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Chapter Eleven
Grace
My name is called, and then two men in white step out of the procedure room and take me by the underarms, one on each side.I get the sense that once I cross the threshold into that room, nothing is ever going to be the same.I question whether to go willingly, but how much of a fight can one really put up with two large men dragging you across the floor?
As it turns out, a mediocre one, at best.
The room is smaller than I thought it would be.There is an odd smell.It is a smell created by a disturbing mix of things, choking and sick.It is the smell of mildew and mold, and the smell of the melted wax that clings to the inside of a candle jar.It reeks of blood and death, mixed with the odor of urine and vomit, sweat and terror.
The room itself is pretty unremarkable, just cold and metal.Through my stockings, I can feel the coldness of the floor beneath my feet.I can feel the cool metal of the table against my trembling body.I can feel everything, as though every sensation is heightened.
Nothing is ever going to be the same.
As I am lifted onto the table and strapped down, my palms sweat.My shirt sticks to my back, my head doesn’t feel like it’s attached to the rest of me, and my mouth is drier than the Sahara.
They put my feet into stirrups.I remember the same feeling from when my mom had taken me to get my first period exam.I remember how the paper crinkled for what seemed like hours, how I didn’t know if the crinkling was real or in my head.I remember how the cool of the fan blowing from the corner of the room felt on the back of my hands.
The doctor walked into the room, and a sense of relief washed over me.He looked the way I imagined he would look, calm and collected.His hair was receding at the forehead, and he was wearing a white lab coat.
“We’re going to begin,” he said in a voice that sounded like it was a part of someone else, a voice that didn’t belong to any part of a human body.A voice that was familiar, and that I had heard before, but couldn’t place because time didn’t have any meaning.
I lie on the table, and I am there in that doctor’s office all those years ago, and I am also here.I am in a fever dream.It’s a funny thing, what fear can do.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” I say with a sigh.“I’m sorry I was such a fool.”
In my mind, I can still see her out of the corner of my eye.She is still there, bound to a gurney, sprawled in the hallway.I can feel her watching me, and I can see a smile on her face.I can feel her watching me like I felt her watching me when each of the staff members had hugged her.I can feel her watching as he walked in.I can feel her staring at me, watching as they strapped me down to the metal table, and as the man in the white coat placed the nodes on my head.She was trying to tell me something, but what?
“We’re going to begin.”
I watch as the doctor assesses the gash in my head, at once deeming it unimportant.“We’ll get that taken care of after,” he says to Nurse Wagnon.
She smiles a pleasant smile, if such a thing is possible.“It’ll be easier then.When the patient is relaxed.”
With a curt nod of his head, he looks to the others, and everything changes.I feel a cold shock in the palm of my hand, the taste of metal in the back of my throat, and my back arches.My body jerks violently, almost violently enough to break free of the restraints.The feeling is so intense and uncontrollable that it is alarming, and not in a good way, like the feeling you get when your dad turned the hose on you in the summer.There is no relief.This is the most excruciating experience of my life.
I had not imagined it could be so terrible; it feels like bone being shredded like a rubber tire, and the way my whole body flails about like a chicken with its head cut off, the way I wonder if these are the last of my thoughts.My brain seems to be dying slowly without oxygen, pieces of brain matter scatter like shrapnel all around my skull.
And then it suddenly stops, and only a dull pain remains, but it is as though the whole world disappeared.
Later, as I was lying in my bed, a strange sensation came over me.It smelled like sorrow but it had a bitter taste, a bit like revenge.
I watched Elizabeth sleeping soundly in the bed across from me and as I studied the rise and fall of her chest, I felt something stirring.An idea.
An idea that didn’t feel half bad.
That idea brought with it a satisfying feeling.It was the first one I’d had in weeks.It was the exact opposite of fear, the exact opposite of pain, and it was a feeling I would’ve paid everything I had ever had for just a taste.I wanted more.I wanted to sleep soundly.I wanted to feel alive again.I wanted to know I had a shot at getting out of this place, at life returning to normal.I wanted to feel like Elizabeth had, lying on that gurney with her smug smile and that fresh stick of gum in her mouth.And I was pretty sure I knew just what I had to do to make it happen.
