Pressure Chamber, page 5
“No.”
“So why are you playing with your fingers like that?”
“Ah, that. It’s nothing.”
“Come on now,” Nathan persists.
“It’s from the book about lucid dreaming,” Daphne reluctantly explains. “It’s called a reality check. You count your fingers, try to pull one and then read something, divert your gaze and then read it again.”
“And what does that do?”
“If there are five fingers and they don’t get longer when you pull on them, and if you read something and turn away and then look at it again and the text is the same, it’s a sign that you’re awake. If there’s a different number of fingers or something strange happens to them, or if the text is different when you look at it again, then you’re dreaming.”
“A different text?”
“That’s how it works. The brain’s center of logic is inactive when you’re dreaming, so you can’t read like you do when you’re awake. You can read, but the moment you divert your gaze, the text will be different when you look at it again. The book you’re looking at, for example, will turn into an epitaph on a gravestone and then a billboard you saw once and then an airline ticket. All kinds of things like that.”
“So why are you doing those checks now? You’re awake, right?”
“That’s the whole idea. You need to get used to doing them when you’re awake and then it becomes a matter of routine, and your brain will do it in your dream at some point too. And once you start to do reality checks in your dream and realize that you’re dreaming, that’s when the lucid dreaming begins. It’s the key to the door to that world. Pretty simple. You should try it.”
“Have you managed to get into a dream yet?”
“Not yet,” she says as she packs the samples they’ve collected in their appropriate places in her forensics kit. “I’ve only just started practicing, and the book says it takes a while before you get it right.”
“Okay. Prove that it works and then maybe I’ll try it.”
From the corner of her eye she can see him staring at her as she sorts out the samples they collected. They’ve been working together for a year and a half now; she knows him well and knows he isn’t the kind of person who thinks out loud. He goes quiet when he’s thinking. He’s giving her the same look she encountered during her first recruitment interview.
After finishing with all the standard technical questions about chemistry, he started on brain teasers.
“If one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in a day and a half, how many eggs will you get from a coop with thirty chickens during the month of August?”
She’d always loved brain teasers.
“Just a sec. Let me think.”
It took her thirty seconds to come up with an answer.
“The classic answer would be six hundred and twenty, but I have some reservations. For example…”
“How did you get that number?”
“If one and a half chickens lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, then let’s forget about the half chicken and say that one chicken will still lay one egg in a day and a half, which means two-thirds of an egg in one day. So two-thirds multiplied by thirty chickens multiplied by thirty-one days in August gives you six hundred and twenty eggs. But there’s no such thing as half a chicken or half an egg, and that makes the question a little problematic, and there’s no data to indicate whether the number of eggs changes as a function of the months of the year. Let’s say: Perhaps chickens lay more eggs during the heat of the summer? Increased metabolic rate? It sounds logical but needs to be checked. Who came up with it?”
She smiles to herself now, recalling how she’d tripped him up.
“What?”
“The brain teaser. One of yours?”
“No. From the Internet.”
She’d taken a small notebook and pen from her purse.
“What are you writing?”
“A note to myself to find out who came up with it. He must have other interesting ones too.”
He recruited her for his Forensics Unit team. She knew he’d had to fight on her behalf with the Human Resources Department, who didn’t want someone with her background. A mother who disappeared when Daphne was nine years old. An alcoholic and abusive father who was a suspect in her mother’s disappearance. A foster home from which she fled and to which she was taken back several times, until she was placed in a boarding school facility.
The police force didn’t want her, but now she’s a cop. The army didn’t want to enlist her, but she insisted, and served as a combat fitness instructor at the Wingate Institute. To get into university, she first had to retake all her matriculation exams to improve her grades, and she funded her studies by working at the same time as a bartender at a pub in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound.
“You’re unstable. You’re fucked up. You’ll be out of here in a year.” They went out of their way to shake her during the interview with HR. They presented her with a scanned copy of her personal file from the boarding school that included transcripts of conversations with her about all she had gone through with her father and with the foster family, things no young girl should ever have to endure. And she had sat in front of them, fists clenched, and explained that she was exactly the person they needed. A fighter. Determined. Uncompromising. Someone who will push on even when everyone tells her she doesn’t stand a chance. All her life she’d been told she didn’t stand a chance.
