Eventually the voices had instructed Donnie to try and kill an orderly by jamming one of the plastic sporks from the cafeteria into her throat. He had been dragged off her, screaming and crying and transferred to the Violent Offenders wing. Torri hadn’t seen him since.
“Now, now, not everyone with delusions is violent,” Dr. Burrows said comfortingly. “But they can still be very difficult to live with. If you’d just take the medications I’ve prescribed to you—”
“No!” Torri said at once. She crossed her legs and wrapped her arms around herself tightly. “No—I don’t like the way those drugs make me feel! I don’t need them—I haven’t hurt myself or anyone else.”
She had been refusing the drugs almost from the beginning. She had only taken them once—on the first night—and that was enough to convince her she never wanted them again.
The pills Dr. Burrows had prescribed for her were supposed to stop the night terrors from happening. But they didn’t—all they did was make it impossible for Torri to wake up from the terrors when they came on. That first night, when she had obediently swallowed the little pink pill the nurse had handed her in the paper cup, she had been locked in mortal terror all night long. A never-ending loop of the AllFather coming for her and his huge black Fathership moving closer and closer to the unsuspecting Earth.
Of course despite her horrible night, she hadn’t woken up screaming—which was an improvement from Chuck’s point of view. Her husband had even offered to take her home with a bottle of the little pink pills, as long as she agreed to take one every night.
Torri had refused. Aside from making her entire night one, long, horrible nightmare she couldn’t get away from, the pills made her incredibly drowsy and confused the next day. She’d felt lobotomized until the medicine finally wore off—well into the afternoon. It was a frightening, vulnerable feeling—like someone had wrapped her brain in cotton so she couldn’t think properly.
Now she realized she should have promised to take the pills so she could have gone home—then she could have flushed them all down the toilet and she would have been free. But back at the beginning, she had thought that her husband really wanted what was best for her—so she had agreed to stay another week, to see if other forms of therapy would help.
Therapy hadn’t helped and so she kept screaming herself awake at night and falling into fugue states during her waking hours. It was an awful way to live, but at least she wasn’t trapped in a never-ending nightmare every night and she didn’t feel like a lobotomized zombie the next day.
“You know, we have allowed you to refuse your medications up until now, Torri,” Dr. Burrows said, frowning. “But there is such a thing as court-ordered medication. Did you know that?”
“What? But why would a court order anything for me?” Torri demanded. “I haven’t hurt anyone!”
“You hurt your husband—you stabbed him,” Dr. Burrows reminded her sternly. “He can bring charges against you any time he wants to for that incident. And then, if I get involved and explain to the judge that you’re not taking the medication I prescribed for you—”
“No!” Torri started backing away from his desk. “No, you can’t do that to me!”
“Torri, please—no one wants to do anything to you. We’re all here to help you.”
Dr. Burrows put on that meltingly sincere face again—the one that had so completely taken her in when she and Chuck had first come to St. Elizabeth’s.
Torri, however, was having none of it.
“Excuse me,” she said tightly. “But I think I’d like to go now.”
“But Torri, you’re suffering needlessly.” Dr. Burrows spread his hands. “If you’d just let me help you…”
“By drugging me into submission? I don’t think so.” Torri shook her head.
“But the delusions you’re suffering aren’t real—these dreams of aliens coming to take over the Earth and the evil alien overlord who torments you every night—with the right medication, they can all go away.”
“Along with half my brain and all of my willpower,” Torri snapped. “I said, no thank you. I prefer my night terrors and fugue states to being chemically lobotomized.”
Then she turned and left his office. She was afraid if she stayed much longer Dr. Burrows would find some excuse to have her sedated. He would say she was ‘acting in a threatening manner’ or that she looked like she might hurt herself or any of a hundred other things.
Though really, he didn’t have to say anything at all, did he? He was a man in charge and she was a woman under his care—a woman who had been committed to a mental institution—his word was law in this awful situation.
And there was nothing Torri could do about it.
Five
I might as well be living in a nineteenth century novel where men could just hide their crazy wives in the attic! Torri thought, as she walked quickly down the pale pink hall, away from the psychiatrist’s office. How could Chuck tell him about my Seeing Dreams? How could he betray me like that?
She could understand how the Seeing Dreams would look like delusions to someone who didn’t know her and didn’t know her family history. But Chuck had known her Nana before she passed away. Nana was always doing little things, like finding people’s lost socks and sunglasses and jewelry. She just knew where things were.
As magic tricks went, it wasn’t very much, but Nana had done other things too—like that time with Torri’s Uncle and the flat tire. Once she’d been sitting in church and had gotten a very strong feeling that she had to get home right away. She had made Torri’s grandfather get up and leave in the middle of the service—it was scandalous behavior for the time.
But it was a good thing they left. It turned out that someone had left a stove burner on with a dishtowel lying too close to it. The towel was just starting to catch fire when Torri’s grandparents walked though the door.
“Another five minutes and the whole house would have been up in flames!” Grandpa Pete used to say, giving Nana a proud look. He hadn’t doubted his wife’s gift or tried to ignore it or hide it, like Chuck did.
But then, Chuck had never had very much imagination. He never wanted to watch fantasy or sci-fi movies with Torri, saying they were “a load of crap.” So it was probably little wonder that he couldn’t believe that the things she was seeing weren’t some strange delusion but a terrible fate that was coming in the near future.
I’m not crazy, Torri told herself over and over. Nana said when she died that the gift might pass to me. And she only died earlier this year!
She felt a sob rise in her throat at the memory of holding her Nana’s frail hand in her last moments. Her mom had died in a car accident when Torri was only sixteen and after that, it had been Nana who had acted as a mother to her. In a way, losing her grandmother had been like losing her mom all over again.
“Torri, sweetheart…” Nana’s voice had been so soft, Torri had to lean over to hear her. “I’m afraid…you’re going to have…trouble…after I’m gone,” her grandmother had whispered. “The Seeing Dreams…may pass…to you. They are not…easy.”