Section Two-The Memories
No, no, I am dreaming, I am dreaming, wake up, wake up. I am sitting in a hospital bed, the doctor is trying to shove a needle into my arm. I am thrashing, I am in the dreaded place, the hospital, no, not the hospital, it is different than a hospital, it is a sanatorium. What am I doing in a sanatorium? I am sane, aren't I? I am healthy, aren't I? So why am I here?
"We haven't the money for an actual hospital, Emilee." That is the sound of my mother's voice
"Ten seconds" I hear the doctor on the other side of me, holding the needle in.
Ten seconds for what? I wonder, for what? What are they doing to me that is going to take ten seconds? Are they going to kill me? This is a sanatorium, a place where people die, are these my final seconds of life?
I blank out. I have no idea what is happening, but I must be dreaming. I cannot see, the doctors think I am asleep, but I am not. I cannot wake up yet I can hear and feel everything. Is that a knife near my head?
I scream.
"Wake her." I hear someone other than a doctor, perhaps an assistant?
I am up in a flash, I begin crying. I tell the doctors all of what happened to me, and how frightening it was. The next thing I hear is,
"Sedate her"
Why are they sedating me? Why are they wrapping a white jacket around me? I know that I have always been a little different, but I heard that that was what made all humans unique. I am being dropped into a padded cell, I do not have the slightest idea of what is going on.
I wake up. I am relieved to find that this was just a dream. A dream reminiscent of the stories that I heard about asylums and sanatoriums at the University; it was all just a dream. I slip back into sleep, and try to think about unicorns or sheep, something to keep my mind occupied.
The dream returns to the padded cell. A doctor comes to take me into another room, all I want to do is sit and think and forget all the bad memories of the medicine, the anesthesia. He carries me away anyway. I thrash, kick, and scream. He puts me into a straitjacket and sits me in a chair that is just outside the office.
The doctor steps out of his office, which appears to be a pale white color, just like the rest of this place. He begins to look up my skirt. I have heard of these doctors, the ones that get kicks out of raping the female patients. A rat skitters past my skirt and I look down to touch it, the guard who dropped me off slaps my hand away.
The doctor appears to be done, he stands up and walks off, I still must be sedated for I do nothing but sit there. Yes, sit there, and stare into an empty, blank space.
I wake again, thanking God that I am not actually there. I look at the clock in my room and see that it is four o' clock. Here I went with the same routine. The terrible truth was, I was getting used to it. I stepped out of bed and went into her kitchen to get breakfast for the both of us. As I step into the empty hallway, a rat goes by my feet, bringing back all of the terrible dreams.
I scream despite myself. This was one scream that I had never uttered before, one that I had never heard. It was the sound of sheer terror. I clapped a hand to my mouth to muffle the sound and not wake my sister, it is too late, and she is rushing down the hallway.
"What is wrong, dearie?" she asks in that sweet voice of hers.
"R-rat…" I say
"It is only a little mousie," she says.
I sit in the corner and rock back and forth, clutching my knees to my breast. I am singing a song I had heard long ago, I cannot remember where, but just a place, long ago…
What do you do with a scurvy pirate, take out his brain and then re-wire it, what do you do with a scurvy pirate, make him raving MAD!
Where had a heard that song? It was sung to me many, many years ago,who had thought it up? Then it comes to me, I had heard it in the sanatorium, I had had a lobotomy, and the girl in the recovery bed next to me sang it all of the time. She called me—and herself, for that matter—pirates. It was all coming back in the forms of memories. I had to mask it. I had to. There was no way I would ever go back there again, ever! It had more rats than an abandoned kitchen, and it was crawling with disease. I had to stay here.
But it was too late. I heard my sister talking to someone in the other room. I knew it was her voice, I knew the other voice was one of someone official, a doctor. I knew that I was going to be carried off again, forced to breathe gas and be put to sleep. Next thing I know, I have a straitjacket around me.
I thrash and kick as I am carried out of the safe heaven that I came to know as my sister's house. The house I loved. The house that was new, the one with no bad memories.
I am placed into a truck and look out the window as I am carted off. I see all of the people just staring at me, some with sadness in their eyes, others with the emotion of pure hate. Some who look at me as if I were a monster, I am a monster, there is no hiding it anymore, I am a monster.
