Sarah's dreams are the one place the truth always finds her. This is the reason for her poor sleep, despite the melatonin, the clonidine, the valium, the trazodone, the off-label Ambien.
Treatment resistant insomnia, Dr. Prevarant scrawls in her chart. Over the years, Sarah has become an expert at reading upside down. She does not correct the doctor's mistaken assumption; his erroneous diagnosis. It's not insomnia if I choose to be awake.
"How did you sleep?" the nurse always asks.
"Fine," she always lies, because she has no wish for it to be anything other than it is. She has to be able to wake up. She cannot let them take that away from her.
Sometimes she will drift off in the dayroom, or during lunch, sitting up in her chair. Sam, or some other white-clad orderly, will gently shake her awake and tell her she is not supposed to sleep except in her room. When it happens, she smiles and says, "I know" and they tell her not to do it again. Those stolen snatches of sleep are enough without being too much. She rests, but not so much that she falls too deeply into that shadow realm.
She walks through the door, but never reaches the crib.
On visiting day, someone brings a baby into the dayroom. The infant is at the age where children first gain their legs and toddle a few steps before tipping over and resorting to their comfortable crawl once again. Sarah notices the baby straight away, a boy by the looks of his blue romper with colorful train car appliques on the legs. She sees him, his fine blonde curls tickling his ears, and she watches as his mother sets him down carefully. He stands with his chubby hands gripping the edge of a chair, but he laughs up at his mother, and at his older brother, who he has been brought to visit here.
With that laugh, the baby releases his hold on the chair's edge, taking a few tentative steps towards Sarah. His adventure is short-lived, however, and he falls down, landing on his hands and knees, more startled than hurt. He stares up at Sarah and scrunches his face into a look of disbelief, just before he begins to wail. Even when his mother gathers him up and shushes him with her comforting words spoken in the softest and sweetest of voices, he wails, great tears wetting his inflamed cheeks.
Sarah sees this, this scene so typical of babies the world over, and it pierces the very center of her. She stares at the baby cradled in loving arms, crying even as his mother pats his back in that soothing way that all mothers seem to possess, and Sarah's mouth falls open.
And she screams.
She screams and screams and screams, until everyone in the room stops and stares and rises from their seats, backing away from her in fear. Until Sam rushes in and takes her away from the visitors and the baby. Until he wrestles her down the bright, clean hallway toward her bright, clean room. Until he presses the call button and tells the answering nurse that he needs assistance. Until Dr. Prevarant is paged and an injection is ordered. Until two other orderlies help Sam hold her down on her bed and the nurse jabs her in the hip and depresses the plunger on a syringe.
Until she sleeps.
Her screams die in her own ears and her eyelids are weighted like lead. Then, there is realization.
Oh, God, this is sleep. I'm asleep. They've made me sleep.
Wake up wake up wake up!
She screams at herself to wake up but she can't. They've given her something, something strong. She can't fight her way through it. It's too heavy. It's seeping through her veins, through her brain. She can feel it, sticky and sluggish and far too powerful. She's coated in a layer of tar and she's stuck in place.
Damn it!
She's in a familiar hallway, floral wallpaper adorning the walls above the chair rail. Karen always did love florals. Peonies, their outer petals a blushing pink with throats of a deeper shade, nearly scarlet, their curling stems and leaves intertwining in a way they never do in nature. Sarah looks away from the unnatural peonies and stares down at her feet. If she can only turn and move to the left, she'll walk down that hallway and through her bedroom door. There, she can collapse in her own bed and draw her quilt over her, hugging Lancelot until this poison wears off and she is once again safely conscious.
If she can only turn…
But it's as if she's paralyzed.
She can feel the door at her back, can tell that it's open, and the quiet from the room beyond is like a living thing, with weight and movement and intent. It wants her. It beckons. It slithers around her, writhing up her back and making the hairs on her neck prickle painfully, like tiny shards of glass nicking her skin.
Like the tiny shards from a shattered crystal orb.
"I'm not going in there," she calls out. She is conscious of a fluttering in her chest; her heart. "This is just a dream. There's no reason why I have to go in there!" She says it out loud, hoping that will convince whoever it is (or whatever it is) that wants her to turn and enter the room; whoever it is that wants her to walk toward the crib.
