Woman on the Edge of Time

Redding put down the mug of steaming coffee he had been carrying and peered into her eyes and poked her. “There’s evidence repeated stimulation of foci in the amygdala can produce results,” he muttered. “Still … probably temporary.”

Connie got up as soon as they left and sat in the lounge, ready to start conversations with one and all. She combed her wig and tidied her clothes. She ate her food, she took an interest, she spoke to the staff politely and with deference. She sat with Tina, whose head hurt and hurt and hurt. She held Tina’s limp small brown hand, scarred and calloused from who knew how many jobs and battles, the tip of a finger missing. Tina roused herself to say soggily that it had been caught in a machine in a box factory. She had been only temporary, so she hadn’t got anything for it. Instead she was fired. “Oh, how my head hurts. Make them give me something! Go to them and ask!”

Staff were relieved to see Connie on her feet again. She had been more work in withdrawal. Now she was not only caring for herself, but volunteering constantly. They finally gave Tina morphine or something like it, letting her drift over into doper’s heaven, that still, high place she had entered too many times before when she had been hurt and defeated. Then Tina was as gone from the room as if she had died.

“You’re doing much better,” Nurse Roditis said approvingly to Connie, and actually smiled. “Now you want to get better.”

“Oh, yes.” She forced a stiff smile. “I want to get well now.” War, she thought, I’m at war. No more fantasies, no more hopes. War.

EIGHTEEN

“If it isn’t Ms. Model Patient, knocking herself out for a kind word from Nurse,” Sybil hissed as she came upon Connie sweeping the day room.

She winced and held her tongue, but the injustice fretted her. How could Sybil lack faith? She wanted to turn and shout after Sybil’s back that when she, Connie, had tried to escape, Sybil had been scared to go with her. But Sybil had been put in isolation for helping her. Sybil was still untouched. The staff was watching Captain Cream and Tina carefully to see how their implantations worked out before they proceeded with more, even though it set back their schedule. Still, all stages were present on the ward, before, during and after: the casualties, the experiments, and the fresh material. Five thousand chimpanzees in their cages.

“I don’t dream no more,” Captain Cream complained. “How come I can’t dream? Something missing.”

Tina was high on pain killers and complained only when the magic pills were delayed.

Taking a shrewd and wary interest, volunteering for every task defined as women’s work, cleaning, sweeping, helping with the other patients, picking up clothes, fetching and carrying for the nurses, Connie tried to gauge her chance for escape. This was a fancy teaching hospital, less grim, less grimy and overcrowded than Bellevue or Rockover. Most of the patients were short‑term and all the other wards were unlocked. If the hospital could not process the patients in a couple of months, they were shipped off to state or private hospitals, depending on means. Most of them seemed to be middle‑class white people with marriage or job problems. All wore their own clothes and had doctors assigned.

This was the only mental hospital she’d ever been in where doctors actually saw patients. She had no idea what went on. The first time she’d been committed, when she belived herself truly sick, she had expected treatment. A kindly gray doctor, a sort of Marcus Welby of the mind, would sit behind a desk asking her questions in a learned but soothing voice, explaining to her exactly how she had gone wrong. She would weep and understand. Confessional. Priests that healed. But all the doctor asked in the five minutes granted her had been the name of the President, the date, why she thought she was there. Then he had told her to count backward from one hundred by sevens.

That counting backward gave her trouble. Somehow, in changing schools from Texas to Chicago, she had missed some arithmetic. Never could she figure a tip or catch the cashier at the superette cheating her, even though she would count over her change, squinting at her palm to con the cashier into thinking she knew what was going on. Let’s see–one hundred, ninety‑three, eighty‑six, seventy‑nine, seventy‑two … A pang of fear tweaked her. Shouldn’t it have been seventy? She’d done it wrong again. Seven tens were seventy; she knew that. She had gone wrong again … .