Sanity by Judy Colella (beginner reading books for adults .TXT) 📕

him. They moved together for a long, delicious time, far longer than he’d imagined he could last before reaching that pinnacle so vital and magnetic to a man’s being. And when at last they were spent, their craving had somehow been made greater.

They saw each other every day for the remainder of the week, but not to share a story. Only their bodies, their hearts, their boundless desire for one another. He knew it was probably wrong, but was helpless against the power of this primal need and the more sophisticated emotions that accompanied it.

To his relief, she never used the word that frightened him so badly he would have refused to see her ever again had she uttered it. He couldn’t afford to be loved, because he didn’t have the currency with which to love in return. He still hadn’t told her what would happen when what they’d done to him reached it culmination. How or when would he have mentioned it? He was being a coward, he knew. And so be it. As long as she never spoke the word “love,” he could live with that admission.

V

“Soon after I’d turned ten, I happened on something I wasn’t supposed to see.”

They were back to the story, having mutually determined to restrict their desires for a time. Still, as he spoke she had to hide what was in her eyes or they’d be at it again in a heartbeat.

“I was bored one afternoon, having finished my studies and being unable to go outside because of a rather violent thunderstorm overhead.” He scowled, not certain he could tell this part without getting extremely upset. Always before now, he’d been able to think about this incident somewhat coldly, a mortician observing a decaying corpse. But since his involvement with Anna, so many of his own ghosts, those that had once been living emotions, had been miraculously raised from the dead and were refusing to leave him alone.

She reached a hand toward his arm as if to urge him to continue, but pulled it back at the last second; physical contact of any kind would inevitably result in more of the same and then some. He knew this, appreciated her restraint, and continued.

“Certain areas of the hospital, I’d been told, were off-limits for anyone but the doctors. Come to think of it, I wasn’t warned to stay away by my father or Dr. Jon, but by one of the surgeons who I’d found to be unreasonably arrogant and therefore didn’t like very much. Perversely, boredom drove me to completely ignore that directive, and before I could argue myself out of it, I was in the lower section of the north wing. The hospital had a basement and a sub-basement on that end where a rising landscape had made it possible to build these two cellars. I believe wine had once been stored there, Dr. Jon having said something about that during our initial tour of the place. But part of the conversion of his mansion had included turning them into a series of small test labs and rooms for minor surgeries. This was where I wasn’t supposed to go, so that’s exactly where I went.

“Halfway down the stairwell, I began to hear what could only be muffled shrieks and screams. Nothing unusual, considering how much of the same filled the upper regions of the hospital daily. I had concluded that these ear-splitting sounds were a kind of language spoken and understood only by the insane. But my curiosity was piqued, so I kept going. Once out in the hallways, the noise became much louder as one might expect, only now I could distinguish the underlying tones.

"These people were in horrible pain, all of them frightened beyond reason. I went to the closest room and peered in through the window half-way up in the door. At first, I could only see the backs of two doctors standing in front of a table. A pair of feet stuck out past them, and they were twitching. The screams were terrible, but I had to keep looking. Eventually, the doctors moved apart and…oh, God.” The memory zoomed into full focus and slammed with brute force into his newly sensitized emotion centers. He got up, taking slow, deep breaths, willing himself not to retch, as he paced away from where she waited, confused, then returned and sat again.

“Sorry. They had strapped the man to the table, and had cut open his face with an incision that ran from his forehead to his chin, the skin pulled back and clamped to his ears. His mouth was open in an unending shriek of pain as they dripped some kind of chemical on the exposed muscles and into the opening where his nose had been. It took a few seconds for my mind to accept what I was seeing, and then I turned away and vomited. They must have heard me, because the door was flung open and I felt myself being hauled to my feet by the back of my shirt.

“‘What are you doing here, little fool?’ the doctor hissed at me, his mouth next to my head. I was incapable of speech at that point, and then I saw the blood on his gloved hand and threw up again. On his shoes, I believe.” He smiled just a bit at that. “Then he dragged me to the stairwell and told me that if he ever caught me down there again, or if I reported what I’d seen to a single soul, they would do to me what they’d done to the man on the table. I didn’t argue, I couldn’t. I ran up the stairs, tripping upward every few steps, and somehow made it back to my room without anyone noticing my state of agitation.”