She says it out loud, hoping to convince herself.
"This is just a dream."
She closes her eyes tight, and when she opens them again, she's in the doorway. It makes her head feel light. She's sure she didn't turn to the door. How, then?
Lightning makes the windows blaze for a second and outlines the crib in brief, flickering brightness. She takes a step just as a clap of thunder follows the lightning.
"No, no, no," she begs and takes another step. Her tremulous pleading is the only sound in the room, save the rain pelting against the glass. Her feet move without her permission and she squeezes her eyes shut, not wanting to see the crib, or what's in it. Or what's not in it.
Dr. Prevarant changes her meds again.
He tells her at their next session. It takes Sarah a moment to understand him. She feels as if she's still half in a dream. When she manages to move her sluggish tongue enough to ask why, he doesn't answer her outright. Instead, he quietly asks her to do something she doesn't want to do.
"Sarah, tell me about the baby."
Forget about the baby.
Sarah flinches. "What baby?" Her eyelids are heavy and her head feels as if it's been stuffed with cotton.
The babe with the power, she hears, and this time, the voice isn't coming from inside her head. Rather, it seems to originate from somewhere behind her.
"Shut up," she slurs angrily, looking over her shoulder. There's no one there.
"Sarah, who are you talking to?" the doctor asks. His tone is nonconfrontational; conversational, even, like a friend who is genuinely interested. Sarah laughs. She knows better. "Do you see someone else in the room with us?" Dr. Prevarant presses.
She rubs her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut. "What did you give me?"
He ignores her question and asks one of his own. "Are you having visual hallucinations again?"
"What did you give me?" she shrieks, pounding her fists on the edge of the doctor's desk. Her hands feel as though they are made of modeling clay.
"Sarah, please calm down."
Sam arrives in what seems like half a second, sticking his head through the door (the door is open, partially. Always open. Dr. Prevarant would never put a patient and a closed door between himself and safety). The orderly asks if the doctor needs help.
"No, Sam, thank you," Dr. Prevarant replies, and his voice takes on a note of authority when he continues, all pretense of conversation and friendship gone in an instant. J. Prevarant, M.D. is a master at changing masks, far better at it than Sarah is herself. "I don't need any help, do I Sarah? Because you are going to calm down and talk to me in a civilized way, isn't that right?"
The rebellious teen inside of Sarah wants to sweep her arm across Dr. Prevarant's desk and knock everything there to the floor: his open laptop with its noisy fan, the charts neatly stacked in a box marked "out", the small clock with a plaque on its base engraved with what she assumes is his med school graduation year, and the ornate silver cup which holds the doctor's pens.
How's that for civilized, Dr. Feelgood?
But she doesn't knock her psychiatrist's things to the floor, partly because she has used what little energy she has in her small display of temper, and partly because during her time in bright, colorless spaces such as these, she has learned not to buy herself unnecessary trouble. Instead, she nods weakly and when Dr. Prevarant frowns a little and leans forward to look at her expectantly, she mumbles, "That's right."
She nearly chokes on the words but manages them to the doctor's satisfaction.
"Good," he says, nodding curtly. "So, we have no problem here, Sam. Thank you anyway."
"Yes sir," the orderly replies before walking away. The door remains open.
After Sam leaves, Dr. Prevarant leans back in his chair and stares at Sarah across his desk. She keeps her expression neutral, but she is waiting for a tell-tale smirk or some sort of mischievous glint in his changeable eyes; something to tell her he's reveling in his control.
Because he should be. It's in keeping with his character, and no one can hide their true nature forever.
But the doctor gives no hint that he is anything other than a competent psychiatrist, meeting with his patient. He is still staring at her, saying nothing. It begins to make her uncomfortable.
"What?" she finally asks.
"I'm waiting."
So am I. "Waiting for what?"
"For you to tell me about the baby."
Sarah's shoulders sink and she looks away from Dr. Prevarant, settling her eyes on his desk instead. "Can we… Can we not talk about the baby right now?" She resists the urge to scratch at the sore on her cheek. It has nearly healed.
"Sarah, eventually we will have to talk about the baby. You know that, don't you?"
