Chapter Seventeen
Meg.
The moment Erik left the room that was to be mine for the next God knew how long, I found the emotions that I had been struggling to hold at bay came crashing over me like a wave. The journey to Kirkbride had been awful, with my stomach and bowels threatening to turn to water at any moment. I had never been more grateful to see a restroom in my life when Dr Lockwood gestured to the one off his office.
Erik's coat had no sooner whipped around the corner out of the bedroom than I had lost control of my legs and sunk down onto the bed.
"Put your head right down, Miss Giry," Dr Lockwood was at my side in an instant, his hand pushing my head between my knees. "Take some deep breaths."
I did not believe that I was going to faint, but took advantage of my face being hidden to let the terrified tears drip onto my skirt. When I wiped my eyes and lifted my head, I saw something I had not noticed when I first entered this room. There was a rectangular window in the wooden door, and that window had bars in it, like that of a prison cell. Lockwood followed my gaze.
"The nurses check on the patients during the night. Glass reflects the lanterns, so we have bars instead." He wrapped his fingers around my wrist, opening his pocket watch with his other hand, and I realised that he was measuring my pulse. "Keep up those deep breaths."
After several minutes, he smiled at me.
"We need to get you processed. Let's get on with it, shall we? Then you can get settled."
I followed him, because I had no choice. Horror and despair were weighing down on my shoulders and I felt like all the fight had done out of me. Lockwood led me out of the room, down the stairs, through the brightly-lit lobby. I made sure to keep my wits about me as we walked through the building, mapping it in my head and looking for ways to escape. We entered a far more utilitarian area than I had seen thus far, where a red-haired woman in a pristine white uniform and cap was waiting.
"This is Nurse Reardon," Lockwood told me. "She'll be taking your particulars." He reached into his picket, took out a diary and opened it. "You and I have an appointment tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, Miss Giry. I will see you then. Do be a good girl, won't you?"
And with that, he was gone. I watched him leave, simmering with fear and anger.
Nurse Reardon was more direct: "Right, clothes off."
"What?" I stared at this stranger.
"It is part of the process, take off your clothes. You will be weighed and measured and then you will be washed and given your uniform. Take your clothes off now, or I will have them taken from you."
I glanced around the room. It appeared to be a communal bathroom, with six bathtubs along the cream tiled walls, a tin bucket of water next to the tub nearest me, and a huge set of metal scales in front of me. A door opposite me opened and two women entered, both in burgundy red dressed with long sleeves and empire waistlines, covered by light grey aprons. One carried a long measuring stick and was gazing into space, and the other held a clipboard and pencil and gave me a reassuring smile. I seriously considered refusing to undress, making a fuss, making it known that I was not a weak female who would be bullied by egotistical women clinging to any scrap of authority they could. But if I co-operated, than this Nurse Reardon and those of her ilk would have no excuse to pick on my further.
I removed my clothes as far as my drawers and waiting for further instructions.
"Those too," Reardon ordered.
"No, I don't think so."
"You'll regret it." The nurse glared at me, and I glared back. She held my eye for a moment, then shrugged. "On your own head be it, you have been warned. State your full name."
"Marguerite Evangeline Giry." I crossed my arms over my breasts, and saw the woman with the clipboard writing it down.
"Date of birth?"
"Twenty-second of October, 1877."
"Age?"
I rolled my eyes. "Twenty-three."
"Stand on the scales with your hands by your sides, chin up."
I did as I was told, watching as Reardon took the measuring stick from the woman with the vacant expression, who did not seem to notice its absence. Reardon adjusted something on the scales, held the measuring stick up to my side, and began calling out my statistics to the clipboard woman.
"Weight: one hundred and three pounds. Height: exactly five feet. Step down." I obeyed, and she began circling me. "Hair: blonde. Eyes: brown. Distinguishing features: two large scars on the back, one smaller scar on the upper right arm. Some malformation of the feet."
I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent myself from telling her that if she had been dancing for twenty years, her feet would be malformed too.
