Blood Day (5 page)

    
Viv stood still as a statue, her mouth trying to move. Finally she let out a weak, “Yes. Thank you.” This seemed to be enough, because Ambrose nodded at her, and without another word, walked out the door. Mark was staring at the spot where Ambrose had been standing a moment before. His eyes were bugging and his Adam's apple was moving up and down. His face was gloriously red. Margaret stopped before following the president, pushed her glasses up her nose with her finger, turned to Mark and smiled.

    
“Just a secretary, eh?” Margaret said to him. Then she followed the president out the door. The sound of a dozen shoes squeaked back down the hall until there was no sound at all but the gentle whirring of machines.
 

    
Viv unbuttoned her lab coat. She unclipped her badge and tossed it along with the coat onto the table.

    
“Goodbye, Mark,” she said. “I hope I never see you again. Tell Sonia I'll miss her.” She turned and headed for the door.

    
“Wait,” said Mark, his voice strangled. “You can't go yet. It's only Tuesday. You don't start until Monday.”

    
“Yeah, but I have a lot of wine to drink before then,” said Viv. He was opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. Viv stopped and looked at him. “You are a hollow man, Mark. A stuffed man.”

    
“What the hell does that mean?” he sputtered.

    
“It's from a poem,” said Viv.
 

    
“What do you know about poetry?” said Mark.

    
“Nothing,” said Viv. “But I'm learning.”

    
She closed the door quietly and didn't look back, her feet carrying her down the hall as if leaving the lab like any other day, to go home and have a drink. To help her forget, for at least a little while.

Four

The first time they took her down the hall for what Evelyn Hauser called “rehabilitation,” Sia fought them. Two large men in blue scrubs finally strapped her down and ended up wheeling her entire bed down the hall. Sia’s hand hurt where she had punched the orderly, and to her satisfaction, his cheek was swollen and bruising by the time they stopped.
 

“Sia,” said a familiar voice. Hauser stepped out in front of her and Sia glared.

“What the hell is this?” she said. “What are you going to do to me?”

The rehabilitation room reminded Sia of an old horror movie, about a nineteenth-century insane asylum where patients were tortured. The walls and floor were concrete block, with drains set into the floor. There were no windows and several stations were equipped with what looked like torture implements.
 

“You said I had to get better first,” said Sia, her voice echoing the panic rising inside of her. “You said they wanted me to get better.”

“Of course,” said Hauser, holding up a large book. “It’s all part of the process, dear. You know I don’t want to do this to you either, but regulations require it, and I’ve never been one to shirk my duties.”

“The regulations require what?” said Sia, through gritted teeth and clenched muscles and tears. She’d been able to get through one full day without vomiting, a small victory, but was now in pain all the time, her muscles clenching and unclenching, and she couldn’t eat or sleep. Evelyn Hauser wouldn’t give her so much as an aspirin for the pain.
 

Hauser took a syringe out of her pocket and came towards Sia, who began kicking and wriggling under the straps. The men held her down as Hauser jabbed the needle into her hip.

“This will make it impossible to move,” said Hauser. “But you’ll still feel everything. You will therefore remember what will happen should you digress from your treatment.”

“But I havennnnnn…” said Sia, her face suddenly refusing to work, her vocal chords limp.
 

“Ah, it’s working,” said Hauser. “Get her up there, please.”

Sia felt herself being lifted, turned upright, strapped onto the cold concrete wall. She was being held by straps on her wrists, ankles, waist and chest. Sia tried to scream but no sound would come.

“You truly believe that you won’t ever use again, Sia,” said Hauser. “But studies have shown that junkies lie, even to themselves. It’s all in the book. We must follow the rules.”

Sia watched, helpless as Evelyn Hauser cradled the book to her chest, and the men disappeared around the corner. They came back with a large hose that looked like it had come off a fire truck. Sia tried to speak, tried to beg them to stop, but all she could manage was a long thin moan.

“You’ll thank me for this one day,” said Hauser. As the man with the swollen cheek turned on the hose, Sia saw that Evelyn Hauser had to look away.

The next day, Hauser brought Sia some pills.