"I…" She closes her eyes, allowing the images of a hundred babies to fill her mind. The Gerber baby. The baby on that fabric softener commercial. A set of twin babies she saw once at the mall. The baby her third grade teacher had delivered just before Thanksgiving when Sarah was eight, resulting in her class being taught by a substitute for three months. Babies in Romanian orphanages, their tear-stained faces featured on exposés by Dateline and 60 Minutes. Babies she'd watched for neighbors when they'd had reservations at fancy restaurants, to the tune of five bucks an hour. Babies in that Family Circle magazine (her stepmother was a subscriber).
Her baby brother.
Sarah stops there, her eyes popping open.
"I know, Dr. Prevarant," she finally says, "but not today. I… I can't even think straight today. Whatever you gave me…"
"Alright, then," he acquiesces. "We can talk more about it when the effects of your injection wear off."
Sarah nods gratefully. That's today's mask: the meek and grateful girl.
"But Sarah," the doctor warns before the girl can congratulate herself too much on her successful manipulation, "your birthday is not far off."
Sarah blinks once, twice, then slowly draws her brows together. "So?"
"So, you'll be eighteen."
She smiles somewhat drunkenly and shrugs. "I know. It's what comes after seventeen."
"You'll be an adult then, in the eyes of the state."
"Okay."
"Sarah, Brooksong is a pediatric facility. We're going to have to transfer you."
Dr. Prevarant's words hit her like a powerful wave of frigid water as understanding dawns and a sense of apprehension takes root. Of course this is a pediatric facility, she has always known that. And of course, she will become an adult and will no longer be suitable for continued residence at Brooksong. It's no secret, for God's sake. But somehow, in her mind, this hasn't meant she will need to worry about leaving one institution for another. She's always thought it meant she'd be free. She's been looking forward to her birthday, for the first time in a long time. This birthday will actually mean something.
She will be eighteen, and an adult, and…
Free.
Free of hospitals, and the control of others. Free to shape her own life as she chooses. Free to find a psychiatrist who isn't tall and lean and blonde with blue-green-hazel eyes. Free to move far away from her father and Karen and their floral wallpaper and…
"I had hoped to have you stabilized before you turned eighteen," the doctor says, drawing her attention, "so that you could potentially be managed as an outpatient…"
"Yes," Sarah agrees in a rush, suddenly more alert. "That's what I want, too, Dr. Prevarant."
"…but your… condition seems to be deteriorating lately. It's refractory to all the typical treatments…"
"Re… Refractory?" She tries the word out. It sounds like something from a physics textbook, she decides. He must have made it up.
"…and unless I can find a better alternative, I won't be able to even recommend discharge, I'm afraid. We'll have to look into transfer to St. Mary's."
St. Mary's.
Dr. Prevarant might as well say he's sending her to Attica or Riker's Island. Hell, he could tell her he's sending her to the Overlook Hotel to be cared for by a man named Jack who likes carrying an ax around, and it wouldn't be any more frightening than what he's saying now.
"But Dr. Prevarant," Sarah tries. She wants to tell him she's not that bad, really, and that she doesn't need to be locked away. She wants to tell him she knows the difference between fantasy and fact. She wants to tell him she only needs just a very little bit of sleep, it's fine, and she won't try to hurt herself, if you don't count scratching off scabs every now and then. She wants to tell him that it would be stupid to send her to St. Mary's (other kids on the ward talk about St. Mary's the way they used to talk about the bogeyman or monsters under their bed when they were too young to understand what is really scary in this world).
She wants to tell him, but she doesn't, because their time is up, and Sam is back to escort her to music therapy and she is looking at Dr. Prevarant's silver pen holder cup thing again, and this time, she notices that the fancy carvings on it aren't random or abstract designs but gargoyles or… goblins?
When she was young, she was scared of the bogeyman, and then monsters under her bed, and then goblins who skittered on the periphery of her vision and made sheets move from underneath when no one else was there to see. In the dark, her imaginings had stolen her breath. She can laugh at such cowardice now.
Because now, Sarah knows what is really scary in this world isn't some imaginary monster who lives in closets or under beds, but the real monster who lives inside of her.