Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [108]
She stood at the window watching Dolly emerge from the building and Nita break free of Vic and race toward her, hugging her around the thighs. Dolly pointed up at the window and Nita, looking puzzled, waved obediently at the building. They went off, Vic and Dolly talking at once. She stood at the window, staring long after they had disappeared.
She remembered something she had heard Dr. Redding say to Superintendent Hodges: that they had used up five thousand monkeys before they began doing these operations on patients. Used up. She had heard him say he had wanted to work with prisoners—he thought the results would be more impressive—but there had been such an uproar about three little psycho-surgical procedures at Vacaville in California that his team decided to work with mental patients. “After all,” he had said, smiling his best ironic smile, “they made a court case and a bleeding heart publicity brouhaha about three procedures, while San Francisco Children’s Hospital does hundreds with sound and thermal probes—mostly on neurotic women and intractable children—and no one says boo.”
Thus, after the five thousand monkeys, they were being used up one at a time. She marched over to Sybil. “Sybil, they’re going to finish us. It’s death, no matter what they call it.”
Sybil sat cross-legged, facing her. Her eyes questioned.
“It’s true this is a locked ward. But the hospital here has lousy security compared to our old wards. I know I could get out of here, if I could get off this ward.”
“How? We eat here, we lie here. There’s not even a porch.”
“If I made them think something’s wrong with me.”
Sybil’s hands rose and floated in the air, graceful and helpless as doves. “You could die of smallpox before they’d do anything.”
“Would you try if I did?”
Sybil looked down. She flexed her fingers, sighing. “Without money?”
“I have ten dollars. With that we could take a bus for a ways. Then we could hitchhike. Skip says women can always get a ride. Just so we get away from the hospital. People are too suspicious here.”
“We’d get picked up before we could reach a bus station.”
“It’s summer. Suppose we sleep in the woods and we walk as far as we can. They can’t watch all the bus stations in every town. Please, Sybil, if I think up a good plan?”
“Since the last series of shocks, I don’t have energy.”
Indeed, as she looked into Sybil’s face she realized how thin and how drawn Sybil was, with that inmate pallor they all shared.
“But we could help each other. We could keep each other’s courage up … . My niece won’t help; she’s too spaced out. But if we got to New York, she’d give us money, I know she would. She’d be real impressed by you, Sybil. She’s into astrology and she’d be excited about witchcraft.”
“If we’d done it sooner … when we were on L-6. I’m tired, Connie, I’m weak. They’ve drained my power. It consumes all my power just to keep out the evil vibrations on this ward.”
“If we got away we’d be safe!”
“Ten dollars! That wouldn’t get us far. We have to eat. When they caught us, we’d be ruthlessly punished!”
“Sybil, what are they going to do to us anyhow?” She gestured toward Alice’s bed.
“At least they only do it to you once.” Sybil looked down. “Is it really worse than electroshock? I still can’t remember all kinds of things I know I knew before!”
“Sybil, you’re getting to be an … old patient.” Before her she could see the chronic wards, row on row of metal beds full of drugged hopeless women. A terrible silence. “Don’t let them wear you down!