Extraordinary Mistakes

14. Heavy price

November 2019

"Just stop it, Abigail..." Rebecca's hands hold her forehead. She hadn't slept all night.

Abigail ignores her pleas and only stops when she gets so tired that she can't fight it anymore and collapses. Rebecca drags her to bed, kisses her forehead and goes back to the control room. When she gets there, she notices that Padma isn't around and goes to her room to find her.

"Is the accommodation to your liking?" Rebecca knocks on the door and gets in.

"Yes, thank you, ma'am."

"I'm sure that Ahktar has explained that everything that happens here is not to be commented with anyone. Abigail's only ability is the mental loop, understood? The emotional manipulation doesn't exist. She has no fatal flaw."

Padma swallows her saliva. She didn't know about the fatal flaw. Why would someone so well off, like you Abigail, commit the fatal flaw? Why would you ruin your life like that? How did you do it?

"Understood, ma'am..."

Rebecca takes a deep breath.

"Do you have an ability, Padma?"

"Yes, I'm self-sustained, ma'am."

"What does that mean?"

"That when it's activated, I don't need to eat, sleep..."

"Do you use it often?"

"I try not to."

"Why is that?"

"Ma'am, my side effects... it can get out of hand."

Rebecca waits and the girl understands that she's supposed to elaborate on it.

"Last time that I overused my ability I spent at least three days without being able to sleep. I had too much energy and ended up having a threesome with two colleagues. It's not something that I usually do." She looks away and her voice breaks. "An older colleague found us... in the middle of it," she whispers, "and took me out of there."

"It could have gone way worse, thankfully you had someone put the brakes on you. Same that I'm doing here. You aren't to interact with Abigail in any way. If you have something to say to her, you tell me, and I'll deliver the message." Rebecca takes a deep breath, deeper than she has all day. "She can be highly manipulative when she's in this state."

***

One week has gone by and Abigail refuses to stop using her ability. She keeps throwing up and crying, begging her parents to let her out, promising that she isn't trying to use it and that the shocks hurt. She refuses to eat and threatens to die from hunger if they don't release her. A doctor comes by and tries to insert a syringe with fluids, but she pushes him.

Rebecca forces her to drink water, and Abigail shouts how much she hates her. Throwing against one of the cameras a book that her mother left for her to read, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk by Portia Nelson. Rebecca highlighted Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.

After two weeks, Rebecca is done, and uses a tranquilizer on her to connect her to fluids.

It's late in the evening. Rebecca reads One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and Padma monitors Abigail's vitals.

Mark has gone to Eurasia to visit Veronica, their middle child, and there are already rumors circulating that they separated.

"One month and a half and you're still a complete stranger to me, Padma."

"Sorry, ma'am."

"Any siblings?"

"Yes. All of them younger, two brothers and two sisters." She shows the pictures on her phone. "The oldest is 18 years old, the next one is 16, this one 15 and this one 12."