They work alongside one another, quietly documenting the scene, photographing every detail, collecting samples from the drops of coagulated blood. Daphne wonders if maybe they don’t all belong to Lee Ben-Ami and they’ll get the DNA of the person who abducted her. Perhaps she managed to put up a fight and something from him remained here at the scene.
The detective, who finishes questioning the finder of the bracelet, comes over to them.
“Find anything?”
“Yes. Based on the findings at the scene, we’re dealing with a felonious assault and abduction.”
12.
She opens the first-aid kit, empties its contents onto the bed and reaches for a triangular bandage, fashioning it into a sling for her arm so as to keep it bent without having to exert herself. She also looks for something she can fix to her arm with another bandage to form a splint of sorts to prevent the broken bone from moving, but she can’t find anything suitable.
She gingerly examines her right forearm again. It isn’t an open fracture. The ulna’s whole and the radius is fractured. She can feel the point at which the bone is broken, and a cry of pain escapes her lips when she touches it.
What did he mean by: “I’ll take care of your arm when I get back”? In their first year of medical school, Lee and her fellow students could recite the names of all the bones in the body and they practiced mending fractures on models. If the bones don’t fuse properly, her arm’s range of motion and symmetry will be compromised. And she’ll require surgery to mend it – a surgeon will have to break the bone again so that it can re-fuse at the correct angle.
If she ever gets out of here.
She feels her head wound. It would have been better to stitch it, but it had already closed partially and was going to leave a crescent-shaped scar. She applies the iodine and fixes a gauze pad to the spot with two strips of adhesive tape in the shape of an X. She then removes her pajamas and examines her entire body. A few scratches and grazes. She cleans them with alcohol and applies iodine to them too, before carefully dressing again. No serious damage, she sums up, concluding her diagnosis; only a broken arm, a large blue contusion on her left thigh where she was hit by the car’s bumper, and a head wound that’s causing bouts of dizziness and nausea.
He’s right – paracetamol would be a good idea; but she won’t touch the medication.
She jumps as she hears a noise outside the door and then holds her breath and listens. Footsteps, and metallic clinking, like the sound of objects being scattered noisily on the floor. Tin cans perhaps.
“So where’s it hiding?”
Someone is talking on the other side of the door. She recognizes the monotone, emotionless voice of the man who abducted her. She has no doubt it’s him. But who’s he talking to? Was she abducted by a group of people? Are there others involved too?
“Recycling is paramount. We have to save the planet. Water with chemicals in aluminum containers, filtered water in plastic packaging. Sewage flowing through concrete pipes en route to a purification facility. It hasn’t gone anywhere. And even if it has, you can wander around there for hours and days without anyone noticing you. Like a ghost. Like an invisible onlooker. The herd won’t spot the tiger until the tiger pounces.”
What’s he talking about? The cans roll and rattle across the floor. She hears the hum of a melody she doesn’t recognize.
She goes over to the bed, places the first-aid kit in its box and returns it to the cupboard. She wipes down the sink with a small kitchen towel and lays it open on the counter, lightly stained with drops of her blood.
“Here it is. I knew it. It’s here.”
She sits on the bed and continues to listen.
13.
He finds the tag among the cans that are on the floor and places it on the desk. Then he gathers up the cans into a large trash bag and places it by the doorway to the first hallway, scanning the room to make sure he hasn’t left a single can on the floor.
Order and cleanliness go hand in hand. Getting down to work is impossible if things aren’t clean and tidy. You can’t think. Everything has to be organized. Like an operating room before the patient is wheeled in. Like a dentist’s clinic. Like the empty refrigerators at the morgue. Like the row of showers. Like the racks of protective gear. Like folders on your computer arranged according to subject.
He sits down and turns on the desk lamp and examines the tag from all sides. It was thrown into the trash by Doron Moskowitz. He’s the father. The wristband grants access to a maternity ward.
It’s made of light blue plastic and has a single-use closing mechanism that needs to be cut to be removed. A sticker with personal particulars. Name. Name of child. ID number. Ariel 16-point font. A severed edge. A date.
He opens a notebook and writes in it, reciting to himself in the process:
I adorned you with ornaments
Put bracelets on your hands
And a necklace around your neck
He’s going to need a small battery-powered printer to which he can send files from a mobile phone. He’ll move to the computer room shortly to check where he can purchase such a device.