“To help you sleep,” said the old nurse, reaching to stroke Sia’s hair as Sia swallowed them. Sia flinched away, the restrains stopping her wrists painfully. Hauser took her hand back and stood, straightening her sweater.
 

“You cannot fault me for doing my job, Sia,” she said. “The person you’re really angry at is yourself. I won’t allow you to be weak here, my dear. I’m tough, but it’s all to the benefit of my patients.”

“What was the benefit of paralyzing me?” said Sia, the very act of speaking painful. Her jaw had been clenched when the paralytic wore off, and her teeth felt like they had turned to a mouthful of nerves. Every centimeter of Sia’s skin felt as though she had been sandpapered down.
 

“So you wouldn’t injure yourself, of course,” said Hauser, her voice confident. “You were very upset.”

“Of course I was upset. You tortured me.”

“Not torture, Sia,” said Hauser. “Redemption.”

“You said they wanted to make me better,” said Sia. “Stronger.” She could feel the pills starting to work. She was feeling suddenly very tired.

“They do,” said Hauser. “But first, you must be punished.”

“Are you going to do it again?” said Sia, Evelyn Hauser growing far away and blurry.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” said Hauser. “Get some sleep.”

Sia woke blearily, what felt like days later, to someone jabbing a needle into her arm. It was the orderly she hit in the face. He put a finger to her lips.

“I’m just taking a little blood for tests,” he said, smiling. “I’m not as nice as Hauser. You hit me again, and this time I’ll hit you back.”

Sia let him take the blood. After he left, the vials of her blood clinking in his pocket, Sia tried to hug herself, but the restraints chained to the sides of the bed wouldn’t let her. She felt too tired to cry. She had brought herself here, Hauser had been right about that. She’d been weak. Sia blinked in the darkness. It was odd, though, she didn’t feel weak. She felt angry, alone, scared. But weak?
 

“I’m stronger than they know,” she whispered in the dark. And for a moment, she remembered someone once saying that to her…

She was still awake when Hauser came in the morning, clutching the blue book to her chest again.
 

“You’re due for another session,” said Hauser. “If you don’t fight us, I won’t have to give you an injection.”

“I’m never going to scream for you again,” said Sia, though her voice was low and shaky. “You won’t get me to scream.”

“I don’t want you to scream,” said Hauser, sounding genuinely surprised. “I just want to teach you a lesson. It’s the rules, Sia.”

“And you’re not one to shirk the rules,” Sia said.

“No, I am not,” said Hauser.
 

“I won’t fight you,” said Sia.
 

“Very good.”

Later that morning, the men handcuffed Sia to a wheelchair and wheeled her to the Rehabilitation Room. Hauser was waiting for her there, still clutching her book. It seemed to Sia that the book had become part of her body, she cradled it so much. Her precious rules. The man pushing her chair didn’t stop at the wall where she’d been hosed a few days before, but continued on to a corner with a cloth partition.
 

“Uncuff her,” said Hauser.

“Ma’am, is that wise?” Hauser glared at the orderly as though she had just been slapped.
 

“Uncuff her and stop asking stupid questions,” she said. “You are out of line.”

“Sorry,” said the orderly, reaching down and squeezing Sia’s wrist hard as he uncuffed her, sneering as she gasped in pain.

“You may go now,” said Hauser, looking at the orderly, her eyes like razorblades. “What is your name again?”

“Clark,” he said. “Reggie Clark.”

“Mr. Clark, you are relieved of your position.”

“What? You can’t—”

“Oh I can,” said Hauser. “Your insolence and your disdain for patients has cost you your job. Leave now or I will call my supervisor.”

Clark glared at her. “You can’t do this. They assigned me this job.”

“They will have to assign you another one. Good luck in the sanitation department.”

“I’m going to come back, and I’m going to kill all you bitches.” He pointed at Hauser. “Especially you.” As he left, Hauser picked up a phone from her pocket. She pressed a key and smiled into the phone.

“Yes, Mr. Kearns? A Mr. Reggie Clark is coming out. He has been terminated for threatening me. Please detain him.” She listened for a moment, then said, “very good, thank you.” Hauser pressed a button and put the phone back in her pocket, turning to face Sia.

