Property of the State, page 12
“You need to wash good. Be diligent with every part of your body,” she said.
I was thinking, How is this bitch going to tell me how to wash? What business is it of hers whether I am clean or not?
Ultimately I did as I was told. I washed my skin, over and over again. Not because she’d said so, but because I felt filthy.
“You have about six more minutes,” Lisa said, peeking down at her watch.
She was getting on my nerves. I mean, even though she spoke softly and was fairly nice, she seemed nervous and was all of a sudden rushing me for some strange reason. Whatever she was on earlier looked like the shit was wearing off.
When I was done cleaning myself up, I went to get out of the shower. Lisa rushed over with a towel and damn nearly wrapped me in it like I was a toddler getting out of the bath. She helped me until I said I could do it myself. I swear it was like she thought I was a precious commodity that she was afraid would break or something.
Lisa led me back into the room where the bed was. I noticed that there was a fresh white hospital gown laid out on the bed.
“I’m in prison. I don’t understand why I have to put on a hospital gown,” I said, suspicion evident in my voice. “I’m not sick. So, what happened to the jumpsuit? This is just way too fucking weird for me,” I grumbled.
“This is just what is worn in this unit,” Lisa said in the blunt way she answered questions when she didn’t want to elaborate. She’d responded like that a few times now. She wasn’t always all smiles, which was weird. I wasn’t sure if she switched up because of me or because she knew in certain places someone might be watching and listening. Either way, it was weird.
I had no clue what kind of shit I was about to endure. After I dressed in the gown, Lisa told me she was taking me to another room. She said it flatly, with no emotion.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “I think I have a right to know where I’m being taken and why.”
Of course, she didn’t want to answer the question or respond to my little rant about my rights. She was busy writing something down after looking at the huge digital clock that hung on the wall. She had done that every step of the way. She’d look up at the clock, jot something down, then look at me and jot more stuff down.
Don’t ask me why I just went along with everything Lisa asked me to do, when I surely could have beat her ass and made a run for it. But I knew hitting her over the head and kicking her ass would be short-lived, because I was probably in the belly of the beast with no way out of there on my own. My head still hurt a little bit.
“Let’s go,” Lisa said. Then she nodded to the bed.
My eyebrows shot up into arches. I looked from Lisa to the bed and back again. I didn’t understand what she meant. If we were moving to another room, why was she nodding at the bed?
“I can walk,” I clarified, my face still folded into a confused frown.
“Not today,” Lisa said. “It’s not allowed during this time. You have to be transported on the bed. It’s for everyone’s safety.”
She had her bullshit-ass response ready. I knew what the fuck she was doing.
“Well, I’m not going on the bed. This is crazy. I’m fine. If anything, y’all are making me leery about my safety with all of this shit,” I replied.
She knew I wasn’t trying to hear anything she was saying.
Lisa let out a long sigh. Then she walked over and pressed a button on the wall. My eyebrows dipped in the middle of my face as I watched her. What the hell is that supposed to do? I thought, but not for long.
With that, the door swung open and three men barged in. I whirled around, my eyes stretched wide and my heart started hammering. They immediately moved toward me like they were about to devour me. I knew what this meant. Since I wasn’t trying to cooperate, then shit would be forced upon me. So I braced for impact.
“Transportation to room A, third subject,” Lisa said to them in a flat, routine tone, as if she did this all day, every day. She carried herself like the head bitch-in-charge, all of a sudden. Gone was the smiling, meek, soft-spoken nurse that I had woken up to.
“No independent movement,” Lisa said with finality. “No freedom.”
At that, my ears perked up even more. What did she mean by “no independent movement”? I didn’t have a chance to complete the question in my head before the men moved in, surrounded me, and forced me down onto the bed.
“No! Wait! Lisa! Wait!” I yelled out. “I can walk on my own. Please, I’m tired of being locked down and lying down. I need to stretch my legs.”