Using a hammer and a small steel nail, he fixes the light blue tag to the white concrete wall and then steps back to examine the wall with a sense of satisfaction.
Back to the desk.
He reaches for the raw materials and starts working. A flexible sheet of light blue plastic. A thin strip of transparent plastic. White paper. A lamination machine. A utility knife. Scissors. A perforator. White plastic snap fasteners.
After an hour of slow and precise work, he slips the finished product into a white envelope and places it on the table. He returns all the tools and accessories to their rightful places, and only then does he make for the door to her room. He’s ready to deal with her now. Everything in its time.
With one hand on the handle and the other holding the key ready, he calls out, “I’m going to open your door now. Don’t try anything foolish. You have no way of getting out of here without me.”
14.
She’s still sitting on the bed when she hears the key turn. Not the series of clicks you hear when a locked door is opened, but just a sharp and short one. The door opens and he enters.
After closing the door and slipping the key into his pocket, he stands in front of her. He’s roughly her height, around forty, not too slim or muscular, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. He is not intimidating, just an average-looking guy. A person she would not notice in a crowd. Lee holds her breath. How’s she going to put up a fight? How’s she going to push him off of her with a broken arm? What’s he going to do to her? He comes over to the bed, sits down next to her and looks at her. The smell of iodine coming off her clothes mingles with the fragrance of his shampoo. She doesn’t dare move and doesn’t utter a sound.
He starts talking all of a sudden, in that same strange and hollow voice: “Since the beginning of time, there has been an element of purity in true suffering. Not the pain of a broken arm, not physical suffering. Mental anguish. For example, when someone’s told he has Stage 3 pancreatic cancer and will live out the rest of his short life in agony. Or when someone is tormented all her life with the thought that she should have done something to save her twin sister a second before she ran into the road. Or when someone loses a child. That’s the most severe torture. The loss of a child.”
He closes his eyes and inhales slowly, filling his lungs. Lee watches him intently. Who is this man? He’s a criminal; he abducted her; he’s insane. But for some reason, she doesn’t fear him. He hasn’t undressed her with his eyes, and he’s keeping his distance from her. She dares to hope that it isn’t that kind of abduction, that he doesn’t have plans to sexually abuse her. So what does he want from her? What’s all this strange talk?
“That’s why you’re here.”
“What?” is all she can say.
“There’s a time for everything. I need you here now and won’t need you afterwards. I’ll release you at the end of the process. You’ll be able to leave. I’m telling you this now so that you’ll cooperate. You’re here for a long time, but temporarily, for a finite period, at the end of which you’ll be able to leave and return to your life. But before you can go, you’ll have to work for me – attentively, with devotion and compassion.”
“What process? What do you want from me?”
She’s making an effort to remain calm. Not to yell. Not to annoy him. She’s decided to cooperate with him, to go along with his madness; she thinks that perhaps she’ll be able to figure out what’s happening here that way.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he responds dryly. “First, we’re going to take care of your arm. I need both your arms in good working order.” He rises from the bed. “Come with me. Don’t try to escape. If you try to get away, I’ll be forced to hurt you again, and I don’t want to cause you any more harm.” He sets out for the door. “Follow me,” he says again, seeing her hesitate. “We’ll take care of your arm.”
He uses the key and leaves the room, and she follows him into the adjacent one. It’s smaller and entirely different. She’s standing next to a wall that’s covered in a collage of pictures, and she studies them closely. They all depict something sick, distorted – a photograph she recalls from the newspaper of an Indian baby who was born with a second head growing out of his stomach; a black-and-white image of two men with narrow faces and straight hair who share one body, two arms and two legs; a picture of twins lying on a long bed, joined at the head with one long body; a photograph of a dehydrated fetus with two heads. More and more pictures, some old and in black-and-white, printed on photo paper or cut from newspapers; and some contemporary and sharp, in color and high resolution, with captions as if they’ve come from hospitals. What is the purpose of this place? Where is she?
She turns her attention to the opposite wall, which is covered by row upon row of large X-ray images mounted on white Plexiglas boxes and backlit by florescent bulbs.