We pull up to what I have concluded was an asylum, a crazy house. But it does not look like the one that I have seen in my memories. It is bigger, perhaps? Maybe they got some add-ons? I take a closer look, I realize that this is indeed not the one that I was in while those memories plagued me. The carriage takes me past the sign, which clearly reads-
BETHLEM ROYAL HOSPITAL
It was obvious that I was not just mildly ill anymore; I could picture myself, being tied to a bed for the rest of my life, living in madness. I go in, and watch as terror engulfs me.
I am first sat in an office that looks like it has not been used in years, then a doctor comes to me and begins to ask me questions, hard questions.
"How long have you been insane?"
"I have no idea"
"Why are you insane?"
"Little bunny fufu, walking through the forest, picking up the beetle bugs and kissed them on the head!" I giggled at the joy of my singing.
They put me back in the wheel chair, or whatever it was, and rolled me down the long hallway. I looked at a sign just above the intersection where two hallways came together, I read it carefully, taking in every word.
LADIES
I was certainly not going to the bathroom. This must be the way they categorized the vast number of inmates they had in here, by gender, gender and nothing more. Then we came to another intersection, there was another sign, bolted to the wall this time, that read,
INCURABLE
Was I really that bad? I had no idea that there were incurable crazies. Or, perhaps, I will get a room all to myself, because that is just how awful I am. I picture myself being in the circus. In a sideshow. As the worlds only human that could not be cured of insanity.
I see us turn another corner and go down a large ramp. The ramp looked like a body tunnel. Where had I seen a body tunnel before?
"Girls, we are going to visit your cousin today. He is very sick in the hospital, he needs special care."
I see us stepping down a hallway into his room, he is weak and very ill-looking. He looks like a mummy, perhaps a zombie, who has risen from the dead to find his prey. I know he is not, for he greets me with a big smile, despite his hollowed cheeks, bony arms, and paper-white skin.
He looks at me, his big grin widening. He looks ornery, like he is playing a fun game of hide and seeks. The first words he says are enough to make me run away from that room forever, without the intention of ever going back.
"I shall die here; there is nothing the doctors can do."
This is what makes me run away. Further, further, further down the hall until I come to a stopping point, I am safe. There is a door in front of me, is it a freezer? Maybe I have run to the kitchen, where there is no sickness, only food and warmth. I decide to open the door.
Peeking inside, I see not meat being stored, but human bodies! What in the world would the doctor want with dead bodies that had blood billowing out of their mouths? I slam the door shut and make a mad dash down the hall, turn a corner, and run down three flights of steps.
At the end of these steps is another long hallway, it is unlit, I believe it is because I am possibly in the basement. I grab a candle out of one of the brass rings on the wall and walk down the long tunnel, which slopes down very severely for a passageway, until I step on something. It is a human head, blood coming out of the mouth. I run out, screaming. My mother takes me in her arms.
I am dropped into my cell. It looks like a big white box; a big white box with a barred, gothic-style, window. I see three more girls sitting in each corner, they stare at me like I am a new toy. One of them, who had lovely blonde hair and dark brown eyes, gets up on all fours and reaches up to touch me, then squirms back, returning to her corner.
I go to sit near one of the other girls, but she also crawls away. I turn my head to the corner across from me, the girl in that corner's eyes are wide open, staring emptily at the ceiling. I decide to follow the suit of the other girls and I crawl over to her and touch her face, her skin is so cold, is she that frightened of me? Did I create that bad of a panic? I turn her over so that she is facing me. Her lips are blue, she is dead; dead from what? I am unsure. But I cannot handle it. I let out a blood-curdling scream of terror, of death.
Footsteps are racing down the hallway, coming for me; they are going to kill me! I just know it! I hide in the corner with the dead girl in my arms.
The doctor bursts through the door, the expression on his face calm, his big blue eyes expressionless. He turns to me, who is cowering in the corner, curled over the dead girl. He leans toward me, he smells good, like a flower, I picture a blue flower to hide my fear. He simply picks up the girl and turns to the door, he walks out.
"I guessed we used too much" he says, out in the hallway.
Too much of what? Instead of molesting us, are they looking for other ways to torture us? I remember the look on that girls eyes, she was scared when she died, terrified, in fact; too scared to breathe. One of the girls, the one with the blonde hair, taps my shoulder.
"He-hello, who are you?" her voice is quiet and timid, she is a mouse.
"I am Emilee" I whisper back
"Do you know what you were diagnosed with?" she asks
"No, I do not. All I know is that I am incurable."
"W-why did-uh-you, Emilee, come here?"
