Page 22 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

She shook her head again.

“Well then,” Marla said, “you know the rules. No blood, no broken bones, no impending death, no doctor.” She gestured toward the wooden carts lined up against the far wall. “Now make yourself useful and grab a cripple cart.”

“But my stomach,” Sage said. “What if my appendix is about to burst or my spleen ruptured?”

Marla put her hands on her hips. “Are you really testing me again, girl? What in tarnation got into you while you were out doing whatever it was you were doing? You need to remember who’s in charge around here. Now get your ass over to those cripple carts before I call Nurse Vic and have her straighten you out.”

Sage opened her mouth to respond, but Marla turned and limped away.

Fighting the urge to scream in frustration, Sage looked around for Tina but didn’t see her anywhere. She made her way through the crowd over to the line of carts, dodging unruly legs and reaching hands and swaying heads. If the attendants didn’t allow the residents to see a doctor when they were hurt or sick, how would she ever talk to anyone besides Dr. Baldwin? How would she ever find someone who would listen or care? She tried to calm down. If Marla wouldn’t listen to her, maybe someone else would. Maybe she and the other residents were leaving the ward to go to a cafeteria where a sympathetic lunch lady would believe her, or a classroom where a caring teacher would realize she was telling the truth. She took the handles of a cart and looked down at the silent occupant of the wooden box, an adolescent girl wearing nothing but a cloth diaper and staring at the ceiling. No blanket lined the box; not even a thin sheet or a flat pillow. Despite feeling anything but friendly, Sage tried to smile at her to show her she cared, but the girl gave no indication of awareness. Sage thought about saying hello and asking if she was okay but didn’t think she could do it without crying. The horror and heartbreak of the poor girl’s nightmarish existence—along with every other tormented soul struggling to survive inside Willowbrook—felt as thick and heavy as breathing lead. Instead of trying to communicate, Sage pushed the cart toward the door, concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and tried not to run into anyone or step on anything. All she could do now was stay out of trouble and pray for something to change.

Marla propped open both sides of the double door, then steered one of the wheelchair-bound residents into the hall. The rest of the residents followed, those who could walk pushing the ones in the wooden carts and wheelchairs. Out in the hall, more residents and attendants spilled chaotically out of the other wards to join the crowd—young girls and teenagers and adult women; some moving zombie-like, gangly and awkward and slow, others trying to hurry forward, pushing and bumping into everyone around them. Through the open doors of one ward, Sage could see what seemed like a hundred naked women on the floor, sitting or squatting or kneeling or cross-legged or bent over, but all of them rocking, moving, swaying. No beds filled the room. No tables or chairs. Just women.

Sage looked everywhere for her sister, searching every face in the wards and hall. With this many people in one building, she thought it would have been easy for Rosemary to return, unseen and overlooked, to get lost in the endless hordes of women and girls crammed into one floor—especially when so many looked so similar, with hollow faces and vacant eyes, thin limbs and snarled hair. Finding her sister among the other residents was improbable, but she could hope.

Shouting orders for everyone to keep moving, the ward attendants herded the residents forward, funneling them into the main hallway like animals into a processing chute, squeezing them between the beds and carts on both sides. Everyone stood too close. They crowded Sage’s space and pressed nearer and nearer and nearer. She was jostled and shoved, her feet were stepped on, and her elbows were knocked into her ribs. It sounded like thousands of people were shouting and weeping, mumbling and screaming. Between feeling crushed, the chaotic din echoing off the walls, and the horrible stench that hung like a thick haze in the air, she could hardly breathe.

“Please move back,” she said. “Don’t lean on me. Please. You don’t need to stand so close.”

No one listened.

She forced her elbows out, kept close to the cart, and shuffled along with the slithering, rambling, fitful horde. While looking down to avoid the brown smears and yellow puddles on the floor, she accidentally ran the front of the cart into another resident. She stopped and looked up, alarmed. Hopefully she hadn’t hurt anyone. A teenage girl in a cloth diaper and a pink sweater stood bent over, one hand holding the back of her bare leg.