The room gives her the creeps. She can’t allow herself to believe anything he says. She has to try to remember everything. The smallest of details could be her way out of this horrible place. She scans the room, trying to take in as much as she can. A wall of photographs, a wall of X-ray images, a desk, a white envelope, a toolbox resting on a concrete floor, a large trash bag alongside another door, which he is opening with a key. He beckons her towards him and Lee follows him through the door. It slams shut behind them and locks automatically.
This room is very big, a hall of sorts, and is filled with medical equipment. In the center of the room is a horizontal surface, like a high bed, and above it the adjustable arm of an X-ray machine, another X-ray machine for chest-imaging in front of a wall-mounted panel, a mobile operating table, the kind of basin she’s familiar with from hospitals, a trash can with a foot pedal mechanism to open it, a metal chair, closed steel cupboards like lockers. Large medical posters hanging on the walls – a muscle chart, a skeletal chart, a vascular system chart, an enlarged diagram of a heart, lungs, a digestive system. There is even an internal control room with clear windows – for the operator of the X-ray equipment, just like in a hospital.
She tries to etch everything into her memory, without missing a single detail. Maybe that’s why he chose her of all people? Because she’s a medical student? Will she have to operate these machines herself? The medical equipment is shiny and looks brand new. How did he get his hands on all of this? Who has this kind of access to professional X-ray equipment, let alone the money to purchase it?
He goes over to the only chair in the room and moves it closer to the X-ray machine. “Sit here and place your arm on the surface, and we’ll take an X-ray.”
She does as he says. He goes into the control room and observes her through the large clear window. “Don’t move,” he says; and seconds later, the machine emits its familiar humming sound. “Turn your arm to the side.” Another hum. “Other side.” Another X-ray. “Can you make a fist?”
She curls her fingers as much as she can, until the pain reaches her threshold of tolerance. Another hum. He studies the computer screen in front of him. “It’s a simple transverse fracture. Your radius is broken. We’ll have to straighten it before we set it externally. There’s a deviation of three millimeters.”
He knows the terms. Maybe he’s a doctor. She isn’t sure if she should tell him she’s a medical student. But something tells her not to say anything yet.
“May I see?” she asks, turning to look at him in the control room while remaining seated with her arm resting on the metallic surface of the X-ray machine.
“So why are you playing with your fingers like that?”
“Ah, that. It’s nothing.”
“Come on now,” Nathan persists.
“It’s from the book about lucid dreaming,” Daphne reluctantly explains. “It’s called a reality check. You count your fingers, try to pull one and then read something, divert your gaze and then read it again.”
“And what does that do?”
“If there are five fingers and they don’t get longer when you pull on them, and if you read something and turn away and then look at it again and the text is the same, it’s a sign that you’re awake. If there’s a different number of fingers or something strange happens to them, or if the text is different when you look at it again, then you’re dreaming.”
“A different text?”
“That’s how it works. The brain’s center of logic is inactive when you’re dreaming, so you can’t read like you do when you’re awake. You can read, but the moment you divert your gaze, the text will be different when you look at it again. The book you’re looking at, for example, will turn into an epitaph on a gravestone and then a billboard you saw once and then an airline ticket. All kinds of things like that.”
“So why are you doing those checks now? You’re awake, right?”
“That’s the whole idea. You need to get used to doing them when you’re awake and then it becomes a matter of routine, and your brain will do it in your dream at some point too. And once you start to do reality checks in your dream and realize that you’re dreaming, that’s when the lucid dreaming begins. It’s the key to the door to that world. Pretty simple. You should try it.”
“Have you managed to get into a dream yet?”
“Not yet,” she says as she packs the samples they’ve collected in their appropriate places in her forensics kit. “I’ve only just started practicing, and the book says it takes a while before you get it right.”
“Okay. Prove that it works and then maybe I’ll try it.”
From the corner of her eye she can see him staring at her as she sorts out the samples they collected. They’ve been working together for a year and a half now; she knows him well and knows he isn’t the kind of person who thinks out loud. He goes quiet when he’s thinking. He’s giving her the same look she encountered during her first recruitment interview.
After finishing with all the standard technical questions about chemistry, he started on brain teasers.
“If one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in a day and a half, how many eggs will you get from a coop with thirty chickens during the month of August?”
She’d always loved brain teasers.
“Just a sec. Let me think.”
It took her thirty seconds to come up with an answer.
