Wilder Girls(30)

West Cedar

House?

Number 6

You’re getting anxious, Teddy says. Don’t get anxious.

I almost forgot, I write.

But you didn’t.



* * *



—

Wake up before I’m supposed to IV still full a haze I can’t blink away and when I close my eyes I am back back in the woods that night the night I came here

Cold damp irises crunching under my boots and Welch holding me tight for the best she says for your friends like there’s a choice I made but it wasn’t I didn’t and pulled me from the infirmary marched me down the stairs no guards no nothing Hetty asleep somewhere Hetty alone

   She needs me I said and Welch said no said she needs you to do this

Through the gate into the trees sounds in the brush animals moving their eyes like torches Welch’s breath warm on my ear and then people waiting

They took me even though I fought even though I ran dart in my thigh and a fog in my brain and Welch leaning over me

I’m sorry she said and I think the worst part is I think she meant it



* * *



—

Something blue out in the bigger room, and I notice, my eyes clear, world firm and real around me. Barely time to see it all, barely time to check my IV and see it’s empty before the curtain’s sliding back, a rustle of plastic pushing through, and then it’s a person, a woman in a suit like Teddy’s, standing at the foot of the bed, holding a patterned hospital gown.

“Hello,” she says. She sounds like she’s smiling. “Time to change.”

She undoes every strap holding me down and helps me to my feet. My limbs are weak and shaking, so she undresses me, her heavy fingers working slowly at the buttons on my shirt and the laces on my boots. For a second I’m shivering in my bra and underwear, and I see her staring at me, at my back where that extra ridge of bone erupts through my skin, and then the gown is slipping over my head. I can’t even lift my arms to get them through the holes. She has to do that for me.

   Her suit is thick like Teddy’s. Rubbery and stiff. They must be afraid of me, of what I have. But it stops at her neck, and I can see the beat of her pulse. Count it—one, two—and it feels better that way.

“Does that feel all right?” the woman asks as she straps me back in. “Comfortable?”

I open my mouth, but she lays one gloved finger across my lips before I can get anything out.

“Let’s stick with nodding for now. Teddy tells me we’ve had some trouble with talking.” She pulls back the curtain a little more to show a sink tucked into the counter against the wall. It doesn’t look quite like a hospital. There’s something sad and ordinary about it. Like the kitchen in a back room of a church, or the break room in an office building.

The woman fills a plastic cup of water for me and holds it to my mouth until I take a sip. “We’ll get you something to write with,” she says. “In the meantime it’s probably best to let you rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

I keep drinking until the cup is empty. She dumps it in a trash basket by the foot of my bed and comes closer. “I’m Dr. Paretta,” she says, bending over my right arm. “Should I call you Byatt? Or is there something else you like to go by? A nickname, maybe?”

   I shake my head.

“Byatt it is. All right, you might feel a pinch.”

I don’t see exactly what she does. There are too many folds to her suit. But when she comes away it’s with a tube of blood. She holds it up to the light. Squints, like she can tell what’s happening inside, and then fetches a small red cooler from the foot of the bed and slots this vial of blood inside, next to another one. “Potential RAX,” I think it’s labeled, but she closes it before I can read the rest.

“One last thing, before I forget, and then I’ll leave you to sleep.” She takes my hand in between hers, curls my fingers and bends my wrist so that I can feel the side of the bed frame. There’s a button there, round and raised.

“This is your call button. In case the pain gets too bad, or you need something. Do you feel it?”

I nod. She looks at me, and then she straightens back up. Waits another second or two. Then: “Do you remember my name?”

My lips peel apart. “Paretta.”

I wanted to say it, to say something, to have my voice again, and I didn’t think it would hurt that bad. Just one word couldn’t hurt that bad. But it does, like something’s trying to rip my spine out through my throat.

“Well,” says Paretta. She sounds out of breath. “We won’t be doing that again.”





CHAPTER 8


Gone, until I’m not. Flat on my back, the world moving around me as four suited figures wheel my gurney into a dark room. I test the restraints at my wrists, but they hold firm, nylon rubbing my skin raw.

“Good morning,” one of them says to me. I almost don’t recognize her, but there, the eyes, and the curling brown ponytail. Paretta.

High ceilings, no windows. An operating room, with something makeshift about it. The table in the middle is shrouded in paper, lit stark and hard. They line the gurney up alongside it and begin to undo my restraints. I could fight, I know, but the door’s shut and locked behind us, and I don’t know, really, what I’d even be fighting for.