She ignored me. Her face remained stoic. I don’t think I had ever seen anyone shift personalities quite like that. She handed one of the men something.
“Hold and ready,” he droned like a robot. Then he plunged a needle into my right thigh.
I opened my mouth to react to the sting, but it just went slack. My body and brain relaxed so fast; I couldn’t control it. I felt tingly all over and I felt warm inside. I could see and hear, but I couldn’t fight. It was as if whatever they’d given me gave them a remote control to my muscles, including my brain.
My body felt heavy, like it was full of lead. I watched the men move adeptly, working to strap me to the bed. I could follow them with my eyes, but nothing else was working. In my mind, I flailed and kicked, but in reality, my legs were lead pipes that couldn’t move. When my ankles and wrist and midsection were secured to the bed with thick leather straps, I tried to move my head to the side, but I couldn’t get my mind and body to cooperate. I was only able to move my eyes, and barely even those.
I watched Lisa pull out a cell phone and make a call. She spoke in a low murmur, so I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying. Plus, my mind was fuzzy as if cotton had suddenly sprouted on my brain. Damn, how I wished Lisa stood a few inches closer. I was eyeing the cell phone. That is what I needed to get my hands on. I needed to call my mother. I needed to call anyone who might help me. Maybe Sandra. Anyone on the outside that might come and bust me out of here, or at least get me a civil liberties attorney and fight for my basic human rights.
As I was being wheeled out of the room on the bed, I noticed all of the armed guards around. They seemed to be everywhere in that section of the prison facility. That was strange. This was definitely a different type of prison. Usually, COs didn’t have weapons. I’d heard that was for their safety and for the safety of the inmates. This was different. I immediately felt sick. I was in an entirely different realm of the prison.
* * *
Fighting the sleep that was trying to take over me, I was wheeled through what seemed like a million mazes of corridors, elevators, and more corridors. We seemed to be moving for a long time. I could tell we were going deeper and deeper into the bottom of the building, because it got colder and darker. It smelled like funeral home flowers mixed with pungent disinfectant.
Finally I was wheeled into a door. That’s when shit got crazy. My eyes roved around, and although I couldn’t scream or talk, I could see clearly. There was a line of beds like mine with women lying on them. They were all dressed similar to me in hospital gowns, not prison jumpsuits. Some were awake, and some were knocked out. Some were strapped down, and some appeared too weak to move. Some cried. Some moaned. Some lay perfectly still, like maybe they were dead.
I wanted to scream, but the paralytic drug they’d given me wouldn’t allow it. This was another room similar to before, but this room wasn’t high-tech at all. It was more prisonlike and less laboratory-like, but it was in the same part of the prison. I could only wonder how many thousands of helpless state inmates were going through this same thing. And they couldn’t do anything about it.
“Move her into position,” Lisa said.
The men went about unstrapping me so I could be moved. I felt like a paraplegic, my body was heavy and numb. They dragged me over to an oversized chair with wires, probes, and monitors around it. They dumped me into it. There were different sounds filtering into my ears and I could hear the murmur of voices, but I couldn’t see right away where they were coming from. It didn’t take long, though.
Soon Lisa was joined by a huddle of doctors. The redhead with the handlebar mustache was back. He examined me, using his light again.
“Can you move, Ms. Heiress?” he asked. “Can you lift your hands or wiggle your fingers?”
In my mind, I was moving, but my body was stock-still. He reached over and pinched my arm. I felt the sensation of his pinch, but I didn’t feel the pain. My eyes darted around, but I could not get my brain to cooperate with the rest of my body.
“She’s ready,” he said. “Bring me the specimens. Let’s make this quick. I have several more of these to get done. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this one.”
Ready? Ready for what?! I was screaming bloody murder in my mind, but only a series of short grunts came out of my mouth and nose.
