The Woman

   I'm not entirely sure what day it is.  I think it's Sunday, because I heard the woman behind the wall praying this morning.  But I don't remember if that was this morning.  And anyway, I think she said she was Jewish.  Then maybe it's Saturday?  For all I know, she was just praying for the sake of praying.  Maybe, unlike most people, she doesn't need a calendar box to dictate her actions for the day.  Maybe they finally broke her.  She hasn't talked to me all day.  Maybe she's not there.  Maybe she left.  Or maybe I made her up.
    It's colder than an abandoned chimney, and the white walls are splotched.  Sometimes I lay on the ground, plastic marbled tile constructed from ice, and I pretend I live in the aforementioned chimney.  I hope that one day a chimney sweeper will accidentally prod me with a broom, yelp at seeing a human being in his workspace, and steal me back into the real world – if it's still out there.  The chimney sweeper in my mind looks like Dick van Dyke, and I pray that he will find me before an inferno explodes through the veins of the placid floor and the flames consume me alive.
    So I guess I pray too sometimes. 
    There is a low shuffle of leather heels outside, and I know they're checking to make sure all the doors are locked.  The hinges five feet from me rattle once.  It must be night.  I don't remember the day passing.  I wish there were windows, so I could check the sunlight.
    The shuffling fades away, and the naked light bulb in the high right corner of the room sizzles out.  Sometimes I hate Thomas Edison.  I've tried to reach that light bulb, but it's too high and there's nothing to step on.  The bed is locked to the floor somehow.  I think they did that on purpose.
    Darkness.  The walls creep around me, but at least I'm not in the spotlight under a microscope anymore.  At least I'm not strapped down in tunnels the same size as bomb shells.  I crumple to the ground in my relief.  The tile is more bearable once my entire body presses against it evenly than when my bare feet have to battle it alone.  Socks are too suffocating for use.
    My legs disappear under my bed.  My head is close to the skeleton vent in the wall, and now I wait.  The stone cold of the floor slowly poisons my jawbone.  Usually I count to one hundred.  Sometimes it's a little longer.  Today it's one hundred and fourteen.
    "Hey.  Are you there?"
    I catch my breath and twist my neck.  My ears suddenly suffer a very real threat of frostbite through the chill vibrations of my cell floor. I exhale rather than speak.  "You didn't talk to me today."
    "I know."  She pauses, her voice suddenly warmer through the vent.  I feel the heat of her mouth through the metal mesh mouse tunnel that separates us.  "I was trying to pray."
    "Is it Saturday?"
    "I think it's Wednesday."
    "Oh."
    "I really don't know."
    I inch my face closer to the mesh, lowering my voice still further.  "Praying – did it work?"
    "I don't know.  I think... I've forgotten how to pray."
    "I think we're too far underground for anyone to hear us anyway."
    "I thought we were above ground – in a building?"
    I hesitate in thought.  I readjust my sprawl on the floor as my hand starts to tingle in the absence of sensation, and respond honestly.  "I don't remember."
    "Maybe I made it up."
    "Maybe I did."
    "Are you real?'
    "I think so."
    "Put your hand to the vent."
    My stiff joints feel the metal pattern brand itself onto my naked palm.  An instant later, a sudden jolt of warmth batters against my flesh, and my hand flies back to my frozen side.
    "Did you feel that?" she asks.
    "You're real then too?"
    "Yeah."
    "Oh.  Okay.  Good."
    "I guess I'm going to go to sleep now."
    "Wait – do you promise to talk to me tomorrow?"
    "Okay."
    I peel myself from my position on the ground like tearing the skin from an orange, stumbling up onto my low, groaning bed like an arthritic dog.  I remain as I land, frozen in my awkward curl, and wait for the rape of sleep.  I fight it as long as I can, but it prevails as it always does and I fall into unconsciousness.  No dreams come.