“The classic answer would be six hundred and twenty, but I have some reservations. For example…”
“How did you get that number?”
“If one and a half chickens lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, then let’s forget about the half chicken and say that one chicken will still lay one egg in a day and a half, which means two-thirds of an egg in one day. So two-thirds multiplied by thirty chickens multiplied by thirty-one days in August gives you six hundred and twenty eggs. But there’s no such thing as half a chicken or half an egg, and that makes the question a little problematic, and there’s no data to indicate whether the number of eggs changes as a function of the months of the year. Let’s say: Perhaps chickens lay more eggs during the heat of the summer? Increased metabolic rate? It sounds logical but needs to be checked. Who came up with it?”
She smiles to herself now, recalling how she’d tripped him up.
“What?”
“The brain teaser. One of yours?”
“No. From the Internet.”
She’d taken a small notebook and pen from her purse.
“What are you writing?”
“A note to myself to find out who came up with it. He must have other interesting ones too.”
He recruited her for his Forensics Unit team. She knew he’d had to fight on her behalf with the Human Resources Department, who didn’t want someone with her background. A mother who disappeared when Daphne was nine years old. An alcoholic and abusive father who was a suspect in her mother’s disappearance. A foster home from which she fled and to which she was taken back several times, until she was placed in a boarding school facility.
The police force didn’t want her, but now she’s a cop. The army didn’t want to enlist her, but she insisted, and served as a combat fitness instructor at the Wingate Institute. To get into university, she first had to retake all her matriculation exams to improve her grades, and she funded her studies by working at the same time as a bartender at a pub in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound.
“You’re unstable. You’re fucked up. You’ll be out of here in a year.” They went out of their way to shake her during the interview with HR. They presented her with a scanned copy of her personal file from the boarding school that included transcripts of conversations with her about all she had gone through with her father and with the foster family, things no young girl should ever have to endure. And she had sat in front of them, fists clenched, and explained that she was exactly the person they needed. A fighter. Determined. Uncompromising. Someone who will push on even when everyone tells her she doesn’t stand a chance. All her life she’d been told she didn’t stand a chance.
They work alongside one another, quietly documenting the scene, photographing every detail, collecting samples from the drops of coagulated blood. Daphne wonders if maybe they don’t all belong to Lee Ben-Ami and they’ll get the DNA of the person who abducted her. Perhaps she managed to put up a fight and something from him remained here at the scene.
The detective, who finishes questioning the finder of the bracelet, comes over to them.
“Find anything?”
“Yes. Based on the findings at the scene, we’re dealing with a felonious assault and abduction.”
12.
She opens the first-aid kit, empties its contents onto the bed and reaches for a triangular bandage, fashioning it into a sling for her arm so as to keep it bent without having to exert herself. She also looks for something she can fix to her arm with another bandage to form a splint of sorts to prevent the broken bone from moving, but she can’t find anything suitable.
She gingerly examines her right forearm again. It isn’t an open fracture. The ulna’s whole and the radius is fractured. She can feel the point at which the bone is broken, and a cry of pain escapes her lips when she touches it.
What did he mean by: “I’ll take care of your arm when I get back”? In their first year of medical school, Lee and her fellow students could recite the names of all the bones in the body and they practiced mending fractures on models. If the bones don’t fuse properly, her arm’s range of motion and symmetry will be compromised. And she’ll require surgery to mend it – a surgeon will have to break the bone again so that it can re-fuse at the correct angle.
If she ever gets out of here.
She feels her head wound. It would have been better to stitch it, but it had already closed partially and was going to leave a crescent-shaped scar. She applies the iodine and fixes a gauze pad to the spot with two strips of adhesive tape in the shape of an X. She then removes her pajamas and examines her entire body. A few scratches and grazes. She cleans them with alcohol and applies iodine to them too, before carefully dressing again. No serious damage, she sums up, concluding her diagnosis; only a broken arm, a large blue contusion on her left thigh where she was hit by the car’s bumper, and a head wound that’s causing bouts of dizziness and nausea.
He’s right – paracetamol would be a good idea; but she won’t touch the medication.
She jumps as she hears a noise outside the door and then holds her breath and listens. Footsteps, and metallic clinking, like the sound of objects being scattered noisily on the floor. Tin cans perhaps.
