Insanity (3 page)

Marjorie tries a different approach. She plasters a fake smile on her round face. Her face isn’t meant for smiling because she looks even more frightening than she did a second ago. “All right, sweetheart.” She’s made her voice light instead of its usual dark. Airy instead of weighed down, it’s almost… it’s almost…maternal. It’s terrifying.

She urges me to go on with her steel eyes. “Down the hatch.”

I stare into my cup at the large pills. They’ve been pumping my body full of pharmaceuticals three times a day since my second day here. I hate it. The pills make me a zombie. They make me walk the halls, trailing my fingers along the smooth texture, forgetting who I am and a lot of other things.

Crazy on the cot across from me has started chanting.
Down the hatch. Down the hatch. Down the hatch.

I bring the cup to my lips and toss the pills back just to shut her up. I don’t swallow them, though. I push them under the left side of my tongue and try to keep a straight face as the chalky, bitter taste coats my taste buds.

“Open wide,” Marjorie instructs me.

I do as I’m told. Marjorie seems satisfied. She moves on to Crazy. “Aurora,” she hands the cup to her and she takes the cup.

At that point, I look away I stare at the tiny cracks in the plaster wall. That’s how I feel inside, cracked—no—shattered. It’s like watching a mirror being blown up in front of you. There are so many pieces, but you have no idea how to put them back together again. You have no idea where the pieces go.

“Open wide, Aurora.” I peek over my shoulder as Aurora opens her mouth. I wish she’d stop taking her time. If I have to keep these pills under my tongue any longer I might as well have just swallowed them.

The second Marjorie is out the door, I spit the pills into my palm and shove them into one of the wider cracks in the wall. I will not let them drug me anymore. I will not let them make me one of their mindless robots.

Suddenly the overhead light in my rooms flickers before dimming. I turn my attention to Aurora who scrambles to the edge of her cot, wrapping her pillow around her head.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” she cries. Her freckled knees begin shaking. Her wails intensify. “Make them stop! Make them stop! Make them stop!”

“I can’t,” I say softly. But she’s still crying out at the top of her lungs so I don’t think she can hear me.

What I want to tell her is I wish I knew how to make them stop. What I don’t tell her is they probably never will.

A volt of electricity climbs through the wires behind the plaster walls and the lighting in our room returns to normal. I know what happens when the lights flicker; it means they took someone else to the basement. It means they took someone else to their sadistic torture chamber to try and electrocute the crazy out of them. I’ve been keeping a close eye on some of the girls in my group who’ve received electroshock therapy, and I’ve made up my mind that the doctors around here aren’t as smart as they think they are. Sending that many volts of electricity through a person’s body doesn’t eliminate the crazy. The only thing it does is fry your brain, dilute your mind, and kill you faster.

Footsteps echo outside the door and carry down the hall, pretty soon they cut out altogether. I walk to the door, then take inventory in the hall. It’s deserted and the only sound is the buzzing from the flickering lights on the ceiling. Closing the door, I turn on my heel to come face-to-face with Crazy, I mean Aurora. She examines me slowly and I choke on a scream, lodged somewhere in my throat.

Backing away from her, my back thuds against the door. Why would they put me in here with her? Do the doctors think it’s normal to put the crazies in with the non-crazies? Aurora tilts her head to the side and takes small, staggering steps toward me. She’s inches away now; her cool stale breath unfurls across my cheeks and wafts up my nostrils. Dropping my gaze, I look to her hands to see if she may have a hidden weapon. She doesn’t, but I can still feel the terror latching onto my spine as she hovers over me.

“Whhaat… What do you want?” I croak.

A look of confusion crosses over her face. She’s got child-like features. Big, wide brown eyes. Soft ivory skin. A dainty, pointed nose. Tiny yet full lips. She continues staring at me and I turn my head and close my eyes. Maybe she’ll get the hint if I’m not looking at her. Maybe she’ll see how frightened I am of her. Maybe she’ll leave me alone.

Somehow I doubt it.

Strands of my midnight hair shield my face and I bravely open an eye and peek through the locks at Aurora. Her fingers are in her mouth and she’s fishing around for something. Oh no. Maybe she hid a weapon in her mouth. I’d heard some of the other girls in the rec room talking about patients hiding razor blades under their tongues. I tell myself to close my eyes again, but I can’t stop watching her.

