I am sitting on hard-plastic, Day-Glow, green-cupped chairs—reminiscent of a low-budget 70’s kitchen. The large room feels stifling with oppressive scents of drug-store cologne, too-sweet perfume, intermingling with sweat, and smoker’s breath, all in an airless space. People’s voices on cell phones ricochet off the windowless room. The numerous stimuli all competing for my brain’s attention feels overwhelming.
I wiggle in my seat to make room for a woman with a baby on her lap squeezing next to me yelling into her phone. “No lo sé, porque ella no me entiende.” Her pink nail polish matches her cell phone cover. The baby stares at me and tries reaching for my long, blonde hair. “Ah, Ah,” it screams. I try to inch away from it in my cramped seat. The smells and sounds are already making my left temple begin to throb.
“Michelle Fall? Ms. Pail?” A man yells out above the masses.
Everyone always gets my name wrong. I stand up, wave and navigate through the masses towards the man. He glances at me and begins to walk quickly down a hall. I assume this means I am to follow. I attempt to rush to catch-up—easier said than done. Herding me down the long-dark hallway we eventually reach an elevator. He swipes a card key, twice.
In the dimly-lit elevator he rattles off a series of questions, to which I give one or two word answers. The doors open three floors down to another even darker hallway. A broken lighting bank strobes off and on. Giving off a beehive-like buzz.
We pass a woman sitting in a lone chair, hunched over in the hallway. Her gown is bunching up around her tan shoulders and short dark wavy hair. We smell her before reaching her. Urine, morning after alcohol and years of regret.
My horror vacation guide turns to the right, and we proceed down a greenish-hue corridor. Lit better than the previous ones. The stench of urine and feces hits me like I have run up against a wall. I push forward. The odor envelops me. I hold back a gag. We pass many nameless, closed and windowless doors.
Finally, a light beam cascades from a door frame onto the hallway. “You can wait in here.” He waves his hand in the direction of the lit doorway. “Someone will call for you.”
I walk into a room only three times larger than a toilet stall. The stench is far worse than most Third World public toilets I have used. A woman looks up from one of the same damn green-plastic, Bee Gees-era chairs. She has a matted hair nest atop her head and sunken-in eyes with dark circles. Dirt streaks across her face and her clothes are covered in the same brown splotches. She mutters something inaudible to herself. She proceeds to answer her train of thought.
Oh, crap! There is no way in hell that sitting in here is going to help my stress-level. I grab a puke-colored seat and drag it out into the “Cuckoo's Nest” hallway.
I sit.
And wait.
And wait.
Daring not to put my headphones on for fear of missing my rescuers coming, and also dulling my auditory perception should my would-be attackers approach.
I continually look left, right, left, and right.
I stand up straight and try to look alert, like I have my shit together. I so don’t!
I look at my clock, forty-five minutes have passed! You have got to be friggin’ kidding me!
A door opens down the hall to the left. Voices. Laughter?
An official looking man comes out of a room. “How much longer is this going to take?” I scream out towards him.
“Name?” he replies.
“Pahl - P, A, H , L,” I spell out. Everyone always spells it wrong.
He disappears behind the now shut door.
“You’re next, ma’am.”
The end of the hall doors open with a loud bang and a sense of urgency to reveal another long corridor to nowhere, and darkness. A man is wheeled in on a bed by an orderly.
“FAIL?” Another man, from the now-open left door, yells.
“That’s me,” I quickly shout as I stand.
“Oh,” says the man on the gurney, “I guess they take the pretty ones first around here!”
“No sir,” the man at my door calmly reassures him, “We take you all in order of need.”
I follow him down a very bright hall, to a closet space. “Undress to your underwear here,” he tosses me one of the styles du jour, “You can put this on. Are you going to barf in there?” He asks with a smirk on his face.
“I don't know. It’s my first time,” I snap back at him.
“Oh, well, ok.” He answers hesitantly. “I’ll meet you back down the hall.” He quickly leaves the doorframe of the dollhouse-sized space.