    Before my God-forsaken light bulb cackles awake to signal the new day, Bear and the Dragon come in with two lackeys.  There's no warning so I scream when I hear my door unlock and open, and the four hazy women lunge at me.  They ask me how I'm feeling, suffocating my flesh with a Velcro band across my bicep and a thumb burrowing into my wrist.  They ask me if I've eaten, clawing my ears with the scratches of their pencils as they etch their hieroglyphs into their clipboards.  They ask me if I've done my exercises.  My ribs threaten to shatter under the pressure of the breaths they ask me to hold.
My screams are now nothing more than muffled groans.  The Bear extends my arm and keeps it as still as she can manage while the Dragon shoves a cold needle into my elbow.  Warm chills shiver up my arm and echo through my veins.  My limbs fall flaccid, and suddenly I don't care as much whether or not they take me.  It's a nice feeling.
    At that moment, the light bulb cackles into life once more.  I hear a few screams down the hall.  The Bear lifts herself from me, her brown and gray hair inches from me as she pinches my cheek.  Her gargoyle stare is cold.  My eyes spin to the back of my head, and all I see is black.
    Then: blinding white, and excruciating cold that rips my skin and muscles from my skeletal structure until they gasp of air.  My blood stream feels dry, then the subsequent intolerable flaming of every inch of my flesh.  I scream, but am muffled by the rubber against my tongue and all I succeed in doing is choking.  I think of my chimney sweeper.
    I submerge again, the crackling plastic of my bed damp with my perspiration.  I roll to the side, plunging into the liquid ice of sweated sheets with a deafening swoosh and a nod to the spotlight endeavoring to blind me.  I count to ten, just when I'm sure Death has his hand lingering over my throat to snatch me, and then the aching dryness comes again.  My eyes throb.  I don't scream this time.  I'm ready for it.  I sip at a four-inch tall cup of lukewarm water.
    I think of the woman behind the wall.
    I shut my eyes as the room swirls.  This time I count to twelve.  Numbers are comforting.  I wish it were always the same number though, that there were a pattern to count on.  I think they do that on purpose too.  Even the number of tiles on the ceiling seems to be constantly changing, but I usually fall asleep before I can finish anyway.
    I think of the Dragon.  Once, she had a deep cut above her red left eyebrow.  There is still a small scar.  I wonder what happened, if she was scared, if she had to sit in a bed like this one, if she had plastic tubes made of icicles burning into the inside of her elbows.
    I don't know how they choose a diagnosis, a treatment.  How they separate us.  I wonder what's wrong with the woman behind the wall.
    They roll me off the stiff bending board onto a squeaky plastic stretcher.  It's ruffled like a squashed loaf of bread.  I don't want them to see me shiver, but I can't gather enough strength to fight it.  I scream at my limbs to vault into action, emotion, anything, but they ignore me.  There is no struggling.  I can't think.
    The spotlight vanishes, and now cookie cutter streams of light flash above me intermittently.  I hear the rattle of the wheels beneath me over the clattering of my teeth, but I don't feel the movement.  At length, the flashes cease and I hear a door open.  Something presses hard on my sandstone ribs and my magma shoulder, and then another dropping sensation, and then the flaming slap of an invisible floor against my racing thoughts.  I only feel it for a moment.  The door slams shut behind me, the spotlight on me anew, and I feel my damp clothes begin to melt into a puddle around me.  I can't stop shivering.
    "Hey," the light bulb says.
    "Stop shining on me," I mumble.
    "It's me," the light says after a moment, and I realize it's not the light after all, but in fact the grate.
    I drag my chin two inches to the left against the tarnished ground.  "I don't feel like talking."
    "How many days have you been in here?" 
"Ten.  No – three.  Or two.  Something like that."
    "That's not too bad."
    "No."
    "Do you feel better now?'
    I'm still shivering, but I suddenly notice the sensation slowly returning to my prickling, burning limbs.  "A little."
    "When you can move enough, wrap yourself in your bed-sheet.  I heard them saying you keep kicking off your covers and getting too cold."
    "Okay."
    "Don't fall asleep.  You'll forget.  Wrap yourself up first."
    "Is it night already?"
    "No, I don't think so.  I don't know.  Does it matter?"
    "I guess not."
    "Do you feel better?"
    I don't move, but we both know I do.  At least now her words are more coherent than the mash of Thanksgiving stuffing they were before.  "Yeah."
