“Yes,” Vi said, because she knew about going someplace else, someplace other than where you were. She closed her eyes and she was back in the car, only it was a bed she was strapped to, and someone was talking to her, someone was counting backward, and she wasn’t sure who she was, if she was herself or Iris.
10, 9, 8, 7…
“And then Dr. Hildreth came and released me,” Iris said. “She undid the bindings. She took my hand. Asked if I was ready to go home.”
It was Gran’s voice counting backward in Vi’s memory, Gran undoing the seatbelt, pulling Vi from the wrecked car in the water.
Vi was so cold. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t feel anything but Gran’s arms around her.
You’ve got a strong heart, Violet Hildreth.
The world spun. Vi felt a headache coming on, one of the bad ones.
“Come on,” she said, seizing Iris’s hand. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll take you to the file room. We’ll grab what we can and go.”
She’d had enough of this place.
She was worried that they were too late. That Gran and Dr. Hutchins had already destroyed all the records.
Too late, too late.
She flipped on the light in the little room with the file cabinet and desk.
“I’ve been here before,” Iris said.
“You have?”
“This is where Dr. Hildreth—Gran—took me before she brought me home. I sat right in this chair, and she told me all about you. She said I had a family waiting to meet me. A brother and sister who’d been hoping for a new sister of their own. Someone to come and make their family whole. A family who would make me whole again. Make me well.”
Vi nodded. A lump formed in her throat.
She shouldn’t have brought Iris here. It was all too much. She remembered what Gran had said about regression. Wondered if this would trigger it, make everything worse.
She walked over to the file cabinet. “The entire bottom drawer is full of files on Patient S. I only took the first one. There’s so much more. We can’t take it all—we’ll just have to pick the stuff that looks most important.”
She pulled open the heavy gray drawer. Iris crouched beside Vi, their hips touching.
We’re conjoined twins, Vi thought.
We share the same heart, the same memories.
I don’t know where I end and she begins.
Iris pulled out a file and started reading some of the notes out loud: “？‘Sodium amytal…’？”
“I looked that one up,” Vi said. “It’s like a truth serum. When the military needs to get the truth out of a prisoner, they’ll dose them up with that.”
“Why would she give me that?”
“To get inside your head. To empty things out. To control you.”
Iris went back to reading. “？‘Metrazol.’？”
“Gran gives it to her rats. It gives them seizures. Sometimes it kills them.”
“But why would she give it to me?”
“I think it kind of scrambles your brain.”
“The rest of this is notes on ECT?” Iris said, looking down at the paper.
Vi nodded. “Electroconvulsive therapy. Shock treatments. They put these paddles on your head, and—”
“And a rubber thing in your mouth,” Iris said. “I remember. I remember the taste of the rubber, biting down on it, knowing what was coming.” She looked at the paper. “？‘Subject underwent daily sessions this week.’？”