Hannah wedged my chair against the wall as the other group approached. Mrs. Caldecott had gone limp. She looked to be in her late twenties, with lovely pale skin and delicate bones. As they squeezed by in the narrow hallway, her hand shot out. Dark green eyes bleary with terror locked with mine as her fingernails dug into my arm.
“Help me. Please.” ?The words dropped hopeless and limp from her chapped lips. “I am not deranged. Do not let them do this to me.”
I sucked in a breath. I wanted to say something . . . anything . . . but before I could force out a word, Hannah wrestled her away. I flinched as Mrs. Caldecott’s nails scored five desperate lines into my skin.
“No-o-o-o-o.” The cry cut off abruptly as the outer door slammed shut behind them.
I am not deranged.
Snippets I’d read about Victorian asylums flapped open inside my mind. The most haunting had been penned in 1879 by the wealthy writer and attorney Herman Charles Merivale. My Experience in a Lunatic Asylum by a Sane Patient was a first-person narrative of the author’s own entrapment inside a private mental institution.
If the readers of this true history will imagine for themselves a number of hospitals for typhus fever, where any one of them, man or woman may, upon the first symptoms of a cold in the head, be shut up among the worst cases—?with moral, social, and physical consequences beyond man’s power of description—?they will know something of the meaning of private lunatic asylums.
I remember thinking, at the time, how terrible it must be to feel so helpless. So caged.
Mrs. Caldecott’s eyes haunted me as I pressed my back hard against the wooden slats of the wheelchair.
“Miss?” Nurse Hannah started, but I interrupted.
“What—?” I had to stop, to swallow down a diamond-hard nugget of fear. “What are they doing to her?”
“Aw now, miss,” Hannah said, her chipmunk voice unaffected. “Don’t you worry none about Mrs. Caldecott. She’s been here a long time, she has.”
We moved ahead toward a wide set of double doors. A brass plate mounted beside them read GREENWOOD LADIES’ WARD B.
“What’s Ward B mean?” I asked, though I kept careful watch as the guard removed the ring of skeleton keys from his belt again and rattled through them.
Okay. Locks from the outside. Sergeant Peters has keys. Check.
“We just passed through Ward A, see?” Hannah was explaining. “Most of the patients on that ward either have very minor problems”—?she whispered the last word as if it were something obscene—?“or they’ve been here long enough, and are responding well to treatment. They may have earned special rights and privileges, see.”
“Can they leave here if they want?”
Hannah chuckled. “Oh no, miss. No one leaves Greenwood but what the doctor releases them. I mean to say they are allowed additional freedom within the hospital. They may have visitors whenever they wish. Go outside on the lawn when it suits them. Walk the gallery. All Ward A patients are allowed to attend the special entertainments. Things such as that.”
“What special entertainments?”
“Oh!” Hannah cried. “We have the loveliest performances here. Just last week, we had an entire orchestra. We’ve had a magician, an opera singer. Dr. Carson spares no expense.”
As the guard continued to sort through the keys, Hannah tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “Aw, don’t look look so glum, miss. You’ll be reassigned to Ward A a’fore you know it. Dr. Carson will know what’s best for you.” Eyes alight with hero worship, she said, “He’ll fix you right up. The doctor can fix anyone.”
Peters gave a loud cough, then grumbled about keys and locks. I looked up as he raised the jangling ring up to the light of a nearby wall sconce. Metal sang on metal as he slid one key after the other slowly around the brass circlet, lips moving as he silently counted.
He made a selection, then held the key aloft as if examining it for nicks. I could smell pipe tobacco and starch on the navy wool of his coat as his eyes flicked sideways to mine.
Seven, I noted as he slowly turned to insert the key into the lock. Seven keys in all. And the one for this door is right in the middle, three on either side. Did . . . Did he just show me that on purpose?
“What in blazes is taking so long, Sergeant Peters?” Hannah whined. “It’s nearly time for my shift to end, and I’ve still Miss Randolph to get settled.”
Peters nodded as he reattached the ring to his belt and opened the double doors. As Hannah pushed past, I risked a glance up at him. One side of his bushy mustache twitched at the edges before he turned to lock the doors behind us.
Another set of keys opened the brass doors of a small elevator that juddered us up two flights.
“Welcome to Ward B, miss,” Hannah said as she wheeled me out of the elevator and into a corridor that stretched out so far, I couldn’t see the end. “This is the main ward. Ain’t much different from A, ’ceptin’ there’s just a few more restrictions is all. Ain’t that so, Sergeant Peters?”
The nurse leaned down and whispered in my ear as the wheels bumped along the wooden floor. “Just be glad Dr. Carson didn’t assign you to Ward C. I hate seeing new patients get sent there straightaway.”
Before I could ask what went on in Ward C, we stopped before a door of dark, glossy wood. A guard with a weedy goatee stood sentinel. “Gotcher self another victim, eh, Nurse?”
“What are you doing here, Dupree?” The sergeant snapped, an edge to his rumbly voice. “Your shift ended two hours ago. Where’s O’Connell?”
Dupree grinned, his narrow jaw and protruding yellow teeth giving him a distinctly rat-like appearance. “Had to go. Wife’s birthin’ their next brat. That’s six for him.” He poked the older man in the shoulder. “Ole O’Connell must be gettin’ it pretty regular to get that many pups out of her, eh? Course, they’re papist, and you know how they are. Breed like rabbits they do.”
Sergeant Peters stiffened. The muscles in his neck went rigid as he stared at Dupree. “I’ll hear no more bawdy talk in front of the patients. We clear on that, Dupree?”
“Take it easy, Eldon,” Dupree replied, palms out in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m just talkin’.” His tiny black eyes roved toward me, then glided down my body until I felt like I’d been slimed. “Well, well,” he said. “Doc sent us a looker this time, didn’t he?”
Peters moved so that his bulky form blocked me from the other guard’s line of sight. “Open the door, Dupree,” he said. “Then go. I’ll take the rest of your shift.”
“But—”
“You are dismissed.”
Sergeant Peters’s tone brooked no argument. Dupree sneered as he wrenched the lock open, then elbowed past Peters. Pausing, he bent until his face was inches from mine. Dupree’s nostrils quivered as he inhaled slowly through his nose.
“Ohh . . . you’ll be a fine addition to Ward B, miss.” I hid a shudder as the tip of a pale tongue darted out to wet his lips. “A fine addition indeed.”
Chapter 26
“SHE’S BACK!”