“A 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 her husband and his mother had paid their family doctor to make was psychosexual hysteria and amoral insanity, and the good Dr. Rosenblatt simply delighted in inquiring about it.
“Tell me, again, how often you and Lord Benchley engaged in marital relations.”
Mena refused to answer the question in front of an audience. “I’ve t-told you already.”
“Yes, you’ve told me he used to come to you five times a week at first, and then hardly ever toward the end. That once he realized you could not bear him children, he sought the company of other women.” Dr. Rosenblatt leaned forward, capturing her gaze that was beginning to blur due to the cold. “Except when you would ask him to force you. He told me you disgusted him, especially when you would request that he fulfill your violent sexual fantasies, isn’t that right, Lady Benchley?”
Mena learned that even in the ice bath she could burn with shame. “He … lied. I. Never. W-wanted…” The cold leached into her chest, robbing her of her voice.
“I’ve warned you, only the truth will liberate you from your current state,” Rosenblatt reminded her.
The truth. The truth was that her husband was as much a sadist as Dr. Rosenblatt. Gordon St. Vincent enthusiastically tried to figure out what made people cringe. What they truly feared. What they hated about themselves. And he exploited this information to his advantage.
It had started gradually, her hell within the St. Vincent household. And before long, when Gordon had thought her broken, when his jibes and torments no longer seemed to affect her, her husband became violent. Acts that would land a man in prison should he enact them out on the streets were all perfectly legal if he perpetrated them on his wife.
In the span of time and space, a quarter hour is nothing. A grain of sand on an endless beach. But in that tub, it became an eternity, stretching away from the warm rays of the sun. Until there was nothing but cold. Nothing but this white, white room and suffering.
After that, Mena lost the ability to see the arms on the clock. Her joints seized and her muscles contracted with such violent pain, she let out an involuntary wail.
Lord, but she truly did sound mad.
Her hands contorted into strange and painful angles against her chest, and odd convulsions seemed to rack her spine, even as she felt her heart slow to a plodding amble, nearly losing its rhythm.
She was tired. So tired.
It was then they dragged her from the bath, lifting her by the elbows drawn stiff enough to hold her weight. She’d become like the ice, truly frozen. She couldn’t even summon the strength to care anymore as Dr. Rosenblatt and Mr. Burns watched while she was toweled dry and a rough cotton shift yanked over her head.
An alarming numbness had begun to spread from Mena’s muscles and limbs inward to her organs. She’d never spent more than ten minutes in the ice baths before. She hardly noticed as a comb was jerked through her long hair. She tried to stumble away, but her knees refused to hold her as the cold had leached all strength from her muscles. Mr. Burns caught her in time to prevent injury, but she’d rather have fallen to the floor.
“She’s too heavy for us to carry. You’ll have to get her back to her rooms, Mr. Burns,” Nurse Schopf ordered.
“’Appy to, madam,” Mr. Burns said cheerfully.
“I’ll assist. The bath has seemed to calm her hysteria, and she should be docile for quite some time.” Dr. Rosenblatt pushed away from the wall and snapped her file closed. “See that this gets back to my office, Nurse Schopf, and make certain that we aren’t disturbed.”
Mena’s useless feet made terrible noises on the long, uncarpteted floor as the two men “ushered” her down the corridor, scrubbed and painted with that peculiar whiteness that must be reserved for such institutions. Gas lamps spaced precisely between the doors did nothing to warm the glaring emptiness of the place. Even the beams and bolts and the padlocks on the iron doors had been whitewashed. Sterile, like their bedrooms, devoid of warmth, light, or color. Pure, like their nightgowns, high-necked, binding, and modest, but for the fact one could see the shape beneath.
Little shivering whimpers escaped Mena’s chest and throat, unbidden and unwanted, but somehow she couldn’t stop them. Her jaw ached from the clenching and clacking of her teeth. The asylum night noises grated on her skin. She felt each wail of insanity as though they were nails scoring her flesh. At the sound of heavy boots, some women pressed their faces against the three bars that comprised their tiny windows to the hall. Their stares pricked her like needles. Some were mad, mocking, and terrible. Others, like her, those who did not belong behind these walls, were full of pity and sometimes tears. Mena could acknowledge none of them. At the moment, she couldn’t even manage to turn her neck.
“I like that she’s clean and meek,” Mr. Burns stated. “But I don’t relish the idea of sticking my prick into an ice block.”
His words speared a sharp clench of panic through Mena. She’d often wondered if rape was their aim. She knew that the doctor and the orderly had used Belle Glen as their own personal playground. She’d listened to the screams of more than one longtime resident as she’d given birth in the middle of the night. She’d cried with them, and thanked her stars for the first time in her life that she was too tall and too round to be considered truly desirable.