Woman on the Edge of Time

Redding held out his wrist watch. “Argent and Superintendent Hodges will be here soon. Let us hope. And the camera crew.” Morgan and Moynihan were exclaiming over spikes. All the time the pens kept writing and the paper kept dropping in its neat diarrhea on the floor. Redding came to a decision. “Nurse, time to get off those bandages. Mrs. Valente, bring us coffee and we’ll hang out in the conference room till our guests come to the party, eh?” He sped out, with his staff in pursuit.

The nurse began removing the head bandages. Cautiously Connie and Sybil edged nearer and nearer till Connie called out, “Is it true you got needles stuck in your … head?”

“No he. Electrodes, they call them.”

Connie stared expectantly as the bald scalp emerged from the swathing. Like Bee. “But I don’t see anything!”

“They inside, girl. What you expect, I look like a goddamn pincushion? They stupid, but they not that stupid!”

“Alice, if they’re electrodes, where are the wires?” Sybil asked cautiously.

“You old-fashion. No wires. They use a little radio, and they stick that inside too!”

“Now, you cut this out,” the nurse said suddenly. “That’s enough. Quiet on the ward. You’re disturbing this patient.”

“I don’t see how we could possibly disturb Alice. It isn’t we who put a radio and electrodes in her head,” Sybil said loftily.

“Quiet down or I’ll give you a shot that will lay you out flat,” the nurse said, hands on her hips.

Back at their own beds, Sybil whispered, “The nurse didn’t contradict us about the electrodes. Could it be true?”

“But what for?”

“Control. To turn us into machines so we obey them,” Sybil whispered.

What nonsense it had to be! They were crazy, they were imagining this. She wished she had stayed in Mattapoisett.

At eleven the staff was back with two more doctors and a video tape crew. One of the newcomers she recognized from the Christmas party of her last commitment as the superintendent of the hospital. Dr. Samuel Hodges was over six feet tall and in his late fifties, with only a circlet of crisp curly gray hair like a laurel wreath around his ruddy dome. The other man was older, with silky white hair, a radiant tan, a fine gray suit, natty but conservatively tailored. Dr. Redding and Dr. Hodges called him Chip, but Dr. Morgan called him Dr. Argent. Dr. Redding asked him how St. Peter’s Island had been, casually throwing at the super that Dr. Argent’s family owned an island off Georgia. Scoring, point-counting.

“A very small island,” Dr. Argent said. “Used to offer shelter to runaway slaves. Now to runaway slaving doctors.” He spoke differently than the others; at first she thought perhaps he was English, and sometimes his voice reminded her of the Kennedys speaking on TV. He wore his white hair a little long and wherever he stood became the center of the room. Redding talked to him with the soft edge of diffidence mellowing his voice. A teasing edge brought a laugh up to Redding’s throat and kept it waiting there, like a little warning light.

“We’ll be video-taping occasionally over the next two months,” Redding said to Dr. Hodges. “Advantages: on-the-spot record of procedures and patient responses. Able to be edited into a film we can use for funding and education. No special lights needed.”

“The light in here is borderline,” one of the crew said. “When we get on the ward in NYNPI we’ll get you better tape.”

“Don’t turn that camera on me!” Alice yanked away from the nurse and flailed in the bed.

“I can, of course, calm her at any point, but I’d prefer to proceed as we’ve programmed it,” Redding said.

Dr. Hodges made him a little bow, indicating he should continue. “Doctor, it’s her head,” Mrs. Valente said apologetically. “We’ve shaved it. She’s bald. You know, it makes her be embarrassed? To be photographed bald?”

They looked at Valente blankly. Connie felt embarrassed herself. She had disliked Valente on sight, because of her burliness and her speech impediment. But Valente actually saw them as people; saw Alice as a woman who should not be publicly shamed. Valente went on, mumbling badly. “Could maybe get wigs?”

“Patty.” Dr. Redding nodded to the ever-hovering secretary. “Get an assortment of wigs for the women, for use while their hair grows out.”

“How soon do you want them, Doctor?” Patty looked dubious. She was a slender woman, always in a mint green or cherry red pants suit, with short blond hair and big round bluetinted glasses sliding on her nose.

“Alice is just a demonstration. We won’t start on the others till we’re at the institute. Two weeks, say.”

So they were going to do it to all of them. They were going to do it to her—whatever itwas. Her too.

“Charlie, if I may be so bold,” Dr. Argent said, “why not begin with her kicking around? After all, irrational violence is what we’re about.”

“Right you are.” Redding chuckled, looking upstaged. “Certainly. Let’s go. Roll ’em.”

“One minute, Doc. We’re working on the miking. Just keep her going and we’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.”