"Into the tub," Reardon gestured to it with the measuring stick. I stepped into it, surprised to find it empty, but one of the women had given her clipboard to the nurse and was getting onto a stool, the bucket of water in her hands.
"I'm sorry about this," she said, and tipped it over my head.
I swore as the icy liquid hit me, inhaled in shock and lifted my hands to wipe my hair out of my eyes, only to find that the other woman had snapped out of her trance-like state and was grinning as she emptied a second bucket of cold water over me.
Nurse Reardon chuckled, taking a thin cotton towel from a rail and tossing it to me.
"I did tell you to take everything off," she gestured to my wet drawers, clinging to my legs. "Maybe next time I tell you to do something, Giry, you will be obedient. Every person here will have a reason for what they ask of you, and we do not tolerate defiance. Brown, take Giry to get her uniform. You'd better include dry underwear as well. Glass, go back to the common room."
Glass, it transpired, was the woman who had been looking so distracted, while Brown was the woman who had been taking down my statistics on the clipboard. She gave me a sympathetic smile as I wrapped the towel around myself, thankful that it was long enough to conceal my modesty, and led me through the door she and Glass had entered by. This was a room with wooden benches down the centre, cubby holes along one wall and pegs along the other, like a changing room at the swimming baths.
"My name is Nell Brown," my guide told me.
"Meg Giry," I replied, and saw her eyes fall to the drenched bandages around my wrists.
"When you're dressed I'll take you to the infirmary so that Nurse Ricci can change those for you."
I felt my cheeks fill with heat, ashamed that my weakness was so visible, and looked bacj at Nell Brown, trying to find some physical reason for her admittance to the Kirkbride Psychiatric Hospital, but nothing stood out. She was two or three inches taller than me, her skin white but a little more tanned than my European pallor. She had eyes and hair the same pale brown colour, and a slightly anxious expression.
Her hair was loose and cut into a fringe, or bangs, that had grown slightly too long.
"This place is a maze," I murmured.
"You'll get used to it," Nell told me. "There is a map in the drawer of your nightstand. Do you have a roommate, or did they put you in 2G?"
"They put me in 2G. Dr Lockwood said that I was lucky that it was vacant."
"At least you won't have to listen to anyone snoring."
"Do you have a roommate?"
"Yes, Adele Scatcherd and I share 3A."
Nell led me through a door into a huge space, full of steam, and the scent alone told me that this was the laundry. More women in the burgundy and grey—patients, I realised—were working at huge tubs of hot water and detergent, two nurses in their white uniforms and caps glowing out of the billowing steam like fairies in a fog. I followed Nell through the overwhelming clouds to yet another door, feeling the wet tiles becoming threadbare carpet under the soles of my bare feet, into a side room that held more rows of the burgundy dresses. It only added to the impression I had gained from the outside of the building that Kirkbride and everything in it belonged to an earlier era; surely this style had not been fashionable for the past century.
"Now then," Nell took a measuring tape from a drawer and wrapped it around my bust, then went through the dresses to find some in an appropriate size.
By the time Nell was showing me to the infirmary, I too was in one of the burgundy dresses, a grey apron that buttoned at the back instead of having strings, and clean, dry underwear.
Laundry was done on a rota basis, I learned, with each patient washing her clothes on a specific day depending on which room she slept in. I was carrying another two dresses and aprons, along with three chunky grey cardigans, more grey drawers and black woollen stockings. In spite of the fresh clothes, my hair was still wet and I was still trembling.
"Are you alright, Miss Giry?"
"Call me Meg. I hate medical surroundings and people, I always have. Coming here is my worst nightmare brought to life."
Nell gave me a small smile. "None of us are here by choice. You'll find your own way of managing day to day."
In the infirmary, which looked more like a traditional hospital ward than any of the rooms I had seen in Kirkbride thus far, I averted my eyes as another nurse changed my bandages. Nell accompanied me back to my new room, and I wished that she would leave me so that I could sob out my feelings in private. Instead, Nell helped me put the clothes away and then informed me that it was time for lunch.
