When She Was Bad

4

“Where are we going? Where are you taking me?”

No answer. Dressed in an open-backed green gown with strings in back that tie in front and paper slippers that keep threatening to slide off, Lilah shuffles down the long green corridor, flanked by a white-clad psych tech on either side. When they reach the elevator, Mullet Woman punches in the security code and steps inside first, while Hulk follows Lilah. Exiting one floor below, they reverse the process, then flank Lilah again and march her down another long green corridor, this one two-toned with a waist-high, olive-colored wainscoting, to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

The door opens, revealing a large tiled room dominated by an enormous padded table in the shape of a cross; it looks more like a medieval torture device than a piece of furniture. Beside it, seated behind a gray metal desk, is a plumpish, bespectacled man in a white lab coat, his reddish-brown hair combed back in waves from a high round forehead. He gestures toward the empty wooden chair across the desk, politely asks her to take a seat. She shakes off the hands of her escorts, puts a little extra hip swivel into her walk as she crosses the room.

“Do you know who I am?” is his first question.

She draws the hospital gown tightly around her, shrugs noncommittally.

“Ever seen me before?”

“Not that I know of.” A seductive smile. “You are kinda cute, though.”

He’s not biting. “What’s your name?”

“Lilah.”

“Last name?”

She frowns prettily. “Sorry-sometimes I have trouble remembering things.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Some kind of mental hospital?”

“Do you know what day it is?”

She shrugs, causing the hospital gown to fall open. His eyes flicker downward-only for a moment, but a quickening of his breath gives her a sense of power. She leans forward provocatively. “Look, whoever you are, could we talk in private for a couple minutes?”

“No, we can’t.” He breaks eye contact, types something onto a laptop computer on the desk, then looks up again. “Just a few more questions. You were right about this being a mental hospital-do you have any idea why you’re here?”

Both the room and the man are too chilly for her to go around with her boobs hanging out. Lilah pulls the lapels of her hospital gown closed again. “Because your goons over there wouldn’t let me leave.”

“I mean why you were brought here in the first place.”

“I don’t know. Amnesia, maybe?” She waits for him to finish typing another note into the laptop. “Well, am I right?”

“You’re experiencing some loss of memory, then?”

“Yeah, I got CRS-can’t remember shit.”

“Tell me the last memories you do have-before coming here, that is.”

“Well there was this biker, he picked me up in Seaside, I was pretending to be a hooker-I do that sometimes, just for the fun of it…. “

She tells him the rest readily enough-Lilah feels no sense of shame where sexual matters are concerned. When she finishes, he closes the notebook, then does something that takes her completely by surprise: he leans earnestly across the table and stares hard into her eyes, saying, “Lily? Lily, if you’re there…if you can hear me…if you’re in any way conscious…if you have any conscious control over any of this…if any of this alter switching is in any way voluntary to any extent, now’s the time to speak up. Believe me, nobody here is going to think less of you.”

Lilah draws back, tearing her eyes from his searching gaze. “He’s the crazy one, not me,” she tells Mullet Woman over her shoulder.

But Mullet Woman’s not looking at Lilah, she’s looking over Lilah’s head at the crazy doctor, who sighs, blows the air out like a man who’s just made a tough decision, then nods toward the cross-shaped table.

“No way,” says Lilah. “No fucking way.”

Yes fucking way. Hulk and Mullet Woman each take an arm and lift her onto the table as easily as if she were a scarecrow, then force her arms away from her sides and fasten her wrists to the crosspieces with fleece-lined clamps. “Help me,” she screams, kicking futilely as strong arms yank her legs out straight and clamp her ankles to the table. “Please somebody, help-”

Something is forced between her teeth, cutting her off in mid-scream. She tastes rubber. Another fleece-lined clamp swings over her forehead, clicks into place to immobilize her head. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpses the man in the white coat fiddling with the knobs of a machine about the size of a metal briefcase. Then he turns back from the machine and holds a syringe up to the light.

“You’re going to be taking a little nap now,” he tells Lilah, patting the inside of her elbow for a vein. “That’s all, just a little nap.”

She feels the needle sliding in, then a burning sensation in the crook of her arm. Please, somebody help me, she thinks. Somebody, anybody….