Page 20 of Unwell
They couldn’t take her.
‘Why would someone take them?’
‘Shh, Ginny,’ Nancy soothed, picking me up frommy spot on the floor. ‘Don’t work yourself up. It won’t be good for the baby.’
I couldn’t stop. I pulled the pillow’s innards out in an explosion of tiny white feathers. My knuckles stung. Small, angry red lines marked their way over my hands.
When had I done that?
Nancy’s eyes snagged on them too. She caught my wrists, feathers drifting around us in a cloud born of my stress.
‘Stop. Look what you’ve done, Ginny. Look at your hands. You’re hurting yourself.’
The hot tears tracked down my cheeks. ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t…I just need them back.’
‘They’ll sedate you,’ Nancy whispered, her eyes growing wide. ‘You need to calm down.’
Fear truly spiked then. The white coats. The prick of the needle. The helplessness. A tremor stole over me.
Nancy crossed the space and wrapped me up in safety. In her arms. I stiffened at the sudden touch before sagging against her. She was motherly. Kind.
My sobs broke free in guttural shakes against her softness. A hand moved into my hair, stroking slowly and steadily. Murmuring something into my hair that I couldn’t quite make out.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ll get you new ribbons. Just the same.’
My breath caught, and I pulled back to look up at her. ‘You will?’
‘I will. I’ll look after you. I promise.’
‘You’re like the big sister I never had,’ I said, pressing my face back into her tear-stained shoulder.
My scratched hands were so red against her uniform, and it left an uneasy feeling creeping low in my stomach. Like some part of me had been misplaced with the ribbons.
TWELVE
GINNY
The air in the corridor shifted, as if some monster inhaled in the darkness.
I should have been in bed, but the night orderly hadn’t locked us in. While the others lay either sleeping or sedated, I traced my way through the halls. The corridor stretched long and dim, like a great spine that splintered off into a series of rooms and smaller corridors.
No one else shifted in the dead of night. I often walked the corridors in the early hours, searching, hiding, escaping.
But there was no escape.
Wellard had snared me, and it was becoming clearer and clearer that it had no intention of letting me go.
Strip lights spluttered overhead, like the dying gasp of the asylum. Some had faded to black. Others buzzed loudly, like the fields at night back home.
Walking through the area shadowed in black made the hairs on my arms rise until I scurried forward back into a pool of blue-white light.
Damp stained the plaster walls, paint blistering and peeling in ragged strips. It scratched at my sore fingers, but the pain made me feel alive. Reminded me that this was all real, not some terrible dream.
A sour smell cloyed in the air, hitting the back of my throat with every shallow breath. Disinfectant. Piss.Rot.
Screams reverberated from beyond the locked door, which led downward, into the festering depths. Distant yet loud enough to send a chill running down my spine.
I faltered, my slippers catching on torn linoleum.