"I'm really not hungry."
"Meals are at set times, if you don't eat now, then you won't get another opportunity until six o'clock this evening."
There was some small comfort in knowing that Kirkbride ran on a strict routine; I had been living by routines for so much of my life that it made me feel like I had some measure of control in this strange place. I also tried to draw comfort from the fact that Kirkbride seemed so much like a hotel for the most part, all dark polished wood and cream walls. Even the dining room was brightly lit and welcoming, with two rows of tables running the length of the room with benches on either side.
My heart faltered in my chest as I looked for the first time at the rest of the women I would be living with for the foreseeable future. I had tried to persuade myself that it would be like living with the ballerinas back at the Paris Opera House, but I could tell immediately that this was going to be an experience unlike anything else in my life. There were about forty women in the burgundy and grey uniforms, but they seemed to be the only similarity between them. They were all of different ages, ethnicities, shapes and sizes, talking loudly.
There was a top table spanning with width of the room for the nursing staff, but I did not see Lockwood or any other doctor; presumably the men ate elsewhere.
"You sit here, Meg," Nell gestured to a spot close to the end of the bench. As Nell slid in beside me, I looked at my fellow dining companions. On my other side was a woman who looked so frail that I was scared she might expire right at the table. Her cheeks were sunken, her long blonde hair hanging greasy, thin and lank, her skin so pale that she might have blended in with the wall behind her.
"Ladies, this is Meg Giry," Nell told the others at the table. "Meg, beside you is Alice Hattersley. This is Sally Caldwell, and Annabella Lawrence. We have to be quiet now."
Both women were older than me, Sally with neat hair beginning to turn from brown to grey, who was sitting up very straight and nodded to me politely. Annabella Lawrence was closer to my own age, a round-faced, plump woman with dark red curls, and fingernails that had been bitten down as badly as mine. The chatter faded away, and we sat in silence while a group of kitchen staff moved up and down the rows of tables, dishing out bowls of tomato soup and brown bread rolls. I blinked in surprise, and realised that I was expecting some kind of gruel, like something out of Oliver Twist.
The nurse in the middle of the top table stood up and addressed us like a priest before a congregation.
"For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful."
The responding "Amen" rippled through the room, and encouraged by the steam rising from my soup, I picked up my spoon. Nell tapped me on the wrist.
"Wait," she murmured.
"What?" I looked at the women nearest me to see that Nell, Sally and Annabella were staring at the top table. The moment all of the nurses were looking elsewhere, Nell whispered:
"Now."
With the precision of a highly choreographed ballet, Nell reached across me and picked up Alice's bread roll, tearing it in two and shoving and half into my lap. At the same time, Annabella took Alice's soul bowl, and poured most if the soup between her bowl and Sally's. It was all so well-practiced that in only a matter of seconds, the bowl was back in front of Alice, two-thirds depleted, and the other women were spooning up their soup.
"What just happened?" I asked the universe at large. Alice smiled at me.
"I can't handle much food. I'm getting 'better'—" she made quotation marks with her fingers, "—but a portion like yours is too much for me, so the girls help me out. Nell, Sally and Annabella give me a slightly larger portion every day. I hate having to eat it, but they say that if I don't try then they won't keep helping me. They'll let Nurse Barber and Dr Huntingdon force-feed me again." She shuddered. "It's ridiculous. Huntingdon wants me to become practically obese, I'm already getting so fat!"
She kept her voice low, but the distress in it could not be concealed, and my heart broke for her. It was a rhetoric I had heard over and again from the dancers I had grown up with, that they were too large for the ballet, even though they were as thin as pins. Some had even starved themselves skeletal, as it seemed Alice was doing, and then been unable to dance because they were too weak and ill. I had never known that a woman could be sent to an insane asylum because she wanted to be thin. Unease sat heavily over the table, and I started to eat the soup. It was creamy and flavourful, a comforting warmth in my chest and abdomen.
