Claire wondered why they had needed to put her into a hospital gown for this. It was all a mistake; all a misunderstanding. It would all be cleared up soon enough, once the Doctor had seen her. Maybe they would send her home, maybe they would hold her for a few days. 72 hours was what she'd always heard on TV.

*So there was no need for the gown*, she thought. There was also no need for the zip ties that the officer accompanying the paramedics had placed on her hands. "For your own protection," he'd said. *Protection from what? From who?*

*This was all a mistake that would be corrected soon*, she hoped. *Perhaps even in time to get back to work*. This is what she thought as she sat in the waiting room, her hands tied, the gown's thin fabric feeling strange and unfamiliar.

The hospital itself was strange and unfamiliar. The walls of the waiting room were utilitarian, painted cinder blocks. *Like a high school cafeteria*, she thought. She sat on one of those metal-legged, vinyl-cushioned benches that looked like three chairs fused together --- the kind of furniture that existed only in waiting rooms and nowhere else. There were metal bars over the cross-hatched shatterproof glass windows. Fluorescent lights buzzed in the drop-ceiling overhead. The place was, in a word, institutional.

The hospital staff went about their business, paying Claire no mind. She detected some murmured voices from the direction of the triage desk. She could not hear words, just sounds. The tile floor was scuffed but very clean under her feet. *Why didn't they give me socks*, she wondered, *don't you usually get socks in a place like this*?

*This was all a mistake, it will all be OK once I see the Doctor*, she told herself, and waited.

At that moment, someone called her name to the desk.

Claire got up as elegantly as one could in her style of dress and state of helplessness, and walked up to the front desk slowly. A woman sat looking at a computer --- presumably some kind of nurse. "Claire?" she confirmed without looking up.

"Yes."

"What's your date of birth?" the nurse asked. This was the universal medical question. Claire was used to being asked this repeatedly at every checkup, lab test, and occasional trip to the ER. Nobody ever seemed to remember it from the last time, no matter how many times she told them. In this unfamiliar environment it was almost comforting.

"September 23, 2000. I'm here because..."

"No need, I've got it all right here in the computer. You're already in the system. We'll get you to a room as soon as your doctor does your intake exam."

Hesitatingly, Claire asked, "Room? I don't think I need a room, I'm not going to be..."

"Don't tell *me*," said the woman, "talk to the Doctor about it."

The nurse gestured at two large men, orderlies or assistants of some kind, very muscular, with tattoos, standing on either side of a pair of large metal doors. The men looked like football players, or bouncers. The same kind of guy probably had both of those jobs, at different times in his life. From tackling opponents to wrangling drunks, a natural progression. And some of them, she thought, ended up here. *Seems a bit much*, she thought, *I certainly don't need wrangling*.

"She's going to 423," the nurse said to the orderlies, who nodded in acknowledgement. The nurse pressed a key card against a card reader on the wall. It was the kind of modern electronic fixture that always looked out of place in an old building like this.

The door beeped, and opened under its own power. Claire knew it was not the kind of door that she would be able to reopen, once she was on the other side of it. The orderlies flanked her and stood silently waiting to follow her through it.

One step at a time on the cold hard floor, she stepped through. With a pneumatic whoosh, the door closed behind her.

The hallway beyond the door looked even older, as if she had stepped through a portal from a DMV office into a historical site. The walls were now brick, and the windows looked like they might have once opened, before the hinges were painted over. There were rusty bars on the windows. Opposite to the windows, wooden doors lined the hallway. The doors had numbers on them, but nothing else to indicate what was in the room. They did not have windows, but wooden slats that looked like they once tilted open to allow light and air in. These too, of course, were long since painted over.

The orderlies lead her to a room numbered 423, and opened the door. It was a non-descript little medical exam room. It looked like it had been repainted many times. The furnishings looked old but not as old as the building itself. There was a medicine cabinet, a metal exam table, and a mirror on the wall.

The men left her alone without saying anything and closed the door. The lights in this room also buzzed. The room smelled faintly of disinfectant. She sat down on the chair to try to wait for the doctor.

Her eyes drifted around the room, not really seeing anything until something caught her peripheral vision. A shape? A figure? Someone?

The mirror! Claire did not mean to look in the mirror, as she did not want to see her reflection. There it was anyway, before she had time to brace herself. Her own blue eyes stared back at her, bloodshot and filled with fear. Her brown hair was mussed and uneven from everything she'd been through. The baby-blue hospital gown hung on her casually, nearly falling off one shoulder. Her legs were bare and goose-pimpled in the clammy hospital air.

She saw the nervousness; the anxiety. She felt sorry for that girl in the mirror, before she even had time to realize it was herself.

* * *

A knock came at the door. Doctors always knocked before entering a room, but then came in anyway before you had time to answer. The door opened before Claire could even turn her head.

A man in his mid-30s entered the room, wearing a white lab coat over a crisp dress shirt and business slacks. The hard soles of his leather shoes clicked on the floor. This was not the kind of doctor who went around in scrubs all the time, to show the world that he was someone who got his hands dirty. This was not the kind of hospital where a doctor needed to make that kind of performance.

