Alexandria

Chapter Eight

In the quiet of the rec-room, four patients calmly sat playing a quick game of checkers. The effect of medication had worn off completely after a month of shakes and fever and the patients were as normal as they were going to get.

"Where do you think Archie is?" Lola asked, concerned. "I haven't seen him in days." Archie was the one who had convinced her to get off her pills in the first place. Over the past two months that he had been here, they had become rather good friends and she was worried about him.

"Maybe he was just another side effect of the pills?" Sandra questioned. This question had been asked multiple times over the last couple of weeks. Due to the effects of the medication, Sandra had had to watch her kids appear and disappear all over again- the pain feeling just as bad as the first time she had lost them. Now they all worked together to determine which of their friends really existed and which did not.

"No, no." Phoebe interjected. "I saw him too and my symptoms were not hallucinogenic...at least I don't think so..." She trailed off, uncertain.

"And Betty." Delilah added. "She's gone too."

"Do you think Veronica might know?" Delilah asked. They had all begun to look up to Veronica as their leader and Red was her secretary.

"We can ask, but her and Red have been really busy lately." Lola answered, unsure. They hated bothering those two when they were working so hard to help everyone.

Phoebe looked over her shoulder and saw a hulking figure enter the room followed by a doctor in a white lab coat. "Guys, Debra the Decimator is on her way over with Dr. Rosenthal. Act like your normal selves!"

The patients resumed their game, beginning to return to their insane habits. They had strict instructions from Red and Veronica that the nurses and doctors could not know they hadn't been taking their pills. At first, some of the women had protested, claiming that if they had been cured, then, they would be released. After much convincing and quite a bit of crying, Veronica had finally gotten the patients to understand how dire their situation was and what terrible things the administration was responsible for.

"Everything good over here ladies?" the doctor stood behind the players, who ignored him and his question.

Delilah looked over her shoulder and leaned her ear into an imaginary mouth. The tall willowy woman nodded her head and pointed to a red checker piece on the board. "Marian says that Lola is going to move that piece." Phoebe took her turn and jumped her piece out of harms way.

"That is cheating!" Lola screamed, changing from her normal, easy-going self into the terror that Kendra was. "You are a cheater! Cheater! Cheater! Cheater!" The enraged woman flipped over the table, spilling the board and little black and red circles all over the floor, before stomping angrily out of the room. An orderlies footsteps were heard padding quickly down the hallway after her.

Phoebe curled herself into a ball and rolled around on the floor with her hands covering her ears. She closed out the world and the other two patients in the room stared on in silence. After a moment, Sandra stood and put her arm around a small imaginary body.

"See Travis? That is not being a good sport. Let's go see if Katie is up from her nap." As she walked past the doctor, she whispered, "I'm sorry about that. It's not one of her good days." Sandra then moved from the room, her imaginary son by her side.

Delilah turned to look at someone over her shoulder. "Marian" She asked her fantasized friend. "let's get Phoebe safe into her bed?" Suddenly she looked over her other shoulder so fast that the force should have broken her neck. "No! Nordic, I want to help her." she began to scream. "No! You two stop it! Just stop! Shut up, both of you! I don't want to hear it!" She turned to them and began grappling with the air. "Ow, that hurt! Nordic!" She ran from the room, arms flapping dangerously.

Phoebe carefully stood, eyeing the towering woman and doctor suspiciously. She moved around them like a scared rabbit and escaped down the hallway. Deborah looked over to Rosenthal,

"They seem pretty normal to me. Well, at least their brand o' normal. No need to get paranoid. These crazy folks are perfectly harmless." She pat him on the shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look. She knew that this sometimes happened to the doctors here. Spending your days surrounded by lunatics can make you start to look for things that aren't there. Deborah had seen too many a good doctor get caught up in one of these types of fantasies. She just hoped Rosenthal could beat this form of crazy.he crazy and continue in his search for a cure.

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Veronica and Red sat in a supply closet, huddled close together in the small space. Veronica's voice interrupted the quiet of the room "It's time."

"Are you sure?" Red questioned, not believing that their plan was finally in motion. She knew that once this last step was put in play, they would be out of this terrible place in no time.

"Yes." Veronica nodded. "Rosenthal is already on his toes, but no one else suspects a thing. Sandra, Lola, Delilah, and Phoebe are all back to normal- thank God." She made a sign of the cross. Red admired her. How she had kept her faith, Red would never know. This awful place had sucked the soul out of everyone- everyone except Veronica. Red was brought out of her thoughts by Veronica's words.

"We need to move on to phase two."

"Without Archie?" Red responded incredulously. She could not believe Veronica was that heartless. Usually it was Red who needed a moral compass, not Ronnie.

"We will find him." The tall woman said with determination and Red breathed a sigh of relief. "I just hope that he wasn't an experiment that was terminated and went out in a body bag. I didn't know him all that long, but he was helpful to us. He deserves to be set free, just like the rest of us.Now that I think about it, nurse Jacobs is missing too."

"You're right. I've not seen Betty around anywhere. She was such a nice lady. It also would have helped to have someone on the inside."

"I think she talked to the wrong people. It's possible she ended up in a body bag herself. I dont want to think that way, but it the most obvious explanation. Rosenthal isn't the type to leave witnesses." Veronica's face hardened at the mention of Rosenthal's name. She had been tortured on multiple occasions. Scars covered her arms and legs. Her back and ribs were always bruised, a patchwork of fading yellow marks and large black and blue bruises that had yet to fade. Veronica knew what it was like to be on Rosenthal's bad side. She hadn't given up though, or yielded to Rosenthal's abuse.

"So when are we going to put the final stage in action?" Red questioned, shaking herself from her own line of morbid thoughts. She also knew what it was like to be mutilated at the hands of the evil doctor.

"Soon." Veronica replied grimly, "Very soon." She paused and let out her tension in a heavy breath. "I say we'll be free to change the world in just a few days."