“So where’s it hiding?”
Someone is talking on the other side of the door. She recognizes the monotone, emotionless voice of the man who abducted her. She has no doubt it’s him. But who’s he talking to? Was she abducted by a group of people? Are there others involved too?
“Recycling is paramount. We have to save the planet. Water with chemicals in aluminum containers, filtered water in plastic packaging. Sewage flowing through concrete pipes en route to a purification facility. It hasn’t gone anywhere. And even if it has, you can wander around there for hours and days without anyone noticing you. Like a ghost. Like an invisible onlooker. The herd won’t spot the tiger until the tiger pounces.”
What’s he talking about? The cans roll and rattle across the floor. She hears the hum of a melody she doesn’t recognize.
She goes over to the bed, places the first-aid kit in its box and returns it to the cupboard. She wipes down the sink with a small kitchen towel and lays it open on the counter, lightly stained with drops of her blood.
“Here it is. I knew it. It’s here.”
She sits on the bed and continues to listen.
13.
He finds the tag among the cans that are on the floor and places it on the desk. Then he gathers up the cans into a large trash bag and places it by the doorway to the first hallway, scanning the room to make sure he hasn’t left a single can on the floor.
Order and cleanliness go hand in hand. Getting down to work is impossible if things aren’t clean and tidy. You can’t think. Everything has to be organized. Like an operating room before the patient is wheeled in. Like a dentist’s clinic. Like the empty refrigerators at the morgue. Like the row of showers. Like the racks of protective gear. Like folders on your computer arranged according to subject.
He sits down and turns on the desk lamp and examines the tag from all sides. It was thrown into the trash by Doron Moskowitz. He’s the father. The wristband grants access to a maternity ward.
It’s made of light blue plastic and has a single-use closing mechanism that needs to be cut to be removed. A sticker with personal particulars. Name. Name of child. ID number. Ariel 16-point font. A severed edge. A date.
He opens a notebook and writes in it, reciting to himself in the process:
I adorned you with ornaments
Put bracelets on your hands
And a necklace around your neck
He’s going to need a small battery-powered printer to which he can send files from a mobile phone. He’ll move to the computer room shortly to check where he can purchase such a device.
Using a hammer and a small steel nail, he fixes the light blue tag to the white concrete wall and then steps back to examine the wall with a sense of satisfaction.
Back to the desk.
He reaches for the raw materials and starts working. A flexible sheet of light blue plastic. A thin strip of transparent plastic. White paper. A lamination machine. A utility knife. Scissors. A perforator. White plastic snap fasteners.
After an hour of slow and precise work, he slips the finished product into a white envelope and places it on the table. He returns all the tools and accessories to their rightful places, and only then does he make for the door to her room. He’s ready to deal with her now. Everything in its time.
With one hand on the handle and the other holding the key ready, he calls out, “I’m going to open your door now. Don’t try anything foolish. You have no way of getting out of here without me.”
14.
She’s still sitting on the bed when she hears the key turn. Not the series of clicks you hear when a locked door is opened, but just a sharp and short one. The door opens and he enters.
After closing the door and slipping the key into his pocket, he stands in front of her. He’s roughly her height, around forty, not too slim or muscular, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. He is not intimidating, just an average-looking guy. A person she would not notice in a crowd. Lee holds her breath. How’s she going to put up a fight? How’s she going to push him off of her with a broken arm? What’s he going to do to her? He comes over to the bed, sits down next to her and looks at her. The smell of iodine coming off her clothes mingles with the fragrance of his shampoo. She doesn’t dare move and doesn’t utter a sound.
He starts talking all of a sudden, in that same strange and hollow voice: “Since the beginning of time, there has been an element of purity in true suffering. Not the pain of a broken arm, not physical suffering. Mental anguish. For example, when someone’s told he has Stage 3 pancreatic cancer and will live out the rest of his short life in agony. Or when someone is tormented all her life with the thought that she should have done something to save her twin sister a second before she ran into the road. Or when someone loses a child. That’s the most severe torture. The loss of a child.”
He closes his eyes and inhales slowly, filling his lungs. Lee watches him intently. Who is this man? He’s a criminal; he abducted her; he’s insane. But for some reason, she doesn’t fear him. He hasn’t undressed her with his eyes, and he’s keeping his distance from her. She dares to hope that it isn’t that kind of abduction, that he doesn’t have plans to sexually abuse her. So what does he want from her? What’s all this strange talk?
