50

 

In the hall, the squeak of rubber-soled shoes.

Kaylie knew that sound. The night nurse, whose name tag read CUNNINGHAM, had left her station and was coming this way.

“Talk to her,” she murmured, “Make her understand.”

It won’t work, Justin said coldly. Nobody’ll listen to a sad little piece of shit like you.

Kaylie ignored him. She had to get the nurse to listen. Cray had promised to be back after nightfall, and although she couldn’t judge the time of day in her windowless room, she knew from the crawl of hunger in her belly that evening had drawn near.

She had no idea how he would gain entrance, what subterfuge he would use, no idea how he would end her life and how he expected to cover it up. But she knew he would find a way.

Since Cray’s departure she had not moved from the floor. Now she struggled to her feet, dizzy with the effort, while the voices of Anson and Justin blended in a singsong mockery of her failing strength.

Weak as a baby.... She’s always been weak.... Running scared, hiding like a mouse in one cubbyhole or another.... Weaklings never last, not in this world....

She staggered under the deluge of insults. For a moment she could only sway on unsteady legs, the room blurring around her.

Then she saw the nurse pass by the plate-glass window in the door, and a sudden fear that she had missed her chance drove her across the room in two steps. She pounded the glass.

“Nurse! Nurse Cunningham! Nurse!”

The shoes stopped squeaking. A momentary silence. Then with surprising abruptness the small window filled with Nurse Cunningham’s face, a face both stern and sad.

“Yes, Kaylie?” Spoken through the glass.

“I need to talk to you.” That was good, it had come out fine, it had sounded calm and lucid.

“Go ahead.”

“Can you open the door?”

“I’m afraid not.” Hesitation. “I saw what you did to Dr. Cray. That was bad, Kaylie. You mustn’t keep misbehaving like that.”

Cray? What had she done to him? Oh, yes, scratched his cheek—a few lines of blood, quickly dabbed up with a handkerchief.

“I need your help,” Kaylie whispered.

The nurse tapped her ear impatiently, and Kaylie realized the words had been inaudible through the glass.

She repeated herself more loudly. “I need your help.”

“We all want to help you.”

“No, that’s not true. Dr. Cray doesn’t want to help me. He wants to kill me.”

“Oh, Kaylie.” No trace of belief in the nurse’s voice, only a tired pity.

“It’s true. I know it sounds ... I know you think I’m ... But I’m not.”

She had been in this situation before, she was sure of it—insisting she wasn’t crazy, warning of the danger Cray posed, and hearing only patronizing solicitude....

The 911 call. Yes. This was like that.

Time had passed, things had happened, but nothing ever changed.

No one listened. No one believed. No one cared. No one could be counted on. No one anywhere, ever.

“It’s true!” she screamed in a rush of uncontainable frustration, and suddenly she was beating her fists on the glass and weeping. “It’s true, why won’t anybody help me, what’s wrong with all you people, what’s the matter with you?”

“That’s enough!”

Nurse Cunningham barked the command, startling Kaylie into stillness.

“Now,” the nurse added more gently, “just get hold of yourself. I know what the problem is, and I’ve taken steps to fix it.”

Kaylie heard this without comprehension. “Steps?” she echoed blankly.

“It’s the medicine you’re taking. It doesn’t seem to work at this dosage. But I’ve spoken with Dr. Cray, and he’s agreed to consider lowering the dose, starting tomorrow. That should help you, Kaylie. If it doesn’t, we’ll try something else.”

Kaylie lowered her head, worn out. “He was lying,” she said softly, no longer caring if the nurse could hear. “He knows I’ll be dead tomorrow.”

“You won’t be dead, Kaylie. You’re just imagining things, that’s all.”

“Don’t let him in my room.”

“Kaylie—”

“That’s all I’m asking.” She looked through the window again, trying one last time to reach the nurse. “Just for tonight. Don’t let him in my room.”

“There’s no reason Dr. Cray would be visiting your room tonight.”

“But if he shows up—don’t let him see me.”

“He won’t show up.”

“Don’t let him see me.”

The nurse looked away, fatigue written in the puffy flesh under her eyes, the slack muscles of her face. “Dr. Cray is the director of the institute,” she answered tonelessly. “If he needs to see you, Kaylie, of course I have to let him.”

No hope then.

No chance.

Told you, Justin chortled, but Kaylie barely heard.

