“I am,” Jude replied even quieter.

“Congratulations. Is he wonderful?”

Through the haze of past visits, Jude remembered Nurse Lacy. She believed the young nurse was doing the best job she could and actually cared about her patients. She was just naïve to what was really happening at the hospital. “He’s wonderful.”

She leaned down, and whispered, “Dr. Conroy was hit by a very angry husband today, a husband wanting his wife released. Do you think…?” She left her question open-ended.

I hadn’t imagined him. He was real. She smiled. My Hazel came for me. “I do think, but more than think, I hope.”

“That’s good,” Lacy replied. “Always hold onto hope.” Backing away, she grabbed the tray and sat back on the side of the bed. “I need to feed you. Are you going to cooperate for me?”

Jude was famished and thirsty. Eating didn’t mean giving up or giving in. Eating was for survival and to keep her strong. And in her current predicament, she wanted an ally, someone who had shown her compassion, so she replied, “I will.”

The sun disappeared just after the nurse left her room. Jude stared out the small window, having stopped pulling on her straps before the sun was above the facility.

She lay in the dark, her weaker thoughts starting to get the best of her. Was Hazel here? Was he not? Was she imagining things when she saw him? Maybe she was crazy.

Jude wanted sleep. She wanted to go to sleep and wake up to Hazel next to her in bed with his eyes open like when he watched her sleep. She wanted to wake up and see the sun rising outside his high-rise as she lay in his arms. She wanted to sneak out of bed and make him comfort food to give him the same feeling he gave her. She wanted to believe that her life with him was real, that he was real, and not a figment of her imagination, not a side character to her crazy.

Even though Nurse Lacy had confirmed Taylor was alive, she struggled to believe when locked in this oppressive room. “Dear God, please let Hazel exist in the world. Please.” She closed her eyes and eventually, after much discomfort, fell asleep.

The sun didn’t wake her. The doctor didn’t wake her. The kind nurse who had sympathetic brown eyes didn’t wake her.

An orderly did.

Flicking the overhead fluorescent light on, he said, “Wake up, sunshine! Time to move.”

Jude groaned, her body stiff from the tight bonds and her heart aching for Hazel. “I need the bathroom.”

“You’re getting moved first.”

“Please.”

“No.”

She looked him in the eyes. “Please. Don’t make me wet myself.”

“I’ll clean it. I’m used to it.”

Traitorous tears pricked her eyes. They made her show how weak she felt and she hated appearing weak. But she’d wet herself once before when she was isolated for a day and she swore she would never let that happen again. “I’m asking nicely. Please let me use the bathroom.”

“How bad do you want to use it?”

Everybody wanted something… “Is Nurse Lacy still on duty?”

“She’s gone. You’re stuck with me.” He licked his lips as he looked her over.

“Who is having me moved then?”

“Dr. Conroy. Do you want him? Or me?”

Pulling herself toward the wall as much as she could, she backed away from him. “Neither.” There was no good option out of those two.

“Well, there’s your answer.” He unfastened one ankle and then the other, but her legs felt too limp to fight. Her muscles had betrayed her and she glared down at them while pulling on her arms to test them. “Don’t hit or kick me or I’ll leave you in here.”

The smell of corn chips and coffee on his breath churned her stomach, so she turned her head away from him while he worked on her wrists. One arm. Then the other. They fell to her sides, her shoulders screaming in pain from the new position. “Can you walk?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” she replied with her head still turned, now embarrassed. This is what they wanted. They wanted their patients at their weakest.

He scooped her up as if she weighed nothing and set her in a wheelchair waiting in the hallway. Jude looked around as she was pushed. It was the middle of the night by the vibe of the place. Empty of medical staff. The patients locked in their rooms. The center eerily quiet. She saw the abandoned reception desk and the front doors just beyond. A red light was lit up in the corner—either a camera or an alarm. He turned and took her down a green hallway. “Where are we going?” she asked, starting to feel uneasy.

“To your room.”

“I’ve never been in this hall before. I usually stay in the blue hall.”

“Not this time. You’re here for a longer stay and apparently need the extra security.”

Squirming in her chair, her voice got louder. “Can you double-check? I’m always in the blue hallway.”

“What’s the big deal? They’re all the same.”

“Maybe I do need to speak with Conroy.”

He stopped in front of a restroom. “Stop your complaining and I’ll let you use it.”

She sat back and nodded. “Thank you.”

He helped her out of the chair and she used the railings to go inside, shutting the door for privacy. She wished she could stay in there forever, but she knew her fate was sealed while she was drugged out.

When they walked into her room next door, she instantly saw what the big deal was—there was no window. There was a bare mattress in the corner and nothing else. Shaking her head, she repeated, “No, this can’t be right. I need a window. I need a pillow and sheets and a bedframe.”

“You do realize this isn’t the Four Seasons, right?”

Jude didn’t reply. She just stared ahead as he nudged her forward, the chair hitting the back of her legs. When she was in the room, he pulled the wheelchair out and said, “Sweet dreams.”

Turning and moving, she shouted, “No! Don’t leave me in here!”

The door shut and the overhead light was left on. Looking at the walls, she didn’t see a switch. Her hands were trembling, remembering she would be here for a month. They’re trying to make me crazy. She recalled telling Hazel that and here she was in a room with no window, no way of telling the time, the day, which way was up or down. She was facing her biggest fear—complete and terrifying isolation—in a place she feared more than death itself.

Standing over the mattress, she dropped to her knees and curled onto her side. Images of her usual cell, the one with chipping paint and metal bars on her window, came to mind. She always hated that room, but it was luxurious compared to this one. It had given her an isolated form of safety. It wasn’t trying to be perfect or prim or proper. It was what is was and she valued that room’s honesty. But here… she had none of that. It was a room covered in treachery with people selling her to the highest bidder. Closing her eyes, she pushed all the bad to the back of her mind and pulled the good forward—Hazel. Hazel. Hazel. Hazel. Hazel.

WHEN JUDE WOKE, the doctor was sitting in a chair nearby. He looked up and she scrambled to the corner of the room, half on the mattress and half off, but away from him.

“Good Morning, Judith.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Now. Now,” Dr. Conroy said condescendingly. He tapped his pen against a clipboard. “Don’t be upset. We have some business to discuss and then you can be moved to a nicer room.”

“What business?”

“Money. Yours to be precise.”

“I have nothing, not a dollar to my name.”

He stood and set his clipboard down on the seat with the pen on top. She had visions of flipping into action and stabbing him with the pen… but she would never do such things. She may be in an asylum, but she wasn’t crazy. And by the way the doctor left the pen unguarded, he didn’t believe she was crazy either. “That’s where you’re wrong, Ms. Boehler. You have more than a few million dollars to your name in fact and I want a lot of them.”