The Commitment

“That’s Clarissa. She likes to sew,” says the woman Alice assumes is a nurse showing her around. She wears pale yellow scrubs as she leads her through the day room. The woman she gestured to is stabbing at a piece of fabric with a plastic needle. “We give her blunt plastic ones.”

“And that’s safe?” Alice can’t help but ask. She’s still in her everyday clothes, but suspects she’ll be asked to change into the gown the woman with the needle is wearing. 

The woman shrugs. The name tag pinned to her shirt reads, “Sophia,” in a scribbled font. “It keeps her from hurting herself and others. We’re looking into other treatments.”

As they pass through the day room, Alice catches sight of others. A woman playing solitaire with cards, looking at them like her life depends on it. Another with a fidget cube, playing with it mindlessly. Two playing chess at the table. One’s three moves to checkmate, but neither really seem to notice. One flips through a magazine without reading. A girl who can’t be older than eighteen picks at her skin. 

She wonders why they’re here. They all look so calm right now. Innocent. All in matching pale yellow gowns that look like the color of a star. Alice likes the night sky. A million stars blinking down at her every night, putting on a show just for her. It makes her feel special in the universe.

But here, there are no stars. Through the windows, she can tell by the streetlamps across from them that it will be too bright to see any of substance. She wants to go back to her cottage in Maine. Where the sky was so dark it seemed endless. 

She shuffles through, taking her time in the day room. Sophia doesn’t rush her, glancing at two nurses in gray scrubs whispering in the corner. Alice just wants to get in and out of here. Say whatever they want to make her think she’s normal, do whatever they want. She doesn’t know how long she’ll last here without seeing stars. 

When she takes a closer look at the women around her, she realizes they don’t look calm. They look like they’ve been tasked with a mission, but something’s keeping them from it. Clarissa stabs at the piece of fabric with the plastic needle, but there’s no thread going through it. Because a plastic needle is safe, but apparently less than a centimeter of thread isn’t. But it only takes watching her for a moment to see that there’s a pattern to her movement. In one end, diagonally to the other. Then the other way around. She’s embroidering. 

It’s silent, except for the occasional ruffling of papers of a magazine. Or the click of the cube. The low hum of the A.C. unit fades into the background almost immediately. Or the tap of a chess piece moving to its new home. Black slides a rook to check the king. Even Clarissa makes a noise with her repetitive stabbing off the fabric. She looks so intent, like there’s a beautiful design she’s dying to get out. The thrum of the fluorescent light tubes above them. The sound of keratin on skin, over and over and over again. The squeak of Sophia’s shoes as she approaches her.

Alice stands still in the middle of it, looking from corner to corner of the circular room. Even corners have been banned here in the name of safety. The white walls seem to blend into the linoleum floor, and there’s a pit in her stomach. 

She’s not supposed to be here. She just has to speak to one of the women in scrubs and she’ll fix it. She needs to go back to Maine.

“It can be overwhelming,” says Sophia, her quiet voice echoing in the silent room. “Come with me.”

They pass the whispering nurses in gray, one casting furtive glances at Sophia as they pass them. 

“Is everything okay?” Alice asks. Sophia seems to be the way out of here. All she needs is to be somewhere quiet. 

Sophia nods. “I must admit, many of my colleagues aren’t the biggest fan of me.”

“Oh?” She glances back at them. “How come? If you don’t mind.” 

She shrugs. “Not everyone makes it out of high school.”

For the first time, Alice really examines Sophia. Her scrubs are a tad wrinkled, but it makes sense for this time of day. She wears no makeup, except a hint of gloss on her lips. She just looks…tired. 

“Here’s your room.” The door’s creak echoes down the long hallway filled with identical doors. Some have name tags on them, others have etches of names in them. 

It’s sparse, but what can she expect for a place like this? She pretends to examine it, but really just looks back at Sophia who’s looking everywhere but her. 

“How long have you been working here?” Alice asks, leaving a gap in the dust that’s settled over the night table. “You seem experienced.”

The edge of Sophia’s lips curl into a smile. “Just a few months, actually. I transferred from my old job not long ago.”

“Oh, what was that?” She tries to focus, but the sound of nail against skin is still reverberating through her skull. All she has to do is speak with Sophia and everything would slot into place. 

“I was a neurosurgeon,” she says tightly. 

“Impressive.” Alice turns around again, taking in the rest of the room. The window is tiny, directly across from the streetlamps. There goes any chance she had of stargazing while she’s trapped here. There’s a dying plant in the corner that can’t possibly be good for morale.

She turns around to ask Sophia if she can take it out, but like magic, Sophia’s been replaced with another nurse. The name tag reads, “Tina,” this time. 

“Where’d she go?” Alice asks.

Tina smiles brightly. “Who?”

“Sophia,” she says. “She was just here.”

“She’s just stepped out,” explains Tina, and holds out a small plastic cup of water. She procures two white pills wrapped in plastic from her pocket. “Take these, dear.”

Alice takes what’s offered to her, about to listen to the instructions when Tina turns her back, leaving the room. She leaves the door slightly ajar.

Looking down at what’s in front of her, she’s starting to get a vague sense of deja vu. Like this has happened before. But she needs to build trust with these people if she’s going to get out. She unwraps them slowly.

As she’s about to swallow them, Sophia reappears in the doorway. The door creaks open again, shattering her skull right open. 

“Don’t take them,” she whispers, closing her hand over the white pills in front of her. 

Alice frowns. “Why not?”

Sophia doesn’t answer right away, working them out of her hand so quickly she doesn’t notice until they’re gone. “Tina gave you the wrong ones. I’ll be back.”

Sophia starts to leave, slipping the pills in the pocket of her scrubs. Her hand pulls the knob before pausing. 

“Do you want to know why you’re here?”

Alice blinks, but before she can think, she hears herself saying, “I do.”