’s the first thing I notice about this next room—that it is much colder and that it is distinctly a room, not another hall. It’s huge, bigger than the span of the halls and the rooms put together if those rooms were anything like mine. They carry me through this room just as quickly as the hallways, but I have enough time to glimpse several smaller doors directly across from the giant metal teeth we just walked through.
I’ve been paralyzed with fear since so many suits appeared in my room at once; now I struggle as much as possible within the jacket. It’s not much, just enough that the men take notice. Ripper grins at me. Jackson looks as impassive as always, like I am no more than a nameless patient. Once through one m
ore set of doors, they lay the board down on a high metal table and just as quickly back away toward the door. They slouch against the wall, both of them lazily removing a gun from their side.
Barlett begins to unbuckle the straps across my chest.
“No,” I croak. “Don’t.” The last thing I want now is to be let go; they’re going to release me just to shoot me. Ripper grins still as he twists something around his gun, like a silencer.
“Cooperate, and everything will be fine,” she tells me, pulling open the jacket and unlocking my arms. She pulls them apart when they remain folded over my chest. She has to help me sit up and supports my weight when I nearly fall backward.
“Please.” I’m crying. I haven’t cried in so long.
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. They’re just here as a precaution.”
Embarrassed? What could I be embarrassed about? They’ve watched me nearly constantly for weeks now. They’ve seen me cry, spit, drool like an animal, use the bathroom, eat ravenously, and waste away. There’s nothing left to be embarrassed about, unless they’re actually planning to kill me and desecrate my body.
Then I notice the more than usual amount of tiles on the floor. They’re small and perfectly square, polished and immaculate. On one side of me is a couple of open white stalls, and on the other side a few open showers.
“We’re just going to get you clean.” Even as she says it, it’s not quite clicking. I’m too stiff to lift my arms, especially my still healing shoulder, so she has to remove my clothing for me.
As much as I want to resist any form of nakedness in front of the men standing guard, especially Ripper, I can’t deny the idea of a shower is appealing. It’s not like I’ve had any kind of thorough cleaning in ages; once I escaped the city and traveled on my own for a while, I squatted a couple of nights in abandoned homes, some of which still had running water at the time. The last time I took a shower or proper bath outside of river water has to have been at least two months ago.
My skin must be several pounds heavier just from the dirt and grime and dead skin sitting on its surface. I’m too weak to stand on my own for long, but even as Barlett steps in the shower behind me to hoist me up by my armpits, I smile. The water is warm—a luxury I didn’t think I’d see again. It’s entrancing watching the drain as water circles it—from black to gray to almost clear again. It’s silly how white and pristine everything in this bathroom is when in the same building, or at least what I think is the same building, there are halls full of nearly decrepit rooms in comparison.
The water hits my skin, and I hear nothing; behind me, water hits Barlett’s suit and crinkles like paper. While supporting me with one hand, the woman hands me a washcloth. My hands shake, and my head is spinning too badly for me to successfully scrub at my skin, careful of the bandaging on my shoulder, so eventually Barlett does that for me too. She gives me the illusion of helping myself; I am grateful. She cocks me against one hip like a babe and scrubs with the other. I can see it’s clinical—for her ultimate betterment later. Her face is just barely visible behind the plastic mask, but I don’t need it to see it: her brown eyes are calculating. She sees my weaknesses, my strengths. She knows how I feel without a single word on my part.
It’s a mockery of a relationship, but it’s all I have now. The plastic suit between her skin and mine is really no different than that of attitude: I consider life as something to chase, and she only sees it as something to study. I could never make the mistake of believing she cares for me beyond a lab rat she has to wash and now dry. At least they give me a big, fluffy, and almost white towel, and when I’m done with it I’m nearly as unblemished as the room.
“There are new clothes for you,” she says. They’re a sickly green color, much like the medical scrubs I remember seeing in the old hospitals. They’re exceptionally soft, but they don’t feel like real clothing. There isn’t anything substantial to them, and even though I’m covered, I still feel quite bare. They smell fresh, like laundry detergent. Another faded memory from a past life.
They fit like pajamas, the shirt almost to my knees and the pants too baggy on my bony hips. Barlett ties the drawstring for me almost too tight. I feel defenseless now, even though I’m mostly standing on my own two feet, not held down by any restraint.
This entire time the men have stood quietly by the door. Only when I see them do I remember that I should be attempting escape; that’s how low I’ve sunk. I let myself lean a little too heavily on Barlett’s side, and she lets me. These are my captors; these are my friends. I have no choice in the matter.