Once I am alone in the closet. I undress and put on the Mao-era-like uniform. It hangs from my athletic-petite frame. I stare back at the reflection in the mirror. The woman peering back has the look of Bambi knowing she is about to be shot.
I quickly turn away and lock my clothing in a cubby hole, wrap the elastic tied key around my wrist and head back down the brightly lit hall. There another Day-Glow chair waits for me. I put my iPods back in, Pema’s voice continues to reassure me, “Breathe in calm and breathe out fear.” I repeat her phrase to myself.
“Ms. Pale?” a new face pops his head out of a room adjacent to the chair and bolts me back to the formaldehyde smell and sterile surroundings. I fake a nervous smile. “I’m Todd. We are ready for you now.”
He leads me into an empty grand room and points to a small table inside the door, “You can place the key on the table.”
I tentatively remove the key, concerned about my belongings back in the locker. “Don’t worry,” He says, watching me over my shoulder, “It is just Antonio and I in the area. Your stuff is safe.”
After leaving the last of my link to the outside world on the table, I reach into my pocket and grab two items I have Shanghai'd into the blockade. “What’s in your hand,” Todd demands. Darn, caught. I open my hand to reveal two professional ear plugs. My attempt at controlling the uncontrollable.
“Oh, I see you have done your research,” he laughs. It slightly lightens the tension in the room for a moment. “Now jump up here,” he says, patting to the long-metal table on a conveyor-belt. “We’ll make you comfortable.”
I suppress a loud snort. First of all, I don’t jump. Secondly, the last thing you are ever going to make me feel in here, Mister, is cozy. I struggle to pull myself up onto the table. Ultimately, he has to lower the plane just so I can swing my legs onto it.
“Now lay back and I’ll place a cushion under your knees.”
The table feels harder than my wood floor at home. Metal bores into my sides from its frame.
Antonio suddenly appears on the other side of the table and both men are working quickly now; shoving a stiff pillow under my knees, propping cushions under my elbows, throwing a warm sheet onto my legs. The bolsters hardly mask the rigidity underneath.
“Ms. Pale,” Todd says, “I’m going to place headphones on you to protect your ears.” Large, cushioned headphones, reminiscent of language lab classes in the 70’s, are slapped onto my head.
The room goes as numb as my thoughts. The men’s movements and lips are soundless. The ghosts of fear floating in the space are palpable.
Antonio mumbles something close to my head. It sounds like Charlie Brown’s parents. He lifts one of the headphone ears. “I am going to stick your IV in now and then put on your helmet. Squeeze this ball if you want to contact us. We can hear you.” He hands me a red, rubber ball tethered to a line. It looks like the kind I would play jacks with as a kid. He drops the matted headphone with a “Thwack” against my ear.
IV? Now? What helmet? WTF? I am too immobilized both geographically and by fear to protest and respond. I detect, with dread, the familiar heat and blood start to rise in my left temple through the side of my nostril. Damn, this is going to create a righteous migraine. I am screwed.
I feel the sharp, but thankfully quick sting of the needle go through the inside of my right elbow’s vein. He tapes the empty IV to my arm and tucks it into my bed.
I luckily see out of the corner of my eye Todd lifting a helmet. They weren’t friggin’ kidding! I hear my stomach gurgle and another surge of heat and pain run straight up my left nostril and onto my temple.
A sense deep within tells me to quickly close my eyes, and tight. I do so just before I feel the helmet clumsily being pushed over my head. I squeeze my eyes even tighter. The helmet smells like the sweat of terror.
I detect the floor of the table slowly moving underneath me. It is beginning.
The banging grows louder and louder. I sense the closing of the coffin-like space enveloping me. My breathing is quickening and becoming more and more shallow. I hear my heart seemingly moving in pace with the pounding surrounding me.
Then I hear Pema Chodron, “You are calm. You are safe. All is well.”
Author: Michelle Pahl
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