“Did you go back?”

“Of course.” He leaned forward, arms on his legs, and stared at the dark green between his feet, the blades stubbled by hospital mowers. “I was always a stubborn idiot.”

“You aren’t an idiot.”

“Yes I am, or I wouldn’t be so stubborn.”

“Can you continue?”

He sat back. “Yes.” After a brief smile meant to encourage at least one of them, he went on. “I never told my father. My plan was to keep investigating without getting caught again. I brought a notebook with me after that, and managed to distance myself from what I saw. I wrote down the names of the doctors and patients involved in each incident, the times, places, and a short description of what they appeared to be doing. Thanks to the content of my father’s texts, I had an unusually extensive medical vocabulary and understanding at my disposal, but the specifics of their experiments were beyond me.

"The study of genetics as a science was still in its infancy then. In fact, the word itself was simply a reference to beginnings, sources, as in the word ‘genesis.’ A man named Bateson used the term for the first time the year after the asylum opened. The term ‘gene’ wasn’t used until the same year I discovered the experiments.”

“Then how could they have been doing genetic tests?”

“The name wasn’t used before then, but the study of traits and how the cells factored into their formulation had been in existence for well over a hundred years already. Mendel did the most definitive groundwork on it, though, about thirty-five years before I was born, and it was on the basis of his studies that genetics became a recognized branch of biological science.”

“I see. Max, if you don’t screw my brains out right now, I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Anna, don’t – “

“Sorry for being crude, for not even making sense, but I can’t stand it. It’s been too long…”

“Oh, hell.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her to him, kissing her ear, her throat, her mouth. “No more for now,” he whispered when he was too near the brink. “Tomorrow. I promise.”

She leaned over and nibbled on his ear. “Tonight.”

“But how?”

She smiled and didn’t answer.

“I hope you turn off the recorder when we talk like this.”

Her smile broadened. “Dr. Franco could use a little stimulation.” Tucking one leg under her on the chair, she raised an eyebrow. “Please go on.”

“’Farewell happy fields, where joy forever dwells: Hail, horrors, hail,’” he muttered through a long sigh.

“What?”

“Milton. 'Paradise Lost.' All right. I continued my spying for about a year, my big plan being to put all my findings into a single report and presenting it to Dr. Jon once I felt there was enough to prove my case. But he got sick, and soon was spending less and less time in the hospital proper, being confined most days to his bed. I tried to see him, hoping to at least warn him of what was happening in his asylum, this place that was supposed to be run with compassion and ethical practices.

"Later, after he died, I began questioning the cause of his demise. How little it would have taken to poison his food; this was a place full of top scientists and doctors with every known chemical and medicine at their fingertips, including substances that would be undetectable soon after being ingested. Anyway, I never did get to see poor Dr. Jon for more than a few minutes at a time while he was ill, and then it was in the company of my father and a few of the very doctors about whom I’d been writing.

“A few months later he died, and Dr. Roskell, I forget where he was from, was named the new Chief of Staff. He set up a Board of Doctors to help him run the asylum, none of whom were the nicer doctors there. My father, too, was excluded, despite his having been on staff from the beginning.

"Shortly after my eleventh birthday, he went out to purchase supplies – he said one of the orderlies had been complaining about rapidly dwindling stores of cleaning materials, suspecting they were being stolen by the non-medical personnel. He wasn’t back by nightfall, and when I went to the main office to ask if anyone had heard from him, I was told that he had been killed in an accident; someone in an automobile had struck him, and he’d died instantly.

“The next day, without allowing me any time to grieve, attend his funeral, or have any time at all to deal with his death, the doctor who I’d first discovered in the basement laboratory came into my room. He dragged me out of bed and pulled me to my desk. There, he removed my notebook and hit me with it, knocking me to the floor.

“’Did you think you were being clever?’ he screamed at me. ‘Did you really think we didn’t know you were there or what you were up to, watching, writing, sticking your ignorant nose where it didn’t belong?’ I was horrified. How had he found out? Then he pulled me up by the front of my pajama shirt, his eyes almost blazing with hatred. ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten my warning. What I said we’d do to you if we caught you at it again. I always keep my promises, boy.’ He threw me back to the floor and went out. I waited a