He had a serious, composed look on his face, and the five o'clock shadow of a man who shaved once a day in the early morning and considered that enough even though it wasn't. His brown hair was cut short, neatly combed. He moved with a confidence that made him seem taller than he was.

He removed his glasses, which were apparently single-focal and not fit for close vision, and glanced over Claire's chart with hard, piercing brown eyes. Then the eyes turned on Claire.

For a brief foolish second, something fluttered in Claire's chest. She felt something like relief. Finally, here was someone who knew what he was doing. Someone who would see the mistake, the misunderstanding, the absurdity of all this.

Surely he would see what was going on.

"Name and date of birth, please," he demanded. There it was, asking for the same info again and again.

"Claire Allman, September 23, 2000," she answered.

"Do you know what today's date is, Claire?" he asked.

Another routine question. His voice sounded as if he asked it a dozen times a day. There was no urgency, no recognition that she'd been dragged into something bizarre and terrifying. He wasn't tired, or bored, or disinterested. He sounded *professional* enough. But there was no sympathy in it, no flicker of understanding for what she was going through. He was just too calm, she thought.

But the date? She knew the date! This was her chance --- her chance to explain everything to this man who looked like someone with authority. Someone who could fix this, make everything normal again.

But something about him --- the white coat, the neat stubble, the click of his shoes, the way his eyes seemed to take in everything at once --- pressed down on her. She couldn't get the words out.

She hesitated, then blurted, "December 20... no, I mean, December 4. 2023."

The Doctor didn't react. He simply wrote something on the chart.

"Are you pregnant, or think you might be pregnant?"

"No."

"Do you know *why* you're here?"

"Of... of course! I can explain everything. I'm not supposed to be here. They only called 9-1-1 as a precaution, it's company policy." As an H.R. generalist in the same office where her supervisor had made that call, Claire could have recited the policy chapter and verse.

"Let's get started with your exam," the Doctor said, as if she hadn't spoken at all.

"What's going on? What are you going to do with me?" she asked. Her voice was thin, shaking with fear.

"Claire." He focused his eyes on hers. Calm. Stern. Unshakable. "Cooperate."

She said nothing, lowering her eyes, avoiding his gaze like someone backing down from a confrontation before it even happened. He motioned toward the exam table and patted it once with his hand. "Sit here," he said.

Silently, she moved from the chair to the table. The shift felt wrong. Chairs were normal life. You sat in them every day. The exam table was different. Cold paper. Metal edges. A place for *patients*.

It was difficult to get up onto the table with her hands still tied. Fortunately there was a small footstool, which partly made up for the inability to use her hands to pull herself up. Her bare legs brushed the crinkling paper as she climbed up. She wasn't supposed to be on a table like this. She wasn't supposed to be someone who belonged here.

The Doctor stepped closer, the chart tucked under one arm. "Look straight ahead," he said.

She did as she was told. He lifted a small penlight and shone it briefly into each eye. "Good." He added a note on the chart.

He moved to her side, took out a stethoscope, and fitted the earpieces into his ears. Then he leaned toward her.

He pressed the stethoscope to the bare skin of her upper back, at a spot where the gown already left her exposed. The metal was shockingly cold. "Breathe in." She shuddered, silently, trying to hold herself together. Another note on the chart.

Without changing his stance, he shifted the stethoscope to her front, over her heart. She closed her eyes. She tried to will her heartbeat to slow, terrified he would write something down --- something that would make all this worse. She didn't know the word *tachycardia*, but she knew the feeling of her pulse racing when she was anxious. She was shaking. Another note.

He took her hands --- still bound by the zip-ties --- and lifted them slightly. He felt for her pulse and timed it with his wristwatch, for what seemed like a long time. Even through his latex gloves, the prolonged contact made her acutely aware of the warmth and firmness of his hands. Another pen-scratch on the chart.

He took out a chrome-plated reflex hammer with a rubber head. "Uncross your legs, Claire." She hadn't even realized she'd crossed them. She shifted and uncrossed them, her bare legs dangling off the edge of the table.

He placed his hand on her knee to steady her leg and tapped just below the kneecap. Her leg jerked; her bare foot twitched. He repeated the test on the other side, identical, then wrote another note. "Excellent," was all he said.

Claire waited for more --- perhaps a chance to explain herself --- but he simply closed the chart with a soft snap.

"That will do," he said.

She blinked. "That's... that's it?"

"For now." He didn't elaborate. "You'll be taken to your room shortly."

"Room? No, I --- I don't need a room. I shouldn't even be here. There's been a mistake, you can see that. If you just talk to somebody, just check something, you'll see. Call my boss. Call my sister --- Liz. You have her number, she's my emergency contact... They'll tell you, I don't need to be here, I don't need a room. I just want to go home. Please..."

Her voice cracked. She was close to breaking down. This man had been her last hope. He placed his hand on her back. It was the kind of gesture that some people might have called comforting.

"Claire," he said calmly, "you are not in charge here."

She looked straight ahead, said nothing.

"Stand up," he ordered.

