With the bitter taste of dissolving drugs slowly filling her mouth, it was all she could do not to choke and cough. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, then spat the pills into her hand and got ready to drop them on the floor. Then she stopped, holding them tight in her fist. What if someone saw and told Marla or Nurse Vic? Maybe it would be better to wait until they got to the cafeteria or classroom or wherever they were going, so she could put them in a garbage can or drop them under a desk.
At the end of the hall, a janitor pushing a mop and bucket came out through one side of the double doors, then stopped and started to open the other side. Sage could hardly resist the urge to plow the cart through the crowd. She needed to get out of the congested hallway. She wanted to yell at the other residents to hurry up and get out of her way, despite the fact that she had no idea where they were going or why. Anything would be better than being trapped in this heaving sea of tormented humans, swaying and moaning and wailing and twitching.
After propping open the double doors, the janitor pushed the bucket along the hallway, staying close to the wall, keeping his hands wrapped around the mop handle. He wore a white shirt and gray trousers, and he looked more like a college kid than a janitor. All the janitors Sage knew were gray haired and wrinkled, with hunched backs and beer bellies and grizzled chins. This janitor reminded her of Dawn’s boyfriend, Len, the star quarterback on the football team, with his broad shoulders, thick brown hair, and strong jaw. Why in the world would someone so young want to work at Willowbrook? Shoveling trash at the Fresh Kills landfill would have been better than working in this awful place. Anything would.
Then she had another thought. He was younger than the other employees—maybe he would listen to her. Maybe he’d believe her if she told him about Rosemary. Unless he’d heard that story a hundred times, which was pretty likely, considering how many other residents probably didn’t belong there either, or believed they didn’t. He’d probably heard all kinds of stories and desperate pleas for help. Suddenly she realized she was staring at him, and he was staring back. She looked away, sweat breaking out on her forehead. Could he tell she was hiding the drugs in her hand? Was he going to tell on her? Instead of waiting like she planned, she opened her fist to drop the pills on the floor. To her dismay, they stuck to her palm, turning her skin orange. She shook them off, but instead of falling to the floor, they tumbled into the wooden cart, landing next to the girl lying inside. Shit. She bent down and scraped the pills into the corner of the box, then wiped her hand on her skirt, praying no one would notice. When she looked up again, the janitor had parked his mop bucket against the wall and was weaving his way through the residents toward her, his face a strange mixture of alarm and surprise.
“Hey,” he said when he reached her.
She shrank back, keeping her eyes straight ahead. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d go away. Why would he care if she took her pills or not? He was only a janitor. Then he touched her forearm, his nicotine-stained fingers pressing into her skin as if testing to see if she were real.
“Rosemary?” he said.
She shook her head, too frightened and confused to speak.
“Leave her alone, Eddie!” Marla shouted at him from across the hall. “I’m not gonna warn you twice!”
He glanced at Marla, annoyed, then whispered, “We’ll talk later.”
She wanted to say something, anything; her name, a demand to tell her who he was and why he knew Rosemary. But she was overwhelmed. The residents were bumping into her. Someone stepped on her foot. A girl screamed in her ear. A young woman pushed her so hard she almost fell. Before she could form a reply, he had turned and begun making his way back through the crowd. When he reached the mop bucket, he pushed it in the opposite direction, stealing glances at her over his shoulder. She watched him for as long as she could, then turned forward again and trudged toward the double doors, her mind racing. How did he know Rosemary? Were they friends? Were janitors and residents allowed to be friends? Judging by the surprised look on his face, he knew Rosemary was missing, but what else did he know? And how would he talk to her later? Did he know where she would be?
It seemed like her instincts might be right about someone younger listening to her, at least. Maybe, between him and whomever she could talk to when she finally got to the cafeteria or a classroom, things would get sorted out. She could be released by the end of the day. If she could convince one of them she was Rosemary’s twin.
Then she pushed the cart through the doors at the end of the hall and a cold block of fear stopped her in her tracks. No classrooms waited on the other side. No gymnasium or cafeteria. Just a vast, windowless room lined with stained couches and plastic chairs. Crude images of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had been painted on the cement walls, as if the cartoon characters could lessen suffering. A television hung bolted to one wall near a Plexiglas cubicle housing a small desk, a chair, and a telephone. More plastic chairs and a dozen round tables were scattered as if someone had purposely run helter-skelter through the room, pushing them this way and that across the stained tile floor, which was still wet with puddles and mop swirls. Twin radiators hissed against the far wall, and fluorescent lights with metal shades hung from the ceiling, casting dark shadows under the residents’ eyes, turning their skin even more pale and sickly. The overpowering smell of Pine-Sol, along with the ever-present stench of human excrement, burned her nostrils.
Above it all, there was the ever-present noise—the inhuman howl of wails and shrieks and moans that somehow grew more deafening in the windowless room than it had been in the ward or the hallway. Like the subterranean cries of an ancient, dying creature echoing inside an underground cave, the sounds fused together until they were all one thing—one clamor, one racket, one tortuous wail going on and on and on, swelling and falling and swelling and falling. Every trapped sound seemed amplified a thousand times over—frantic voices, manic laughter, skin slapping against skin, heavy breathing, sobs and shouts and groans and screams. It seemed impossible that the desperate, horrendous din was coming from humans, but the tortured souls making the noises were right in front of her. It was enough to drive anyone mad.
To add to her dismay, Wayne, the bald, tattooed attendant, was herding everyone inside, yelling at them to move to the far end of the room. “Put the carts against the wall,” he shouted. “Come on! Move it!”
Sage fought her way across the Pine-Sol-damp tiles, skirting around a bald girl in a frilly dress who sat splay-legged on the floor and a half-dressed woman who looked unconscious. She parked the cart in the haphazard line of a dozen others below a giant image of Donald Duck, his oversize eyes crossed and black. Several of the carts held two or three girls or young women inside—some naked, others in cloth diapers or straitjackets. A few of the girls were sitting up while others lay curled into fetal positions. Still others lay helpless, their bare, skeletal legs draped across the edge of the cart or sticking straight up, resting on the handles.
Sage looked down at the girl in the cart she’d been pushing to see if she was okay. Her eyes were closed as if she were asleep, her limbs safely tucked inside the wooden box. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she lifted one of the other girl’s legs back into her cart, then moved another one’s arm from over her head into a more comfortable position. After one woman grabbed her hand, someone else tried to bite her, and another girl returned to the same awkward position Sage had just moved her from, she gave up trying to help. No matter how bad she felt for them, there was nothing more she could do. And for all she knew, she could get in trouble for even trying. On shaking legs, she hurried over to a chair in a far corner of the room, put her hands over her ears, and hunched her shoulders to make herself smaller. A shoe flew past her and hit the wall, making her jump.