6. Ophelia
OPHELIA
I’m unsure how many hours have passed, as I’ve slipped in and out of a drugged sleep.
Deep down, I know I should be angry that my own parents had me sedated, but I can’t seem to find the energy. The only thing that really matters right now is that, in this drugged state, I can’t hear the Prophet’s voice.
Is this how I’m spending the rest of my life? Either screaming and pounding at the sides of my own head, or barely conscious?
There was another way…I could have stayed with the Preachers, but now I’m too dosed up to fight my parents, and I don’t even have enough control of my limbs to find a phone and contact the college.
Outside of my window, I’m aware of the grumble of an engine as a vehicle pulls up.
Doors slam and murmured voices drift over me.
I can’t hear or understand what they’re saying, but they’re low and concerned.
I have no doubt they’re talking about me, but I can’t do anything to intervene.
It’s as though they’ve stripped me of all my bodily autonomy. I have no control anymore.
I drift back into sleep, but then blink open my eyes as my bedroom door opens.
Two strangers walk in—a man and a woman, both dressed in white medical uniforms like I’d expect to see in a hospital.
Close behind them are my parents, both with pinched expressions.
The strange man is pushing a chair with wheels.
The sight sparks something inside me, and I suddenly feel more awake. I push myself to sitting and frown as I force my mouth to form words. “What is this?”
My mom is by my side in an instant. “You need help, sweetheart. More than we can give you.”
It takes my muddled brain a moment to figure out what she means. Then the presence of the wheelchair and the two strangers slot into place like missing pieces from a jigsaw puzzle.
I jerk away from her. “No, please, you can’t.” My words come out slurred, my tongue too thick to speak around.
She tries to smooth my hair away from my face, but I flinch at the touch. “We’ve tried everything we can. We don’t have any choice. This is a last resort, Ophelia. They’ll help you to get better, and no one else will know where you are.”
Two birds, one stone, I think bitterly.
I already had been getting better, and I hadn’t needed to be locked up in some facility to make that happen. I’d just needed them . My Preachers.
“Come on, Ophelia. Don’t make a scene.” My father steps in. “This is for the best. It’s a private facility with additional security. I’ve made sure of it. No one will be able to hurt you there, especially not this prophet you keep speaking of.”
I become rigid at the mention of the Prophet.
Because there’s one thing everyone is forgetting about while they’re all so focused on me.
A young woman—a girl, really—wrote that letter to me because she was in need of help.
The same man who is haunting me has turned his attention to her.
While all this is happening, he might be making her his wife, and then he’ll take her to bed, and he’ll…
I can’t even bear to think about it. It could have been me, if I hadn’t gotten away.
Worse, in many ways, the only reason Daisy is in this position now is because I left. If I’d stayed, I’d have been the one who’d have become the Prophet’s seventh wife, and Daisy would have been left alone.
This is my fault.
But in this state, I’m helpless and hopeless. I have no control over my own fate, so how can I possibly help someone I can’t even reach?
The two strangers gather round the bed.
“Come along, dear,” the woman says—she’s older and matronly, and though she smiles at me, I see no warmth in her brown eyes. “Let’s get you somewhere you can rest.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I can rest here. I don’t want to go.”
The man steps in. “It won’t help to get agitated. Everyone here wants what’s best for you.”
“So why aren’t you listening to me?” It sounds like I’m drunk. “Just take me back to the college. I need to go back to the Preachers.”
My mom’s brow furrows. “This obsession with prophets and preachers isn’t good, sweetheart. It’ll help you to be away from it all.”
She has no idea what she’s talking about. I know she loves me, and I’m grateful she cares, but she must understand that having me locked up in a psych ward is not going to make me better.
“You’re wrong.”
My head is so heavy, my chin dips to my chest as they lift me from the bed between them and deposit me into the chair.
A belt is clipped around my waist, and straps are lifted from the handles and fastened around my wrists.
Because of my half-drugged state, it takes me a moment to understand what’s happening, but when I do, I let out a yell and kick out at them.
I’m trapped, and panic hits me full force, spiking adrenaline, which overrides the remaining sedatives in my system.