“Oh my God,” Sage said. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

“That’s okay, that’s okay,” the girl said, her eyes rolling toward the ceiling. “That’s okay, that’s okay.” Then she straightened, turned, and kept going.

Mortified, Sage held the cart back briefly to see if the girl was bruised or bleeding. Thankfully, no marks reddened her pale skin. No blood ran down her leg.

When Sage started moving again, she stood on her tiptoes and peered over tilted heads and sloped shoulders to see where they were going. She searched for Tina too, but picking one person out of the roiling mob was impossible. At the end of the hall was a set of double steel doors, which hopefully meant they were being taken to classrooms, with desks and a teacher and some semblance of order. Willowbrookwascalled a school, after all. Surely most parents sent their kids there for the benefits of special educators who knew how to work with the disabled. There had to besomereason they let their children live there. The tiniest spark of hope ignited inside her. Surely a teacher would listen to her.

Then she saw where they were headed, and a cold slab of dread pressed against her chest.

CHAPTER 6

Standing in front of the nurses’ station where Sage had first seen Nurse Vic, two burly-looking attendants allowed one resident at a time to take a plastic medicine cup from a stone-faced woman in a gray skirt and blue blouse. Nurse Vic supervised the process from behind the counter, refilling the water glass and restocking the medicine cups. One by one the residents put the cups to their lips, then took a sip of water from the glass and threw back their heads to swallow. After the woman in the gray skirt took their empty cups and put them back on the counter, Nurse Vic waved the residents on toward the double doors at the end of the hall. The line limped slowly but steadily along. Anyone in a wheelchair or cart who was unable sit up on their own was heaved upright by the attendants, and the woman in the gray skirt held the cups to their mouths and gave them a sip of water, carelessly letting it spill down their chins and necks. If a resident was uncooperative for some reason, whether sitting or standing, the attendants forced the pills into their mouths with their fingers, without giving them a drink afterward.

Sage didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t let them drug her. Couldn’t let them turn her into a zombie who slept and swayed and lurched around this hellhole. She’d never get out of there if she was hopped up or knocked out by some powerful psychiatric pill. Then she realized no one checked to see if the residents actually swallowed the drugs—not the attendants, not the woman in the gray skirt, not Nurse Vic. If she was careful, she could hide the pills in her mouth and get rid of them later. No one would know. Surely she couldn’t be the only person in Willowbrook who did that. If she got caught, she’d likely be punished, but it was a risk she had to take.

Then she noticed a slender girl with a familiar head of strawberry-blond hair at the front of the medicine line, swaying back and forth as if listening to music. Sage’s breath caught in her chest.

Rosemary.

She let go of the cart and sidled up its side, her bare legs scraping the oversize wheels as she fought her way through the crowd toward the nurses’ station, determined to get to her sister. Gently pushing the girls and women to one side and craning her neck to see, she tripped over wayward legs and feet, bumped into shoulders and heads, and tried not to lose her balance. Not that there was anywhere to fall; the rocking, jerking, twisting residents were crushed together like kindling, filling every available space.

“Rosemary!” she yelled.

The strawberry-blond girl stepped up to the woman in the gray skirt and took a plastic cup.

“Rosemary! It’s me, Sage! Turn around! I’m right here!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sage saw Marla shove her way into the crowd and start toward her, anger twisting her face. “Don’t you leave that cart there!” she shouted. “Get back to it right now!”

Sage froze, adrenaline coursing like fire through her veins. If Marla sent her to the pit or had Nurse Vic drug her, she’d be done for. She fought her way back to the cart and took the handle. Thankfully, Marla stopped, waited to make sure she was staying with the cart, then turned around and waited near the wall. Breathing a sigh of relief, Sage stood on her tiptoes to look for Rosemary.

Rosemary had taken the pills and was returning the plastic cup to the woman in the gray skirt. Sage almost called out her name again, but stopped. There would be time to find her when they got to the cafeteria or classrooms. And they couldn’t reach each other right now, anyway.

Then Rosemary turned, revealing her profile, and Sage’s heart sank. The girl had a high, round forehead, bulging eyes, and a cleft lip. It wasn’t Rosemary.Damn it. How could you have been so stupid? Did you really think it would be that easy?

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