Finding Alice Read online

  They say this is a hospital, but I can tell it’s a prison. There are locks on all the doors, and a mesh that looks like chicken wire runs through the glass windows. My food is brought to me on an unbreakable plastic tray (I know it’s unbreakable, since I threw it once). I get no utensils to eat with, not even plastic, in case I should decide to hurt myself or someone else. I have been informed by Dr. Thornton that restraints will continue to be used if necessary. So far this has been necessary twice. It is the worst feeling imaginable to be tied up like an animal, completely helpless. You can’t even wipe your own nose. Naturally, I want to avoid their contraptions if I can, but I’m not promising anything.

  The woman in the room next to mine screams almost constantly. I think she is a patient. I call her the Duchess since she’s always in a royally foul mood. She screams so much that I’m sure some of the noise must be coming from the pig baby, and there are times I expect her to blast into my room and throw the squealing swine right at me. But this hasn’t happened yet.

  The scrawny blond “orderly” with the thin pale mustache is definitely a spy. I can tell by the way he walks, very stiff legged, sort of like a goose. I’m sure he is hiding sound and photography equipment in his baggy pants. He pretends he is cleaning my room, but I know he is gathering information to be used against me.

  The stocky red-headed nurse is a spy too. She pretends she’s doing medical procedures on me, checking my blood pressure and heart rate and taking blood samples, but I know that she’s just trying to get information. I’m afraid she’s already inserted implants beneath my skin to monitor me. And every time she sticks a needle in me, which is quite often, I suspect she’s filling me full of chemicals to make me forget or else to poison me—or maybe both.

  Why else would they need to check these things so often? And why would they need to keep drawing my blood? Do they plan to kill me this way? Slowly so that no one notices? How long does it take to drain the blood from a human before he dies? I’m shorter than average and underweight too, so I’m guessing I could go faster than most.

  My mom has been to visit me every day. But so far I’ve completely ignored her. She is definitely the enemy. This all became painfully clear the day the three of them dragged me in here.

  And of course my notebooks are gone. If I were speaking to my mother, I would ask her where they went. Maybe someone here took them. I knew they would fall into the wrong hands sooner or later. I probably should’ve destroyed them when I had the chance. My mother brought me a sketch pad and pencil, but the pencil was taken away from me when I tried to use it to defend myself. I know the pad and pencil were only a trick—a way for them to extract more information from me. So I’m not talking or writing or anything. I will just stay quietly in my jail cell until I am dead. I’m thinking it shouldn’t be long, since I’m barely eating now. It bothers me that I don’t know where I’ll go when I’m dead. I wish it were simply to a deep and dreamless sleep, but I’m afraid that might not be the case.

  Sometimes I have nightmares so terrifying I’m not sure whether I’m awake or asleep. But the experience is so chilling that I shake uncontrollably, as if I’m having a seizure and my heart is about to burst. I have seen Satan and his demons in these moments. I have smelled their sulfurous smoke. I have even felt their fire melting the flesh from my bones. And I have been horrified by the tortured screams I’ve heard while there. I am scared beyond words that Pastor John’s sermons, the ones I endured as a child and suffered nightmares from, might be true after all. What if they are true?

  So I wonder sometimes, What if that’s really what happens when I die? What if the church ladies are right, and I am evil, and I am going to hell? What then? The Queen’s Prison might seem hellish to me now, but this is nothing compared to what I’ve seen in the night. This fear alone almost makes me want to live.

  And yet I believe they are slowly killing me here.

  chapter TEN

  Adventures in Wonderland

  It turns out I was wrong. There actually is a Level Two in this place. I suppose this might mean there is also a Level One, but I’m not jumping to any conclusions yet.

  After I finally decided to cooperate with Dr. Thornton and his “staff”—this was to determine whether or not they were lying—I was eventually moved to Level Two, or what I now think of as Wonderland.

