They collected her in the common room where she was crying, and she thought they would take her to her room to prevent her from upsetting the other patients, but instead they took her to see the chief physician in his office.
In the office, she was also met by an assistant physician whom she didn’t like at all, the charge nurse, and one of the younger physicians who was in charge of prescribing medication. They all looked serious, and Rose knew that the day had come when she would once more be confronted with the offer of electroconvulsive therapy.
But she wasn’t about to let anyone mess with her brain. The things she had experienced in her life should not just be shocked out of her system. Whatever spark or creativity remained in her shouldn’t be dulled. If they couldn’t find medication that could make her feel calm inside, she didn’t want to be there at all. She had committed an offense and done things she wasn’t proud of, and that was a fact they couldn’t erase.
She would just have to learn to live with it. That was all there was to it.
The chief physician looked at her with the sort of steady expression you could learn. Manipulation came in many forms, but even if they tried their hardest, they couldn’t fool an investigator who spent most of her time dealing with lies and evil.
“Rose,” he said in a soft voice. “I’ve asked you here today because we’ve obtained some information that affects our understanding of your situation and what we can do to better it.” He held out a pack of tissues, but she didn’t take them.
Rose frowned, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and turned toward the wall, staring intensely while trying to calm herself down. She hadn’t seen this coming. Information, he had said? But there wasn’t going to be any talk about information unless it came from her. That was for sure.
She began to stand up, thinking that now was as good a time as any to go back to her room and stare at the wall. She could think about what to do next later.
“Sit down and listen to what I have to say, Rose. I know it can feel extremely intimidating, but everyone just wants what’s best for you. You do know that, don’t you? Your sisters have come forward with some information about what you have written, and your colleagues at police HQ have analyzed it. They’ve created a timeline, so to speak, of your life since you were ten based on your changing mantras.”
Rose sat back down. She had lost her focus and felt trapped. Her eyes welled up and her jaw tensed.
She slowly turned toward him, and despite his welcoming and friendly attitude, she could easily see through him. He had seriously let her down, the shit. He had failed to inform her about the development and neglected to tell her that he was in possession of new information that he ought to have asked her permission to use. She had felt tortured for days and now he dragged her into the actual torture chamber.
“I’m going to place a sheet of paper in front of you with a list of the phrases you’ve written in your notebooks every year since you were a girl, Rose. Take a look at it and tell me what you feel.”
Rose wasn’t listening. She was just thinking that she should have burned the notebooks when she had the chance and committed suicide before the insanity took hold. Because now it was as big a threat as ever. The situation itself indicated as much.
There was a cabinet with glass doors next to where she was sitting. God only knew what the doctor kept in there, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at it. Two days ago she had turned her head toward it and seen her reflection in the glass, and it had seemed so unreal that it terrified her. Was it really her own image she saw in the glass door, reflecting not only her face but also the thoughts that had been going through her head? Had the reflection of those eyes been the same eyes she knew were on her face, transmitting the impression to her brain? These impossible questions were driving her crazy. The incomprehensible fact of even existing made her feel dizzy, as if she was on something.
“Are you with us, Rose?” The chief physician gestured toward her, causing Rose to turn her head in his direction. It almost seemed as if his forehead was touching hers and that the room was smaller than ever.
It’s because there are so many of us in here, she thought. The room is the same as always. It really is.
“Listen to me, Rose. These phrases you’ve written make it clear that you’ve attempted to protect yourself against your dad’s psychological abuse through an internal dialogue with him. We roughly know when and why you switched between the different phrases, but we can’t know exactly what was going on inside you. I think you’ve been searching for answers that could help you escape the darkness that surrounded you. And this is what we need to deal with now, once and for all, so you can free yourself from your compulsive thoughts. Are you willing to work with us, Rose?”
Work with him, he said, as if they were colleagues.
Rose’s arms felt limp, so she simply glanced across at the sheet on up toward the ceiling. She could clearly sense the way the four other people present were staring at her in anticipation. Perhaps they were waiting for this damn shit to cause her to have a breakdown. Perhaps they thought that these phrases and systems would suck the thoughts out of her and leave the answers to their questions rotating in the air around them. As if their maneuver would make her burst out with the information her medicine and their saccharine talk, admonitions, warnings, and pleas had failed to elicit. As if this were a truth serum—pure scopolamine in paper form.
She locked eyes with the chief physician.
“Do you love me?” she asked him with exaggerated clarity.
It wasn’t only the chief physician who looked confused.
“Do you love me, Sven Thisted? Can you say that you do?”
He searched for the words. Stammered that of course he did, just like he loved everyone who entrusted him with their innermost thoughts. Like those who needed help and those—
“Please spare me your bloody doctor talk.” She turned toward the others. “What do you say? Have you got a better answer?”
It was the nurse who took the role of the oracle.
“No, Rose, and you shouldn’t expect that from us. The word ‘love’ is too big, too intimate, don’t you understand?”
Rose nodded, stood up, walked over to the woman, and embraced her. Of course she misunderstood and patted Rose comfortingly on the shoulder, but this was not Rose’s intention. She embraced her so that the contrast was all the greater when she turned toward the three doctors and hissed directly in their faces, sending a cloud of spit around them.
“Traitors, that’s what you are! And nothing in the world is going to bring me back to a place where well-paid, healthy, condescending quacks who don’t love me have secret thoughts that are more dangerous for me than the ones I have myself.”