Inside the tiled room, no residents were being hosed off, and no one had cleaned the filthy toilets. Sage held her breath and went inside. If yesterday was any indication of how things were going to go, this would be her only chance to relieve herself until she returned to the ward later, and who knew when that would be. No wonder the residents soiled themselves.
When she was finished, she went to the opposite wall, where everyone had stood to get hosed off, so she could rinse out her skirt and underwear. Lifting the end of the sprayer, which seemed more like a fire hose than something that should be used on humans, she found the water faucet and turned it on. No water came out.
“What in the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing?” someone yelled. It was Marla, glowering at her from the main room, her hands on her hips. “Put that down. There’s no showers today.”
Sage dropped the sprayer and turned off the faucet. “I just wanted to rinse out my skirt.”
Marla shook her head. “Come on out here right now,” she said. “You’re gonna have to wait for clean clothes like everybody else.”
Sage started out toward her. “When will that be?”
“You know the laundry don’t tell me that,” Marla said. “They just show up. Now grab a cart and get ready to go.”
Trying to ignore her dank clothes and dreading another day spent trapped in the dayroom with Wayne, Sage went to the other side of the room and grabbed a cart with two girls inside—one in nothing but a cloth diaper, the other in a short-sleeved blouse and diaper—then followed the other residents into the hallway. Hopefully Nurse Vic would be at the nurses’ station again; maybe she could talk to her. Shuffling forward within the roiling sea of residents, she slowly rounded the corner into the main hall and stood on her tiptoes to see who was at the nurses’ station. When she saw a nurse with silver hair refilling the medicine trays, her shoulders dropped. The stone-faced resident in the blue blouse and gray skirt was there again, passing out the plastic cups like a well-trained robot, but Nurse Vic was nowhere to be seen.
She would have to make the best of it. Who knew—maybe the silver-haired nurse knew more about Rosemary than Nurse Vic did, anyway. Maybe she’d be friendlier too. When Sage finally reached the counter, she addressed the new nurse in the most reasonable-sounding voice she could muster.
“Excuse me.”
The nurse set a tray of cups on the counter and gave her a smile that was both gentle and indifferent. “Yes?”
“This might sound like a strange question,” Sage said. “But do you remember my sister, Rosemary? And would you happen to know anything about her and Wayne?”
The silver-haired nurse wagged a crooked, rheumatic finger at her. “Now, now,” she said. “You know we don’t have time for that nonsense this morning. Take your pills and move along.”
“It’s not nonsense,” Sage said. “Rosemary is still missing and I’m her twin sister. I came to Willowbrook to look for her.”
The silver-haired nurse ignored her and kept dropping orange pills into plastic cups.
“Please,” Sage said. “I need to talk to someone who will listen. I need—”
The nurse stopped filling the cups and eyed her coldly. “You need Marla to help you take your pills?” she said. “I can get her over here if you’d like.”
Sage shook her head, frustration burning her face, then obediently took the plastic cup from the resident in the gray skirt. After hiding the pills in her mouth again, she pushed the cart with the two girls toward the dayroom and, looking around to make sure no one was watching, spat the pills into her hand. As she’d hoped, Eddie came into the hall pushing a mop and bucket, then propped open the double doors to the dayroom. Would he say something to her again? Would he realize she wasn’t Rosemary?
But the janitor wasn’t Eddie. He was a stick-thin man with black orthopedic shoes that looked too big for his scrawny legs. Maybe Eddie had the day off. Maybe he’d gotten in trouble for talking to her. Could that be why he’d looked so serious while smoking with Wayne yesterday?
When the new janitor walked past pushing the mop bucket, she thought about shouting out to him, asking him about Eddie. But he kept his eyes on the floor, his face a blank slate. He almost seemed scared to look up. If she tried talking to him, who knew what might happen? Instead, she kept going and entered the dayroom, staying as far away from Wayne as possible. Why couldn’t he have had the day off?
After parking the cart with the others beneath the crude painting of Donald Duck, she looked back at Wayne. Hopefully he was too busy driving the rest of the residents inside, barking orders and yelling like a cowhand herding cattle, to see what she was about to do. She hurried to a far corner of the room, put the orange pills beneath the back legs of a plastic chair, and sat down hard. After the pills were crushed, she stood and brushed the gritty fragments across the Pine-Sol-damp floor with her bare feet, smearing the powder around the floor and pushing the larger pieces under a couch, one eye on Wayne.
When she finished, she sat down again, determined to stay out of trouble until she could figure out what to do next. Along with everything else, hunger began to gnaw beneath her rib cage. She put her hand on her stomach. What she wouldn’t give for a stack of pancakes or even a dry piece of toast instead of whatever mush they’d be serving that day, not that she could remember anything but the watery oatmeal. Then she noticed Norma leaning against the wall, watching her. Shit. Hopefully she hadn’t seen what she’d done with the pills. She pretended to examine her fingernails, praying Norma would get bored and leave her alone.
After the residents were served another breakfast of pasty oatmeal and medicated orange juice—which Sage poured behind her chair again—the janitor in the orthopedic shoes came into the room to empty the trash. Keeping his head down as he worked, he only looked up when a patient got in his way, then left without exchanging a word with Wayne.
A little while later, the silver-haired nurse entered, pushing an unconscious resident in a wheelchair. After locking the door behind her, she pushed the wheelchair across the room and parked it with the other wheelchairs below Mickey Mouse’s giant yellow shoes. Some of the residents watched in grave silence, their worried eyes speaking volumes; the rest paid little or no attention. When Sage realized who was in the wheelchair, her breath caught.
Tina sat slumped in the plastic seat, her head lolled back, the scar-free half of her face deathly pale. A leather chest strap kept her from falling out of the wheelchair, and more straps wound around her wrists and ankles. As soon as the nurse walked away to go speak with Wayne, Sage hurried over and squatted beside the chair. A dark spot of dried blood filled the inner corner of Tina’s right eye; more blood crusted one of her nostrils.
“Tina?” Sage said. “Are you awake?”
No answer.
“What did they do to you?”
Struggling to open her eyes, Tina lifted her head, straining as if it weighed a thousand pounds. Then she let her head fall back to rest on one of the wheelchair handles, her eyes still closed.
“Can you hear me?” Sage said.
Finally, Tina opened her eyes. But she stared into nothingness, as if she’d gone blind and deaf and mute. There was no eye contact, no nod to show she was listening. No clue she was even there.