  Many strange creatures inhabit Wonderland. There is this older woman with a shaved head, named Dorothy, who carries around a pink toy telephone and has conversations with God. At first I thought she was telling him about me, but now I’m not so sure. I heard her promising him that she’d be good if he’d come pick her up. So far he hasn’t shown.

  Then there’s Ben. He’s pretty old and sweet looking in his plaid flannel shirts. He likes to play checkers and watch sitcoms on TV. He seems pretty quiet and subdued most of the time, but every once in a while he just erupts into a fit of profanity and swearing and has to be given a shot and taken back to his room. I am sorry for him though, because I suspect he doesn’t mean to do this. I think I know how he feels.

  Then there’s this teenage girl with scars all over her arms and legs. She’s really sort of pretty with dark brown hair and big eyes like a doe’s. When I first saw her, I suspected the scars might be from the implants the nurses are always inserting into the real patients. One day when I was certain we were the only two in the bathroom, I asked her about them.

  Without looking directly at me, she simply answered, “No, I did this to myself.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed her or not. Maybe they told her to say that. Then when I mentioned it to Nurse Kelly, she told me that the girl’s name is Lisa and that she’s a cutter.

  “What’s a cutter?” I asked.

  “Someone who cuts himself.”

  Well, this makes absolutely no sense to me, but then not much does anyway.

  I’ve also noticed a guy about my age named Jason, who Nurse Kelly says is schizophrenic too. She keeps telling me that I should talk to him, that I should ask him how he’s dealing with his life.

  “And you better not wait too long, Alice, since he’s about to be moved to Level One,” she says.

  I eye her suspiciously. “What is Level One, really?” Sometimes I almost think I can trust her, but then again she might just be really good at playing this game.

  “Level One is when you’re released to go home. You only come in here for outpatient treatment after that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You just come in here every week so we can check your blood and make sure your meds are working.”

  I nod like this makes sense, but I’m not sure if this is true or not.

  “Talk to Jason,” she urges me with one of her smiles. “He can tell you some of the things he’s been through.”

  But I’m worried that Jason might be a spy, because he looks far too normal to me. Plus he talks with the staff way too much. That in itself looks suspicious.

  And the staff people are an odd bunch too. But then what can you expect? I mean they are either spies, and I’m seriously starting to question this theory, or they like bossing around the poor crazy folks. Which one is worse, I’m not sure.

  Like this one nurse’s aide named Frieda. Talk about weird. She’s got orange hair that’s styled within an inch of its life. She scurries around like a hyped-up bird, chirping at everyone as if she’s in charge of the whole nutty place, and yet she’s really just an aide. Her big thing is cleanliness. It’s like she’s obsessed with it. She’s always telling people to wash their hands or clean this up or sweep that. She could drive a sane person crazy. Maybe that’s why she’s here—to keep us all in our places.

  Then there’s this male nurse named Henry, a great big black guy who wears a gold chain and looks like he used to play professional football. I was kind of scared of him at first. Turns out he’s pretty nice and surprisingly gentle. When he draws my blood samples, I hardly even feel it.

  Today I surprised myself by asking H
enry if there’s a reason for all this bloodletting or if it’s simply a form of torture.

  He laughs at first but then realizes I am serious. “I’m sorry,” he says kindly. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you why we do this?”

  I shake my head and feel stupid.

  “We’ve got to measure the level of medication in your body. If you get too much it can harm your white blood cells, and that wouldn’t be good.” He looks me in the eyes now. “The reason you’re here is to get better, Alice.”

  “Really?” I ask. He nods.

  “So I can go home.”

  “If you get well enough.”

  “Do very many people get well enough to go home?”

  Now Henry glances toward the door as he puts the little rubber cap on the tube of dark red blood. This worries me some.

  “Henry,” I plead, “I need to know. Do very many people get to go home from here?”

  He shrugs and packs up his stuff. “I suppose that’s something you should discuss with Dr. Thornton.”

