"I doubt that you can," Sarita said, her voice as kind as ever. "There is nothing sharp in there, Edith. If that is what you are looking for, we might as well go back to the bed right now."
"Of course there isn't," Meredith said bitterly. "This is a psych ward, right?"
"A psych floor," Sarita said gravely. Meredith remembered reading somewhere that nurses who cared for suicidal patients had to be careful not to smile too much, lest they make their patients feel even bleaker by comparison. She'd also read that hospital staffs, by and large, hated attempted suicides, hated expending their time and skill on people who wanted to die, when so many who wanted to live never got the chance.
"Why do you do this?" she asked the nurse.
"Because it is my job."
"But why this job? Why not another one? Why not work—I don't know, pediatrics or maternity or, or—"
"Edith, do you still need to use the bathroom?"
"Yes," Meredith said, defeated.
Sarita guided Meredith into the bathroom and stood with her, pointedly looking away, while Meredith tried unsuccessfully to urinate. Then they repeated the whole laborious trip in reverse.
"I have to put the restraints back on," Sarita said when they reached the bed.
"What about the catheter? Can you leave that out?"
Sarita shrugged. "Yes, certainly, but if I didn't come quickly when you rang—"
I'll turn into Hortense. "I'll take my chances." It was better than being hooked to a tube. "You aren't going to answer the question I asked before, are you?"
"Maybe tomorrow," Sarita said. She refastened the last restraint and said, "And maybe tomorrow we will give you real food again. Sleep now. You need to heal."
I don't, Meredith thought. I can't.
Thirty
IT was pathetically easy to fake out the doctor, a harried man who rattled out a series of perfunctory questions and looked as if he'd much rather be anywhere else. His English wasn't as good as Sarita's, and neither were his manners. Meredith told him that she regretted what she'd done, that she'd been desperate after a bad love affair in Europe—well, close enough but now that she was properly rehydrated and well fed, she wouldn't dream of hurting herself again. She fed the same line to a social worker, two Catholic priests, a Green chaplain, and the orderly who brought her lunch. To the orderly she said, "Why doesn't the hospital have bots bring the meals? Wouldn't it be easier?"
The orderly blinked at her, squinted, smiled a little. "Bots," he said tentatively. "Bots are—how you say—machines, yes?"
"Yes," she said. "Machine. Why didn't you have a machine bring my lunch?"
He nodded to show that he understood. "On the other floors," he said, pointing at the ceiling and then at the floor, "they have bots. Not here. People here—people here need other people. Bots no good. Sad and scared people here, yes?"
"Yes," she said. So they didn't use bots because it was a psych floor; well, that made sense. "I see. Thank you."
She'd have preferred bots, who were easier to fool, but in fact the afternoon brought a steady stream of people: an old woman with a tray of candy and newspapers—Meredith suspected she was some sort of volunteer, although the language barrier kept her from asking—another social worker, nurses bearing antidepressants. As she had at home, Meredith pretended to swallow the pills, but hid them under her mattress instead. She wondered why she hadn't been given injections or gene therapy, but wasn't about to ask. The ease with which she could evade medication was a small favor, and she thanked the universe for it.
Periodically she heard the scream from down the hallway again; once or twice she saw stretchers wheeled past. Just before dinner, Sarita came in and removed the restraints for good, without comment.
"Does this mean I can leave?" Meredith demanded. "Not yet. You still need fluids, Edith."
"When can I leave?"
"You will have to ask the doctor tomorrow. And you will need to tell the social workers where you plan to go. They need to call someone who can take care of you outside. They need to be in touch with your family."
Meredith grimaced. She was going to have to fake plans too, not just remorse. This was entirely too much work. "My only family's that woman—the one I don't want to see. You can understand why I don't want to see her, Sarita, can't you? Much less live with her? All those horrible things she said—"
"She loves you," Sarita said.
"No."
"She brought you here."
"She didn't want me on her conscience, that's all."
Sarita shook her head. "If she did not love you, her conscience would not bother her. Edith, we cannot let you leave until you have a place to go."
