"Miss Spade, you have a phone call!"
My head jerked abruptly from my shoulder where I had fallen into an uncomfortable sleep. A nurse behind me was smiling gaily and began to steer my wheelchair from its place by the window back over to the caged contraption they called a bed. She offered me a plastic phone attached by several yards of cord, and I stared at it apprehensively.
"Miss Spade?" I shook myself and took the phone from her hands. She stood with her arms crossed, watching me for a moment before it was clear that I wouldn't be saying anything with her in the room. "Very well," she sighed, and left. Waiting until I had heard the door click shut and was very much alone, I lifted the phone, which was shaking in my fingers, to my ear.
"Hello?" I rasped hoarsely. My throat was sore from allergies and sounded as if I was sixty years old. I heard a stifled sob on the other end of the line and recognized my mother's voice. I slumped back into my wheelchair, automatically casting my thoughts elsewhere.
"Good morning, Samantha" she quavered tearfully. After a pause, I realized I was expected to answer.
"Good morning, Ma," I replied.
"How are you feeling?" My mother took a brave stab at conversation
"Fine. You?"
"Oh, just fine. Getting over a cold, that's all."
"Well, it's that time of the year."
"Yes, it is," she replied enthusiastically. I fingered the cord blankly and picked at the Property of Winchester Psychiatric Facilities sticker which was stuck on the wall. "Your father's garden is blooming. Yesterday, I swore I saw a tomato plant just about to blossom. Mrs. Leonard said that he should enter it into the fair this summer. You should come by if you…feel…you know…up to it." I felt a pang of something grab at my insides and sat up in the chair.
"Ma, what is it you want?" I said more sharply than I'd intended. I heard the emotion build up behind her voice and was tempted just to hang up the phone and end all contact.
"Just…" She whispered in a trembling voice. "I mean, it will take as long as it takes, sweetheart. We're all…praying for you." I felt my heart pounding sickly and cringed at what they all must think of me as now. My throat constricted so that I couldn't speak. Finally, I heard her end of the line click and a conclusive dial tone blared into my ears. The nurse re-entered my room and crossed over to where I sat. She pried the phone from my stiff fingers and looked down at me curiously.
"How is your mother, Miss Spade?" She asked in a cheerfully neutral voice. "Is she doing well?" I swallowed the knot in my throat and blinked my stinging eyes.
"She's just getting over a cold," I managed to whisper. The nurse nodded and threw back the curtains to my room. A gloomy mix of post-rain mist and gray skies welcomed me.
"Seventy acres of farmland and two stables and not a soul on my floor bothers to ride those poor horses," she frowned sadly to occupy the silence. "Why don't you go for a ride, Miss Spade? I'm sure I could arrange it with Dr. Aldersyde." I looked away from the window. "Oh, you don't know how to ride, do you? Don't worry, the horses are as gentle as anything. They're therapy ponies, you know. Won't hurt a soul."
I felt a strange urge to hurl my pillow at her to silence the nasal voice which grated on my ears daily. "Is Dr. Aldersyde coming today?" I asked instead of the man who had been studying and analyzing me for the past few months. The nurse nodded before heading towards the clipboard she kept at the end of my bed.
"Any minute now, Miss Spade," she chirped. I prepared myself for the list of questions I was asked everyday to determine the state of my mental health. Clenching my teeth, I closed my eyes as she began.
"Have you felt any panic today?"
"No."
"Has anything caused you to resort to anger?"
"No."
"Is your digestive system functioning uncomfortably?"
"No."
"Have you had any thoughts of death today?"
"No."
"Is there anything today that you can't remember happening?"
"No."
"Memory faults?"
"No."
"Any fits or convulsions?"
"Just a couple." The nurse wrenched her head upwards, and I smiled weakly. The corners of her chapped lips twitched in annoyance. She finished checking off boxes on her tablet and smiled brightly before returning it to its place at my bed.
"Doctor Aldersyde will be in any minute." She finished coldly before exiting the room. I saw her rolling her eyes to another nurse outside my room before shuffling away.
