A black void. Floating in nothingness and cradled in snatches of fond memories, of loved faces somehow unfamiliar but evoking a sense of peace and security. Breathe, dream, draw nourishment through the tubes and needles inserted into her body. An occasional twitch or eyelid flicker, then it was back to the comforting arms of Morpheus, the Sandman...
Something changed, and the darkness began to clear away like fog on summer morning. Up she ascended, through the layers of unconsciousness and she began to feel pain, sharp agonizing pain, and hear voices coming from Outside, then her big blue eyes flew open and strangely enough, focused for the first time in weeks and weeks. She cast her blue-green gaze around the sterile room, the stainless steel equipment and white-painted walls, then to the scary looming figures surrounding her. She knew none of them, or where she was at, and began gasping like a rabbit in a snare, her eyes rolling this way and that like a spooked horse.
The screaming began. High-pitched, wailing, bloodcurdling screaming. She hurt, oh Lord she was hurting, all over her body, she was hungry and thirsty and scared. Her arms flailed out, once-strong arms of action now wasted with her bedfastness but still putting bruises on the restraining hands trying to calm her. Crying out from their strong grip on her tender flesh they eased up on her somewhat, and her thrashing subsided as her depleted energy was quickly spent.
"Wha...wha...where am I," she managed to speak. The physicians in the room blared their eyes--they had thought she would be a vegetable for the rest of her life, unable to comprehend or move.
One of the bolder of the lot stepped forward, clearing his throat. "Ah, you're in the Ruggsville County Medical Facility."
The young woman digested that a moment, then looked down at her person. She was bandaged over most of her tanned, sleek body, a cast on her left leg and right forearm and she blinked in shock. How had she gotten so badly wounded? She took a deep breath and whimpered in sudden pain, like knives sticking in her side. With her better arm she reached up to touch her head and found most of it shaved and bandaged as well. Brow furrowing, she tried to recall what had happened and to her horror, found nothing. In fact, she didn't even know who she was.
"Do you remember anything," the doctor asked her, a cold sadness in his tone. Why would he sound like that?
"No," she whispered, a slimy creeping terror sliding over her very bones.
"What is your name," his colleague, a younger man in spectacles, queries.
"I...I don't know," she responds hopelessly, glancing from face to face. The nurses turn away from her bewildered, pitiful gaze and many of the medics simply watch her scornfully. Why weren't they more understanding? Aren't doctors supposed to care about their patients? Then she saw the police officers emerging from the background, and their expressions were positively hostile. The woman tried shifting in her bed and more pain went through her, leaving her gasping.
"Miss Vera-Ellen Johns," announces a very young officer, putting his sunglasses in his shirt pocket. Despite his youthful appearance he seemed to carry quite an air of authority, even though his huge sideburns looked a bit ridiculous. "Or should I say, Angel Baby Firefly?" He approached her bedside clenching his jaw and studying her face for any possible reaction. She slowly shook her damaged head in genuine puzzlement, for he didn't seem to believe what she said. "No? Doesn't ring any bells? Well how about Otis B. Driftwood? Eve Wilson? Better yet, here's some pictures of your victims, recognize any o' them?" He shoved into her field of vision the mangled corpses of dozens of people, many of them young women, horribly abused all of them.
The woman turned her head in horror, her stomach churning. Did they think she did these things? "Please...I don't know what yer talking about. Please can I have some water?" After a few moments one of the nurses pours a cup of water and holds it out shakily to the patient, who takes it gratefully and drinks it down. She noted how the nurse backed away like lightning, as if the heavily bandaged female would kill her right then and there.
"You don't know who I am either, then," the officer says. "Dobson, now acting Sheriff since your clan killed Sheriff Wydell. I can almost believe this weak, snivelling thing ain't Vera-Ellen, a she-wolf among sheep." He bent over her, his gaze full of restrained anger and hate. "Won't matter none, that's the body that killed its way across several states, and it's gonna fry. Yep, you can bet on that, bitch."
"Officer, that's enough," the doctor in charge says, stepping in front of the cop. "She's still a patient under our care."
The police finally let the patient be, and one of the nurses administered some painkillers through an IV which left her boneless and spacy. She let them do as they would; she'd worry about what would happen to her later. She only half-heeded the physicians and attendants talking over her head while they re-dressed her terrible wounds and fed her through a tube.
"What d'you think they'll do," asked one of the older nurses. "Will they have us fix this broken gal so's they can turn around and execute her?"
"Shhh, she can hear you," hissed another with Mexican features.
"I don't think it'll matter much, Maria," said the doctor in charge. "But we have no control over the law or the courts. We can only do what we can do."
"I hate to see what'll happen if they get em both together," the senior nurse declares. She was obviously the staff busybody.
"You don't mean...," Maria gasped.
"Yeah, one of the bastards survived too."