Jackson opens the doors for us. Inside the new prison, I briefly think about running toward the massive doors and flinging myself against them, even if they wouldn’t open for Superman, let alone a sick girl. My legs shake too much to think about it seriously. When she leads me toward one of the doors on my side, I can’t even fight it. I know this means something big; nothing will be the same once I enter this new room. They’ve promised as much.
The paint on this door isn’t peeling, doesn’t even look like paint. It’s smooth and heavy and doesn’t creak when opened. Inside there’s a slightly larger twin bed, with a real mattress and comforter, and a desk and single chair pushed beneath it. A few items on the desk include books, maybe some paper, although I don’t see anything to write with. Nothing sharp or pointed—just like an ordinary institution. Lastly, on the end of the bed, is a piled bundle of fresh clothing. More clothing, as if I need all of it.
It looks simply ordinary; it looks pleasant. It scares the shit out of me.
Barlett helps me to the bed; it’s comfier than the last, for sure, with a layer of fluff and warmth. It’s nicer than what I had on my bed at school, I realize. I’m laid all the way down, my head sinking into the pillows. Already I feel better—cleaner, stationary, and static.
It feels so wrong. Moving is breathing.
“How do you feel?” Barlett asks, almost on cue. I don’t answer, but I’m pretty sure she can tell. I smile, even, very small. “Listen, we received some more food today. If there’s anything you particularly care for, I can see what’s possible.”
Moving is life.
“No more baby food?” I ask. They tube-fed me for the first week; most of it pureed junk.
“Notice the bed. There won’t be handcuffs, no restraints of any kind, so long as you’re not harming yourself in any way, and we’re willing to be very generous as long as you cooperate.”
I bristle; clearly they think I’m some kind of suicide risk, but any risk is better than no risk at all.
She continues. “The door to the room will remain locked except for meals and checks when someone will attend you. Otherwise you are free to spend your time as you see fit. We have some more reading material if you’d like to request anything else. Some board games too….” She trails off, as if we’re both thinking the same thing: board games require at least two people to play. Even though I’m now in an almost humane living situation again, I doubt any of my keepers will be cuddly enough to play chess with me.
I can’t explain the extreme helplessness washing over me; now it’s less a question of how long I will live, but how could anyone want to live like this? A prisoner. A lab rat. Nothing human, and certainly not a teenage girl. Barlett and Ringley told me so much the other day—that my health was in no immediate danger, and that I’ve be given a certain status in the compound. It’s a whole new kind of sick.
“I wanted to be a doctor, you know,” I say. Quietly. It’s not important if she hears it or not. It won’t make a difference to her when her emotional armor is stronger than her physical armor.
She pauses briefly, barely looking me in the eye. Rolling on my side, I smile at the new walls. No tally marks bitten and scratched here, just a clean canvas. I had thirty-seven marks before they moved me.
“How long are you keeping me here?” I ask just as quietly.
She doesn’t even hesitate. “As long as you last.”
&nb
sp; Nodding, I shut my eyes once more and try to push down the feelings of shame. Shame that I am still alive out of so many people. Shame that I feel comfortable in my new surroundings. Shame that I am comforted by monsters.
As I sleep they watch over me, and I fear nothing but a sinking soul.
THERE ARE new routines in this place; even though they encourage me to move about my space as much as I can, I find it difficult to move just between my bed and my desk. This is partially because of the blood samples they insist on taking every day during routine checks. While it’s never a lot of blood drawn at once, over time I feel as if I am being drained slowly of all life.
There are more than the four hazmats who used to tend to me; now there are faceless men and women who usher me out of the room for checks, encouraging me to move about the larger room like a dog on a walk. They spend so much time bent over their files it’s difficult to learn faces, so it’s hard to count how many scientists are actually in the facility. There is a new color of hazmat thrown into the mix now—the black suits. These are easy to identify; these are strictly security forces. They don’t shuffle medical carts back or forth or flip through monitors or files of information. They just carry guns. The big kind, and definitely not ones loaded with tranquilizers.
Inside the atrium there are all kinds of suits—not just ones tending to me, either. They gather there to work on the row of computers nestled along a table, very carefully monitored for energy, I notice. They come and go, often just looking for someone else for whatever they need. They come in with metal trays and bloody instruments which go through one of the other mysterious side doors near the restrooms. Some kind of sanitation unit, no doubt. Sometimes they sit and rest. Sometimes they gather to watch me take a turn about the room. They like to watch Barlett give me my shots.
