“Perhaps another treatment altogether. Consider the lobotomy, Dr. Kaiser. We don’t want to release these sick minds back into the world. If she’s still speaking of spirits, then she’s far from cured.”
“Mmmhmmm,” Kaiser murmured. His fingers moved toward Sophia’s face and his forearm brush against her breast. She wanted to roll away from him but couldn’t move.
The woman trained her beady brown eyes on Sophia, her thin lips pursed as if she studied an especially nasty rat. Sophia’s cheeks flushed, and she experienced an uncharacteristic shame beneath the woman’s gaze. She clenched her eyes shut and her insides rolled. Her mouth opened a spew of vomit rose and splattered both doctors’ coats.
“Ugh.” The woman backed away, pulling her white coat off and dropping it on the floor.
Dr. Kaiser also removed his coat, watching Sophia through angry, hard slits of blue.
The stink of her vomit filled her nostrils. She looked at Dr. Kaiser, her eyes pleading and reluctantly he unlatched the leather straps around her head. She was not free, but able to turn her head to the side.
“You’d best call Alice to come clean this up. I’m expected in therapy in a half hour,” the woman doctor said stalking from the room. Her rubber-soled shoes slapped on the cement floor.
Alone, Kaiser took a wet washcloth from a basin by the bed and wiped Sophia’s face. His eyes moved up and down her body. The cool washcloth was a relief, but his touch made her recoil.
“How are you today, Doctor?” a man asked from the doorway and Sophia saw another doctor, his white coat pristine, filling the doorway.
“I’m well, Dr. Knight. And you?”
“Fine, fine. Though I saw the insufferable Dr. Moore leaving your room. More wisdom to impart?”
Kaiser did not turn, but cocked his head to the side, and roughly wiped the cloth over Sophia’s cheek, smearing the vomit more than cleaning it.
“The Lobotomy Queen wanted to recommend I render this patient as brain-dead as all of hers.”
“Surprise, surprise,” muttered Knight. “This is the patient who speaks with the dead?”
Knight leaned toward her, unfazed by the smell, and peered into her face studying first one eye and then the other.
“Yes, patient seven-twenty-two, Sophia Gray,” Kaiser replied.
“We’re meeting on the 10th this month. Can Sophia be present? The other doctors don’t have a suitable patient for the Umbra Brotherhood?” The man continued, reaching a hand out to wave it in front of Sophia’s face as if her eyes weren’t open wide watching him.
“I prefer if you don‘t speak that name here,“ Kaiser uttered, casting a dark look at the man. “I had hoped to be further in her treatment when I presented her,” he continued dropping the soiled rag on the floor. “She’s not as foggy as I would like after the electro-shock. I wonder if a higher dose is in order.” He seemed to be talking more to himself. “Yes, let the others know. I’m willing to present her.”
Chapter 18
September 1965
Jude
Something snaked from the darkness and grabbed Jude’s sleeve.
“Ahhh…!” She screamed and jumped back scrambling in her bag for a weapon.
“Sshhh-” A woman’s voice snapped.
The woman stepped from the trees. She wore a plain gray dress and her hair was tied in a severe-looking bun at the base of her neck.
“You want em’ comin’ out here?” she hissed, gesturing at the asylum and stepping closer to Jude.
Jude saw the woman missed several of her teeth. Her eyes darted toward the asylum.
“You knew our mama?” Hattie asked, stepping between Jude and the woman.
Jude stifled an urge to push her baby sister behind her.
The woman nodded.
“Lucy,” she said pointing at herself. “And you’re the daughters. You look just like her,” she said to Hattie.
“Do you know where she is?” Hattie asked.
The woman nodded and pursed her lips.
“Meet me at Grady’s Diner.”
“In town?” Jude asked, incredulous. “Don’t you have to…?” she gestured to the hospital door.
The woman let out a shrill cackle and slapped her thigh.
“I’m not a patient! I used to clean in there.” She laughed again. “They don’t like me hanging around, but I have a right to be here. They kept my supplies,” she growled, glaring at the lit windows on the second floor. “And I’ll get ‘em back, too. Meet me in fifteen minutes?”
“Yes, yes,” Hattie gushed grabbing Jude’s sleeve as if this woman might have their mother sitting at home in her parlor.
“Sure,” Jude grumbled. She wanted to talk to the woman but preferred to do it alone. She worried about Hattie’s reaction if they received bad news about their mother’s fate.
Lucy ordered a cup of black coffee and sipped it, nervously drumming her fingers on the white porcelain cup. Jude couldn’t shake the feeling she’d been a patient at that hospital. The woman’s paranoia was palpable.
Hattie asked the waitress for a cup of ice tea with packets of sugar, and Jude opted for a coffee to which she added a dash of whiskey. When Lucy saw the flask, she tilted her cup and Jude added a shot to hers.
“You’re the older girl,” Lucy said, wagging a finger back and forth. “Your mama said you were a willful thing, wild. I can see it.”
Jude didn’t respond. She wasn’t interested in this woman’s two minutes analysis of her character.
“How did you know her?” Jude asked.
“I told ya. I cleaned in there for twenty years. Till they hired some ferners undercuttin’ the good local people.”
“Ferners?” Hattie asked.
“Foreigners,” Jude told her, trying not to roll her eyes.
“Anyway, about our mom…” she said taking a drink of her coffee and wishing she’d just gone straight for the flask.
Hattie was practically bouncing up and down in the seat beside her. The fluorescent lights seemed to burrow holes in Jude’s skull, and the man at the counter’s ears reminded her of Damien. Damien who still hadn’t called. Damien’s whose pictures sat in a pile on Jude’s kitchen table and when she got home, she had half a mind to burn the lot.
“Sophia was a gem,” Lucy told them, smiling her toothless smile.
“Was?” Hattie asked, her blue eyes growing wide.
“Is,” Lucy corrected. “It’s only, well I haven’t seen her in a while, but I’m sure she’s livin’. She only escaped nine, ten days ago.”
“Escaped?” Jude asked, the hairs on her neck prickled.
Lucy nodded, a gleam in her eye.
“An orderly helped her. And they killed him for it.”
Jude held up a hand before Hattie started in with ten thousand questions.
“Tell me something about our mom?” Jude said.
“Don’t believe me? I’m not surprised. Nobody else did, either.”
“I believe you,” Hattie breathed, reaching for the woman’s hands across the table.
Hattie held tight to the woman’s worn hands as if she might magically turn into their mother.
“You are a spitting image of your mama,” she told her, offering another gap-toothed smile. “She wore a necklace.” Lucy tapped on her chest. “They took it away when they admitted her, but I snuck it to her a few times. Her own mama gave it to her.”
Jude knew the necklace well, a heart shaped gold locket engraved with a rose. Her mother never opened the locket. Several times she had told Jude she kept a flower petal from her childhood home in the locket and feared if she opened it the dried bits would disappear forever.