Once everyone had left the room, I tried to wake her, to no effect. She was heavily drugged, and would only open her eyes for a second before falling back asleep. Her dark lids fluttering and closing like they were a leaden weight, too heavy to lift. I decided to let her rest and try and talk to her tonight, at lights out.
The day went by uneventfully. Although, again, the white coats looked more stressed than they had been before. They looked tired. Tired and unhappy.
When I got back from exercise, Clara was sitting up but there were people all around her again. I was led back to my bed and given dinner. Inside I was bursting to jump up and talk to Clara. I wanted to shake her awake and pepper her with questions. But I had to wait, eat my dinner slowly, and wait for the last check before bed. Looking calm and dopey on the outside but buzzing on the inside. I did what was required, and thought it was safe, until someone came in again and injected more liquid into Clara’s tube. I was very worried this was more mind-altering drugs, like the gas. Clara seemed so dopey, her head lolling from side to side listlessly. She barely looked in my direction.
Lights out.
Clara’s voice was crackly as she spoke, “I know what you’re going to ask me but I didn’t see very much.” I couldn’t see her face very well but it sounded like it was an effort to speak.
I wasn’t going to ask her that, well, not at first anyway. I held my tongue from saying anything defensive and asked, “How are you feeling?”
She laughed. “Oh, wonderful,” she said with unfamiliar sarcasm. “At least the baby is safe.”
Luckily, she couldn’t see me rolling my eyes in the dark. “Yeah, there’s that I guess. I’m glad you’re safe, Clara.” I gulped and said the words that would give me away, “I was really worried about you. What happened?”
“I don’t really know,” she whispered. “All I remember was that horrible pain and then being rushed out of here. They took me up, Rosa. There were real windows, a real sky, not just pictures of the real thing. I don’t think we are that far underground. We got in an elevator and the numbers read B6 to Ground. They covered my mouth to stop me from screaming and then jabbed me when I got to the top. When I woke up, the pain was gone and the baby was fine.”
I absorbed this new information. Critical information. If we were only six levels underground maybe there was a way to get out. If there were elevators maybe there were stairs, maybe… my mind was running away with the idea of escape.
“What else? Anything else you can tell me?” I said urgently. I think she sensed my desperate tone when she replied.
“Calm down. There was something else.”
“What?” I was barely keeping my nerves contained. I felt like I was jumping out of my skin.
“There were other girls up there. Most were pretty dopey. But there were two that were out of control, screaming and carrying on. One of them yelled ‘how could you do this to me?’ The other one was just crying hysterically. She was so scared. I wanted to run to her and hold her. Rosa, I think they were the girls that moved into my old room. Someone said that these were the crazy ones from room 112. That was my room.”
I felt a shiver of dread run through me. I wasn’t sure I could even ask her the next question.
“What happened to them?” I could hear Clara sniffing. She was crying, a choked, crackly sound.
“I heard two of the people in white talking while they were cleaning my room. Something about a waste.” She hesitated and took a breath before imitating the conversation she had heard, “What a perfect waste of time and money, a waste of two perfectly viable fetuses and two good breeders.”
I could hear her wiping her face with her arm as she uttered, “I think they killed them. No, I’m sure they’re dead.” For the first time, she sounded as hopeless as I felt.
I felt the need to protect her, to preserve that shining light. “Maybe they didn’t, Clara. Maybe they just moved them to another place. Gave them another purpose.”
“Maybe,” she said breathlessly, but I don’t think she really believed me. I didn’t believe it myself. If life in Pau Brasil had taught me anything, it was that the Superiors were not merciful.
“You need to sleep. Shut your eyes and we’ll work it out in the morning,” I said, trying, unsuccessfully, to sound soothing. Trying really hard not to sound petrified. Because I was. If the girls were from Clara’s room, it wouldn’t be long before the white coats worked out what we’d done. And once they did, acting dopey wasn’t going to save us. I was sure they would be coming for us soon.
I woke up coughing, tears filling my stinging, itchy eyes. Clara was coughing too. The lights were still off, but as I watched, strips of light started illuminating the floor like miniature airstrips. It felt like my lungs were on fire. It wasn’t like smoke from a fire. It was odorless but leaving a bitter taste in my mouth when I exhaled. I couldn’t see where it was coming from and it was filling the room fast. I thought—this is it. They have finally worked out that we are aware. They were going to gas us to death. I fumbled around, trying to disconnect the leads to my machines and monitors they had reattached to me after Clara’s episode. I quickly gave up and just rolled to the floor, feeling the machines towing along behind me. A convoy of sounds—metal crashing against metal, emergency beeps and blips.
I could breathe a little better, down on the cold, linoleum floor. I called to Clara, my voice raspy and hoarse, “Clara get down on the floor.” I could vaguely see the shadow of her awkward form climbing carefully out of bed as the photo wall flickered images I’d never seen before, a window with grey wool curtains, a desk with a photo frame on it, stacks of Woodland textbooks dog-eared lying in the corner. An old wooden chair projected over Clara’s back as she used the wall to support herself as she got down on the floor. I cursed her careful movement and wished she would move faster.
We started crawling towards the door, an oppressive cloud of smoke hovering just over our heads. The machines started disconnecting and setting off alarms. Ignoring them, I stood up and went for the door handle. I lost my balance and slipped in some kind of liquid. What was it? It was slimy and thick. “Clara, are you ok?” It felt like blood. I shuddered involuntarily. “Are you…bleeding?”
“No‚” she responded quickly. “I think it was my bag of fluids.” Relieved, I reached for the handle. I was about to open the door when it slammed into me from the outside and knocked me to the floor. Someone strong picked me up under my arms, dragged me out the door, and then went back for Clara.
What I saw in the poorly lit hall was absolute chaos.
It was a war zone: girls coughing and screaming. Disoriented and frightened. The white coats were trying to get them into a line, but they kept wandering off, banging into walls, into each other. Each of them lost in their own foggy panic. Clara and I were pushed towards a wall that had a long bar running along its length. We held onto it and followed the strips of light. It stayed dark as we walked in line, collecting more confused, coughing girls as we went. Whatever this smoke was it had infiltrated the entire place. Some of the staff were wearing masks, but I could still hear them coughing. They pushed us through doors and upstairs, through another door, up some more stairs until I started to lose count.