Everyone in the room did as they were told. I noticed Lisa had fallen back. She seemed to have a glint of sympathy in her eyes now. I couldn’t figure her out. It was strange. She had gone from smiling, to serious, to sympathetic. Something about her gave me pause. I was more and more convinced that she was being given drugs to make her act a certain way.
Probes were placed on my head, neck, and chest. My arms were secured to the chair arms and my legs to the chair legs. There were bright lights shining down on me and I could feel the heat from the lights on my face. I looked out into the gathering crowd of doctors now filing into the room. It was crazy to me. They all seemed to be ready to see the spectacle. It looked just like some sort of science or premed class. When I looked up and over at the other women, some were watching. I could only wonder if they were trying to warn me with their eyes.
“Test subject ready. Record day one, first injection,” the redhead boomed loud enough for the group to hear.
That’s when all of the gathered people hurried to take notes and put their full attention on the doctor and me. I was suddenly grabbed on the top of my right arm. I fought to twist my head sideways, but, of course, I couldn’t move. My eyes stretched painfully wide.
“Keep your face straight and eyes forward,” a voice whispered to me from the side.
I felt a gun pressed up against the side of my head. It was one of the armed guards. But I couldn’t understand why they’d need to do that when I was in a helpless position. It was a scare tactic that was over the top, and for no reason at all.
Or maybe it was to serve the purpose of scaring the holy shit out of me so that I would be compliant for the rest of my time here. It worked. I was scared shitless.
I immediately closed my eyes. Then I felt the excruciating pain of a huge needle being plunged into my tiny arm. All I could do was scream inside. I was buried alive in my own body. The numbness I was experiencing on the rest of my body was no match for the needle they used. I could feel my body straining because of the pain I was feeling, but with no way to let it out.
My heart felt like it would explode. My insides churned as if all of my organs were being put through a meat grinder. My head pounded and I felt my eyes roll up into my head. I sucked in my breath because I felt like I was going to suffocate. I don’t know what the hell they had put into my body, but I knew it was serious.
What happened next amazed the fuck out of me. Some of the other women in the room started screaming as if they could feel my pain. My eyes came back down, and I looked around strangely, eyes wide like a trapped animal’s. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that one of the girls had jumped up from her bed and dashed toward me.
“Help her,” the girl said robotically. “Help her. Help her. Help her,” she kept repeating. She was running toward me one minute and crumpled on the floor the next.
One of the armed guards had handled her real quick with a crack to the head with the butt of his gun. I screamed inside my head, but that did me no good. I was feeling faint. This was some sick shit, for real.
Whatever they’d injected me with felt like it was spreading over my body like a black massive blob. It was thick and slow and oozing into my organs like a plague. I wheezed for air and tried to suck in as much breath as I could, but I knew there was nothing I could naturally do. They had probably injected me with some terminal disease.
As I sat there suffering, I saw my entire life flash before my eyes. The mere fact that they were experimenting on human beings told a lot about my fate. I was officially these people’s guinea pig. A fucking lab rat.
So I’d lost all confidence that I would make it out of this place alive.
12
DEATHBED
I awoke convulsing on a bed. My body jerked and flopped, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Blood leaked out of my nose and ran down my face, neck, and chest. I couldn’t stop my body from violently thrashing, and I felt like my bladder would explode at any moment. Wherever they had me now, it was freezing cold, like I was lying on a block of ice. When my body finally stopped involuntarily bucking, I felt extremely weak. I heard voices around me, but it sounded more like buzzing than talking. The room spun as if I had just gotten off of a high-speed ride at an amusement park.
“She’s conscious,” a man’s voice sounded off. I braced myself because I didn’t know what was coming next. I had been injected several more times over the night—that much I knew. I felt like I had the worst flu you could imagine—body aches, fever, chills, and, now, convulsions with stabbing pains all over. Sweat drenched me, and maybe that’s why I was so cold. I felt like I was dying. I couldn’t imagine making it out of this. I hadn’t ever been this sick in my life.