  So now I’m wondering if they just want to keep people in here forever. After all, this is a way for them to make money. If everyone got well and left, then where would they be? Even my mother tells me, “This place is not cheap, Alice.” Then she usually adds, as if it’s going to convince me, “I’m doing this for your own good.” Another one of her favorite lines these days. I have started talking to her but just barely. I still haven’t forgiven her for bringing me—and for the way she did it. I still believe that was very, very wrong. And because of that, I find it hard to completely trust her or believe what she tells me.

  Anyway, I’m thinking about talking to Jason and asking him about his “illness.” But I’m going to watch him carefully when he answers. After all, I know a little about this whole business myself, and I doubt he can pull one over on me. Then again he may have been carefully trained in how to deceive patients. He might just be a setup—someone they use to get your hopes up so they can keep you subdued while you do your time.

  The truth is, I am feeling a tiny bit better these days. Okay, maybe I am a little dopey from the meds, and I don’t feel at all human. But I am sleeping a little better, and I eat most of my food—at least the parts that are recognizable. My thinking seems fairly normal, at least to me. If I seem suspicious and skeptical to others, then I’d like to invite them to walk a mile or two in my shoes and see how they like it. There’s plenty to be suspicious about around this place.

  So if I am better, then why can’t I leave? Why can’t I get out and get on with my life? Although I’m not entirely sure what kind of life I’ll have left. Will I be able to go back to school? Or has the university been informed that Alice Laxton has gone crazy? Have they neatly erased my transcript from their computers, wiped me off their records?

  I just wish there were some way out of this place. I’ve been looking at all the doors and windows and trying to figure how to escape, but so far I haven’t come up with anything. But I’m not giving up.

  I have this feeling that if I don’t take matters into my own hands and get out of here on my own, I’ll end up just like my grandma. That I will live inside these walls until I die. Then I remember she did manage to escape every once in a while. Now if an old woman could break out of here, surely I can.

  chapter ELEVEN

  A Narrow Escape

  I’m sitting in Dr. Thornton’s office daring to hope that things might finally be changing for me. He’s talking all positively to me now, saying how I’ve made such good progress and how pleased he is with me and how I’m cooperating so well. Then suddenly he switches gears and asks me about my “symptoms,” and I stupidly tell him the truth.

  He nods with this knowing look, and I suspect this is exactly how he’s duped so many other unsuspecting patients before me. “So the hallucinations haven’t completely subsided yet.” He makes note of this in my file, and I am silently swearing at myself for letting down my guard with him. What was I thinking?

  “I didn’t really mean that I heard something.” I attempt to correct things. “I mean that I thought I did. Actually, it was more like a daydream.”

  He nods again, jotting down even more notes. Probably something such as “patient is in denial.”

  “I just answered you without thinking,” I say quickly and try to laugh it off. “I think I was having a flashback at the—” I stop myself now, realizing I am only digging my hole deeper.

  “Don’t worry, Alice.” His voice turns placating as he peers over his half-glasses. “It usually takes time for the psychosis to completely abate. Sometimes one medication works for a while, then for some reason it stops, and we need to switch. We have patients here who take a number of meds to keep their symptoms under control.” He smiles. “We call it a ‘cocktail.’ ”

  I sigh and slump down in my chair. This is not going the way I’d hoped. I imagine the “quiet” patients, the ones who enjoy a little before-breakfast cocktail and then another one before dinner. These are the patients I usually try to ignore. I’ve never questioned whether they are spies. They most definitely are not. They are the ones that remind me of my grandma. The ones I do not wish to become. These are the patients who are so drugged up that they sit like a sack of potatoes and drool on themselves. Occasionally their limbs will jerk or twitch, but other than that there are few signs of life in them

  I know this isn’t their fault, and I do pity them. Out of respect, I try not to stare at them the way I did as a child. I know I would not want someone standing there and gaping at me. I don’t want anyone to assume that just because I look like a vegetable I am a vegetable.

