Page 18 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

“You see that shit?” Leonard said. “You remember anything now?”

Sage shook her head, too overwhelmed to speak.

Those girls and young women who were aware of the world around them stared at her with pitiful, knowing eyes. One laughed, leaned over to a girl in the next bed, and whispered behind her hand. Another reached out and yanked Sage’s hair, pulling hard. Sage raised a protective hand to her head and hunched her shoulders to make herself smaller. Someone else touched her cheek, fingers brushing dead cold against her skin. Another woman got up and followed her and Leonard to the end of the row, where a teenage girl sat on the next-to-last bed, watching silently. She looked to be around fifteen or sixteen, with piercing blue eyes peering out of a face covered in scars, marled and red like a slab of petrified beef. More scars covered one side of her neck and the length of one arm.

When they reached Rosemary’s bed, Sage could see inside the tiled room where Norma had tried to get away. A row of sinks and low-slung toilets without lids lined one wall, and half a dozen steel trollies lined the other. Most of the toilets were cracked and broken; some had dirty toilet paper hanging over the edge. Brown streaks and yellow puddles seemed to mar nearly every surface—the floor, the sinks, the toilets, the walls. She swallowed the gorge rising in her throat and turned toward the window. Night had fallen and it was snowing outside, sheets of white flakes dropping thick and fast. The wind groaned against the ice-covered windowpanes, forcing snow between the glass and a scratched sheet of Plexiglas that covered the inside. Obviously someone had already thought about breaking the window and jumping out. For the first time, Sage realized how cold it was in the ward, and remembered she no longer had her jacket.

“Do you know what they did with my coat?” she asked Leonard. “It’s brown suede with—”

“Nope,” he said, cutting her off. “Didn’t see it when we picked you up.”

“But I had it when I got here. Can you get it back for me?”

He let out a sarcastic laugh. “You’re shittin’ me, right? You know how it works in this place. If something’s gone, it’s gone. ’Cept you, of course. You seem to be the strange exception to that rule. You’re like a cat with nine lives or something.”

“That’s because I’m not Rosemary. My sister is still missing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “That’s what you keep telling me.”

“What about a sweater and some shoes? It’s freezing in here.”

He rolled his eyes. “Does it look like there’s an extra sweater or pair of shoes laying around this place? Now sit.”

She looked at the bed, searched the thin, grimy blanket for the cleanest-looking spot, then did as she was told. The mattress was lumpy and hard, the frame of the bed nearly poking through on the edges. A stained straitjacket hung over the footboard, like a sweater tossed haphazardly aside after school. She couldn’t help picturing Rosemary in it, helpless and afraid, her arms trapped around her waist by the row of leather straps. She was about to ask Leonard if he’d take the straitjacket away when he picked it up.

“Now that you’re back where you belong,” he said, “do I need to restrain you, or you gonna stay put this time?”

She shook her head. “I’ll stay put.”

“Good girl. No one’s gonna tolerate any more shit from you, you hear? Least of all Marla and Wayne.”

“Who’s Marla?”

He pointed at the female attendant who was tending to Norma. “How could you forget about Marla? You know you don’t mess with her.”

She glanced at Marla, grateful for the warning, then looked up at Leonard. For the thousandth time, she tried to think of something to say to make him—anyone—believe her. Nothing came to her.

“When do I see Dr. Baldwin again?” she said instead.

He scoffed. “How the hell should I know? Probably not until the next time you try to run away, which I wouldn’t even think about if I were you.”

“What about classes?” she said. “Do we have any tomorrow?” Maybe a teacher would listen to her.

“Classes?”

She nodded.

He shook his head in disbelief. “Look, you’re not gonna fool me by playing stupid. So quit trying.” Then he dropped the straitjacket over the footboard of the bed and walked away.

As she watched him go, an odd numbness mixed with growing panic started to spread through her body, icing her legs and arms and heart. What did he mean she wouldn’t see Dr. Baldwin unless she tried to run away again? The residents saw doctors on a regular basis, didn’t they? Shehadto see Dr. Baldwin again. Or any doctor. And soon. They wouldn’t just stick her in a ward and forget about her—would they?

Wishing she could disappear, she started to pull her legs up on the bed, to curl up and make herself smaller; then she noticed the filth on her feet. And she had no way to wipe them clean. She stood and looked down at the blanket. The end near the footboard was dirtier. She lifted the blanket and looked underneath. The mattress was dirty too, but not as bad as the blanket. Rosemary must have wiped her feet on the top of the blanket before getting under it. She sat down again and wiped her feet on the end of the blanket too, careful not to touch the filth with her fingers. Then she sat in the middle of the mattress, her knees under her chin, her arms wrapped around her knees, the black terror needling its way into her every crease and pore.

When Wayne returned to the ward with bandages for Norma, he glanced in her direction, then quickly looked away. Unable to decide if the look on his face was anger or worry, she thought about getting up and approaching him to ask what he knew about Rosemary. But what would she say, and how would she say it? If she pissed him off like Leonard had, she’d get nowhere. Before she could decide what to do, he gave the bandages to Marla and left again.

After bandaging Norma’s wrist, Marla went over to a Plexiglas cubicle near the ward door, sat down inside, and put her hand on a light switch. “All right, ladies!” she yelled. “Lights out in five!”

When Sage saw the able-bodied girls and women scrambling beneath the covers of their beds, she did the same. A few seconds later, the ward went dark. She lay down and closed her flooding eyes, every thud of her heart like an explosion inside her skull. She put her hands over her ears to shut out the sounds of human suffering all around her and prayed for sheer exhaustion to overtake her, to release her into sleep. Then something crawled on her leg, inching along her skin. Something else trailed up the back of her neck. She brushed it away, trying not to think about what it might be. Unlike séances and needles and tunnels, insects were not on her list of fears—and Willowbrook made any and all fears seem foolish by comparison anyway—but she’d rather not be under the covers with cockroaches or any other type of pest. She stood up, shook out the blanket and wiped her hands over the mattress, then got back in bed. When sleep mercifully came, several wretched hours later, she dozed in fits and starts, alternating between nightmares of being chased through a tunnel by Cropsey and dreams of drinking and laughing with Noah and her friends. And, of course, Rosemary.

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