I’d like to rest for days. I’d like an extra blanket because I’m so cold all the time. I’d like more water. I’d like music to drown out the sounds of the screaming and sobbing coming from the other rooms.
I want to know if my mother and father are here.
I want to scream for Patient Thirteen to free me. To save me. I want to call out for my dad and tell him who I am. Tell him what they’ve done to me in here. I want to know that he’ll avenge me the way he’d avenge my mother.
“Maybe tomorrow.” Meridei brushes my hair away from my face. “Today is your next dual treatment.”
“No.” The air deflates from my lungs. “Please. No more shock therapy…”
Sometimes my body still convulses when I’m alone. Right before I fall asleep, the phantom of an aftershock hits me before I can escape to my dreams. My memory already comes in pieces lately. I’ve lost entire days. Conversations end before I even realize they’ve begun. It’s as if someone has taken a blade to my thoughts, poking holes and tearing them to unrecognizable shreds. I’m not myself anymore. I’m all alone. I don’t even remember the last time I saw Niklaus.
“And what will you give me if I postpone your electroconvulsive therapy for a while?” She tilts her head curiously.
“Anything.” I have to keep whatever is left of my memories.
“Hmm.” Meridei shrugs, knocking on the asylum door to let in the orderlies. “Today is your Matrimony Method therapy. I’m rather excited for it.”
My shoulders sag, and I let the orderlies guide me away from the scale and out of the room. With my elbows pointed outwards, they’re practically carrying me to the treatment room as I have no strength to walk myself on my quivering legs for too long.
“Also, have I told you we’ll have a special guest observing today?” Meridei asks me as she smooths the shiny black hair on top of her head.
“No,” I say.
“I don’t allow guests to observe often, but I trust you and your husband implicitly,” she replies with a smile that only effects the bottom half of her face.
And I really don’t care.
But the energy I have to tell her that is nonexistent.
The orderlies set me down on a metal chair located in the center of the white treatment room. My shackles cuffed to the metal arms, which is silly. Do they not know that I’m not even close to being strong enough to fight back?
I glance to my right at the tall pole next to me. A skinny needle connected to a tube is poked into the inside of my elbow. Meridei tsk-tsks. “Oof. I almost couldn’t find a vein. You’re quite dehydrated.”
Something clean and cold flushes past my nose and face, internally.
“A bit of saline,” Meridei narrates.
The door opens again, and her head pops up. “Did you lower his dose of sedation to what I added in his chart?”
The orderlies nod.
“Good. I want him a little more alert for this, but still not strong enough to attempt another escape.”
I lock eyes with those deep, bottomless blue irises I’ve spent my entire life hating. Though this ward reeks of despair, loneliness, and antiseptic—his eyes cut through it all. He’s clouded and sleepy, but still sharp and aware.
The orderlies cuff him to his chair, though there are extensions to give him extra slack and room to move.
There’s a beat of silence as he adjusts in his seat. And we’ve never locked eyes this long. Something shakes loose in my chest. A sense of relief. Familiarity. Comfort. A flicker of hope at the way he looks pained to see me this way. I know it can’t be a pretty sight. I looked into my own reflection once, yesterday, I think…and I was horrorstruck by the sight of my hollowed cheeks, pale skin, and brittle hair. I was witnessing my body transform from healthy to a corpse.
There’s something dehumanizing about it. Letting someone control my nutritional intake, dangling me right over the brink of death.
“I am so glad we have finally made it to this treatment,” Meridei announces proudly.
But he’s still looking at me. There’s an apology in his gaze. A message for me to unravel. That he tried to escape. He tried to break me out before it got this bad.
I breathe through the blinding emotion that he’s triggering in my soul. It’s forming a lump in my throat and burning my eyes.
“Hey!” Meridei snaps her fingers in front of Niklaus’s face.