"That's not fair," Meredith said, although she knew it was, knew that her chances of getting out would be better if she could fake being reasonable. She could hear the whine in her voice. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because it is my job."
"Isn't it enough work taking care of the people who want to be here?"
"No one wants to be here, Edith."
"Can't you just leave me alone? Why are you keeping me here if I don't want to stay?"
"Because it is my job," Sarita said, maddeningly. It was like talking to a bot.
"Has anyone told you that you repeat yourself?"
Sarita raised an eyebrow. "Same question, same answer. Good night, Edith." But she squeezed Meredith's shoulder as she left.
Sleep was impossible, and Sarita had said nothing about getting out of bed. Meredith sat up, cautiously, to make sure she wouldn't get dizzy, and then stood. The IV pole helped. She took tiny, shuffling steps, pushing the pole ahead of her, and made it out into the hall. Sarita, writing reports at the nurses' station, looked up; Meredith glared back and said, "Exercise. It's supposed to be good for me, right?"
"You'll tire yourself"
"That's what I want. So I'll be able to sleep."
Sarita nodded, acquiescing, and then said, very quietly, "Remember where you are. Everyone dangerous should be restrained, but—"
"Don't worry," Meredith said. She'd done volunteer work with brainwiped baggie : she didn't think much would be able to shock her. And indeed, after she'd located the elevators—the real reason for the expedition—the first few rooms she looked into contained only people who were sleeping, or crying, or mumbling to themselves. Then she heard a TV and headed toward it. Dayroom. There'd be news. It would be in Spanish, but there'd be pictures. Something new to look at, anyway.
She shuffled into the room, furnished with ugly orange couches and chairs, a battered plastic coffee table, and a large cafeteria table along one wall. Three men and two women sat in wheelchairs, arranged in a tight semicircle. They were being coached by a young man who wore hospital scrubs and held a milk carton.
"Leche," he said, and began pouring mille into five paper cups. "Leche." He handed out the paper cups; one woman dumped it over her head, while the other just poured it on the floor. One of the men stuck his fingers in it; one threw it at his neighbor, and a third, with tremendous concentration, folded his beefy hands around the little paper cup, lifted it to his mouth, and drank.
The young man beamed. "Bravo, Luis! Leche!"
"Leh," Luis said. "Leh, leh—" With evident difficulty, the woman sitting in the wheelchair next to Luis turned toward him and slowly punched him in the mouth, staring at her own hand as if mesmerized. It was a very soft punch; it couldn't have hurt much. Luis began to cry, anyway, and the woman who'd hit him mimicked the sounds he was making, looking anxiously at the trainer, as if for approval.
"Maria," the young man sighed, and walked over to her and lifted her fist, limp now, squeezing it between both of his hands. He saw Meredith, nodded and smiled. "You are the American, yes? These are—we call them the ghosts. That is your word, yes? Ghosts? They are new. It is very good that Luis already knew what to do with the milk."
Meredith turned and fled, as quickly as her rubbery legs and cumbersome IV pole would allow. Of course. Of course. Where else in a public hospital would you put the brainwiped? She had read that Mexico kept its untrainables, its baggies, in hospitals forever instead of letting them out on the streets. She wondered how many of the people in the dayroom would wind up in that category. At least all of them had been older than six.
It shouldn't have bothered her. She'd worked with the brainwiped; she'd advocated for them. But she couldn't look at them now without seeing Nicholas, and behind him, the dim shadow of Henry Carviero.
She had to get out of here, out of the hospital. She had to escape. She couldn't be patient anymore; she was losing her will for subterfuge. The walls were closing in on her, and she couldn't breathe. As soon as she got into the hallway, away from the terrible sight of the drooling shapes in the wheelchairs, she tried to pull the IV out of her arm, only to have the monitor begin whooping like some archaic air raid siren. Sarita and two orderlies rushed up mere seconds later. Sarita grabbed the IV pole and one of the orderlies grabbed Meredith, slinging her unceremoniously over his shoulder. She kicked, pounded on his back with her fists, and yelled, but she was too weak to do any significant damage.
