There’s a man standing at a distance away from the huddled mass, watching with arms crossed. A crew cut frames his sensible face, sharp under the red light. A yin-yang pendant glows in the open collar of his polo shirt. He’s nodding slowly. As if it’s all part of the journey. Mark.
Mark, what are you doing here?
He turns and looks at me then. Standing there, swaying there in the aisle of a theater so dark I can’t see the seats around me. His face is grave and pale. What have you done, what have you done, what have you done? He holds up his arm. There’s a bandage on his wrist—right where I touched him in the treatment room. I can see a blotch of blood seeping through the gauze.
The audience gasps at the sight, horrified.
I shake my head. Ridiculous. It’s a lie. I didn’t draw blood, I just touched him. He never bled. “It’s a lie,” I tell the audience all around me that I can’t see, the three men behind me now. “This man hurt me. He hurt me! Again and again and again.”
And then I point at him. “He hurt me, and I had to defend myself!”
They don’t listen to me. They go on gasping and shaking their heads at Mark’s wrist.
Mark looks at me standing there in the audience, and then he turns away. He looks back at the huddle of men on the stage, gathered closer around the medical table. More red lights on these men. Brighter now. They’re working on something together, working at whatever’s on the table. What are they working on? Whom, I realize. Whom, not what.
And then I see her. I can see her unshaven legs trembling between their huddled bodies. Her bare feet poking stiffly out from among the khaki thighs of the men. She’s squirming, and I know she’s strapped to the bed with belts. I feel the weight and tightness of the straps bearing her down. I can feel her heart jumping under her ribs. I can feel her breath broken and raspy in her throat.
“Who is that?” I mean to scream, but my voice is suddenly very thin. Because I know who it is. I feel their every touch and pull on my skin. A sudden soreness in my muscles. A stiffness beginning to spread across my limbs. A sudden cramp that curls my foot into a claw. Inner webs lighting up red, red, red. “Stop it!” No one answers me. Not the men on the red-lit stage, not the audience in the dark who are rapt. Watching.
Onstage, Mark just continues to watch too. Watches the men huddle closer and closer around the table, pulling and prodding at the woman’s body. Mark is sorrowful but smiling. As if whoever that woman is, well, she asked for this, didn’t she? She’s trouble. We have to shut her up. She just won’t quit complaining. About how much it all hurts. Well. Well, what if we give her something to cry about, shall we?
“No.” I shake my head. “Please.”
But the men don’t hear me. They’re talking among themselves. Now one of them—Dr. Rainier? Dr. Harper?—readies the needle. Larger than any needle I’ve ever seen. I watch the needle squirt liquid into the air.
“No. No, what are you doing to her? Stop! Someone stop him.”
No one stops him. I run toward the stage as he injects the woman on the table.
“Never,” he says. “I would never. Never, I would never.”
“If I had known,” chimes in another doctor. “I would never.”
“Wish I could take it back,” says another. “If I could, I would.”
“I would, I would.”
“Would have never done it.”
“Never, I would never.”
And then I feel it. For the first time in how long. That bright hot fire. Running right down my thigh. All the nerves there screaming. Onstage, I hear a muffled scream coming from the woman on the bed just as a scream escapes my own lips.
The audience applauds. Dr. Rainier bows a little.
I fall down in the aisle. Down to the black floor. I’m staring at a black leather shoe that is tapping, tapping on the floor. I can’t bring myself to look up, to see which face, which of the three. Weren’t they just in the back, behind me? Now they’re sitting up here near the front. Clapping. Laughing.
We just want to see a good show, Ms. Fitch.
No.
I drag myself back up to my feet. The audience gasps. I’m standing in the aisle, crookedly now. I start to walk toward the stage, toward the circle of men, who are gathered more tightly around the woman, around me.
“Never, I would never,” they’re chanting. “Never, I would never.”
They’re going to kill her. Though I want to run to the stage, my walk is slow. I’m limping so heavily. I have to make it to the stage, where two men are about to slice up my leg. Another pitchfork into the thigh. Three marks. I feel the bones in my hip instantly scream, stretching open my mouth.