A harsh voice barked, “Don’t bother, she can’t hear you. She’s not even registering that we are here.”
On closer inspection, I could see the kind, younger woman wore a flesh-colored facemask over her mouth and nose. This seemed important but important kept dissolving in front of me. I was trying to reach above the fog, trying to hold my breath and climb past it. Silver pipe, shower head.
A bloody taste developed in my mouth, filling it with metallic-flavored saliva. I felt dizzy. I leaned over the side of the bed, the room tipping and tilting, and vomited on the floor. The two women jumped back in unison. The tall man raised his eyebrows, displeased. He wasn’t fast enough. He had vomit on his shoes and halfway up his pants.
He looked down at his shoes and frowned. “Keep an eye on her and make sure she keeps her food down over the next day or so,” he muttered to the women and hurriedly exited the room, his pants making a wet, flapping sound as he walked.
I watched him go, struggling to remember why he had left so quickly. My brain was still foggy but the vomit cleared my head a little. Vomit, right. I pressed my fingers to my mouth, trying to suppress a smile. I had the feeling I shouldn’t smile or even show any emotion to these strange people.
After the younger woman had cleaned up my mess, she placed a tray in front of me and left. I held the large, paper cup in both hands and twisted it around, inspecting it. Carefully, I took a small sip. The milkshake inside tasted very familiar. I opened the lid and peered inside; it was grey and sludgy, the consistency of wet cement. The food looked more normal, some meat, cooked to death, mashed potatoes and peas. The food didn’t taste exactly right. It tasted more like the milkshake than mashed potatoes, and the meat taste like charred wood, but I found that I was starving. I ate a little, drank a little, very slowly. Thinking over what I thought I had worked out.
This fog I was lost in was something they were doing to me. The masks meant it could be something inhaled.
“Whoosh!” I instinctively pulled the bedclothes over my face, trying to block out the invisible poison. A silver pipe pushed up into my memory. Had I seen something or heard something? I wasn’t sure but the picture in my head was clear, a silver pipe. I pulled myself over and out of the bed, realizing for the first time that I was attached to several lines and monitors. Still holding a sheet over my face, I clambered towards the wall under my bed, the shiny grey floor reflecting my face as I crawled along. I looked thin, well, thinner. My odd eyes popped out of my head, framed by purple circles. When did my hair get so long? I ducked under the metal bed and there it was, a silver pipe and a tiny showerhead attached to it. As quickly as I could, I shoved the sheet over the opening, hearing a muffled ‘whoosh’ as I sat back on my knees.
I wrung my hands together, thinking. I couldn’t leave the sheet there. They would work it out and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do yet. I needed them to think nothing had changed. I needed to find something else to seal the opening to that pipe. My eyes searched the room, really seeing it for the first time. There was nothing I could use. It was so bare. Four painted walls, a sink, a door leading to a bathroom, and shiny grey tiles climbing halfway up the wall. There were some things I recognized, items from my room. The small details were there, but enough was changed that it now felt very wrong.
I stood up too quickly, feeling very light-headed. I held myself up against the side of the bed and took it in. It was bizarre. A lot of the details were actually painted onto the walls. My dresser with the few ornaments I possessed—a bottle of perfume, a book. All two-dimensional representations of the real thing. How could I possibly have believed this was real? I pulled my fingers through my hair, snagging them on all the knots. The looming question that was now flashing in my brain like a broken streetlight was—how long had I believed this was real?
The perfume bottle that used to sit on my dresser in my bedroom looked so real, the green faceted glass glinted in some nonexistent sunlight. I reached out to touch it, feeling only cold, hard wall. The bottle was now reflected on my hand. I removed it sharply, like the image would somehow stain my skin, but of course it returned to the wall. I searched the ceiling and located a little camera or, I guess, projector, streaming light over this one wall. It was a photo from one corner of my bedroom at home.
I thought of the perfume bottle. It had never moved from that position, the whole time I lived in that house. It was empty, had always been empty. It was a gift my father had given my mother. When he left, she threw everything away, except that. She gave it to me one night before Paulo had come home from work, placing it carefully on my dresser. She didn’t say anything except, “Here, I don’t want this anymore,” and stole out of the room like a thief. Thinking about Mother was strange, almost new, like I was reinventing a long-lost memory, colors and shapes swirling, mixing together in confusion. Her face faded in and out as an unseen force pushed her away from me.
Scanning the room again, I realized there was one real thing on the wheeled table across my bed. The food. I scooped up some mashed potato in my fingers and crawled underneath the bed again. Dragging machines with me, their wheels squeaking and whistling painfully, I edged closer to my target. Carefully, I unscrewed the head of the pipe and shoved the potato into it, placing the showerhead back over the top. I rolled back on my heels and sighed. No more whooshing.
As my head cleared, memories assaulted me one by one. Joseph, warmth and love that turned twisted and hard, Rash and the boys, something to live for, a purpose, and a new family. It hurt so much. It was a real, physical pain. I breathed long and slow, trying to calm myself. I made a decision. At this moment, in this already overwhelming and frightening situation, I would push it down. I couldn’t acknowledge this pain, this loss, not without falling apart. It would have to wait.
It would have to wait because that morning one thing became very apparent and, all of a sudden, glaringly obvious. I stared down at my round belly and sighed thinly with absolute exhaustion. I was pregnant, probably about four or five months. Looking back over the foggy days, it made a lot more sense. How starving-hungry I was, how uncoordinated and unbalanced I felt, and the way I was being treated by the staff. What I couldn’t understand or remember was how I came to be this way.
I’d tried to hide it the first time I remembered being taken to the exercise yard, but I couldn’t help a sharp suck of breath in shock. It was difficult not to reel backwards, turn to the door, and run. There, padding their socked feet over the fake grass, the projected trees not swaying in the wind, the birds frozen on the branches, were at least a hundred girls walking around the yard. All at different stages, but most were quite obviously pregnant. They were all being ushered into different circuits that were roped off with nylon tape and were mindlessly walking through them. They would bang into each other occasionally, unaware of their swollen stomachs bouncing into each other’s backs. There was no sound apart from the soft swishing of padded feet on the fake grass. I looked up at the bright blue sky decorated with puffy white clouds projected on the ceiling and wished it were real. This was nightmarish.
The kinder blonde woman, whom I’d learned was named Apella, guided me to an opening in the chattel and gently pushed me through. I walked with my eyes set on the ground, trying not to attract any attention. I felt like a spy—the only one aware of what had happened to us.