“All right,” she mumbled, surrendering.

“I have to check on another patient. Okay?”

“Go ahead.” The nurse began to move away, when Kaylie added for no reason, “After I’m dead, you’ll know he did it.”

Nurse Cunningham frowned sadly. “Kaylie, don’t think that way. It doesn’t help you to get better.”

“After I’m dead,” Kaylie repeated stubbornly, “you’ll know. He did it. Remember that. Will you remember that, at least?”

“Dr. Cray would never hurt you, Kaylie. He would never hurt anyone.”

Kaylie sagged. She pressed her face against the glass, feeling its cold kiss.

“You bitch,” she whispered. “Stupid, stupid bitch.”

“I’m sorry,” Nurse Cunningham said from what seemed like a great distance.

Kaylie didn’t respond.

“Your dinner will be here shortly,” the nurse added, as if this would make everything better.

“Don’t want dinner.”

“You need to eat. You had no breakfast, no lunch.”

“Not hungry,” she said, though she was.

“I hate to see you starve yourself, Kaylie.”

Cray was going to kill her, win his final victory, and all this prattling idiot could think about was food.

Last meal for the condemned, Justin said.

Don’t turn it down, Anson advised. If you’re not hungry, girl—we are.

Laughter from them both.

“Shut up,” she said weakly.

The nurse assumed the comment was aimed at her. “Fine, then,” she said stiffly. “If that’s the way you want to be, we won’t bring you any dinner. You’ll be ready to eat by morning, I’ll bet.”

There would be no morning. But Kaylie knew it was pointless to say so.

The nurse lingered another moment, perhaps expecting Kaylie to reconsider, but Kaylie was silent, leaning disconsolately against the door.

“Sometimes,” Nurse Cunningham said finally, “I wonder why I even try.”

Her shoes squeaked again as she stalked off down the hall. Kaylie heard her go.

It was the sound of hope retreating ... fading ... gone.

The nurse would not stop Cray. No one would stop him.

You’re dead, girl, Anson said, and Justin added, As dead as me.

They kept talking, saying awful things.

Kaylie turned away from the door and stumbled to the bed and fell on it, her fist jammed in her mouth, her whole body shaking as she contracted into a fetal curl.

This wasn’t happening. None of it was real. It couldn’t be. Cray and Nurse Cunningham and this room and the bed with rubber sheets and the steel toilet in the corner—all of it—this cramped and dismal universe she inhabited alone—it was a fake conjured by her mind, a cell that existed in imagination only, and if she concentrated hard enough, if she wished very hard, like a child wishing for a visit from Santa, then maybe it would all go away and she would be free.

But she knew she could never be free, not really. There was no exit from this nightmare, no escape from Cray ... except the one he himself had pointed out.

She lifted her head, blinking at the harsh overhead bulb in its wire cage, and then slowly her gaze traveled to the air vent in the ceiling, the grille fastened to the frame.

For a long time she stared at it while a thought took shape, a thought floating in space, offered for her inspection and approval.

Kaylie sat very still, contemplating that thought.

For once the voices were gone. There was silence inside her and around her, the hurricane’s serene eye, and in that calm place she was herself again, at least for the moment.

She saw her situation plainly.

And she knew that there was only one way out. One plan that could work. One chance, and one hope.

Strip the sheet from the bed, then tie a knot ...

A slipknot.

With a trembling hand she touched the rubber sheet. It was smooth and cool between her thumb and forefinger.

How would it feel, wrapped around her neck and drawn taut as she dangled, dangled ... ?

“No,” she murmured, “I can’t.”

But she had to.

If she didn’t, Cray would come, and he would kill her.

Could she give him that final victory? After everything he had done to her, could she allow him the obscene triumph of taking her life by his own hand?

This new thought of hers was the only alternative, her only choice.

If she dared to do it.

If she had the will.

The strength.

Time for you to go, Kaylie, said a voice that seemed oddly familiar, not at all threatening—a gentle, persuasive voice. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own.

Slowly she nodded.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s time for me to go.”

All right, then. Do it.

Now—quickly—before the nurse returned for the day’s last injection.

Kaylie rose from the bed with a sleepwalker’s unselfconscious grace and, moving fast but with no sense of strain, began to strip the top sheet from the bed.

“Yes,” she was saying in a quiet monotone. “Yes, it’s time. It’s time. It’s time, at last, for me to go.”