“You see, dear? I don’t want to hurt you. I want to protect you. Had I not incited Mr. Clark, his sadistic tendencies would have been directed at you.”

“Why me?” she said. “Why not all the patients?”

“Oh, Sia,” Hauser laughed. “You are my only patient. Now stand up and take your punishment.”

The remaining orderly, looking more than terrified of Hauser, pulled back the partition revealing a bathtub. There was a cloth cover on top with a hole cut out right where Sia imagined her head would go. The orderly pulled the canvas back and motioned for her to step into the tub. Sia looked down and saw it was full of ice. There was a cart piled with tubs of ice next to it.

“Go to hell,” Sia said, gravel in her voice.

“We can put you in,” said Hauser, “but I believe you’ll find that even more distasteful.”

Sia looked at the orderly, but he was watching Hauser. Sia glared at the old nurse and pulled her gown off, throwing it on the floor.
 

“This isn’t you, dear,” said Hauser, stroking the blue book. “This is the junkie who will soon be redeemed.”

“I’m not going to scream,” said Sia. She raised her foot and lowered it into the tub. She hissed air in through her teeth as she plunged the foot to the bottom of the tub. Tears stung her eyes, but she wouldn’t cry. She told herself over and over that she wouldn’t cry.
 

But in the end she did cry. And that night, Evelyn Hauser gave her another sedative. Sia fell asleep to the woman stroking her hair, unable to push her away through the shivering, even hours after she’d been returned to her bed and covered in hot blankets.

Sia dreamed of a man, his dark, dark eyes pushing into her, staring at her, yet burning her at the same time. She startled awake with his name almost on her lips. She strained to remember him, but the tendrils of the dream slipped from her grasp.
 

“Jesus, what happened to you?” said a familiar voice. A dim light switched on and Sia blinked at the man standing there. He was wearing scrubs just like the other orderlies, but he didn’t look like any of the others. He was tall and thin, handsome, with beard stubble dotting his chin. He smiled and Sia knew that he probably got his way a lot with that smile. He was familiar.

“You want my blood,” she said. “Go ahead.”

He pulled a stool over next to the bed, tossing the blood kit on the floor. Sia looked at him, interested.

“You don’t remember me,” he said. He had an English accent.

“Should I?” she said.

“Dez Paine,” he said. “I’m the one who brought you here.”

Sia shrunk away from him, her eyes wide.
 

“No, no, it’s not like that,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But you will if I make you?” Sia said.
 

“Jesus, what the hell are they doing to you here?” he said, looking disgusted.
 

“Rehabilitating me,” she said. “You should go. Movers aren’t supposed to come in here.”

“Relax, love,” said the Mover who was now an orderly and did not want to take her blood.

“Why are you here?” said Sia. “I’ll scream.”

“I don’t want to…” he began, then shook his head. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I want to help you.”

“You’ve helped me enough, thanks,” said Sia.
 

“I had to do that,” he said. “My partner, she’s crazy about the rules. She would have reported me. Maybe even killed me herself.”

“That’s a sad story,” Sia said.

“I know how it sounds,” he said. “But they were looking for an orderly, so I volunteered. And here you are.”

“Why did you volunteer?” she said.

He grinned again. “I’m going to bust you out.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you risk your life to bust a junkie out of rehab?”

“Sister, this ain’t no rehab,” said Dez Paine, looking at her wrists in their padded restraints.

“I have to stay,” said Sia, surprising herself. As she said the words she knew that they were true, but she didn’t understand why. She frowned, searching her broken mind for the reason. Without warning an image from her dream flashed in her mind. A pair of dark eyes. A man watching her. Her heart beat faster and she gasped for breath.

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Dez Paine. He fidgeted around on one of the wrist cuffs and it fell away.

“Stop it,” said Sia. “I have to stay. You can’t make me leave.”

“I’m trying to help you,” said Dez.

“I don’t want your help. Why are you doing this?”

He froze and looked at her. He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I just have to.”

“No you don’t,” Sia said, anger rising in her chest. She didn’t know why she was upset. She didn’t know why she wasn’t eager to escape this horrible place. But for some reason, she had to stay. She had to…what? Search for something? Someone? She couldn’t get her mind to make the connections.