Clare's Choice

The screams of the child — agonized and piercing — rang in Clare’s head, even after she stumbled outside. The poor young girl in the electric chair had begged her not to be strapped in. She’d been through this before.

She was only nine years old, being shocked for the third time in one week.

Her family had a history of depression in the women on her mother’s side. She was being subjected to shock treatments in the hope they could electrocute the bad genes out of her early and prevent the depression from ever forming in her.

If it ever did, they would sterilize her and the rest of the females in her family.

It had been easy to get a job at her father’s mental institution; no one wanted to work in such a dark, horrid place. The hard part was carrying out her duties the way a man would, because that is what every person in her town believed she was: a young man named John, who had just moved to this small New England town to make something out of himself.

She gripped one of the small brick pillars marking the entrance to the hospital and took a few deep breaths, watching as the clouds formed before her in the frigid December air. She hoped no one knew she was out here; a few of her coworkers already thought of John as weak and more than a little odd. When the ringing in her ears had subsided a bit, she collected herself and walked back into the looming brick building.

“Mr. Watson,” the secretary asked, her voice filled with alarm, “are you all right? You look a tad pale.”

Clare only nodded to her and walked away. She never used her voice in this place; it was far too feminine to be believable. In fact, she could not recall the last time she had spoken.

The other employees walked by her in the harshly lit, sterile white hallways in their pristine white uniforms, nearly blending into their surroundings. She did not want to become like them, cold and empty, so much a part of this place that she could no longer escape it. She picked up her wheelchair and began walking toward the Treatment Center.

As part of her duties, she had to take the patients to and from their rooms, and so had to see either their fear as they were taken to their tortures or their brokenness and wretchedness as they were relocked away and forgotten. Clare believed these were the real people of the world, whether unfit and ill or well; the stoic faces of the men who condemned them could not be real.

She returned to the room holding the young girl — Anna, her file had said. Around here, however, the patients were referred to by their room and bed numbers, sometimes so often, for so long, that they forgot their real names. The man administering the shocks opened the door for her. “Patient 209-2 is finished. She is waiting in the chair to be transported back to her room.” He said this stoically, in an almost bored tone, as if they were discussing the weather instead of a tortured nine-year-old girl.

Clare gave him a momentary hard look before entering the room. The girl was still strapped to the chair and she was looking at the floor, her long, knotted flaxen hair hanging over her tear-streaked face. Her breaths came in heaving, hiccuping sobs, so quick and uneven she was almost hyperventilating. When the girl saw Clare, her eyes widened in fear and her breathing quickened further. Clare loathed that her mere presence could cause such fear in a child. Anna began desperately struggling against the restraints, trying frantically to escape.

What had this place — this “science” — done to this girl?

“Please,” the child begged, gasping for air, “please don’t shock me again!” Her voice was frenetic with terror, hoarse from her earlier screams of pain. “I promise to be happy! Do you see?” She forced a grotesque grin on her face, fresh tears shining on her cheeks.