Breaking Chains

Isolation and Interrogation

It was so cold.

Samantha’s body was wracked with uncontrollable shivers. The feeling in her bright red appendages had left her a long time ago and now they were only numb. She had tried to stand earlier. When it was really necessary she could use her bad leg to stand or walk a minimal amount; it hadn’t exactly been a good day but she needed to try at least. Her fingers could barely move but she still managed to push off against the frozen walls and shift her weight onto her feet-bad move. Not only had it sent shocks of electricity up her legs but she had fallen over completely.

She was in the isolation cell. The stunt earlier had earned her two days in freezing cold, no food, and five cubes of ice to suck on for water. As the name suggested, it was isolated and a cell. Nothing much to it other than that. Anyone who opened it would have thought it was a closet, possibly for cleaning supplies, because there was a bucket in the corner and it smelled, especially the floor, of bleach and other strong cleaning materials.

The room was so small that it was impossible to lay down with arms and legs freely laid out, not that she wanted too. To stay warm she had to curl up into a tight uncomfortable ball. Her legs were criss crossed underneath her and her front was bent over and pressed against the floor with her arms tangled and squashed beneath them. Her back had been sacrificed to the freezing air to protect the rest of her. This position had been retained for the past day. Even though the position was cutting off a lot of the blood to her feet; she hadn’t dared to move out of fear some of her warmth might escape. In addition, she was stark naked. Clothes were a luxury.

Even when Samantha had to urinate, she had been forced to spill the warm liquid all over herself instead of using the bucket. The warmth was something that could not be sacrificed for something as trivial as a bathroom break. But that humiliating experience was the most relief she gotten in the past two days.

Before she had struggled over whether or not she should eat an ice cube and freeze her mouth but get water, now she would have killed for one. Samantha had made the choice to breath through her mouth because her nose had numbed from breathing in cold air; the warm breath on her skin had been heavenly but now her mouth was a dry as a desert.

The first few hours she had screamed and pounded on the metal door to no avail. She was just but one of the people in the isolation cells. Her neighbor to the right was screaming a pure terror and her neighbor to the left was sobbing like a child, despite the fact that he sounded like a grown man. The anger fueled adrenaline had faded quickly and all the yelling did was make her hoarse. It wasn’t long before she was pacing her tiny confinement, all five steps of it. Meanwhile, the sobs and screams continued to bounce around her skull.

Every few minutes or so a panicked thought crossed her mind and she would quickly repress them before the panic could spread like a disease.

What if she ran out of air and slowly suffocated? No, there were three holes at the top of her cell that let in air from the outside, unfortunately they also let in cold.

What if she froze to death? No, it wasn’t cold enough for that. This part of the hospital was relatively heated and they others had been there longer than she had. If they had survived she would survive. Besides the doctor had said she wouldn’t freeze to death.

What if he lied. He wouldn’t. Why? Because he’s professional. He locked you in here in the first place and choked you, he’d probably lie. He wouldn’t. Why? Because damn it!  

She switched tactics. Instead she imagined that she was somewhere else. However, the more she imagined walking in the outside the more her legs ached to be spread and the more she imagined opened fields the more the walls seemed to close in on her and the deeper into her mind she went the darker her thoughts became. Until the bad thoughts started to come to the surface.