The bitter amusement I felt earlier faded away into a sudden loneliness. I looked outside the window. Several horses grazed absently in the field adjacent to my room. Winchester, Virginia really was a beautiful place. Or it would be, were I not in an asylum.
My fingers traveled across my lap and below the seat of my wheelchair where I stored a small journal that I was instructed at the beginning of my session to write in. At first I wrote the least possible, but to my surprise, the words sort of fell out of me as my hands moved across the page. I turned to the last page I had written on and took out a pen, but just as I pressed the nib to the page, the door swung open and a thirty-something doctor with premature salt-and-pepper hair entered with a quick knock on the threshold.
"Good morning, Sam," he said in greeting. I shoved the journal back underneath my seat and sneezed as the allergies overcame me again. He offered me a tissue and I took it. This doctor, of the twenty so who had analyzed me, was the one, if one had to be chosen, that I disliked the least. If for any reason, because he called me "Sam," not "Miss Spade" or "Miss Samantha."
"Morning," I sighed, my eyes traveling outside again. He sat down across from me and watched my face with a quiet smile.
"Something on your mind, Sam?" I looked at him. It was the same question he'd been asking me for three months. And each time I'd answer him with the same response: "Nothing worth mentioning." Today, however, I stared back out the window and before I could stop myself, blurted out:
"I want to go home, Doctor." He paused in mild surprise and sighed, removing his glasses from his face.
"I know, Sam." I snorted and turned to face him, twirling my fingers along the sleeve of my sweater.
"Do you? Then why the hell am I shut up in this room? I haven't had one bloody … attack in six months, and yet I'm still stuck here. I just want to go home! I swear I won't do it again, I swear to God. I hate it here. I hate it…" My voice trailed off pathetically into silence. I didn't have to look up into his face to know what the answer. I sighed. "Haven't I made any progress, Doctor?"
He stirred from the position he had been in while he was listening to me and took my file from his clipboard. He flipped through it and I watched him with a tired anxiousness.
"I can't deny that the recovery you made to your latest collapse has been quite remarkable, and you are displaying promising signs of improvement," Doctor Aldersyde said, his voice hesitant. After a moment, he looked up and sighed at my intent face. "Sam, you have to understand: you are here because you've been experiencing reoccurring mental breakdowns for the past year and a half. That isn't something you can just fix with a syringe and a couple meetings with a shrink twice a year. This may be your chance to end all of this, Sam! Don't you see? Something in this last attack triggered your memory. There was something different than the others because you could remember it. You knew something had happened!"
I swallowed and continued to watch his face, more alive now than it had been in the past stolid months. He gripped my hands.
"Sam, I can't do this alone," he told me seriously. "The sooner you admit that there is something wrong, the closer you'll be to leaving this behind. I can help you, Sam. I swear to you, I will get you through this, but I need you to recognize that something in you needs to be fixed."
I shuddered, feeling very much like a delinquent and less and less sure of the difference between what he was saying and what I was thinking. He let go of my hands which were trembling and ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm not even supposed to be this far ahead of myself in your treatment. Six months is very early in a case like this. But…" He paused and watched me gravely. "If you promise me that the second this becomes too much for you, you will inform me and we can moderate your therapy, I am willing to try…to get you out of here as soon as I can." My heart thumped rapidly in my chest and I jerked suddenly.
"I swear," I breathed. We sat there, doctor and patient, for a good minute before either of us said a word. He stood and sighed, sliding his hands into his pockets.
"It won't be easy," he told me weakly. I rose from my chair, a little queasy from the medicine I had been regularly administered. "You can't underestimate this, Sam."
"I understand," I responded quietly. He took up his clipboard decisively and crossed the room to leave.
"We'll begin tomorrow," he said, his hands on the doorknob. "Early. 7:30, or so. I'll have one of my nurses come for you. I think your personal aid could use a …vacation." A shadow of a smile showed through on my lips and he returned the gesture. I heard the door close and sank back down into my chair. Whatever it was he wanted, I would give him. All of the self-pity and disgust I had wallowed in for the past six months suddenly gave way to a sharp clarity that filled my mind. I was ready.