Alice & Dorothy (6 page)

Coming up out of the Rabbit hole was a lot like being deep underwater and quickly running out of oxygen; Alice had the feeling that no matter how fast she moved, she wasn’t going to make it. The world was a black void behind her, ahead of her lay reality, murky and emerald. It was quiet. Pink, ambient light through her eyelids. She could hear the rise and fall of a respirator somewhere. Smells of alcohol and industrial cleaner; her own cigarette breath caught in her nostrils. Someone was crying nearby.
Something about rabbits
…

Alice focused on her breathing. Her lungs were sluggish, slow to react to her demands. She could feel a stitch deep in her chest, as though she had been sleeping with a weight on her chest. Her muscles ached. Her head ached. Her eyes were glued shut. Pain, everywhere, nerves stretched and singing. There was something in her mouth. Alice moaned, unable to speak.

Playing cards
.

She’d been wrong. They weren’t simply a pack of playing cards. That bitch queen and her idiot husband had somehow managed to knock her out. Maybe she’d tripped over something when the cards flew up into her face, struck her head…

Alice moaned again. She flexed her arms, and succeeded in sending shooting pains up into her shoulders. Whatever the Queen of Hearts had done, Alice was in a bad spot. She imagined herself tied to a medieval torture device, and any moment the ropes holding her down would tighten, pulling her limb from limb.

“Well hello,” a woman’s tired voice said. “Back from the dead, are we?”

Alice tipped her head toward the sound of the woman’s voice but didn’t say anything. She was like a goldfish flopping on linoleum; exposed, injured, and unable to defend herself. Whatever this woman was going to do to her, she was free to do as she wished and there wasn’t a thing Alice could do about it.

“I’m going to take the tape off your eyes first,” the woman said. “But I need you to keep your eyes shut until I’m finished, alright?”

Alice nodded.

“Let’s turn this
overhead
—,” a soft click, and the ambient light dimmed under Alice’s eyelids.

Alice felt the skin around her eye tighten as the tape was removed, and the woman placed a hand over her eye at the same instant. Alice moved her head slightly.

“One more, just like that,” The woman said. The skin tightened around Alice’s other eye. “
Perfect
. That should be a lot better.”

Alice opened her eyes. They were thick and gummy. There were spots in them. She blinked rapidly a few times, and the world came back into focus. There was a middle aged woman standing over her smiling pleasantly. Dark hair. Nurses smock. Flowers and pink blotches. A stethoscope. When she was a kid, her kindergarten teacher looked a little like this woman standing over her. Same soft face and dark eyes. Waking up from nap time was like this. Not as good as when your mom woke you up, but these kind looking women were a close second.

“I’m going to remove your respirator now,” the woman said. “And then maybe you can tell me who you are and how your feeling.”

Alice nodded. She was still half expecting the Queen of Hearts to appear, shrieking about her execution. Her mind flooded with blood and Alice shuddered at the thought...

“Easy now,” the nurse was saying. “I had to tape this on. You were unconscious, and I didn’t want you to pull it out when you started to detox.”

Alice looked into the woman’s eyes for a moment. Then looked away.

Then looked back.

The woman busied herself removing the tape from around Alice’s mouth, and then pulled the tube away from her face. Alice responded by gagging hard and fought the urge to clench her teeth shut. And then the hose was gone, and the urge to vomit passed. Alice licked her parched lips.

“I imagine your mouth is going to be a little dry,” the woman said. “We’ll get that taken care of in just a moment or two.”

“Where,” Alice croaked.

“Mercyview General Hospital,” the nurse said, finishing Alice’s sentence. “You’re in emergency right now. Do you remember anything about last night?”

Alice shook her head. No.

But it was a lie. She remembered it all. The tea party. Shrinking and growing. Being stuck inside the rabbit house and swimming in a lake of her own tears. Croquet in the Royal gardens…the Red Queen, face spattered with gore, chest heaving, the feral look of a wild animal on her face, screaming

Off with her head!

Animal heads on posts. The Mad Hater clawing his way into her skull, behind her eyes. She remembered it all.

“Do you remember overdosing on heroin last night?” The nurse said, intercepting Alice’s train of thought.

What?

“Uhh,” Alice said.

“Somebody thought enough to bring you to the hospital but didn’t stick around long enough to give us any information on you,” the nurse said. She busied herself with monitors and plugs and swabs, anything to avoid looking Alice in the face. “You are lucky to be alive.”

Alice tried to think back. There was a fog wall in her memory right before the long hallway with the glass table and all the doors. Something about Rabbit.
Wait…

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Alice Pleasance,” she said automatically, without thinking.
Shit
.

“Ok, Alice,” the nurse said. “My name is Dana Howard, I’ve been looking after you for the last ten hours or so. Can you tell me anything about the heroin you took?”

“What?” Alice said.

“Like, were you smoking or spiking? You don’t have a lot of tracks on your arms, so we weren’t sure if you were a long-term user or not.”

“Long—uhh, no, not really,” Alice said. “I do it once in a while, that’s all.”

“Uhh
huh
,” Nurse Howard said, making a note on her chart. “And did you smoke the stuff last night?”

“I’m not sure, exactly,” Alice said. “I think I might have used a needle.”