The orderly carried her back to her bed, holding her there while Sarita snugged restraints on ankles and wrists. She fired off a quick stream of Spanish to the second orderly, and then told Meredith, "The doctor will be here soon to restart your IV. This will not get you out of here more quickly, Edith."
"But I just—"
"IV needles are sharp," Sarita said. "You might have meant to hurt yourself with it. This will keep you here at least another week. I will have to call your friend."
"I don't want to see her!"
"There will be a meeting with the doctor and the social worker and your friend. Do you understand?"
She understood. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to look at them, but the image of Luis, drinking his milk with so much effort, came unbidden instead.
* * *
She didn't know if Zephyr, the doctor, and the social worker had the meeting without her or not. The next day the doctor arrived, clucking and frowning, and the social worker shot barrages of questions at her. Zephyr never showed up at all. Meredith told the other two that she was tired and turned her face to the wall, and finally they went away.
Her escape, two nights later, proved to be ridiculously simple. She waited until the predawn shift, when the floor was short-staffed, and began twisting her IV arm as much as the restraints would allow, twisting and wiggling, patiently, willing the tape to loosen, willing the needle to shift, ever so slightly. When it did, she waited for her arm to swell from the fluids leaking into the tissues, and then she very deliberately wet her bed, and then she rang the call button.
They had to take the IV out, and they had to call a doctor to restart the IV in the other arm, and they had to change the sheets. She was betting on the fact that they wouldn't tie her up while they did all that, and she was right. The orderly went to get clean sheets and the nurse turned to strip the bed, and Meredith, her heart pounding, just walked out of the room, ducked into the nearest elevator, and pressed the button for the basement. If this was anything like American hospitals, that's where the labs would be, and it would be quiet this time of night. She just had to hope that there wouldn't be any bots roaming around, or that if there were, they'd somehow mistake her for authorized personnel.
Gaia be praised, she met no bots: another gift. She found an open supply closet, managed to climb into scrubs and some slippers, and then walked out the nearest door, into the humid, fragrant Mexican night. There was a full moon; good. She needed the light. It would help her find her way, and it would remind her how dark the shadows were.
Zephyr had been right: Meredith never should have asked the bots to cut her. She'd been violating everything she'd ever believed, asking machines to do her work for her like that. She'd wanted to make things as easy as they'd been in Sydney, but it didn't work that way. She had to take responsibility for her own monsters. She had to do the job herself
She didn't have the pen-lasers anymore, or even a scalpel, but that was all right. She found a bottle in a pile of trash, broke it on the sidewalk, and then carried the largest pieces to the beach. She had to walk for miles, it seemed; the hospital was quite far inland. She followed the smell of the sea, the faint sound of surf, and when at last she got there, her hands already slightly cut from the glass, she washed her tools in the salt water. Holy water, she told herself, the stuff of tears and wombs, and most of what our blood is, all our blood: Patty's and Bluebell's, Nicholas's, Raji's, mine.
The journey to the beach seemed to take hours, the process of washing the glass an eternity. She was still very weak and still moved very slowly. She told herself she had to hurry, that someone from the hospital would be looking for her, although now that she was out of the hospital, she couldn't imagine that' they'd look, couldn't imagine why they'd care. Surely Sarita had only been saying what she was trained to say, what she was paid to say. She couldn't truly care about someone she'd only known for a few days.
By the time Meredith got the glass clean, it was dawn. She sat crosslegged on the sand, trying to meditate, trying to steel herself, and then began tracing cuts into her face, first shallow and then deeper, as if she were slicing through all the layers of pain and isolation, all the masks and shells, her life had built around her. To her surprise and gratitude, it didn't hurt at all.
* * *
Cold, and darkness; and then warmth, as if she were being brought near a fire, near and then too near, until it burned her, until the light of it flooded through her shut eyelids. She tried to run away from the flames and couldn't: her arms and legs wouldn't move. "Edith," someone said, "can you hear me? Open your eyes."