Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Hearing her own worst fears voiced by the huge orderly made Torri’s stomach twist into a knot.
“You don’t know anything about it!” she shouted, backing away from him. “So just shut up and leave me alone!”
“Is there a problem here?” The head night-shift nurse was suddenly right beside her, frowning at Torri reprovingly. “Is there a reason you’re raising your voice, Ms. Morrison?”
“I don’t know what her problem is, Nurse Kathy.” O’Toole put on an expression of hurt and shock. “I just said hello to her and she started shouting at me! I don’t know—maybe she needs to be sedated.” He shrugged his bony shoulders in apparent confusion.
“No, that’s not true.” Torri struggled to make her voice sound calm and clear but inside her heart was still racing and her stomach was twisted into knots. “I’m fine,” she said to the nurse quickly. “I don’t need to be sedated—I was just heading for the Patient Lounge to watch TV.”
“Well…all right then.” The nurse frowned at her as though she was a naughty child. “Just watch yourself, Ms. Morrison. The day shift staff told me that you’ve been having some episodes today. I will sedate you if I have to.”
Torri felt a helpless kind of anger come over her. She was a grown woman being treated like a misbehaving child. She had no agency here—no free will. She had a right to feel angry, damn it! But she couldn’t show it—showing any emotion at all was likely to get her sedated.
And who knows what O’Toole would do to me if I couldn’t move to push him off me or run away, she thought, feeling sick. The nurse might as well be threatening her with that date-rape drug men slipped into unsuspecting women’s drinks at bars.
“I’ll be fine,” she said tightly to the nurse. “I’m just going to watch TV.”
She would have preferred to go back to her room, but she would be alone in there. She tried to avoid being alone as much as possible while the big orderly was on duty—though of course, once it was lights out, she couldn’t help it.
So she went to sit and watch TV mindlessly in the lounge, not seeing a thing as she stared at the lighted rectangle on the wall. Instead, she was thinking—a single thought that looped through her brain over and over and over again.
How am I ever going to get out of here?
Six
Ten o’clock was lights out, so at nine thirty, everyone lined up at the plastic window in front of the nursing station for evening meds. Torri lined up as well, though she always refused what was offered. You had to line up, so everyone could be accounted for and they could mark it down if you refused your medication.
Every single night—and every morning, for that matter—the nurse on duty tried to hand Torri a paper cup filled with pills and every single night and morning, Torri refused. The nurse on duty would shake her head and frown and put a big black X next to Torri’s name. It stood out in the long line of neat check marks that marched down the medication list next to all the other patients’ names.
Tonight was no different, except that it was O’Toole handing out the meds. When Torri shook her head, refusing the little paper cup he tried to hand her, the big orderly grinned at her.
“That’s all right, darlin’—I’ll be in later to tuck you in,” he murmured and blew her a kiss.
Torri’s stomach clenched as she turned quickly away. Could none of the other staff see how he acted? Or did they just turn a blind eye? Maybe O’Toole was supplying them with drugs too.
Either way, she was more afraid now than she had been since she’d first unwittingly caught O’Toole’s attention by seeing that blowjob in the soft room. He knew that Chuck wasn’t happy with her, which wasn’t good—her husband was her last line of defense here at St. Elizabeth’s. But saying, “Leave me alone or I’ll tell my husband,” didn’t carry much weight if the husband in question had abandoned her.
Of course, she’d called Chuck the minute O’Toole had started making nasty remarks to her, but he had brushed it off as her imagination.
“Don’t you think you might be overreacting, Torri?” he’d asked, sounding impatient to get off the phone and get back to work. “I mean, reading things into it? I can’t interrupt your treatment just because some guy is looking at you funny.”
“It’s more than that!” Torri tried to tell him, but then Amanda interrupted the call to tell him he had someone important on the other line so Chuck had made an excuse and hung up on her.
She’d called again, after the first night O’Toole had groped her, thinking surely Chuck would come and get her. But her husband had disappointed her again.