He waited as she sat still for a few seconds, with some residual defiance against doing what she was told simply because she was being told. He waited, as if he had all day to wait, and she stood up.

He opened the door, looked out into the hallway, and nodded at whoever was out there. In came a different female nurse, a middle-aged red-haired woman, and another one of the orderlies. They said nothing. Presumably they'd come to take her away, but now they too were waiting for whatever would happen next.

"Turn around."

She turned around, facing the table, and leaned her hands on it slightly to steady herself. At least, she thought, they'd tied her hands in the front, so she could at least partially use them. She could see herself in the mirror again now. She looked paler. Her eyes were wide open. She looked down, to avoid staring into her own face too long.

"Let's get something straight, Claire," he intoned, his voice still oddly calm, calmer than his words would normally indicate, "I am in charge of your treatment here. I decide how long you stay, I will decide when you will leave. Your time here could be pleasant, or unpleasant, depending on your behavior."

Claire said nothing. She was finished talking to this man. He was not going to help her. Was not interested in helping her. And she knew, somehow, that unlike the others he *saw* her. The others didn't even notice her unease, her humiliation, her overwhelming wish to be somewhere else. He saw it, he just didn't care. With just a few words from him, all of her hopes had been dashed. She had nothing to say to him.

"Not talking at all, are we?" he said, still with that eerie calm in his voice, "I do not normally do this to new patients on their first day, but you need to be shown that your behavior has consequences in this facility."

Claire was frozen. What kind of consequences?

"Typically, you would be shown to your room now and provided with a change of clothing. Pajamas, robes, slippers, that sort of thing. You're going to stay like *this* for a while. Additionally..."

Her heart sank. She did not like the word "additionally," *how much worse could it get*?

"Additionally," he continued, "You are *not* authorized to wear any outside garments. The gown is enough for you, until your behavior improves. Let's get these off you now." He looked at the nurse.

*What?* she thought, *what the hell does that mean? What garments?... he doesn't mean they're going to...*

"Hold still, sweetie," the woman whispered in a thick Southern accent. She untied the lower of two pairs of strings on the back of Claire's hospital gown, so that its two sides now kept her covered up only by gravity. She reached inside the gown, without fully opening it, and pulled Claire's underwear down off of her hips.

*Oh my god, I was right, they took my... I'm going to have to walk around this, with my...*, Claire could not even finish the thought, it was so horrible.

Her panties fell to the floor around her feet. Gingerly, she stepped out of them and left them there, not sure what to do with them now.

"Show her to her room, Pam," said the Doctor to the other two.

Claire, mortified, said nothing. She could not believe what was happening.

"Come on, honey," said Pam, "this way."

Claire followed her through the door, and suddenly realized the gown was still untied. There was nothing back there keeping it closed except gravity and good luck. Had they left it like this on purpose, or just forgotten to retie them? She was afraid to ask. How was she supposed to walk like this? Very slowly and carefully. She placed one bare foot in front of the other, and tried to move as stiffly as possible, keeping her back completely straight. *If only*, she thought, *if only they'd tied my hands behind my back*.

* * *

The hallway was long, with many more doors like the one she'd just been in. She followed the employees at some distance, due to her slower pace. They did not seem to mind; they did not stop and wait for her or scold her to speed up. They acted like this was normal. Was it normal here? What kind of place was this, where this might be normal?

They rounded a corner, turned right. For a few seconds, she couldn't see them, and they couldn't see her. How did they know she was even still following? She continued following them, she had nowhere else to go.

"Well, well," said a male voice from the hallway behind her, "you must be new."

She turned her head, and saw a man in greasy janitor's overalls, carrying a mop and pushing a wheeled bucket. He looked to be in his forties, with a beard going gray in uneven patches. A grimy red bandana covered his hair --- whatever hair he still had --- the kind of thing that looked like it doubled as a rag when he needed one. He wore thick yellow cleaning gloves, the industrial kind, not the thin medical ones the Doctor used. Everything about him said maintenance, janitorial, the people who came in after hours to empty trash cans and mop floors.

At her office, people like this didn't talk to her. They moved around her, silent and invisible, doing their work while she did hers on nights when she worked late. That was the unspoken arrangement. And yet here he was.

"You must've really done *something* to get your hands tied up like that on the first day! Usually Doc's nicer to the new ones. He must have something special planned for *you*."

Claire said nothing, and continued to walk. Slowly. Trusting her slow pace would keep the gown in place in spite of nothing physically holding it. How long was this man going to be back there, watching her walk? Now she really wanted to get around that corner, where the others had gone. But she dared not speed up.

*Oh God, oh God, please let the gown stay shut*, she thought.

"Name's Bill, by the way," the man continued, as if oblivious to her unease, "Ol' Bill, the gals all call me. Don't mind me, I'm friendly! It's the other patients you need to look out for. They might get jealous once they see Doc has a new *project* going!"

Claire tried not to even think about these words. She continued to place one foot in front of the other. *The gown stayed in place*, she thought.

As she rounded the corner, Bill got in one last parting shot, "it's gonna be nice having a new pair of cheeks peekin' out around here!"