"No need to guess how you ended up here," Annabella observed, indicated my wrist with the spoon, where my sleeve had ridden up to reveal the bandage. Sally stared at her.
"Anna! You mustn't say that!"
"Oh, do back to organising pencil shavings, grandma."
I could feel my cheeks burning red.
"Well how did you all end up here then?" I demanded, hoping that my rudeness would quell my humiliation.
"Alice you already know about, she doesn't eat. Nellie has delusions and lapses of memory. Sally here," Annabella patted the older woman's shoulder. "She has something called Obsessional Compulsive Disorder. She likes everything to be done in a very specific way, and as for me, I have been diagnosed with 'sexual desire' and 'sexual orientation disturbance'."
"I don't know what that means," I admitted.
Annabella grinned. "'Sexual desire' means that I enjoy having sex—"
"Who doesn't?" Sally interjected.
"—and 'sexual orientation disturbance' means that I enjoy having sex with girls."
"O-Oh," I blushed even deeper than before. Annabella laughed at me.
"Sweet girl, don't you know your Greek history? Did you think that lesbians don't exist?"
I tore Alice's bread roll between my fingers, reducing it to breadcrumbs on my plate, and chose my words with care.
"I think that you are the first person I have met who has been open about having such inclinations."
"Well, my parents think it unacceptable that I would rather sleep with women than with men. It makes me difficult to marry off, apparently. Don't worry, Goldilocks, you're not my type." She aimed an exaggerated wink in Nell's direction, who rolled her eyes in return.
"Who is your doctor?" Sally asked.
"Lockwood."
"Mine too," Annabella said. "He's quite attentive, and not a terrible person. I think you and I are his only patients since Bathsheba was released."
"No," Sally contradicted. "Emily Tamworth has Lockwood too. I've got Naysmith. Who have you got, Nell?"
"Dr Wilmot. Alice has got Dr Huntingdon."
"How many doctors are there here?" I wondered.
Annabella started ticking them off on her fingers. "Lockwood, Huntingdon, Varens, Wilmot, Naysmith… um, Poole, Oliver, Mason, Schwartz and Maxwell. That's, what, ten doctors? There are about thirty nurses including Nurse Barbarism—"
"That can't be her real name," I objected.
"Of course not, she's just Barber," She nodded to the woman at the top table who had led us in saying grace. "But she definitely deserves the nickname."
"You should be careful around her," Nell agreed. "She likes to use solitary confinement as punishment."
"And the White Room," Sally agreed.
"What is the White Room?"
"It's the room they lock you in when you're being especially difficult," Nell explained. "It's got white padding on the walls and floor to stop you from hurting yourself. I think they use old mattresses or something. The staff call it the Quiet Room, because it's a place where you're supposed to calm down, but the rest of us call it the White Room. Believe me, being in solitary confinement is better."
I glanced anxiously at the top table, but Nurse Barber did not look at all threatening to me. She had dark brown hair, pulled back into a nun, a very neat uniform, and the cap with additional lace that demonstrated her rank as Head Nurse.
Once the soup and bread was consumed we were free to go, apart from Sally Caldwell and the other patients of Dr Naysmith, who were in charge of wiping the tables this week. Nell took me to Kirkbride's common room where, I was told, the patients spent most of their time. There was also a library on the ground floor, with the patients able to borrow any title they chose.
"They absolutely censor the books though," Annabella told me. "I haven't seen a single Henry James since I've been here."
The common room was a huge space with forest-green carpets and curtains, little tables and squashy armchairs scattered around where women sat sewing, knitting, reading, conversing, smoking, staring blankly into space, weeping into their hands. There were six male orderlies stationed around the room, looking their white trousers and shirts like statues. They all had very short haircuts, and all stood with their hands behind their banks, like soldiers at parade rest.
Alice wafted over to the window and gazed out over acres of sun-drenched lawns, bordered with more species of trees than I could name, and beds of brightly coloured flowers.