Aurora’s eyes widen. Her forefinger and thumb appear to be pinched down on something. Shit. “Please!” I beg her. “Don’t kill me!”

I face her and she regards me in an odd way. She regards me like
I’m
the crazy one and she’s
normal
. She pulls whatever she was fishing for and balls it up in her fist. Then she holds her hand out to me. “Give me your hand,” her voice quivers.

I remain silent and shake my head.

“I said give me your hand,” she says louder and with a growl. I stick my hand out, palm up and Aurora places two pills in my hand. “Do me a favor and put those where you put yours.” She plops back down on her cot while I stay in my spot gawking at her, baffled. Her eyes flit across my face and she shrugs. “Well.”

I will myself to move and walk over to my cot and shove the two pills in the same crack I hid mine in.

Sitting down on my cot, I tuck my legs underneath my butt and say, “I don’t get it.”

Aurora faces me. “Don’t get what?”

“I thought you were a few cards short of a full deck.”

A soft smile spreads across her lips. “Pretty convincing, wasn’t I?” I nod and she goes on. “Here’s the 411 on mental hospitals. If you act like you’re crazy and pretend to take your pills they pretty much leave you alone.” She sits back, placing her back against the wall and pulls her knees to her chest. “It’s the people like you who try to fight them that they focus on,” she makes quotation marks with her fingers, “trying to
fix
.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” I tell her. “I don’t belong here.”

“Neither do I,” she insists, “but the last place I want to end up is in the basement. And trust me, you keep acting the way you’ve been acting and you’ll earn yourself a first class ticket.”

I shudder when I think of what goes on beneath the floorboards of my room. I’ve never seen the basement, and I don’t want to, but I get plenty of reminders of what goes on down there from the wild shrieks in the night,(not mine) flickering lights, and horrific stories from the other patients. I scoot closer to the edge of my cot and play with my fingers. “So, if we’re supposed to be acting crazy, how will the doctors be able to tell if we’re getting better? How will we ever get out of here?”

The thought of freedom almost seems like a joke. Or a distant memory. Like when I was a child and used to tell my parents I wanted to be a canary and fly to the moon. In here, we’re not birds, and people only fly because they’re high or have lost their minds.

Aurora raises an eyebrow. “Get out of here?” she asks then laughs again and it reminds me of the cackle she let out earlier. I frown at her while she laughs at my expense then her face gets all serious. “It’s simple. You don’t.”

No, at Oakhill, it’s safe to say we’ll never be birds. We’ll always be caged lab rats.

Chapter 4

~AFTER~

“Patient’s name, Adelaide Carmichael. Age—twen—.” Dr. Watson sits at his desk, leaning back in his chair, tapping a pen against the leather arm rest, gold hair and stunning profile in perfect view. He spots me in the doorway and his eyes scorch mine.

Dr. Elijah Watson doesn’t look old enough to be a doctor. For some reason when I think of what a doctor should look like, I get this image of the pediatrician my mother used to take me to when I was a kid. An overweight man with a kind face, gold-rimmed wire spectacles, and white hair. Dr. Watson presses a button on the tape recorder he was speaking into and sits up straight in his chair, hands folded neatly on the desk in front of him. He smiles at me, but the smile doesn’t touch his hazel eyes. “Ah, Adelaide,” he motions to an empty folding chair in front of his desk, “please come in and have a seat.”

I hear the way the nurses talk about him. Some of the patients too. Standing here, in front of him for the first time, I can see why people here gossip about him and say the things they do. Hesitating, I trace the oak paneling of the doorframe with my finger. As beautiful as he is, with his sharp, angular jaw-line, pale pallor, and stunning eyes that border between hazel and warm honey in color. This man frightens me.

I don’t trust him.

“Adelaide.” There’s a rich texture to his voice. I eye him apprehensively. Yeah, this man is definitely smooth. “I promise you, I won’t bite.” He motions to the chair in front of his desk again. “Please. Sit.” Somehow I get the feeling that this is a command, not a request.

“Addy,” I tell him, making my way over to the chair and sitting down in front of him.

He raises a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Addy?”

