A-Splendid-Ruin(60)

I stared at them both in horror. My appetite died abruptly. “I’m not hungry.”

“No?” Costa asked. “Not even a little bit of bread?” She tore off a piece and waved it before my mouth. Then, deliberately, she dropped it to the floor. “Oh, dear. Well.” She picked it up. “Waste not, want not.” She shoved it against my lips. I clenched my jaw. She shoved harder, grinding my lips against my teeth until I tasted blood. “Open up!” She sighed and gave O’Rourke a sorry shake of her head. “Shall I get the wedge?”

O’Rourke rolled her eyes and crossed her beefy arms over her chest, but she didn’t argue, and I realized that whatever it was that had forced Gould to follow Costa’s orders had struck the other nurse as well. She would not help me. Costa leaned over and grabbed my jaw, pinching until I could not resist. Tears streamed down my cheeks as she shoved that soiled bread into my mouth. When I spat it out again, she repeated it. Once, twice, a third time, until I could only swallow, and then she stood back in triumph.

“Eat it all,” Costa commanded. “You’ll stay here until you do.”

“Don’t bother throwing it to the floor,” advised O’Rourke. “She’ll only do it again.”

I believed her. The bread lodged in my chest; I felt it as a diseased thing trying to claw its way back up, and the nurses had no sooner left me alone in that nauseatingly wretched room than I threw it up again, along with everything I’d eaten at breakfast, all over myself. It ran down my front, pooled in my lap. I tried to wipe it away with my already begrimed hands. I wanted the water, but when I drank it I only vomited again. The meat glistened in the half light, the bread mocked me.

A patient came in to use the toilet. She cocked her head like a dog at me, lifted her skirts, and when she was done, she came and grabbed the meat from my tray. She tore it apart with her bare hands, shoved half of it into her mouth and threw the other half back on my tray before she went away laughing.

I don’t know how long I was there. The window darkened. The gaslight burned steadily and low. No one else came. No nurse to check on me. My bladder became full, then overfull, and I held it until I could not. The mess on my hands dried and stiffened. The bells rang out the schedule. I did not know what it was, what they meant. I gagged and cried and tugged at the straps and then I did nothing but sit and stare and moan in pure helplessness, and then, finally, I closed my eyes. I pretended I was not here. I was in a quiet room, my dining room of dark walls and pale floors. I pretended I was drawing.

Finally, O’Rourke peeked in. “What? Still not eating?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I’ll be good.”

She stood before me and crossed her arms over her apron. “Is that so? Why don’t you show me then? Eat it, and I’ll take you back to the ward.”

I was desperate by then. The offer seemed a miracle. I reached for the bread.

She slapped it from my hands. It rolled across the floor, coming to rest against the base of a toilet. “The meat. I want you to eat the meat.”

My stomach roiled. “I can’t.”

“Then I guess you’ll stay.” She turned to go.

“Why are you this way? No one can be so mean. Why do you let Nurse Costa tell you what to do?”

It was the wrong thing to say.

O’Rourke turned back. Again the crossed arms. Again the waiting. This time, her eyes were stony. Whatever compassion I might have seen in her before was gone.

The meat was cold and greasy and quivery in my soiled fingers. I pulled off a piece. The gristle caught; finally I had to tear it with my teeth. My gorge rose; I would not be able to swallow this, I knew I could not, and there was vomit and filth on my fingers and still I pressed it into my mouth—I could no longer see; I was crying, no, I was sobbing.

Nausea rushed so violently through me I could not get it past my lips. I vomited everything all over the tray, and O’Rourke watched me until I was dry heaving and then she bent until her face was even with mine. Only then did I see any hint of emotion in her eyes, though it wasn’t sympathy. It was relief. Relief that it was over, that she’d done her job, that we could dispense with this.

“You going to be a good girl now, Kimble?”

I nodded fervently.

She unstrapped me, making a face the whole time, as if I were so disgusting she could not bear to touch me. Then she prodded me into the hall. By then the stench had permeated my skin, the inside of my nostrils. I thought I would never be rid of it. I shook as she led me, not to the ward again, but down the stairs, past others who stared at me as if I were a walking disease, to a room I hadn’t seen before, lined with rubber-sheeted mattresses, some of which held women wrapped shroud-like in water-soaked sheets. Two men in raincoats and rubber boots sloshed pails of water over the women. There were three empty baths with limp and swollen leather straps. Coils of dripping hoses hung on the walls. The tiled floor was pocked with drains.

O’Rourke took me to a chair in an empty corner and called over one of the men. “She stinks.”

My mind was gone; I was nowhere. I was no one. I scarcely knew what was happening when he uncoiled a hose, when he pointed the nozzle at me. I was completely unprepared for the force of freezing water that blasted me from the chair. Pain shot through my arm, my head hit the chair leg, but the chair was bolted to the floor and did not move, and then I was drowning, gasping for air through a gush of water, wishing I were dead.