Nacaria had been waiting hours for Nurse Cassie to come in. She waited through the night in a rancid heap of her own waste. The smell, the feel, and the humiliation had all finally twisted together to make her vomit. Nacaria laid in that, too. It was all so disgustingly miserable to endure. She began to realize that Cassie was her only caregiver and if she were not around, Nacaria was on her own.
Why am I still here? Nacaria wondered. Why hasn’t someone come for me? Or released me? She wished she knew how this all worked. She wished she could remember what was said all those years ago about her punishment. Was this all a part of it? Did no one at home notice her shadow was missing? That she was no longer confined to the walls of Blanchard House? How long had she been in this room awake? When would the person who decides her punishment is over let her go home?
At last, Nacaria heard the metal key scraping inside the lock of her door. The heavy door pushed open, and Nurse Cassie walked in. The odor in the room must have been putrid to the nurse’s senses, assailing her upon entry. Nurse Cassie walked to the bed and found Nacaria in her current state.
Angrily she slapped her patient’s face and shrieked, “You are revolting!” She scurried to clean her up complaining the entire time. “It’s bad enough I have to change your shitty diapers, but now I have to wash vomit off you, too!”
Nacaria could not move or fling her hands to shield her face from the angry nurse’s blows. It was simply too tiring to try. She had no strength to her limbs. She could only lay there taking every blow as it came. On the last slap Nacaria took, Nurse Cassie raised her blood-covered hand. She had busted Nacaria’s nose. Cassie withdrew another syringe and stabbed into Nacaria’s arm this time, rather than injecting the IV tube. Within seconds, Nacaria was unable to think again, unable to do anything but simply be. She was like a doll that only came to life long enough to contemplate why it lived and when it would return to the limbo that was before it had developed consciousness.
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After locking her patient’s door, Cassie walked down the long corridor of the asylum. How she hated being there. Those screams from the other witches locked away in the other rooms had almost driven her to madness. But this was her job, this was what she had to do for the moment, and there was a very good reason behind it. Finally, she made her way through the winding hallways and warped channels of this great catacomb. The front door stood before her, leading outside to where the sun shone—where the air was crisp and new and lifegiving.
The doorman who stood guard tried to speak to her as he always did, and as she always did, she ignored him. The other nurses congregated outside, each one discussing with the others their experience with their patients that particular day. Cassie did not speak to them either. She never did. They were beneath her.
Cassie reached her car in the parking lot and got inside. Withdrawing her phone from her purse, she dialed the number to give her daily report.
“It’s me.”
“Yes, nothing’s changed.”
“Yes, I am increasing the dosage.”
“Don’t worry, no one will ever know her curse has been lifted.”
“Of course, I’m sure. The administrator of the sanitarium comes by her cell only once a week. She is always completely unconscious by then.”
“I assure you no one is ever going to discover that Nacaria Blanchard is free. From all appearance’s sake, she is still in the very same coma she has been in for twenty years.”