Page 15 of The Preachers' Promise
OPHELIA
No one speaksto me the entire ride to the facility. The man drives while the woman perches on a small fold-down seat beside me.
Because the only windows are in the cab of the vehicle, I can’t tell where we’re going, and I have no way of knowing the time. The drugs in my system mean I keep nodding off, which doesn’t help my perception of things. I try to reassure myself that my parents know where I am, but my trust in them has been fractured, and I’m not sure how we’ll ever repair it. I have no idea how long they’re planning to keep me here, but if I’m going to get out, I need to convince them I’m as sane as the next person. No more losing my shit, no matter how frightened I am, or how loud and overwhelming the Prophet’s voice might be. From now on, I won’t mention it to anyone.
It is a relief that the sedatives they’ve given me have silenced him for the moment. It occurs to me that maybe they’re right, and I need to be on them permanently, but I don’t want that for myself. I don’t want to go through life in this strange, numb, distanced world. I want to feel alive, like I did when the Preachers were chasing me through the woods.
Alive and free for possibly the first time in my life.
The memory makes me want to cry all over again.
Finally, the van comes to a halt, and the engine switches off. The female staff member stands and prepares to disembark with me. The rear doors open, and the ramp is rolled back out.
It’s dark outside.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. It feels worse to be smuggled into this place in the middle of the night, like I’m some kind of dirty secret.
In front of me is a single-story building, painted completely white. There are bars on the windows. A tall fence and gates secure the grounds. Someone has tried to soften the severity of the facility with some strategically placed planters around the outside, and there’s a seating area with wooden benches. It hasn’t worked. It looks like what it is, a clinical prison.
At the front of the building is a large sign that reads, ‘Cedar Bridge Recovery Center.’
Somehow, seeing the name of the place gives me comfort. If something has been named, it means it’s possible to be found.
“Let’s get you signed in,” the woman says. “Then we can show you to your room.”
I don’t want to have a room here, but I have no choice.
She wheels me toward the building. A set of automatic doors senses us approaching and slides open. A reception desk is directly in front, with a woman in a white uniform, the same as the one my two captors wear—sitting behind it. She’s young and pretty and offers me a smile.
“Welcome to Cedar Bridge Recovery Center,” she chirps, as though I’m here on vacation and not strapped into a wheelchair.
“This is Ophelia Sinclair. Her parents have already signed the forms,” my female captor says.
They did? I guess they must have. I try to figure out the legal implications of that information. I’m over eighteen, so does it mean I’ve been assessed as being a danger to either myselfor someone else? I remember the Preachers finding me after I’d taken all those pills, and how they’d dumped me in a cold shower. Maybe the assessment isn’t wrong.
On my lap, they place a folded set of pajama style clothes in a shade of pink that reminds me of strawberry milkshakes and cotton candy. They’re good things—faint reminders of the childhood I was stolen from—but instinctively, I know this place is anything but.
“We need all your personal possessions, too,” the younger woman says. “You’ll get them back when you leave.”
I don’t understand what she means. “I don’t have anything.” I display my empty hands, my wrists still strapped, as though proving a point.
“Yes, you do.” She motions at the small gold hoops in my ears and the gold bracelet I received as a birthday present from my parents on my last birthday.
“Why do you need my jewelry?”
“You might use them to hurt yourself with, or to buy yourself contraband from other patients.”
I’m still confused. “What kind of contraband?”
She opens her mouth as though she’s about to tell me, then snaps it shut as she must realize that not such a good idea. But I’ve already put two and two together and come up withdrugs. Patients must not take their meds and stash them to sell on to other patients who perhaps might be on a different kind, uppers instead of downers and vice versa.
“We just need the jewelry,” she says instead.
“Oh.”
It’s not as though I can take it off myself, so my female captor unclips my bracelet and takes out my earrings. As her hands brush my cheek, I resist the urge to growl and snap at her like a wild dog as I’m guessing those actions won’t do me any favors on the ‘trying to convince them I’m sane’ front.
I’m strangely naked without my jewelry. It makes me feel like I’m back in the commune where any kind of dressing up was considered vanity and a sin.
