Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [97]
“Should we send a note of complaint to Diana of Treefrog?” Otter asked, and everybody laughed, enjoying their power to embarrass Luciente.
Dr. Redding had arrived on the ward as she slipped back. Nobody was paying attention to her. I could have stayed longer, she thought regretfully, but things looked interesting. Dr. Redding, Dr. Morgan Acker, the psychologist, Miss Moynihan, the EEG technician, and even the secretary, Patty, and the attendants were gathered around Alice’s bed.
“I want you to pay close and careful attention this morning, and I want you to keep in mind in the ensuing months of this project what you’re going to witness demonstrated. I expect to see immediate effects in a higher level of confidence among staff,” Dr. Redding said coldly.
Dr. Morgan’s ears were red sticking through his pale thin hair. He hunched smaller. Misery rose from him like a stench. It was quiet in the women’s ward.
“Don’t get too sure of yourself, Dr. Ever-Ready.” Alice grinned under the hill of bandages. “That fat kid doctor there, he scared. He scared of me. Thinking I be fixing to bite it off.” Alice snapped her teeth. Under the sheet she wriggled her long body.
“Behold, Francis,” Dr. Redding said genially. “Patients recognize hesitation. You were reluctant to include Alice in the experiment because of the very violence that makes her a suitable subject. Your fears are groundless. Poor impulse control has brought this subject into repeated scrapes with society. The very lack of control that has stunted her development, we can provide her.”
“You just saying I do what I want. Don’t you wish you just sometime know what you be craving to do? Mr. Beardo there, he poor at controlling impulses too. Making it with Miss White Coat Hot Pants. You all just go have one on me and get this crap out from my head.”
A tremor of embarrassment bent them all, grass in the wind. Then they drew mutual strength, gathered around Alice’s bed, and silently decided to pretend not to hear her. Acker muttered something about “random hostility patterns.” They clustered around a machine that was writing with pens eight at a time on paper that had been heaping up on the floor in accordion piles.
“All that paper,” Alice said, louder. “Running out like toilet paper gone wild. How many trees we use up this morning?”
Redding held out his wrist watch. “Argent and Superintendent Hodges will be here soon. Let us hope. And the camera crew.” Morgan and Moynihan were exclaiming over spikes. All the time the pens kept writing and the paper kept dropping in its neat diarrhea on the floor. Redding came to a decision. “Nurse, time to get off those bandages. Mrs. Valente, bring us coffee and we’ll hang out in the conference room till our guests come to the party, eh?” He sped out, with his staff in pursuit.
The nurse began removing the head bandages. Cautiously Connie and Sybil edged nearer and nearer till Connie called out, “Is it true you got needles stuck in your … head?”
“No he. Electrodes, they call them.”
Connie stared expectantly as the bald scalp emerged from the swathing. Like Bee. “But I don’t see anything!”
“They inside, girl. What you expect, I look like a goddamn pincushion? They stupid, but they not that stupid!”
“Alice, if they’re electrodes, where are the wires?” Sybil asked cautiously.
“You old-fashion. No wires. They use a little radio, and they stick that inside too!”
“Now, you cut this out,” the nurse said suddenly. “That’s enough. Quiet on the ward. You’re disturbing this patient.”
“I don’t see how we could possibly disturb Alice. It isn’t we who put a radio and electrodes in her head,” Sybil said loftily.
“Quiet down or I’ll give you a shot that will lay you out flat,” the nurse said, hands on her hips.
Back at their own beds, Sybil whispered, “The nurse didn’t contradict us about the electrodes. Could it be true?”
“But what for?”
“Control. To turn us into machines so we obey them,” Sybil whispered.
What nonsense it had to be! They were crazy, they were imagining this. She wished she had stayed in Mattapoisett.
At eleven