Dr. Fitz Morrible walked into the room, a folder in his hands as usual and came to sit on the chair by her bed.
"So Miss." he began. "How're you doing?"
The Witch looked at him suspiciously. "Fine…."
"Good, good." he said with seemingly artificial brightness, flipped to a new page in his folder and took a pen out from his breast pocket. "So I have a few questions to ask and I'll need you to be completely honest with me."
'With me' instead of 'with us' thought the Witch. A tactic to personalize. She set herself on guard although she was not certain why she was so on edge."Alright." she had no idea where this was going and was curios. Morrible looked up at her, deadpan.
"Do you do drugs?" he asked, outrageously blunt for a doctor. The Witch started at the question for it was last thing she expected to be asked. Do you do drugs?
"What? No."
"I need you to be honest."
"Which is exactly what I'm doing."
"Well…." He flipped to a page covered in words and figures the Witch could not make sense of. "I ran the test and the results show rather large amounts of…..well as you'd know it, LSD and acid which would also explain the fatigue and high body temperature."
Again; I instead of we.
The Witch stared at him fiercely and utterly confused. "I do not do drugs."
He opened his mouth to retort "Yes but – "
But she beat him to it. "Think Dr. Morrible –
"Fitz. Call me Dr. Fitz."
"- Think about it. I am the fucking Snitch of the West so who in their right mind would sell drugs to me –"
"Someone who's not in their right mind –" again, with that playful smirk that seemed to get to her in an unfamiliar way and made her uneasy.
"And do you think being a Witch pays anything?" That wiped the smirk off his face and there was a pregnant pause as the point sank into Fitz's mind, stopping him in his tracks with a bombardment of meaning.
"You…you have no money." said Fitz slowly, carefully for there was another meaning to this point that the Witch seemed not to be aware of.
"Exactly, so even if there a person insane enough to sell me drugs, I wouldn't be able to pay for them! I have no income."
Fitz's expression seemed to freeze on his face. Should he mention it? But then if she knew, it would be like he was insulting her intelligence….but it seemed that she didn't know.
"So then explain." he said instead, making sure his voice was even. "How these drugs wound up in your system, hmmm?" I sound like a school principal. Who the fuck says 'hmmm'? Why did he even care? Why was he letting his self consciousness get to him like some high school boy?
"You expect me to know that?" The Witch asked, choosing to use a measured, indignant tone and she reached over to the table to grab the bottle of pills, her fingers closing around the bottle…..but then she found she was forced to stop for there was a pressure on her forearm and she could feel the fingers, warm and leathery around her arm.
Little green fingers.
The Witch froze in her position, her arm outstretched and she allowed her gaze to slowly travel up from the bare, green arm to the shoulders and finally to the child's face that appeared next to Dr. Fitz's broad shoulder. The hallucination of young Elphaba stared back at her older self, her childish eyes wide and shiny and she bit her lip with those pointy front teeth that used to scare her parents to no end. She seemed agitated, concerned…..a look of warning.
Fitz looked over his shoulder while the Witch blinked rapidly with a hollow feeling filling her chest. When she focused her vision again, the child had disappeared.
"What in Oz….?"
"You saw something." said Dr. Fitz when he saw her muttering, craning her neck to see past his shoulder.
"Hm?"
"You saw something just now."
"I'm not crazy." 'You saw something just now' it wasn't a question.
"It makes sense since LSD and acid are hallucigens."
"What if someone drugged me?" she thought about the image she saw a moment ago. Young Elphaba, the way her subconscious almost seemed to be warning her…"What if it's the IV or the pills?"
"The IV."
"We both found it strange to find that it's tinted."
"Hospitals don't drug patients – and I already mentioned it's a new….thing we're doing." he then stood up, noting something down in his folder. "I'm afraid I'll have to keep you in for a while longer." he said after a moment, his tone level and not giving anything away.
"What are you going to do?"
"Not me – we'll be putting you in a different department and they're actually quite interested - with you being the Witch and all that." He got up to leave but then paused. This might be his last chance to ask her about that scar – he was nearly certain it was a surgical birth scar but he couldn't imagine the Witch being a mother, the two words just didn't match. But it wasn't his place to ask so he started toward the door.
'They're actually quite interested - with you being the Witch and all that.' She found herself troubled over the words that now swirled around in her head, replaying over and over again in an endless loop. She had a nagging feeling that they meant something significant but somehow she couldn't place it. She looked closer at Dr. Morrible as he left the room and decided that he was clueless.
So the hospital had drugged her – she was certain of that but for what purpose?
She imagined what might happen. They make her seem psychotic in order to make her stay then move her to a different department then… 'They're actually quite interested - with you being the Witch and all that.' Her eyes widened in realization. It all made sense – she was a fucking Witch, the opportunities for research and experimentation were nearly endless with her being able to do magick and all that.
But she could hardly believe Dr. Fitz had set it up for he treated her well and had even developed a sort of friendliness with her, the way he'd sometimes joke at her snappiness and smirk in his boyish, playful way. It pained her to know he too had gone against her but what did she expect? He was Madame Morrible's nephew for Oz sake!
She sat up and moved to the edge of the bed, looking about the room. The oncoming events seemed almost unreal, staring at the room she had become s familiar with during the past weeks. She could not imagine being moved from here and into the hands of whoever would be handling her next - for her to go from a well treated patient to an experiment – a test subject but it all made too much sense; she had eaten their plastic like food, took their medicine – in a few weeks they'd probably find her yelling at thin air and cursing at inanimate objects like poor Ama Clutch.
She knew she had to escape; she would have had to anyway for the law required for her to be turned in eventually. That must be why the hospital had drugged her! To make her appear insane in order to have a valid reason to keep her! Why hadn't she caught on sooner?
Oz, she felt like an idiot. She closed her eyes imagining her broom at the window, the brown, smooth tip knocking against the window making echoing tapping noises. She tried to imagine it with the fullest clarity possible for she had never done this long distance.
A number of days later she found herself jolted to attention by a noise at the window.
Tap…tap….tap. It was actually a bit eerie sounding. She bolted up, using that blasted IV stand to support her as she walked for her leg was still wrapped up in plaster and plastic and was easily irritated under pressure. She half hopped, half hobbled over to the window and sure enough, her broom was floating just outside, positioned conveniently parallel to the window. The Witch unhooked herself from the IV, watching uneasily as she slid the needle from her within her wrist, feeling the thin, cold mass of metal against her skin as she removed it.
She then went over to the cupboard simply out of a hunch and was glad to find her hat on the shelf. She put it on just for the sake of it and positioned herself at the window so that she was sitting on the windowsill, her legs dangling out into empty space, her knees touching the side of the broom. After some difficulty, she was finally in the air, flying as fast as the broom would allow. She followed the Brick Road, staying above clouds and recklessly surfing along rapidly moving wind currents so her young hallucination of herself would have to remind her to slow down, her inner mind acting like a worried mother. Damned drugs.
She arrived at Kiamo Ko at mid day.
The broom drifted automatically into the nearest window which happened to be the main recreational room while Liir had been at the front door, picking up the weekly mail. He was surprised to find a package of papers wrapped in a large, white envelope. He turned it around in his hands, wondering what it was.
It was from Nest Hardings General Hospital.