Page 43 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

Sage kept going. Hopefully someone would be at the nurses’ station.

“Jesus, Eddie,” Wayne said, laughing as he followed her. “What’d you do to her? She’s trottin’ like her ass is on fire.”

Eddie wrung out the mop and slapped it onto the floor. “Not a thing, my friend,” he said. “Not a damn thing.”

“Uh-huh,” Wayne said. “Sure.”

When Sage neared the nurses’ station, Nurse Vic leaned over the counter and peered down the hall toward Wayne. “What’s going on?” she said.

“Just taking this straggler back to her ward,” he said. “She was hiding in my cubicle while I was rounding up the others.”

Nurse Vic came around the counter and waited for them to reach her. “Was she trying to escape again?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Wayne said. “She’s a sneaky one.”

Sage made eye contact with Nurse Vic, hoping she’d see the fear on her face. Nurse Vic glanced at her briefly but didn’t react. Instead, she took a pack of cigarettes out of her uniform pocket.

“Got a light?” she asked Wayne.

“Sure,” Wayne said. He stopped to dig his lighter out of his pocket.

Sage kept going.

“Whoa, slow down there,” Wayne called after her. After lighting Nurse Vic’s cigarette, he sprinted to catch up.

Sage glanced over her shoulder to see if he was getting close. To her surprise, Nurse Vic walked casually down the hall behind him, taking a long drag from her cigarette and watching them. Wayne slowed when he caught up to Sage, then followed a few feet behind her. When she turned the corner and went down the hall toward her ward, she looked back again. Nurse Vic strolled past the hallway intersection, keeping an eye on them until they reached Ward D. As soon as Wayne unlocked the door and pushed it open, Nurse Vic turned around and disappeared.

Once Sage was inside the ward, Wayne shut the door behind her, locking it before he left. Near the back of the room, Marla was holding a screaming woman down on a mattress and waiting for her to stop struggling, her face pinched with determination. Grateful that Marla was too busy to notice her late return, Sage hurried toward her sister’s bed, surprisingly relieved to be back in the noisy, overcrowded ward. At least Wayne couldn’t reach her there. Then she remembered what Rosemary had told Eddie about someone sneaking in there at night.

She wasn’t safe anywhere.

CHAPTER 10

At the nurses’ station the next morning, Sage took another chance with Nurse Vic. “Thank you for looking out for me when Wayne took me back to the ward last night,” she said. “I felt safer knowing you were there.”

As usual, Nurse Vic ignored her and kept working, filling the plastic cups with orange pills, putting the trays on the counter.

“He really scares me,” Sage said.

Nurse Vic stayed silent.

“You know I’m right,” Sage said. “You know Wayne is dangerous and I’m telling the truth about what he was doing to my sister. That’s why you followed us last night.”

Nurse Vic lifted her chin to look out over the crowd of residents. “Marla?” she shouted. When she saw Marla, she motioned her over. “Can you come here, please? I need you to take someone to the pit.”

Sage went rigid. “No,” she said. “You don’t need to send me there. I’ll shut up.”

“Then shut up,” Nurse Vic said.

Sage dropped her eyes. Eddie was right: The staff wouldn’t rat on one another, no matter what they knew about what their coworkers were doing. And if the look in Nurse Vic’s eyes was any indication, she was afraid of Wayne too. Sage took a plastic cup from the woman in the gray skirt, popped the pills into her mouth, grabbed the wheeled cart she was pushing, and moved on. Anger and frustration boiled like acid in her throat.

After spitting the drugs into her hand, she watched the dayroom door for Eddie, anxious to find out whether he’d gotten in touch with Alan. If he hadn’t, she wasn’t sure what she’d do—break down and weep? Scream at the top of her lungs? The thought of spending another night in Willowbrook was more than she could take. She tried to remember if Eddie worked every day or every other day, but the days and nights jumbled together, like waking from one frightening nightmare to find yourself lost in another, more terrifying one.

When the janitor in the orthopedic shoes came out of the dayroom door pushing the mop bucket, she nearly wept. What if Eddie had been fired after all? What if he’d moved away or been run over by a car? Or maybe he decided not to get involved. Maybe he requested a transfer to another ward. No. She had to stop being so paranoid. Either he had the day off or he was working in another building, that was all. With any luck, he was on his way to Willowbrook with Alan. The two of them could be in Dr. Baldwin’s office at that very moment, explaining the situation and giving him hell.

After parking the cart in the dayroom, she sat in the far corner and tried to make herself invisible. Thankfully, the other residents left her alone for the most part, but every now and then someone tried to talk to her, or picked at her hair and pulled at her clothes. When that happened, she kept quiet and waited for them to go away, afraid she’d say or do something to set them off and get punched or slapped or kicked. Thankfully, Norma stayed away from her too, and so far she hadn’t snitched on Sage for destroying her pills. At least she didn’t think she had. She thought briefly about asking Wayne if he knew where Eddie was, but decided against it.

During the long, horrible hours of uncertainty, she survived by closing her eyes, putting her hands over her ears, and pretending she was somewhere else. She thought about her father—about going to South Beach with him and Rosemary, the sea-green water foaming on the sand, the sun a dazzling high point in the sky. She could see her dad, tall and tanned in his swimming trunks, chasing them through the waves. And Rosemary, building a sandcastle with a moat and a railing and windows made out of seashells. She thought about piggyback rides, picking out toys at yard sales, and riding her banana-seat bike to Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour. She imagined sitting in the darkened theater at Lane Theater waiting for the movie to start, breathing in the smell of fresh popcorn. She remembered curling up on the couch to watchThe Brady Bunch, downing root beers at the A&W, dancing and going out for pizza with her friends.

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