“I prefer to be called, Addy.”

He steeples his hands against his lips. “Very well then,
Addy
.” His eyes do a clean sweep of me and the way they touch the bare skin on my arms and legs makes me feel uneasy. Tense. Nervous. Dr. Watson clears his throat and even that normal, bodily function coming from him puts me on edge.

I think the institution likes to switch up the doctors on the patients. I’m not sure why they do it, but up until now I’d always had a stern, yet informative doctor named, Dr. Matthew Morrow so this is my first visit with Dr. Watson. You see, even though he’s beautiful, I know that behind that flawless face lurks something truly capable of evil. It’s like a double sided coin. One side is beautiful and perfect, the other rotten and sinister.

Dr. Watson’s eyes are still on me, I can feel his gaze shredding through the flimsy fabric of my hospital gown. I do everything I can to avoid looking at him by staring at his plaques of achievement hanging on the white walls in this tuna can of an office, flicking a piece of fuzz off my knee, and then I drop my gaze to my hands and start playing with my fingers.

Finally, Dr. Watson cuts into the silence and says, “So Addy, since this is your first session with me, would you mind starting at the beginning?”

“The beginning?” I look at him, but try not to stare directly into his eyes. I think most women could get lost there. That one look into his beautiful eyes could be their undoing. Their unraveling. Most of the patients here seem unraveled. I wonder if men that looked like Dr. Elijah Watson are the reason why. In this day and age, a lot of women are tricked by beautiful men into thinking they’re something they’re not.

Pursing my lips, I examine Dr. Watson’s features further and decide that he’s the Aphrodite of most of the attractive men I’ve seen in my life.

I don’t want to take any chances. Or maybe I do. I know that Damien is here somewhere and I could never be unfaithful to him. So I bravely, stare directly into Dr. Watson’s eyes. And while they are stunning, they are also distant—vacant.

My attention averts to a manila folder on his desk. Dr. Watson flips through it for a moment then stares at me again. “Yes, the beginning. I have your file from, Dr. Morrow.” He pats the thick folder, but doesn’t drop his gaze. “But I’d like to hear why you think you’ve been brought here from your lips.” He stares at my mouth. The obvious shift in his attention causes me to bite my bottom lip and brings blood to my cheeks.

I frown. “I don’t know,” I say weakly.

Dr. Watson’s face is contorted in confusion. “Pardon me?

“I don’t know,” I say louder and with force.

“You don’t know why you’re here?” There’s a hike of surprise in his voice.

I shake my head. “No.”

With that, Dr. Watson reaches into his desk, whips out a notepad and a pencil then hits the record button on the tape recorder. “Then tell me, Addy, what is the last clear recollection you have? What do you remember about your life before you came here?”

“You mean before I was brought here?”

“Excuse me, yes, before you were brought here.”

I swallow hard and look away from him. “I don’t want to.”

He probes me further. “Don’t want to what?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snap. “I don’t want to think about that.” Then I clamp my mouth shut and regret getting mouthy with him. During this moment, I think about the basement. About the devices that I heard are down there. About patients who visit the basement and never return. Then I think about Damien and how I know he probably gave up a lot to follow me here and how his heart would shatter into a million pieces if I earned a trip downstairs and never returned. “I mean…” I hesitate and work up some fake tears. “It’s just really hard to talk about or think about.” I dip my thumb into the corners of my eyes and blot away the wetness. “But sometimes I get bits and pieces.”

Dr. Watson smiles triumphantly. It’s like the arrogant son of a bitch thinks that he’s the one who made me crack. Guess what, you pretentious prick? I made myself crack—
no
—more like the haunting images of this institution and the realization of what might become of me if I don’t cooperate is what made me crack. “Bits and pieces,” Dr. Watson muses and leans back, steepled hands pressed against his plump lips. “What do you mean by that, Addy?”

“Kind of like flashbacks,” I tell him. What I don’t tell him is that they are the same flashbacks that make me wake up in the middle of the night shrieking. The same flashbacks that make the doctors, nurses, and orderlies working the night shift come running down the hall with forceful hands and syringes filled with sedatives to quiet my screams.

“Why don’t you tell me about them?” Dr. Watson crosses his legs and urges me to go on with his eyes.