When She Woke. Hillary Jordan
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WHEN
SHE WOKE
Hillary Jordan
This book is for my father
“Truly, friend, and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness,” said the townsman, “to find yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people.”
—NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter
Table of Contents
When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not
She tried to go back to sleep, but the white light burned
The shower became Hannah’s one pleasure and a crucial
She made it to the ninth day before she asked. She hated
On the fourteenth day, Hannah was sitting against
How many days had She been here? Twenty-two?
When the lights came on, Hannah’s lids opened with
Sunlight bouncing off concrete, glinting on razor wire
Mary magdalene herself greeted Hannah. Three
Exhaustion trumped the strangeness of her surroundings
Hannah was restless and unable to concentrate during
Hannah spent the Weekend brooding about her talk
Hannah’s Ebullience Dwindled and eventually disappeared
She walked aimlessly for close to an hour, heedless of
Hannah slept until well past noon, waking to
They asked her to tell them about herself, and Hannah
Hannah did little but sleep in the days that followed.
A short eternity Later, the trunk opened to reveal a
The briny tang of the sea was the first thing her senses
At first, when the blackness began to recede, she was
She waited twenty agonizing minutes for
WHEN SHE WOKE, SHE WAS RED. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.
She saw her hands first. She held them in front of her eyes, squinting up at them. For a few seconds, shadowed by her eyelashes and backlit by the hard white light emanating from the ceiling, they appeared black. Then her eyes adjusted, and the illusion faded. She examined the backs, the palms. They floated above her, as starkly alien as starfish. She’d known what to expect—she’d seen Reds many times before, of course, on the street and on the vid—but still, she wasn’t prepared for the sight of her own changed flesh. For the twenty-six years she’d been alive, her hands had been a honey-toned pink, deepening to golden brown in the summertime. Now, they were the color of newly shed blood.
She felt panic rising, felt her throat constrict and her limbs begin to quiver. She shut her eyes and forced herself to lie still, slowing her breathing and focusing on the steady rise and fall of her belly. A short, sleeveless shift was all that covered her, but she wasn’t cold. The temperature in the room was precisely calibrated to keep her comfortable. Punishment was meted out in other ways: in increments of solitude, monotony and, harshest of all, self-reflection, both figurative and literal. She hadn’t yet seen the mirrors, but she could feel them shimmering at the edges of her awareness, waiting to show her what she’d become. She could sense the cameras behind the mirrors too, recording her every eyeblink and muscle twitch, and the watchers behind the cameras, the guards, doctors and technicians employed by the state and the millions watching at home, feet propped up on the coffee table, a beer or a soda in one hand, eyes fixed on the vidscreen. She told herself she would give them nothing: no proofs or exceptions for their case studies, no reactions to arouse their scorn or pity. She would sit up, open her eyes, see what was there to be seen and then wait calmly for them to release her. Thirty days was not such a long time.
She took a deep breath and sat up. Mirrors lined all four walls. They reflected back a white floor and ceiling, white sleeping platform and pallet, transparent shower unit, white sink and toilet. And in the midst of all that pristine white, a lurid red blotch that was herself, Hannah Payne. She saw a red face—hers.