"My dead father abused me; I took refuge with my sister, a re-wired brain…"
"You had a lobotomy?"
"Perhaps, I do not remember"
"We have tea and recreation in an hour, thank goodness they do not know about the missing brain part. Meet me in the tea room in an hour."
I did as she told me and went to the tea room precisely an hour after she told me while we were having free time outside of our cells. I walked down the series of long, dark hallways until I found the tea room, marked with chipping paint and a sign above the door frame. She sat at a table encircled by five other girls, none of which I had ever seen. The table was lovely, despite the horrid room, and the tea cups and saucers were made of beautiful white porcelain and were rimmed with gold. Each cup had a small, soft pink heart on the handle, in which was dodged by the pinky finger. I stepped forward and took a seat at one of the dark, wooden chairs with rose-colored fabric and a daisy carved into the top of it.
As I was sitting down, the girl whom I met in my cell plunked down a cup in front of me. Was that pomegranate I smelled? My favorite tea? The one that I had grown accustomed to over the past few years? How did they know?
"Greetings" the girl said, "I, even though I am part of your cell, have not yet introduced myself, I am Carminedi."
Carminedi, what an unusual name, but how beautiful. I continued to listen to what she was saying. She seemed to be the leader of this group, much unlike the girl I saw in the cell. She was so confident, so, so sane. Why was she here, and not at her home?
"I have to introduce you girls to our new member, Emilee. It is Emilee, right?" she asked.
"Yes, I am Emilee, delighted to be here."
The girls at the table just looked at me as though I were an animal at the zoo, a fiend. Was it my ill-kept hair, my scarred arms and legs, my hollow cheeks, pale skin? Were they just delighted to find a new friend? I was unsure how to react to this; I sat still and continued listening.
"I was wondering if we would all like to tell her our stories." Carminedi asked
"A charming idea, Carmine." One of the other girls chimed in.
This girl had bright red hair and big green eyes. She looked like an actress or a singer, not an insane person. Her hair looked silky enough to sleep in, her eyes deep, undiscovered forests. She was flawless despite the dark sleep that encircled her eyes, making them appear hollow and sickly, but yet mysterious and beautiful.
"Emilee, your name is, right?" she asked.
"Yes, it is Emilee."
"Do you have a last name?"
"No, I'm just Emilee. I am not entirely sure of my last name at the moment."
"Alright then, Emilee, just Emilee, I am Samantha." She held out a hand, I took it and shook it lightly, "would you care to hear how I got here?"
"Only if you wish to tell, I do not want to push anything that you do not remember."
I look into her hollow eyes. They are so full of sadness, I wish to see her happy, I want those eyes to smile. I hear the other girls in the wing lining up to go back to the cells, we all leave our tea and head out of the door. I turn my head to hear a screaming sound at the end of the hall; a girl is having a breakdown. I see the same doctor who carried the dead girl out of my arms come to the group that is standing around the girl, on the floor, bawling. He takes her by the arm and takes her down the hall, others follow. I cannot control my curiosity; I creep along the floor with the crowd.
He is shooing them all away. I stay to watch. When I feel as if I am in sight, I hide behind a big, heavy open door. I see him walk into another room with the girl and close the door. I walk up to the door and peek inside; he is sitting at a chair, the other girl sitting across from him. He sits her on a chair that appears to be one of a dentist, and gets a needle out from a drawer. He looks at the needle for a moment, and then shakes his head. There is something wrong with it, and he is going to fix it. He walks to the other end of the room and gets a machine that looks a lot like a robot in one of the illustrations in one of the books I read. He turns on the robot, then, ever so slightly, he places it over the girl's mouth, she begins to laugh uncontrollably, then he, just as carefully as the gas, injects the needle into the girl's neck. She stops moving. I move behind the door where I was hiding previously when I saw him turn to open the door.
He looks down the hallway, the girl lying asleep in his arms. He calls down the hall to one of the doctors. The doctor runs up to him, a look of surprise on his face.
"What is the matter, sir?" the doctor asks.
"We, unfortunately, need to find a grave for the poor dear, the medicine was too much. I tried to fix her, I really did. I guess even the most educated cannot treat the 'untreatable'" replied the doctor with the girl in his arms.
"Very well, then, a grave for the miss. It seems we are losing many to this new medication."
"I shall do more tests on the mixture."
They walk off. I just saw a doctor take a human life. Nothing is safe in the wing that I am in, nothing! I make a mad dash for my cell so I can be safe with my room mates again.