For the first time, I realised why the burgundy shade of red had been chosen for our uniforms. It made the patients easy to see from a distance, meaning that we could be tracked if we tried to run away.
"Giry!"
I looked around at the side of my name. "Yes?"
Nurse Reardon had entered the common room and was standing with one of the orderlies, holding a sheet of paper. I felt a thrill of fear stutter through my chest, imagining that I was going to be taken away and locked in solitary confinement for some unknown crime. Nevertheless, I crossed the room to join them.
"Miss Giry is considered a thread to herself," Reardon was telling the orderly. "Giry, you are not to have access to any sharp objects. No scissors, needles, crocket hooks. You will be searched when you leave the dining room to ensure that you do not smuggle any knives out, and you are not allowed to use glassware unsupervised."
I stared at the nurse. "This is all rather excessive, don't you think?"
"You tried to slash your own wrists with a broken glass," she stated, not bothering to lower her voice, and I was aware of heads turning towards me, the cessation of chatter. "You cannot be trusted."
My face was turning the same colour as my dress.
"I don't want to harm myself, Nurse Reardon. I am here because I want to get help."
"Giry, we have already talked about following the rules today. These restrictions will remain in place until Dr Lockwood says otherwise."
She left the room and I turned to my fellow patients. I considered spreading my hands and challenging each and every one of them on what they had heard, but I was not brave enough. God, what must they all think of me?
Without speaking, Nell led me over to one of the tables, where Annabella started to deal cards.
"Don't worry, gorgeous," Annabella told the orderly who was watching us. "We're not gambling and the cards aren't sharp enough to cut anyone. You know how to play Hearts?" She added to me, and I nodded.
"So we know why you are," Nell began as we picked up the hands of cards. "What are you leaving behind?"
"I don't even know anymore," I mumbled.
"Oh, come now, don't be coy, I'm just interested to know what your background is. Take Peggy Atwood over there," she nodded to an elderly woman with a shock of silver hair curling out of her head. She was knitting at a ferocious speed. "Peggy was the manageress of an uptown boutique. Apparently she lost her temper with her colleagues, screamed like a maniac at them, and threw shoes around the store."
I took another look at Peggy Atwood, considered her speed and the length of her knitting needles; she could do quite a bit of damage with those.
"Her official diagnosis is hysteria," Nell continued.
"But of course Nell has her own opinion," Annabella interrupted in the weary tone of someone who had heard something repeatedly and is sick of it.
"Why?" I asked as I played my turn. Nell leaned towards me and lowered her voice.
"I think that she is pretending, or at least exaggerating her symptoms. Because Dr Huntingdon still uses vaginal stimulation as a treatment for hysteria. You know, with one of those electrical devices."
"I guess Huntingdon thinks that an orgasm can fix anything," Annabella rolled her eyes as she played her turn. "The same as every other man, whether the orgasm is his partner's or not."
I blushed, wondering how much of that statement was true and wondering why any woman in her right mind would want to be admitted to an insane asylum. I did not know what electrical device Nell was referring to, but I did have an idea of what my stay at Kirkbride was costing Erik Danton, and presumably Lucy Phelps. In my opinion, an orgasm would surely cost far less, if anything, especially as it could be had at the tips of one's fingers.
"So," Nell prompted. "What's your background."
I took a deep breath. "I am the leading lady of a freak show on Coney Island. Before that, I was a ballerina."
With Erik's recent media campaign for the Imaginarium, there was a chance that some people here might know of me. I did not consider myself a celebrity in the vein of Christine Daaé, but if I lied it would be easy for others to dismantle. Annabella looked up.
"Which freak show?" When I told her, she chuckled. "I saw your show last year—before I ended up here, obviously. It was good. If you were the blonde in the pink tutu, I thought you were cute."
"Thank you," I chose to take that as a compliment.
"And what led you to slash your own wrists—if that's what you did?" Nell asked. I frowned at her.