  Sometimes, when I’m bored, I try to imagine what these people would be like without their little “cocktails.” Would they suddenly burst into life like some weird horror movie called Awakening the Dead? Or maybe they would stand up and sing and dance and have a big old welcome-back party.

  “Alice?”

  I jerk myself back to attention, realizing that I’ve let my mind run away with me again. Not a good thing to do when you’re in Dr. Thornton’s office.

  “I’m changing your medication to something a little stronger.” He says this as if he’s doing me a huge favor.

  “But I—”

  “Don’t worry.” He closes my folder and smiles in his usual condescending way. “Nurse Kelly will walk you back to your room now.”

  I recognize my cue to stand and exit, but I want to stay there. I want to yell at him. I want to cuss. I want to tell him that he’s as crazy as any of his patients. What sane person would abuse the power to prescribe medications? Why does anyone want to turn living people into barely breathing zombies? I want to wail and scream and carry on, but I know what that will get me—a shot in the rump and a free ticket to the Queen’s Dungeon. And so, like a good little Alice, I simply nod and move toward the door. He says good-bye in a satisfied voice, as if he is the king of his crazy kingdom and his rules reign supreme.

  When I get into the reception area, I see neither Nurse Kelly nor the receptionist. I can hear a scuffle going on in the hallway. I’m guessing a new and very distraught patient has arrived, and they are now attempting to subdue—

  That’s when I notice it. The door to the waiting area is propped open with a black rubber doorstop, the way they do when someone is being difficult or in a stretcher or wheelchair. Without even thinking or looking back, I pass through the open door. This time I don’t even have to take a pill to make myself fit. I just walk right through like a normal person. Then I simply walk across the vacant waiting room and continue past the main entrance, and suddenly I am outside.

  I continue walking, more quickly now, but without looking back. I can hear my grandma speaking to me now. She is saying, “Go, honey. Just keep on going. Stay to the right. Walk in the shadows of the evergreen trees, and keep on going.”

  It’s getting dusky outside, and I happen to be wearing a charcoal-colored hooded sweatshirt and my dark jeans. Good camouflage for moving through the
shadows. I pull the hood over my hair and begin to jog.

  I couldn’t have planned this whole thing better if I’d tried. It’s as if some hand of fate or God or even my dear departed grandma just opened the doors and said, “Go.” Unbelievable!

  As I jog, I think it might’ve been nice to have my backpack with me, but then it might’ve slowed me down too. I feel excitement surge through my veins like electricity. It’s the first time I’ve felt this alive since the day they dragged me in and drugged me up. My morning meds are just beginning to wear off now, and I am incredibly free.

  And, oh, does it feel good. As I reach the fence by the road, I know I can easily scale it, and climbing like a crazed monkey, I do. I honestly believe I may have escaped. Over my shoulder I hear my grandmother urging me on.

  “Go, honey, just keep going.”

  chapter TWELVE

  The Pig Baby

  It’s the first time I’ve ever hitchhiked, but I am not a bit afraid. I believe that God or Grandma or maybe even Amelia is watching out for me. I stand close to the interstate entrance with my thumb sticking out and am picked up within minutes. I run toward an old blue VW van with bumper stickers all over the back. One sticker makes me laugh as I see it in the headlights of a semi: Pray for Whirled Peas.

  “Where you headed?” asks the chubby guy at the wheel. His hair is a peacock blue and spiky. He has on a leather vest, and numerous tattoos decorate his arms.

  I think for a minute, unsure of my final destination, just anyplace away from Warren and Forest Hills. “Portland,” I announce as he takes off, reentering the fast-moving traffic with his little engine whirring but barely going forty. A horn blasts behind us, and a set of headlights illuminates the back window.

  “Hey, whazzup?” calls a sleepy voice from the back.

  “Just picking up a hitcher,” says the guy at the wheel.