The Highlander Read Free Page A

initial panic subsided and she stilled. Was this to be how it ended, then? Imprisoned along with the empire’s forgotten naturals and unfortunates, a Cockney pervert sneaking a squeeze of her breasts, and a sadistic nurse holding her down while a coldhearted doctor looked on?
    She wondered if Lady Farah Blackwell, Countess Northwalk, had ever received her letter. Had the countess done anything on her behalf, or merely ignored her pleas for help. Judging by the burning in her lungs, Mena doubted she’d ever find out.
    Perhaps it was for the best. She’d leave this world surrounded by cold and merciless shards of suffocating ice. The literal manifestation of what her life had been these past five years.
    Could hell really be worse than this? Was there a chance she’d already served some penance for her sins here on this cruel plane? Perhaps the Lord was not such a vengeful God, merely an indifferent one. Be that the case, maybe she could persuade him to let her have a tiny, insignificant corner of heaven. Even the part no one else wanted. An isolated place at the end of a long lane where she could exist in quietude and seclusion. Away from the malevolence of expectation and the judgment of her many failures. Somewhere the clouds hovered low like a canopy and the sun filtered through them on a late summer’s day like the pillars thrown down on the southern moors, as majestic and warm as divine forgiveness.
    Closing her eyes, Mena found the bravery to draw in a breath of icy water just as the hands holding her under tightened to pull her up. She surfaced and heaved what little of the liquid had made it into her lungs in a series of soul-racking coughs.
    Once the spasms had passed, she focused on filling her lungs with air. The moment was gone, that glimpse of peace she’d found beneath the ice. She knew she was too much of a coward to take her own life.
    So she sat and shivered, surrendering to her misery, drawing her knees up to her chest in the bath before the cold stole mobility from her limbs.
    â€œSee that she’s cleaned and then we’ll begin,” Rosenblatt directed.
    The nurses scrubbed her skin with harsh soap and efficient brutality, remarking as they did so that this would account for her weekly bath.
    Five minutes had passed once they’d finished, and Mena’s skin felt as though a thousand needles pricked it with simultaneous persecution. But she set her jaw, deciding to do what she must to escape the cold now seeping into her bones.
    â€œI’m going to interview you now, Lady Benchley.” Dr. Rosenblatt stepped to the foot of the tub. “I want you to tell me how the following information affects you. If I feel you’ve answered honestly, we’ll get you out of the tub. Do you understand?”
    Mena nodded.
    â€œGood.” He shuffled some of his paperwork, and finding the one he searched for, he placed it on the top of her open file and read. “First we’ll dispense with the generals. Do you hear voices in your rooms at night, Lady Benchley? Ones that keep you awake or torment you?”
    Mena remained staring straight ahead and answered honestly. “Only the screams of the patients. And the nurses who mock them.”
    Greta Schopf pinched her shoulder painfully, but Mena didn’t so much as wince.
    â€œQuite so.” The doctor never looked up from his notes. “Do you ever see things, strange things, apparitions, ghosts, or hallucinations?”
    Mena answered this very carefully, as she knew that hallucinations were the mark of true madness. “Never.” She shook her head.
    â€œA few questions for statistical purposes, due to your diagnosis,” Rosenblatt continued.
    The cold had begun to muddle Mena’s thoughts. The blood in her veins slowed to a drip and she’d begun to shiver so violently, she had to force her words through teeth clacking together. But she knew which questions were forthcoming. The diagnosis