"Why are you so interested?" I was not sure how much information I wanted to give this stranger.
"Nell says that she is a journalist," Annabella told me. "She says that she is going to expose places like this and shut them down."
"No," Nell retorted. "I am an investigative journalist, Meg. My editor at The New York World is funding my stay here, which is a lot of money, believe me."
"I believe you," I assured her. "But I would rather not talk about what happened to me."
"You'll have to, whether you like it or not, with Lockwood as your doctor. It's his primary treatment method."
"And don't mind Reardon," Annabella said. "She's like that with everyone. Not quite as much of a bitch as Nurse Barbarism, but not far behind."
I played round after round of cards, keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the other women. Nell and Annabella gave me their conditions if they knew them: hysteria, depression, anxiety, insomnia, selective mutism, hallucinations. One woman believed that she was a little girl of around six years old, and in the case of Carrie Glass, the woman who had taken such delight in tipping cold water over my head:
"She's a complete idiot, that's all there is to it."
I wasn't allowed to be alone until after dinner, which was a rather nice chicken casserole. Back in the common room, with the fire burning in the huge hearth and the night falling outside, we were joined by a group of nurses, led by nurse Barber. As Nurse Barber called out names, the patients took small ppaper cups from the trays her colleagues held.
"Giry."
I looked up, surprised to hear my name. Barber was looking around for me.
"Yes?" I raised my hand.
"Well, girl, what are you waiting for? Come here."
I approached, and a fair-haired nurse gave me a little cup containing two white pills.
"What is this?" I asked.
"The medication that Dr Lockwood has prescribed to you."
"But Dr Lockwood has only met me once, and we have not discussed my treatment. I don't want to take something without knowing what it is and what it's for."
Barber glared at me.
"Nurse Reardon told me that you were already being difficult, Miss Giry. You will do as you are told by the staff here, or you will suffer the consequences. Now, will you take the medicine, or do you want to spend your first night here in solitary confinement?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I was Nell shake her head. I took the paper cup and swallowed the pills, trying not to gag at the chalky bitterness. As I turned to resume my seat, Barber caught hold of my wrist.
"Open your mouth," she commanded. I obeyed, and she peered inside.
"Why did Barber check my teeth?" I asked Nell once the nurses had left.
"She was making sure you didn't cheek the pill. You know, conceal it instead of swallowing it."
She reached a curved finger into her mouth and withdrew a small white pill of her own.
"How did you do that?" I was astonished. "And why didn't they check you?"
"I'm a good girl, Meg Giry," Nell smiled angelically. "They trust me."
"Why didn't she tell me what the pills were?"
"It will have been a sedative, sweetie," Sally patted my hand. "Nothing to worry about."
"But it could have been anything!"
"Oh do calm down," Annabella was slumped in her chair. "It won't have been anything dangerous. The longer we stay here the more money they can charge."
I worried about the unknown substance I had ingested for the remainder of the evening, distracted from those around me and jolting in surprise when a nurse ordered us all to bed. I returned to room 2G, consulted the map of Kirkbride in the drawer of my nightstand, and found that the bathroom on this floor was halfway along the corridor.
I took my toiletries bag from where is rested at the top of my carpet bag and went to brush my teeth in preparation for bed. Contrary to its name, there were no bathtubs in this bathroom, just toilets and sinks. As I cleaned my teeth, two other women joined me. The older introduced herself as Winifred Dent and the younger, already wearing her nightgown, as Emily Tamworth. They shared room 2H, the one opposite mine.
I returned to my room and undid the buttons at the back of my apron, then pulled the burgundy dress over my head. Wiping the hair out of my eyes, I caught sight of my reflection in the darkened window, the only reflective surface in the room. I stood mostly naked, and saw for the first time that I really did look pregnant. My breasts had grown larger and my stomach rounder.
I caressed the small swell of my abdomen and remained where I was, gazing at the evidence of the life within me, until the gas powering the lights was shut off, and I was plunged into darkness.