Woman on the Edge of Time

Dr. Argent put down the proposal, took the pipe from his mouth, and fixed Connie with a twinkly smile. “Mrs. Ramos, you’re frightened by the idea of an operation. Isn’t that right?”

“Sure, I’m afraid! I’m okay now, Doctor. Look at the ward notes.”

“Your mother died after an operation. Didn’t she, Mrs. Ramos?”

Ay de mн, he was playing a psychiatrist game. She would have to say yes. “Doctor, can I get myself a cup of coffee, please? I feel a little confused, a little sleepy. I didn’t sleep so well last night on account of worrying about this.” She stood up, but remained balanced over her chair. “Please, Doctor, can I get myself a cup of coffee?”

Argent raised a silvery eyebrow, his interest fading. “You’ve often been a little confused, haven’t you, Mrs. Ramos?” He picked up the proposal again, reaching for his pen.

“You can have your coffee as you leave. We’re almost done with you,” Dr. Redding said, stretching his long legs under the table. “We can all use a coffee break. This is the last of them, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Patty said, consulting her calendar.

“Connie, we understand that you’re frightened. Society is also afraid of you–with more reason, wouldn’t you say? This operation is less complicated than the one you underwent in October. Now, you agreed you’re better for that operation.” Redding spoke fast, the words speeding into her. “You’ll be the better for this surgical procedure also. Then, like Alice, you’ll be released. Surely you don’t want to spend your life in a mental institution?”

“But last time I got better and they let me out without any operation!”

“And here you are again. Aren’t you? Your brother … what’s his name?”

“Lewis Camacho,” Patty read. “From Bound Brook, New Jersey.”

“Your brother … er … in New Jersey … Mr. Coman‑chee? … has signed the permission. The procedure will be carried out Monday. In a month you’ll be released. Consider that, Connie, and you’ll realize your fears are as irrational and as much a part of the pattern of your illness behavior as your hostile episodes. Okay, let’s break!”

The staff leaned back in their chairs and turned to each other as Connie got up, all except Miss Moynihan, who brushed past her in a hurry. Her face was twisted and she raced toward the staff ladies’ bathroom. Tony had been standing outside, sneaking a smoke, wrapped in a plastic bag of music from his transistor radio. “They done with you?” he asked.

“I don’t know!” She held up her hands. “I don’t understand what they’re doing. You ask them. They keep talking about my brother Luis. I don’t understand what they want me to do.”

“Wait here. Just hold on.” Tony stuck his head into the room, where she saw past him the doctors pushing back their chairs and beginning to rise, small knots of conversation forming. Argent and Redding had their heads together over the proposal, plotting. Morgan hovered, ignored and nervous. Redding nodded briskly at the little notes. Five thousand more chimpanzees? Prisoners? Women on welfare? They had disposed of her. “They said I could have some coffee,” she said out loud, and moved at once into the alcove where the doctors’ big shiny coffee machine stood. Quickly she dumped the contents of the old pot, emptied a premeasured packet into the filter, and pressed the Brew button. Then she fished the bottle from her purse and dripped the oily liquid into the glass pot as the coffee began to fill it. She hoped they would realize this was fresh coffee, and not discard it to make more.

When Tony came out the water was still pouring down. “Come on, Ramos. They’re done with you. Leave the doctors’ coffee alone, don’t mess up now. You can get a cup on the patients’ side.”

“They don’t want me anymore?” She blinked confusion.

“What do you think, they need all day to make up their minds about you? They’re big‑shot doctors. That Redding, he had his picture in Time.Patty showed me, she keeps a scrap‑book on him. Dr. Argent, he goes up to Washington to testify before Congress to set them straight on things. You don’t think they got all day to waste making up their minds about what to do with you!”

She washed her hands in the bathroom, she washed them again and again. “I just killed six people,” she said to the mirror, but she washed her hands because she was terrified of the poison. “I murdered them dead. Because theyare the violence‑prone. Theirs is the money and the power, theirs the poisons that slow the mind and dull the heart. Theirs are the powers of life and death. I killed them. Because it is war.” Her hands shook like a willow branch used by dowsers in Texas, a willow branch pulled by water deep in the ground. “I’m a dead woman now too. I know it. But I did fight them. I’m not ashamed. I tried.”