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still new here. The excitement of actually being able to leave the building squirms inside of me. I love the outdoors. The delicious thought of breathing in the fresh, spring air swells in my lungs just thinking about it. The wind whipping through my hair. The sun on my skin. For a second I truly believe I am outside until soft whispers from a group of girls to my left snare my eardrums.
I don’t know all of them, just the blonde with a pixie cut named, Cynthia, who seems to be the ringleader of the group and a trouble-maker as well. The few times I’ve been in here she’s always been gossiping about somebody or making fun of another patient. Aurora seems to be the butt of her jokes.
My eyes wander over to Aurora who is seated in the far left corner of the room, humming to herself and coloring in a coloring book with a green crayon. She’s in full crazy mode. She lifts her head slowly, winks at me, then returns to her coloring book. I can see why Cynthia, and all of the others say things about her. I mean she’s a really pleasant girl, but I can understand why they gossip. I might have thought the same things they did if she wasn’t my roommate and I didn’t know otherwise.
Her words from last night surge through me; It’s simple. You don’t. Get to leave is what she meant. Doesn’t anybody here get better? Don’t any of these girls have parents who are waiting anxiously for the day they can pull up in their Buick and bring them home? My eyes circle around the group of girls to my left. I know I’ll never get close enough to them to ask.
It’s not that I don’t want to make friends, but I’ve always been the outcast. I don’t try to be, but for some reason girls either like me or they don’t. In most circumstances they don’t. It also doesn’t help that I’m painfully shy and choose not to include myself in their social circles for an obvious reason; I’m not the giggly, girly, gossipy type.
Sometimes the staff lets us listen to the radio. Today is one of those days and I perk up when Patsy Cline croons, “Crazy. ” I have to laugh at how ironic that is. Until Cynthia’s low voice cuts into chorus of the song, “Did you guys hear what happened to Suzette?”
Suzette used to be in the room across from mine when I was in solitary. She, like me had night terrors. I heard stories, mainly from Cynthia and her clan about how the staff used to have to give Suzette double the sedatives a normal patient would receive. Then it dawns on me, and I wonder how Cynthia gets her information.
I keep my head straight forward, my eyes closed, but my ears open. Most of the time the only excitement you get around here is eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.
One of the girls, a thick brunette with medium length brown hair and cat-eye glasses gasps, “No, what happened to her?”
“Poor Suzette.” Cynthia’s voice is heavy with a sadness that isn’t genuine and it makes my stomach churn. I wonder if the bitch talks just to talk. “You know, they took her down to the basement.” Whispers and gasps fill the room. “I overheard one of the nurses saying that they were going to try this procedure on her.”
I sit up straight. So now I know where Cynthia gets her information. She likes to eavesdrop too.
“What’s the procedure called?” asks another girl in the group. She is thin, waifish, with blonde hair that stretches down the length of her back.
“A lobotomy.”
The entire room is still. Silent. Everyone knows what a lobotomy is. The procedure had been introduced by some German doctor in an institution like Oakhill decades ago. Some people come out of the procedure unscathed and feeling better. Like the screw in them that was loose had been tightened.
According to the staff, we’ve had none of those cases here at Oakhill. The patients either enter a vegetative state or die. Again, I’ve learned this from eavesdropping on Cynthia’s conversations.
I assume that in Suzette’s case it was the latter.
Just by looking at the girls’ faces in the rec room I know they’re thinking the same thing. And now we all know that Suzette is never coming back.
Blondie speaks. “Who administered it?” She swallows the quiver in her vocal cords. “I mean which doctor said she needed it?”
“The new one,” Cynthia whispers. “The young, dreamy one.”
“Dr. Watson?” I find my voice and insert myself into their conversation—for once.
Cynthia’s powder blue eyes widen and I notice that even Aurora seems attentive. She’s abandoned her coloring book and is gawking at me. She sucks on her thumb, careful to not drop the crazy act completely. “You know him?” Cynthia asks.
“I met him today.” My eyes return to the window. “He’s treating me.”
“I think he brings life to the cliche; if looks could kill,” Cynthia adds. “You better hope he doesn’t treat you the way he treated, Suzette.”
“But I thought you said he ordered it, but didn’t actually do it.”
Cynthia shrugs. “It’s basically the same thing. Potato, pototo.”
She’s right. I don’t know why I said what I said in the first place. It’s like a person who holds the gun while his partner cleans out the vault during a bank robbery. That doesn’t make the person who isn’t cleaning out the vault any less guilty. In fact, in my eyes he’s even guiltier than the guy cleaning out the vault.
A nanosecond later, Dr. Watson breezes past the rec room. All of the girls shut up and I stare at his silhouette of a reflection and his cold, beautiful eyes rest on my back through the window. A shiver of panic runs down my spine and now I know…
I should be afraid of Dr. Elijah Watson.
Very, very afraid.
Chapter 5