“Pretty dangerous behavior,” the nurse said. There was a hint of condescension in her tone. Alice didn’t like it, but it wasn’t anything new. Everyone was better than a heroin user. Some of them were just better at hiding their disgust than others.

Condescending bitch
, she thought.

Nurse Howard put down her clipboard and undid the straps on Alice’s arms first. Then she did her legs. Alice moved her hands, shook them out. The blood began to return to her fingers and toes.

“I have to ask, Alice,” Nurse Howard said, picking up her clipboard again. “Do you have health insurance?”

“I do,” Alice lied.

“Oh
good
! And what is it, state funded? Blue Cross maybe?”

“Yeah,” said Alice. “
Uhh
, Blue Cross.”

“You didn’t come in with any identification,” Nurse Howard said. “Is there any way you could round up your number for us?”

“Yeah,” Alice said. “I can,
uhh
, call my folks.”

Another lie
. Alice’s father had been dead since Alice was little. It had driven her mother insane with grief, and she’d concentrated her feelings into a little green heat ray and pointed it straight towards Alice. Now they didn’t speak at all. The last thing Alice had heard her mother say was
go on, you little bitch! You killed him! You just couldn’t get your shit together and you killed him! I hope
you
die too!

“Oh. Good,” Nurse Howard said again. “Well maybe we can sneak the phone call in before the doctor sees you this morning. That way we can get you all squared away in a proper room. Get you out of this area.”

“Sounds good,” Alice said. She’d already made up her mind. Getting out of the hospital would be first on her list of things to do.

She was deeply disturbed that there seemed to be two sets of memories in her mind regarding the last little while. She remembered vividly all the time she had spent down the rabbit hole, but underneath that was another, less soluble version of her life; one where she had been getting high and having sex with Rabbit. She’d been really upset about something in the foggiest part of her memories. She’d gone to Rabbit. They’d gotten high, and then…
had she followed him down into a cave or something
?

One set of memories filled with smoking cats and bizarre tea parties. Technicolor and fragmented, like an acid trip. The second memories made more sense, but they were dull and mottled copper-gray and seemed to just begin and end with no real beginning or ending. But worse, there was something black in that set of memories, like a dead patch of night between street lamps. A place where monsters might lurk; where she could step in and be dragged away screaming in eternal darkness if she wasn’t very careful. But that was just the thing; her mind was being dramatic about it because it was simply a black hole with sepia and silver memories in orbit around it.

“Where are my clothes?” Alice said.

“Oh, they’re in a bag at the foot of the bed here,” Nurse Howard said. “No need to get back into those dirty things. We thought you had some kind of injury, there is quite a bit of blood on them.”

She stopped for a moment, looking over charts and monitors again. Alice looked at the woman. Nurse Howard shook her head.

“No trace of injury though,” she said. A quick glance into Alice’s eyes, then darting away again. Trying to be flippant about the whole thing. Trying to act like it didn’t matter where the blood came from, even though the nurses face had
WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO
pasted across it like a billboard sign.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Alice said.

“Well, we’ll get it all squared away,” Nurse Howard said. She double-checked the heart monitor. “Everything looks good here, why don’t you relax and I’ll get you some water.”

“Oh good,” Alice said. Beside her, the heart monitor blipped as her heart rate started to speed up.

Nurse Howard gave it a look, and then glanced at Alice. Looked away. She seemed on the verge of saying something, but then turned on her heel and walked out. The dividing curtain swished shut behind her.

Alice watched her shoes under the curtain. Nurse Howard was standing just outside, like a curious parent on the wrong side of a child’s door, listening for any sign of wrongdoing. What was Nurse Howard up to out there? Writing on her clip board? Waiting for Alice to get off the bed and try to escape? Signaling security to be ready for anything? Whatever it was, the moment passed and Nurse Howard’s feet disappeared from under the curtain. They turned and walked briskly down the hall.

Alice sat up in bed. If she was going to do this, she had to get up and moving. Her legs groaned in protest when she swung them off the side of the bed. Vertigo came, swished around behind her eyes, and drained away. Alice slid off the bed. Standing was an act of will.

She flicked off the finger sensor. The heart machine whined at her for a moment, and Alice hit the on/off button. She looked down at the IV needle in her hand. She was still being fed saline from a half filled bag on a post at the head of her bead. There was a touch of pink in the hose where the needle met her hand. The needle itself was deep inside her, in a vein. In spite of her recreational heroin use, Alice cringed at the thought of it. She didn’t like needles at all; that’s why she always made Rabbit fix her arms for her.

The needle was going to have to go.

There was a box of paper towels by her bed, and Alice grabbed a handful of them. Then she undid the tape around the IV needle and pinched the hose in her fingers.

Pulled it.

There was blood.

A line of dull purple-red shot from the hole in Alice’s hand across the bed. She clamped her hand over the wound. Then she grabbed the bag at the end of her bed, pulling out her jeans. The nurse was right; there
was
a lot of blood on her clothes. Alice slid her pants on, the blood making them waxy. They smelled like iron; like when her period came early and got into her pants; like an unseasoned chunk of meat that had been sitting on the counter all day. She quickly did them up and grabbed her shirt. Yanked off her hospital gown. Pulled the shirt over her head. Blood was running down her fingers by the time she finished dressing, and she grabbed a folded washcloth from a pile of linens on a little shelf under her bed. She folded it in half and wrapped it around her hand, making a padded fist.