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I announce myself at the modest but well-secured gate. There are cameras, barbwire, and an electrified wire warning sign. An armed guard exits a guard post on the inside of the property after checking the appointment schedule. He uses a pedestrian gate to meet me. After he searches the car and pats me down, he opens the gates and waves me through.
The house is a three-story, modern building with narrow windows. They’re not barred, but a body can’t fit through them. Precaution against suicide and escape, I assume.
I park in the guest lot at the front and ring the bell at the entrance. The double doors open to reveal a short woman in a white uniform with a broad smile.
“Mr. Botha,” she says, shaking my hand. “What a pleasure. Please follow me.”
When I made an enquiry, there was a questionnaire as well as a list of required documents, one of those being a salary slip. I guess my monthly income is the reason for the warm welcome.
The nurse doesn’t introduce herself but walks me through an entrance resembling an art gallery. It’s contemporary, colorful, and acoustic. Our steps echo up a marble staircase. Expensive. Cold. The space smells like toilet flowers, the kind that comes from a canister.
“The dining room, laundry, and kitchen are downstairs,” the nurse explains. She stops in front of the first door. “This is Dr. Dickenson’s office. Tea? Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“Something stronger?”
It’s ten in the morning. “I’m good.”
Her nod is no-nonsense and professional. She opens the door and walks away.
Dr. Dickenson gets to his feet when I enter. His gaze is attentive and his handshake strong. “Please, sit down.”
When we’ve taken a velvet sofa facing a chrome coffee table, Dr. Dickenson gets straight to business. “Tell me more about your wife.”
“Privacy is my priority.”
“We’re all about integrity at Willowbrook, Mr. Botha. Our staff signs confidentiality agreements. How did you say you heard about us, again?”
I didn’t. I left that part of the questionnaire blank. They operate strictly by word-of-mouth. There’s nothing about Willowbrook in the media or online.
“Harold Dalton,” I say. “He submitted his daughter for a year.”
I couldn’t risk them calling Dalton and asking questions about my false persona. They would’ve checked me out before our appointment—credit history, criminal records, and the like—and found the history one of my old cellmates created for Ben Botha. Wealthy, ruthless. All true, down to unscrupulous. A wife with a big inheritance. A business in trouble. The last part is untrue, but one quickly gets the picture.
Dickenson rubs his chin. “Ah, yes. Lina Dalton-Clarke. She was indeed a patient.” He puts on a polite act of interest. “How is she doing?”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t met her. Dalton and I were business partners. We didn’t socialize outside of work.”
“Terrible what happened to Harold,” he says.
“Mismanagement and fraud.”
“Indeed.”
He seems to say indeed a lot. “Dalton was happy with your service.”
“That’s always good to hear.” He gives me a close-lipped smile. “You said on your questionnaire your wife suffers from dementia.”
I put out my first piece of bait. “That’ll need to be clinically confirmed.”
“Of course. We have a fulltime psychiatrist on board.”
My second piece of bait is more direct. “For how long can you offer treatment? I was thinking two years.”
“You must understand an establishment with our reputation is in high demand.”
“Can you do it or not?”
“We are fairly booked up, but anything is possible if you can afford it, Mr. Botha.”
“I don’t want her to suffer unnecessarily.”
“That can be arranged.” He crosses his legs. “If you have no objections to drugs, we can go that route.” He says it like no objection is a given. “The patients tend to suffer less when they’re sedated.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Isolation.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Some patients get disruptive. It’s in the best interest of the other patients.”
“Drugged or isolated.” I drum my fingers on the armrest. “What if they don’t put up a fight?”
He smiles. “They all do, Mr. Botha.”
He says Mr. Botha a lot, too. I already feel like breaking his neck. It takes everything I have and more to return his smile.
He stands. “Shall we take a tour?”
“Gladly.”
We go through the hallway. There are doors on both sides, and each door is fitted with a window. There’s an old woman in the first room. She sits on a bed and stares at a television. The second room looks the same. Its inhabitant is a teenager with his nose pressed up against the window, looking zonked out.
I stop at the third one. A man is spread-eagled and strapped to a bed. The room is bare and white. Except for that bed, there’s no furniture. His eyes are closed, but he’s not sleeping. He’s twitching and jerking.
I barely swallow my rage. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Let’s just say he’s not being cooperative,” the doctor says behind me.
This is worse than prison. In my cell I had books, access to study materials, a laptop, music, my own private toilet, and whores once a week, if I desired. These people are innocent, their freedom not stripped by bars but by a certificate that declares them insane.