“Now, now,” the older woman says, trying to grab one of my feet. “There’s no need for all of this. We’re trying to help you.”
“Get off me!” I cry.
I wish I was wearing shoes, so my kicks made more of an impact.
Mom bites her thumb nail anxiously. “Is this all really necessary?”
The older woman shoots her a look. “From your daughter’s behavior, clearly it is.”
I sense I might have an ally in the form of my mom. “Please, Mom, don’t let them take me away again. I’ll stay here. I’ll be good, I promise.”
Tears stream down her cheeks, and she glances at my father, her face anguished. Whatever she sees etched on his features has her shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry, Ophelia. This is for the best. You can come home when you’re better.”
“I’m better now,” I lie.
“No, you’re not. You haven’t been well for a long time. We’d hoped sending you away to college would help, but it’s only made you worse.” My father’s words are stern, and I know he loves me, but he’s being so ruthless with me right now that it hurts my heart.
A part of me wants to tell them everything, but I know I can’t. It won’t help my case if I start talking about orgies in the woods, and masked men, and black candles.
The two staff members from the facility try to strap my ankles to the footrests of the wheelchair, but I don’t give in willingly.
I kick out, and my bare foot catches the woman in the jaw.
I take a moment’s satisfaction from it until I see the look in her eyes.
I think I’ve just stored up a whole heap of trouble for myself.
“If you don’t behave yourself, we’ll have to sedate you again.”
She speaks from between gritted teeth, and I have the feeling if my parents weren’t here, she’d have delivered me a slap as punishment for kicking her.
But the last thing I want is to be sedated—I barely feel like I’m properly awake from the last dose they gave me.
I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this, but the one thing I’m certain of is that I need to be awake for it to happen.
They strap my ankles into the chair, so I’m completely helpless now. Silent tears roll down my cheeks, and I let my chin hit my chest, my head hanging, unable to even look at my parents. How could they do this to me? After everything I’ve been through, this feels like the biggest betrayal.
Shame settles over me like a heavy fog. What will the Preachers think of me when they discover I’ve been sent to a facility?
Maybe they’ll believe it’s for the best. After all, they were the ones who found me after I took all those pills to try to silence the Prophet’s voice.
Perhaps I should have been committed then.
The woman gets behind to push me. I’m so slight, she won’t have any trouble maneuvering the wheelchair.
She moves me out into the hall, and my mom’s voice chases me from behind. “I’ll pack your suitcase with some of your things.”
“She won’t need much,” the man replies. “All our patients wear the same thing.”
Great. So, they’re going to provide me with some kind of uniform. As if it’s not bad enough that I’m going to be held against my will, I’ll also be dressed like a prisoner.
All the fight drains out of me in that moment.
I don’t scream or plead or cry, I just sit there, numb, as I’m wheeled out of my house, toward the back of a white van.
There’s already a ramp positioned at the rear doors, which are standing open.
The inside looks like an ambulance with a padded bed in the middle, and equipment on either side of the walls.
“I’m not sick,” I murmur to myself. “I’m not sick.”
Except I am, aren’t I? Mentally well people don’t hear the voices of people who aren’t there.
I tussle between the belief that what I’m experiencing is real and knowing it can’t be.
For years, I spent hours every day sitting through sermons where he instilled in me—and everyone else in the commune—that he was all-seeing, and all-knowing.
He could read every thought that went on in my head and feel every emotion in my heart.
Now he’s haunting me, though I know he can’t be, not really.
I’m damaged. Broken.
For the briefest of moments, I’d thought my Preachers had put me back together again, but how can I have any kind of a future if I lose my mind the moment we’re apart?
I can’t ask them to have that kind of responsibility.
They’ve done nothing to deserve being lumbered with someone like me.
They’re young and gorgeous and have their whole lives ahead of them.
They can each meet some mentally stable women and go on to have families of their own.
They don’t need me.
The chair bumps and jolts as it goes up the ramp, then the doors slam shut. I don’t bother trying to look for my parents. I’ve always loved them, but right now I hate what they’re doing to me. They’ve given up on me, in a way I felt they never did when I was missing.
How ironic that it’s only when I’m back that they stop fighting for me.