Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [166]
But she did know something new. The war raged outside her body now, outside her skull, but the enemy would press on and violate her frontiers again as soon as they chose their next advance. She was at war.
She strove to display good patient behavior. She cooperated, she smiled and played up to the staff. She played the nice polite eager humble patient game for all she was worth, because she wanted that damned machine to stay out of her head.
“I do think it helped me,” she lied earnestly to Acker. “I feel much calmer. Those blackouts scared me.”
“Well, that won’t happen again. We try one course of treatment, but we stand ready to switch to a better one if the first has unexpected side effects,” Acker said importantly, playing doctor for Miss Moynihan, who was standing behind him. “Sometimes a patient may express an allergy to penicillin. We have to use another antibiotic. Similarly, you proved to be, let’s say, allergic to the dialytrode … .” He trailed off as he saw Dr. Redding standing in the doorway with his eyebrows raised.
“Allergic, mm?” he said. “How’s our problem this morning?”
“I feel fine,” Connie said desperately. “Ever so much better!”
Redding put down the mug of steaming coffee he had been carrying and peered into her eyes and poked her. “There’s evidence repeated stimulation of foci in the amygdala can produce results,” he muttered. “Still … probably temporary.”
Connie got up as soon as they left and sat in the lounge, ready to start conversations with one and all. She combed her wig and tidied her clothes. She ate her food, she took an interest, she spoke to the staff politely and with deference. She sat with Tina, whose head hurt and hurt and hurt. She held Tina’s limp small brown hand, scarred and calloused from who knew how many jobs and battles, the tip of a finger missing. Tina roused herself to say soggily that it had been caught in a machine in a box factory. She had been only temporary, so she hadn’t got anything for it. Instead she was fired. “Oh, how my head hurts. Make them give me something! Go to them and ask!”
Staff were relieved to see Connie on her feet again. She had been more work in withdrawal. Now she was not only caring for herself, but volunteering constantly. They finally gave Tina morphine or something like it, letting her drift over into doper’s heaven, that still, high place she had entered too many times before when she had been hurt and defeated. Then Tina was as gone from the room as if she had died.
“You’re doing much better,” Nurse Roditis said approvingly to Connie, and actually smiled. “Now you want to get better.”
“Oh, yes.” She forced a stiff smile. “I want to get well now.” War, she thought, I’m at war. No more fantasies, no more hopes. War.
EIGHTEEN
“If it isn’t Ms. Model Patient, knocking herself out for a kind word from Nurse,” Sybil hissed as she came upon Connie sweeping the day room.
She winced and held her tongue, but the injustice fretted her. How could Sybil lack faith? She wanted to turn and shout after Sybil’s back that when she, Connie, had tried to escape, Sybil had been scared to go with her. But Sybil had been put in isolation for helping her. Sybil was still untouched. The staff was watching Captain Cream and Tina carefully to see how their implantations worked out before they proceeded with more, even though it set back their schedule. Still, all stages were present on the ward, before, during and after: the casualties, the experiments, and the fresh material. Five thousand chimpanzees in their cages.
“I don’t dream no more,” Captain Cream complained. “How come I can’t dream? Something missing.”
Tina was high on pain killers and complained only when the magic pills were delayed.
Taking a shrewd and wary interest, volunteering for every task defined as women’s work, cleaning, sweeping, helping with the other patients, picking up clothes, fetching and carrying for the nurses, Connie tried