    "Good.  I... I guess I should let you rest."
    "Okay.  Wait."
    "What?"
    "Thank you."
    She hesitates for a moment.  "For what?"
    "For talking to me."
    "Really?"
    "Yeah."
    "You're welcome."
    She's quiet, and after a count of ninety-seven I hear her slither off the ground and shuffle away from the vent.  I still can't move, but I don't think my quavers are so fierce any longer.  I'm getting used to the jackhammering concrete feeling in my brain.  I don't know how long it takes –it's before I stop hating the Industrial Revolution and Thomas Edison – but eventually I manage to shove myself away from the floor and deeper into my bed.  I mummify myself with my sheet, my body folding in on itself and suddenly desperate for its own warmth.  Then there is blackness.
    I dream the Bear is in the light bulb.  She shines on me with a malicious grin and glares.  I'm not bothered much.  I just don't want her to see me at the grate.
    When I wake up, it's still bright, and it's still silent.  The wet spots on the floor have disappeared.  The metal springs of the mattress pry into my ribs like railroad nails. I sit up and my crumpled gown slips down, its own dampness like the light dew of an exhalation.  I gather it up, wishing I could wear clothes, wishing I could be a normal person again.
    I slither off the bed and pull myself to the grate, the aluminum rubbing against my blushed skin through the thin sheet I still comfort myself with.  "Hello?" I whisper with a glance toward the door.
    There's a rustle a million miles away, and soon I hear the woman slide to her position.  "Hello."
    "What day is it?'
    "I don't know."
    "Have I been asleep long?"
    "A night passed, I think.  They knocked on our doors a little while ago for meals.  I think they skipped you."
    "Not good to eat after the meds, I hear."
    "They didn't give me food either."
    My stomach rumbles with the thought of food despite itself.  "I'm sorry."
    "You made me promise to talk to you yesterday.  Will you talk to me tomorrow?"
    "I promise."
    "Hey," she sighs.
    "What?"
    "How long do you think until we can go home?"
    "What do your prayers tell you?"
    "They don't tell me anything.  They just watch over me at night, and they give me hope that one day things will be different.  Don't you have hope?"
    "I guess a little."
    "But not from prayer?"
    "From you."
    She's quiet for a long time, and I wonder if I said something wrong.  I don't know if it's better to speak again or leave her to sort out her thoughts.  Before I can settle on either decision, she continues, "Why are you here?"
    "I don't remember."
    "I think you do.  If nothing else, I think you remember that."
    My mind whirls like a butterfly in a trap and my stomach pulsates and aches violently in disuse.  I think of a little girl with curls like rays of the sun over the tide of the main.  I think of the cornucopia of pill bottles always behind me in the shadows.  I think of the day I flush them down the toilet, swirling into a porcelain abyss.  I cringe at the sudden explosion between my ears.  The image vanishes but I still remember everything.  "Hallucinations.  Since I was a kid.  You?"
    "Same."
    "Wow, really?"
    "Really really.  Where is your family?"
    "I don't know.  Yours?"
    "They don't know I'm here."
    "Oh."
    The woman grows quiet, and I take the opportunity to count the tiles on the ceiling again.  Four-hundred and eleven.  Three less than last time.  I worry for a moment that the tiles were hiding of their own volition, but quickly realize that my mind is finally returning to me.  No, tiles don't move.  They are the same as they had been yesterday, and the day before.  I am the one who is different.
   The Bear and the Dragon and their wraiths come for me before the light turns off that day.  But it's not a bear: it is a heavy set nurse with a dark tuft of hair and an ambling gait.  And it is not a dragon: it's a lanky woman with slanting green eyes and cherry red lipstick.  And they are not wraiths: they are interns, their eyes seen only through the reflection of their glasses on the bright white papers on which they scribble.
   "I'm feeling better," I tell the larger of the women.
   "Good," she smiles.  "Do you want to go home today?"
.  "Yes."
.  I wonder if I should ask about the woman on the other side of the grate.  I don't think I can bring myself to visit her, but maybe I can write?
   But I worry they'll tell me she wasn't real, and I keep my mouth shut.