“That’s why you’re here.”
“What?” is all she can say.
“There’s a time for everything. I need you here now and won’t need you afterwards. I’ll release you at the end of the process. You’ll be able to leave. I’m telling you this now so that you’ll cooperate. You’re here for a long time, but temporarily, for a finite period, at the end of which you’ll be able to leave and return to your life. But before you can go, you’ll have to work for me – attentively, with devotion and compassion.”
“What process? What do you want from me?”
She’s making an effort to remain calm. Not to yell. Not to annoy him. She’s decided to cooperate with him, to go along with his madness; she thinks that perhaps she’ll be able to figure out what’s happening here that way.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he responds dryly. “First, we’re going to take care of your arm. I need both your arms in good working order.” He rises from the bed. “Come with me. Don’t try to escape. If you try to get away, I’ll be forced to hurt you again, and I don’t want to cause you any more harm.” He sets out for the door. “Follow me,” he says again, seeing her hesitate. “We’ll take care of your arm.”
He uses the key and leaves the room, and she follows him into the adjacent one. It’s smaller and entirely different. She’s standing next to a wall that’s covered in a collage of pictures, and she studies them closely. They all depict something sick, distorted – a photograph she recalls from the newspaper of an Indian baby who was born with a second head growing out of his stomach; a black-and-white image of two men with narrow faces and straight hair who share one body, two arms and two legs; a picture of twins lying on a long bed, joined at the head with one long body; a photograph of a dehydrated fetus with two heads. More and more pictures, some old and in black-and-white, printed on photo paper or cut from newspapers; and some contemporary and sharp, in color and high resolution, with captions as if they’ve come from hospitals. What is the purpose of this place? Where is she?
She turns her attention to the opposite wall, which is covered by row upon row of large X-ray images mounted on white Plexiglas boxes and backlit by florescent bulbs.
The room gives her the creeps. She can’t allow herself to believe anything he says. She has to try to remember everything. The smallest of details could be her way out of this horrible place. She scans the room, trying to take in as much as she can. A wall of photographs, a wall of X-ray images, a desk, a white envelope, a toolbox resting on a concrete floor, a large trash bag alongside another door, which he is opening with a key. He beckons her towards him and Lee follows him through the door. It slams shut behind them and locks automatically.
This room is very big, a hall of sorts, and is filled with medical equipment. In the center of the room is a horizontal surface, like a high bed, and above it the adjustable arm of an X-ray machine, another X-ray machine for chest-imaging in front of a wall-mounted panel, a mobile operating table, the kind of basin she’s familiar with from hospitals, a trash can with a foot pedal mechanism to open it, a metal chair, closed steel cupboards like lockers. Large medical posters hanging on the walls – a muscle chart, a skeletal chart, a vascular system chart, an enlarged diagram of a heart, lungs, a digestive system. There is even an internal control room with clear windows – for the operator of the X-ray equipment, just like in a hospital.
She tries to etch everything into her memory, without missing a single detail. Maybe that’s why he chose her of all people? Because she’s a medical student? Will she have to operate these machines herself? The medical equipment is shiny and looks brand new. How did he get his hands on all of this? Who has this kind of access to professional X-ray equipment, let alone the money to purchase it?
He goes over to the only chair in the room and moves it closer to the X-ray machine. “Sit here and place your arm on the surface, and we’ll take an X-ray.”
She does as he says. He goes into the control room and observes her through the large clear window. “Don’t move,” he says; and seconds later, the machine emits its familiar humming sound. “Turn your arm to the side.” Another hum. “Other side.” Another X-ray. “Can you make a fist?”
She curls her fingers as much as she can, until the pain reaches her threshold of tolerance. Another hum. He studies the computer screen in front of him. “It’s a simple transverse fracture. Your radius is broken. We’ll have to straighten it before we set it externally. There’s a deviation of three millimeters.”
He knows the terms. Maybe he’s a doctor. She isn’t sure if she should tell him she’s a medical student. But something tells her not to say anything yet.
“May I see?” she asks, turning to look at him in the control room while remaining seated with her arm resting on the metallic surface of the X-ray machine.