“Please,” I slurred, but that was for nothing. It was clear that these very dangerous people were not going to have any mercy on my body or my soul. Whatever experiments they had in mind were more important than my human rights. That much was clear to me. I saw the redheaded doctor approaching my bed. He represented danger in my eyes. Every time I saw him, something terrible was done to me afterward. He was the Devil, if you asked me. He terrified me.
“Ahh.” I let out a weak scream as the doctor got closer to me. “Please don’t,” I whimpered, my words sounding like I was intoxicated. My tongue felt heavy and my head ached.
I didn’t know how much more my body would be able to take. My face was scrunched and fear played out across it. Sweat poured from every pore on my body and danced in jagged lines down the sides of my face. I gagged, but nothing came up from my stomach. The waves of nausea were so strong that I was sure my entire gut would come up out of my mouth.
My heart pounded painfully against my weakened chest bone and my stomach churned. At that point, I prayed for death, because nothing else seemed fitting. Another syringe filled with poison, and I was sure I’d be dead.
The redheaded doctor ran his hand gently down the side of my face. “Seems like it is working,” he said eerily. “The disease is progressing quickly, as we suspected. I see the symptoms, and soon the test subject will be fully incubated. I think this one will implant successfully. Now let’s just hope we can find the right medication to reverse it,” he continued, smiling slyly.
When his fingers got close to my mouth, I moved my head, opened my mouth quickly, and tried to catch hold of his finger. I wasn’t fast enough. I would’ve bit his shit off, I swear to God.
“Oh!” The doctor jumped. Guards rushed over. “She tried to bite me,” he grumbled, seemingly unfazed. “Another dose should take care of that,” he said. “She won’t have the strength of a newborn baby soon. That’s when this gets fun.”
“But Dr. Clemons, wouldn’t that be overdosing? The medicine only has the capacity to maybe cure . . . ,” Lisa said, stepping up.
I was glad to see her. She appeared to be a reasonable person. She wore a look of genuine concern.
I finally learned the name of the redheaded doctor: Dr. Clemons, the equivalent of the Devil himself. Even his hair was red—red like the Devil.
“Lisa! Help me!” I struggled to get the words out as my body jerked fiercely from another painful shot in my arm muscle.
“Please let me go,” I mumbled, my words came out labored and almost breathless. “Just kill me and let me go in peace,” I whispered through dry, cracked lips.
Suddenly I had that feeling in my lungs again. I began coughing and wheezing as everyone stood on, watching. It was almost unreal what I was going through. I was in a position of total helplessness. I was weak and useless. My eyelids closed on their own, and I saw my mother’s face. She was crying. She was calling out my name. She was surrounded by men in suits, carrying guns. She was in grave danger. Then suddenly she was starting to fade away, fast.
“Mommy,” I panted. “Don’t let them kill me. Please save me.”
I spoke as if my mother was right there. I squinted my eyes and swore I saw my mother standing right there, but the bright lights the doctors were using brought me back to reality. I was hallucinating. I figured that I would probably never see my mother again.
I could hear the voices around me clearly, though, so I knew I was still in prison. Suddenly I heard another familiar voice. I jumped and whipped my head to the left. Then it seemed like the voice moved to the right. I whipped my head that way.
“You betrayed us, Misty. You and your cousin thought you could outsmart us. I should have never trusted you. I should have known that such a ghetto bitch would turn on us. You dishonored my family. You got too big for yourself. I would’ve let you have a good life, but you didn’t know how to act. You thought the feds were your friends. Now look at you! Look what they’ve let happen to you,” the voice said.
Finally, it hit me. It was Ahmad’s voice.
“Help me! Don’t let him get me!” I screamed, shivering all over. “He’s trying to kill me! Don’t let him kill me! Help me!”
Ahmad had stepped around the bright light and I could see every feature of his face. He had a gun to my mother’s head and she was sobbing. He cocked the hammer of the gun and pressed it harder to my mother’s temple.
