The Sandman

92

Her eyelids are heavy, but she forces herself to look. The light from the lamp in the ceiling is strangely clouded. The metal door opens and a man in a white coat comes in. It’s the young doctor. He’s got something in his slender hands. The door closes behind him and the lock clicks. She blinks her dry eyes and sees the doctor put two ampoules of yellow oil on the table. Carefully he opens the plastic packaging of a syringe. Saga tries to crawl under the bed, but she’s too slow. The doctor grabs hold of one of her ankles and starts to pull her out. She tries to cling on, and rolls over onto her back. Her bra slides up, uncovering her breasts as he drags her out onto the floor.

‘You look like a princess,’ she hears him whisper.

‘What?’

She looks up and sees his moist gaze, and tries to cover her breasts, but her hands are too weak.

She shuts her eyes again and just lies there waiting.

Suddenly the doctor rolls her over onto her stomach. He pulls her trousers and pants down. She dozes off and is woken by a sharp prick in the top of her right buttock, then another slightly lower down.

Saga wakes up in the darkness on the cold floor and realises that she’s got the blanket on top of her. Her head aches and she has almost no feeling in her hands. She sits up, adjusts her bra and thinks about the microphone in her stomach.

There’s very little time.

She could have been asleep for hours.

She crawls over to the drain in the floor, sticks two fingers down her throat and throws up some acrid liquid. She gulps hard and tries again, her stomach cramps, but nothing comes up.

‘Shit...’

She has to have the microphone tomorrow, so she can put it in position in the dayroom. It mustn’t disappear into her duodenum. She gets up on wobbly legs and drinks some water from the tap in the basin, then kneels down again, leans forward and sticks two fingers down her throat. The water comes back up, but she keeps her fingers where they are. The meagre contents of her stomach trickle down her lower arm. Gasping for breath, she sticks her fingers in deeper, setting off the gag reflex again. She throws up some bile, and her mouth is filled with the bitter taste. She coughs and sticks her fingers down once more, and this time she finally feels the microphone come up through her throat and into her mouth. She catches it in her hand and hides it, even though the room is dark, then stands up, washes it under the tap and tucks it into the lining of her trousers again. She spits out a mixture of bile and slime, rinses her mouth and face, spits again, drinks some water and goes back to the bed.

Her feet and fingertips are cold and numb. She has a vague itch in her toes. As Saga lies down on the bed and adjusts her trousers she realises that her pants are inside out. She isn’t sure if she put them on wrong herself, or if something else has happened. She curls up under the blanket and carefully puts one hand down to her crotch. It isn’t sore or hurt, but it feels strangely numb.