Toys were scattered everywhere. The slide was overturned; a tattered, one-limbed doll lay against its base. Books had flown like fluttering birds across the room. The little plastic table had been upended and the legs popped off.
The bear she had given Sarah lay just inside the door, a mute eyewitness to the tragedy.
Light flashed in her eyes. She glanced across the room at the right-hand window. Behind the wire mesh ran a long, splintering crack, winking in the sun.
The commotion came from the corner farthest from the door. Two white-shirted counselors were slowly closing in on a disheveled, hysterical figure.
“She touched him,” Wasserman said. “Dennis does not like physical contact of any kind, as I think I told you.”
Dennis was backed against the wall. His baseball cap was tilted to the right and upward, his shirt untucked. His hands were up and pawing the air and his head whipped back and forth like that of a dog trying to free itself from a choke collar. His voice was a constant, piercing scream. “Nonononononono…”
“Where’s Sarah?”
“We managed to get her back downstairs. It took three men and almost fifteen minutes. She scratched one of them badly. I believe he’s gone for the first-aid kit.”
“I want to see her.”
“She needs to calm down. I’ll go with you in just a moment.” Wasserman stepped into the room and raised his voice to a commanding pitch. “You there! That’s not the way to treat him. Step away, give him air.”
"Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten. Twoandtwoisfour. Threeandthreeissix. Fourfivesix. Seveneightnine."
The two counselors slowly moved off. Dennis continued to scream numbers in a wild, high-pitched stream. Jess remembered her brother’s similar episodes. Sometimes they wouldn’t even know for sure what had set him off, only that he had felt threatened by something. Her mother would have been drinking, most likely, though she hadn’t been doing that as much when he was still alive. Somehow he had always seemed to know when she did. He tried to draw it out of her by force.
What did we used to do? Talk softly to him, talk him down…
Wasserman spoke in a calming, quiet voice. “There, there, Dennis, no one’s going to hurt you. We’re all friends here. Friends, Dennis.” He moved slowly closer, hands at his sides. “There, now, that’s better….”
She took the bear and slipped down the hall to the elevator. Downstairs, she told Jeffrey behind the desk that she was here to examine Sarah. She let him examine the temporary pass Wasserman had given her after her first visit, even though he had seen it many times. Finally he led her through the dreary corridor to Sarah’s door.
Now that she was away from the scene upstairs, she allowed her anger to boil to the surface. How could they have made such a stupid mistake? To leave the girl with a group of other children when she hadn’t seen another child in God knew how long…
When Jess caught a glimpse of the poor girl, crouched against the wall, she was glad Wasserman had not followed her down here.
Sarah’s eyes were already beginning to glaze over. A long, thin scratch divided one cheek. They had slipped her back into her restraints and the drugs were at work on her already. But Maria was gone. So who was giving her these heavy sedatives?
“Sarah, fight it,” Jess said, over by her side. “Fight it. Do you hear me?” She unbuckled the jacket and slipped Sarah’s arms out, then lifted the girl to her feet. Sarah muttered something incomprehensible.
Jess made a sudden decision. “Hold on, we’re getting you out of this place,” she said. She piloted them to the door, hit the buzzer with her palm. Come on, you son of a bitch. A moment later the door swung open and she pushed by the startled Jeffrey—"I’m taking her back upstairs"—and through the hall, half carrying, half dragging Sarah to the elevator.
Upstairs she poked her head into the hall, which was empty. “You stay with me,” she said, holding Sarah’s chin and looking her in the eye. “You focus. Do you want to see the sky? Do you want to feel the breeze outside?”
Sarah muttered. Her eyes rolled and focused and rolled again. What the hell am I doing Jess wondered, carrying the girl down the empty hall. But Sarah needed something to shock her from this trance. If it went too far she might never come back out again.
Noise still from the playroom; Dennis had calmed down a little, but not much. She went for the doors, and didn’t see anyone until they were on the front steps, blinking in the bright sun.
She sat Sarah down on the top step. “Now you listen to me.” She took the girl’s chin in her hand again and tried to make contact with her eyes, tried to force her way through the soft glaze and hazy sun. “I know you’re scared, and angry, and hurt. They treated you like an animal in there when you had a good reason for what happened. How were you supposed to feel, with all those people looking at you?”
Sarah moaned. She pulled her arms into her sides and rocked, head cocked, eyes squeezed tight.
“You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. You didn’t mean any of it. You only fought back to protect yourself. Am I right, Sarah?”
Sarah twisted her head away. “Leave me ’lone.”
“I’ll go if you want. Do you really want to go back to your room? Do you want them to lock you up again?”
“No! I don’t!”
“I want you to fight that gray feeling that’s trying to fill you up. I want you to push it away. We’ve come too far to go back and I don’t want to lose you. Can you do that? Can you open your eyes?”
“I don’t want to!”
“Then you’ll miss it. Can you smell the air? It’s cool out here. There’s grass and some trees in the yard. There’s a squirrel by the fence, he’s standing up and holding something in his paws. He’s chattering at us. Can you hear him, Sarah?”
Slowly, her eyes still squeezed tightly shut, Sarah nodded. Then she opened her eyes to the sun and struggled to her feet. Spreading her arms wide, she stood there for a moment, then stepped away into the grass and stumbled to her knees.
Jess felt a curious chill creep over her that had nothing to do with the wind. Sarah’s face had suddenly gone absolutely smooth and a smile touched her lips as she knelt in the grass.
She bent and grabbed two handfuls and pulled, digging her fingers into the dirt. She rolled on her back and wriggled herself into the earth.
A strange sound the girl made. It took Jess several moments to realize Sarah was crying and laughing at the same time.
The sun slipped behind a cloud. Jess sat on the steps and watched as Sarah sat up and swayed like a snake, eyes closed, cheeks streaked with dirt and tears. “I don’t feel too good,” she said in a slurred voice.
“They gave you a drug. It’s supposed to calm you down. It will make your mouth feel a little dry and your head kind of full. You’re going to feel calmer and you might get sleepy.”
“I don’t like it.”
“What happened in there, Sarah?”
She opened her eyes. “Nothing!”
“You mean you don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I don’t believe you did anything on purpose. You were scared.”
“You weren’t there. In the Room. I needed you!”
“If I’d known they were going to bring you to the playroom today, I would have come sooner.”
“I looked for you out the window.”
“Did you break the glass, Sarah?”
“I don’t know! I just wanted to get out!”
“And then what happened?”
“I tried to talk to that boy, to help him. But he wouldn’t listen. He started screaming, and he tried to take Connor. Then they came to take me away. You don’t know what they do! They grab you hard and they give you shots and tie you up. They take you to the bad place. I didn’t want them to do that anymore. So I pushed them. I… pushed.” Sarah smiled and closed her eyes again, drifting. “I pushed…”