But in a moment that I fear that I’ll second-guess later, I manipulate the pills under my tongue and along the side of my gums, and fake a pained dry-swallow.
“You need water?” the attendant asks.
I shake my head. And then I open my mouth, per routine, to show that I’ve been obedient and done as required.
Satisfied that I’m not demonstrating any form of resistance, he—also per routine—barely glances at me.
The female attendant shuffles me toward the bed, and when they both have their attention on pulling back the sheet and prepping the night restraints, I spit the dissolving pills into my palm, clenching my fist to keep them hidden.
My heart is pounding as they help me into bed and wrap the fabric around my wrists. Not from the fear of getting caught, I realize, but from what will happen, during a long night of nothing but me and my unmedicated mind. What will I see? What will I remember?
I’m not sure which is worse.
The pills are still stuck against my skin inside my fist and for a moment, I’m tempted to confess. Tempted to bend my head toward my hand as close as I can to try to get them to my mouth and for a deepening of the blissful oblivion they offer.
Instead, I wait until the attendants leave and then I tuck my hand beneath the sheet and shake the pills loose onto the bed. They fall, rolling across the mattress to settle near my leg or bounce the other way, captured between the layers of bottom sheet and top sheet. This ploy will not last more than a day, once they change the bedding. I hope that will be enough time for Max to get me out of here. But mainly, I hope it’s not too much time—I don’t know how long I can hold it together without those pills. Too many hours of unmedicated madness and no one’s going to let me go anywhere.
It turns out, the ward is not an easy place to sleep when you’re not drugged into oblivion, even if everyone else is.
Vera whimpers across the hall. Someone, somewhere, is shouting. Then a rush of footsteps head in that direction. No one bothers to check on me as they pass. There are rounds through the night,though, probably. I would think so, though I have no memory of anything like that. Once again, my mind is failing me. But at least this time, I understand the cause of it.
I shiver at the idea of such vulnerability, bound to the bed and completely out of it, while someone stares down at me.
Sweat coats my skin as withdrawal begins. I squeeze my eyes shut. It would be better if I could sleep through most of this.
But my eyelids refuse to stay closed, even though there’s nothing to look at. The room isn’t dark with dim light from the hall seeping in through the partially open door.
My gaze bounces around my small room, from the plastic visitor’s chair across from the bed, the three-drawer bureau on the wall at the foot of the bed, to the Tower-owned-and-installed art panel above the bureau. The normally serene lake scene, with the weeping willow branches swaying gently in the breeze, looks ominous, threatening.
A low moan comes from nearby, and I jerk my attention away from the lake to the visitor’s chair.
The man, dressed in gray pajamas like mine, is seated and bleeding from his wrists, the wounds horrible gashes. His fingers loosen and drop a twisted and sharpened bit of metal, perhaps a bracket from the bureau drawers. It hits the tile floor with a soft clink.
My breath catches, and then I realize that I’ve been waiting. For him. Forthem.
He looks at me, through me, and then vanishes.
A moment later, a woman walks by outside my door, calling for someone. “Tallie? Are you here?”
I can’t see her, but when no one rushes to respond to a resident up and out of bed in the middle of the night, I am left with the conclusion that she, also, is not really there. A former resident, like the suicide in my chair?
When I lived on-planet last, in the Verux group home, on overcrowded and under-resourced Earth, it was difficult. So many people, and with them, the others who no one else could see. But I learned to ignore it… and to run when I couldn’t.
But here, at the Tower of Peace and Harmony—what bullshit wishful thinking—there is nowhere to run.
I pull hard against the restraints, but they have no give. Not that I have anywhere to go, to get away, even if they did.
An old man shuffles into my room, passing through the wall on my left. His hospital gown is white, bearing a large Verux logo on the left side of his chest. Not like any of the clothing I’ve seen distributed here.
He pauses, seeming to see me, and a chill ricochets through my body.
“Marja?” he asks, then continues without waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice. You know that. Don’t you? I didn’t know the engines were overheating.”
I can’t respond. I don’t know what to say.
But it doesn’t seem to matter. He turns away from me, heading for the opposite wall, and I see the back of his head and shoulders, all blistered, blackened, and burned.
He passes through the wall and vanishes. He’s not impeded by the constructs of the physical world, so I can still hear him giving his speech, to whoever is next door, whoever he thinks is Marja. Hallucinations, spirits, whatever you want to call them, their noise isn’t stopped by walls, doors, or burying your head under a pillow. Even earplugs are useless. The sounds areinsideyour head, which has nothing to do with actual vibrations hitting your eardrum. Getting out of range is the only solution.
