“You can drive on up,” the attendant says. “They’re expecting her.”
Expecting me?Expectingme?
“No, wait!” I call out to him. But the attendant is opening the gate wide so that the car can pull through. I turn to Mrs. Grissom. “I amnotstaying at this place!”
She begins to drive slowly forward. “You need to trust the people who have been charged with your care and well-being, Rosanne.”
“But I’m not sick. I’m just... I just...” I place a hand on my tummy. “I made a mistake.”
Mrs. Grissom says nothing but keeps her foot on the gas pedal, her hands on the steering wheel.
She pulls up to a cement curb beside the building just as the large wooden front door opens and a woman in a dark blue dress steps out, along with a nurse in a starched uniform and a man dressed in white pants and a matching shirt. The man comes down the steps quickly, opens the back seat passenger door, and reaches for my travel bag.
I swing around from the front and put my hand out to stop him. “I’m at the wrong place. I’m not staying here.” He pulls the bag from my reach and takes it anyway.
The woman and the nurse have joined the man at the curb now, and the nurse takes the bag. The man returns to the car and opens the door where I am sitting.
I instinctively move closer to Mrs. Grissom. “Tell them to give me my bag back. I’m not staying here.”
“Rosanne, this is for your own good,” Mrs. Grissom says.
The woman in blue bends to look into the car. “We have your room all ready for you, Miss Maras. It’s a nice room with a bed by the window.”
“But I’m not sick! I’m not ‘infirm’ or ‘psycho... ’ whatever that other word is.”
The man starts to reach inside to pull me out. I scoot away from him, as close to Mrs. Grissom as I can be without climbing onto her lap.
“Rosanne! You are making this far more difficult than it needs to be,” Mrs. Grissom scolds. Her words are hot with annoyance and peppered with flashes of topaz.
The woman in the blue dress bends further to look me full in the face.
“Miss Maras, we are all here to help you. Here to take care of you. Now, please come on out of the car, mmm?”
My heart is thumping madly in my chest. I can feel my pulse in my ears like a beating drum. “I don’t need to be taken care of.”
“Well, how about if you and Dr. Townsend have a little chat about that. Just a chat. You aren’t afraid to have a little chat, are you? If you aren’t one who needs our care, well then, we aren’t going to keep you. We couldn’t possibly. Our rooms are needed for the people who really do need our help. If you don’t belong here, I will see to it that you are on your way.”
The pounding in my head begins to ease a bit. “You will?”
“You have my word.”
I turn to look at Mrs. Grissom, who nods toward the woman. “If I get a telephone call that you don’t belong here, I’ll come back for you myself. I promise.”
“A telephone call? Why can’t you just wait here for me? You should just wait here for me.”
Mrs. Grissom sighs. “Fine. I’ll wait here.”
I stare at her until Mrs. Grissom turns the key and kills the car’s engine. Then I turn to stare at the man standing by the open door. “I don’t want him touching me.”
“Norman won’t be obliged to help you inside if you just come out of the car on your own,” the woman says.
I hesitate a moment and then scoot the rest of the way across the seat to step out.
“Well then, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” the woman in blue says, smiling brightly.
I want to tell the woman it was indeed hard. It was extremely hard to get out of Mrs. Grissom’s car and step into an enclosure with high fences and a locked gate.
“And you promise after I talk with the doctor, I can come back out to the car?” I say instead.
