Body of Stars by Laura Walter (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

group therapy sessions, when we were asked to take turns reading it aloud, I didn’t touch the brochure. I couldn’t face it, especially then when I was freshly returned, broken and bruised. Many years later I’d find that brochure in a box of my old things, and I’d hold it up to the light with a sense of awe. I couldn’t believe I had saved it. I couldn’t believe it had followed me that far.

The nurses had assured us that if we focused on other things, on the small wonders and happiness even girls like us could achieve, we could begin to forget. I wanted to forget, and yet there in bed that night I also wanted to remember—because to lose that span of time forever made me feel shadowy, dead.

What I needed was a written record of my abduction, a document outlining just how I’d ended up there. The full account of what happened to me might not exist, but there was always my transcript. All I had to do was seek it out and read it.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I put on my slippers. The hallway outside my room was bright but quiet, and when I peered around the doorframe, I saw the nurses’ station was empty. This didn’t surprise me. The Reintegration Wing wasn’t a high-priority area. Once girls’ initial injuries were tended to, the nurses mostly waited it out with us. They led us to programming; they offered us therapy. Doctors didn’t bother to check on us after the initial exam. It was possible, on that night, that the nurses of the Reintegration Wing had been called away to other parts of the hospital where they were needed more. Where the injuries were purely physical and easier to understand.

I skidded down the hallway in my slippers. The sliding motion reminded me of ice skating, which I’d only attempted once, a few years prior. I’d fallen hard and bruised my knees, which put me off it. Now it seemed silly, to be afraid of falling. The ice was hard, but it was just water. It was there to hold us up.

At the nurses’ station, I ducked under the desk and found the drawer marked Transcripts. I slid it open and rifled through the thick manila folders inside, letting the names—the true names—of the other girls wash over me. I did not know them. They were not real. I stopped only when I came upon my file, my name written in thick black marker, the word CONFIDENTIAL printed on the front. When I opened it, pages scattered across my knees and fluttered to the floor. I grabbed at them and started to read.

First there was the police report. Victim unable to provide sufficient description of perpetrator. Victim has no memory of the crimes. Victim appears to have gone willingly with a pair of trappers; trapper identities and whereabouts unknown. Victim claims she was drugged (unconfirmed). At the bottom of the page, in red ink, was one final line: Case suspended barring further evidence. Recommendation for closure following a sixty-day period.

I set the police report aside, turning instead to the medical report. No one had briefed me on this. No one had briefed my family, either. These cases were confidential, which meant that neither the hospital nor the police would turn over my records to anyone, including my parents, without my consent. The nurses had explained it all during our first therapy session. But when I applied for jobs in the future, or if I had the audacity to apply to university despite all of this, I’d have to sign a waiver granting access to my file. The same would go for the courts when my future husband and I applied for a marriage license—because I was still fated to one day marry, even if just then I couldn’t stand the thought of being close to a man. Any time I tried to take a new step in my adult life, this file would be opened, my secrets released.

But for now, no one aside from the doctors, police, and nurses had seen my file. No one else could see the description of my injuries (extensive bruising on arms and legs, minor internal injuries consistent with sexual imposition), which I flipped through slowly, in wonder, as if I were reading about a stranger. I studied the list of medications I’d been given, the record of the programs I attended within the Reintegration Wing, and the recommendation for release following the minimum four-day period (no additional therapy is anticipated or recommended).

When I arrived at the final pages in the back of the file, I was confronted with drawings of my own markings. My adult markings, including the moles on my left side. While I’d never had my changeling inspection, my body had been recorded upon my arrival at the hospital. During my entry examination, the doctors used a special light to see beneath the bruises, and an inspector must have been on call to record my predictions. Nothing was a secret from the people who worked here, not even my brother’s fate.

My hands started to sweat. I shoved the papers back into the manila folder, which I held to my chest like a shield as I hurried back to my room. My first thought was to lock myself in the bathroom and flush the pages one by one down the toilet, but I worried the noise would draw attention. Maybe I could pass the night carefully ripping each page into tiny pieces and then toss those pieces out the window, like little bits of snow. I even considered swallowing the records. I could consume my ruined future bit by bit, making it more a part of me than ever before.

I sat on my bed with the folder. I was still thinking through my options when a nurse swung open my door. She panted slightly, as if she’d run a great distance to