"Ellen? Wake up, Ellen," came a gentle voice. It was Nurse Busybody propping the young woman's ravaged body up. A steaming tray was set before her and the smells of hot food drifted up her nostrils. Her belly began rumbling at once and she clumsily reached for the fork with her not-as-damaged left hand and dropped it in her lap. "Well, you must be gettin better," the nurse said bemusedly. "You're eager enough for that food. Here, lemme help you." Grunting, the patient groped until she got the utensil back in her hand and stabbed at the salisbury steak hanging out in the middle of the plastic tray, almost causing it to slide up over the side. "Here, now," the older woman admonishes, snatching the fork away and producing a rounded table knife which she cuts the meat with. She then opened the carton of milk provided and sticks a straw in it while Ellen chases the bits of steak and gravy around her tray but says nothing.
The lady finally gets some of it to her mouth, chews rapturously and swallows, feeling the solid matter go down her esophagus and into her stomach. Ohh, that was wonderful. Only after she'd eaten her fill of salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and jello did she notice the beefy orderlies watching her like hawks. What, did they think she would leap off the bed and murder the nurse right then and there? There must be some mistake, surely. Perhaps her family would come claim her and take her home, wherever that was.
After lunch some more people appeared, this time to ask her questions and submit her to a battery of tests. They were intended to find out the extent of her amnesia, and it seems she remembered nothing of her life, nothing at all. She remembered how to speak, and that was about it.
The psychologists exchanged looks with each other, scribbled on their clipboards and left shaking their heads.
Then another man came, flashing a fake-friendly smile and chatted with her a while. He told her his name was Dr. West. "I want to show you some pictures, just to see if they jolt your mind into remembering. Do you mind?"
"No," she replies, but she sensed it wouldn't have made a difference, he was merely being polite. She destested Dr. West already.
He flipped one out of the small stack he had. It was a police photo of a lean, hardened man with long stringy hair and wearing a cocky sneer. She stared at it for a long while, searching with her eyes and mind, but there was nothing. Blank. She shook her head, deflated. He put another photo up, this one of a large surly individual in clown makeup, but after an initial twitch she didn't recognize him either. "How about this one? Surely this might help you," the man said, flipping up a picture of a highly-made-up middle-aged woman with a saucy grin. Ellen squinted at the picture biting her lower lip, but came up with no connection. She felt she should know the person, that they were important to her, but her mind was empty.
"Nothing," she whispers, tears flowing down her face. "These are my family, ain't they?"
"If you like," he answers coldly. "The family that slays together, stays together I suppose."
"What's that supposed to mean," demands the woman, growing incensed. "Where are they?"
"Miss Firefly," Dr. West begins, shutting his notebook. "It seems only fair for me to tell you, that you and your clan of miscreants are charged with the murder and/or kidnapping of over 75 persons, and possibly more to be revealed later."
"So...so you want me to remember everything so, what--so I'll confess?"
"Well, we would appreciate if you could shed some light on a lot of things."
She laughed, a bitter, hopeless laugh so unlike the cheerful, murderous giggling she was once known for. "What a fine predicament I'm in, yessirree. I can't recall a goddamned thing, I'm not anything, not a whole fucking person because I don't fucking know anything! Yet if I do gain my memory and my sanity back you'll fry me in the electric chair, izzat right? Or maybe if I'm a good little girl I'll get life in prison with no parole? Get the fuck outta my sight!"
A few minutes later...
"What is going on here," came the head doctor's voice roughly.
"Just asking the lady some questions, Dr Branigan," the man replied smoothly, standing abruptly. Dr. Branigan swipes the photos out of his hand and peers at them.
"This is NOT to be shown to the patient, she's at a critical point. I know Dobson sent you, so cut the bullshit. I will have you forcibly removed." He throws the pictures back at Dr. West.
Clenching his jaw the skinny, overly dressed psychiatrist departs swiftly. Branigan then turns to find his subject sobbing, her face in her hands. "I shoulda just died...why didn't I die? I'm trapped...like an animal in a cage...alone..."
"What makes you think you're alone," he asked softly, and she sensed that he was a stern man, but a fair one.
"He told me--my mother and father an' brothers are all dead...I'm a thief and a killer.."
Taking her now-bony hands in his own surgeon's hands he uncovers her battered face and makes her look at him. "I can already see, that the person who committed all those crimes is not the same one who woke up in my hospital. All we can do is work with what we have. Maybe this is a way to truly start anew? Don't give up hope, Vera-Ellen."
"I like Ellen," she says.
"All right, Ellen."
A few days later after much begging from their now infamous patient they decided to remove the dressing from her head and let her look at her own face. She'd been grazed by bullets in several places, and a bullet fragment had actually penetrated her skull. She'd been in a coma for nearly two months and the nicer nurses remarked she was a living miracle; the other nurses stayed away as if Ellen had the plague. After forcing herself to remain still while the doctor snipped away at the bands they fell away and a nurse held a hand mirror out to her. She took it in her left hand (still awkward as she was right-handed) and gazed at the reflection.
Her hair had been shaved to get at the wounds, the rest hacked to get it out of the way, and angry red formerly stitched gashes decorated her pate. Her face was still blotched, more gashes marring her youthful appearance and a permanent scar on her pouty lower lip. Good Lord, she was a monster! She tossed the mirror angrily to her lap, nostrils flaring. "You're still healing," Maria spoke up helpfully. "You look better every day."
Ah well, looks weren't everything, were they? Ellen stifled sobs.