“This isn’t no jive loony bin,” Captain Cream said. “This is a Hilton!” Captain Cream was a light‑skinned numbers runner born in Trinidad, who believed he was a comic book hero. Even the doctors called him Captain. He was lean and fastidious and spoke with a lilt and grace that kept her from noticing much of the time that he was walleyed.

Sybil sniffed. “You can be sure it’s for their convenience and not ours! They’re important gentlemen! Even the laboratory mice must have nice clean cages.” Sybil had recovered some energy.

Captain Cream, Sybil, and Tina Ortiz stood gathered in the doorway with Connie to see what the new men’s attendant, Tony, was doing to Skip, bending over him with scissors. Skip’s fine brown ringlets were falling on white towels. “Alas, Delilah, you do me wrong!” Skip sang to Tony. Snip, snip. The hair tumbled. It looked as if he was being drafted. His big, curiously vulnerable‑looking skull showed gray. This too they would do to her in time, this too.

“And will I get a wig, Tony?”

“Only the women, punk,” Tony grunted. “Hold still, or I’ll cut your ear off.”

“Like Van Gogh. He was mad too. But he did it to himself. Why don’t you let me have a scissors so I can do it?” Skip made a half‑playful, half‑serious grab.

Tony clouted him in the chest, and Skip fell back coughing. “Stop trying to hold the doctors up.”

Snip, snip, past his left ear, coming around. Only one long cluster of curls clung to his cheek. Tony sliced through that and then swept up. When he returned with a razor, Skip stopped joking. He had been given no breakfast. Soon he would be taken away to a hospital near Columbia, where Redding and Morgan would drill a hole in his skull and insert their electrodes. Skip would return to them violated.

She stood with Tina and Alvin as he was carted out. His eyes were open but without expression. After the outer door had shut on him, the patients hung around, as if by staring at the door they might read something of what was happening.

“You like that kid, uh?” Tina asked her. Her new roommate was about her own age, with a long record of drug busts and commitments and disorderly conducts.

“He loaned me money to call mi sobrina, and he knew I couldn’t even pay him back.”

“He’s got it to loan. Easy to be nice if you can afford it, hey? But I guess he’s in plenty trouble now, like the rest of us.” Tina was Puerto Rican, born in the Bronx, skinny with only a little extra meat on her hips. She talked fast but her sentences often trailed away as if she did not expect to be listened to. She was scrappy and would not settle down to being a good patient. She never stopped hating the hospital. “Just one more way to get busted,” she said, glaring at their room. She was the first one on any newspaper that came into the ward, after the staff, although she would read only the first section, the news, muttering to herself, sneering as if she could not be fooled, “Crooks, big crooks!”

They went off together to visit Alice, who lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, as she did most of the time now. She looked ten years older, she looked her full age and then some, all the sass and vinegar bled from her long body.

“Hey, Alice, you know what them bums are trying to pull now?” Tina asked, trying to rouse her.

But Alice only shook her head. The black pageboy wig was stuck on her head crooked, and she did not straighten it. When it fell off, she did not replace it. When the attendant found it on the floor, she scolded Alice, telling her how ungrateful she was. Alice lay and blinked.

The only time Connie saw her look like her old self was when one of the doctors came to use her for a demonstration to an interested visitor. Then her eyes shone blood red and she sang long chains of bitter curses until the doctor pushed the button that shut her up. Now that Dr. Morgan had lost his fear of her, there was something ugly in his demonstrations. He particularly liked to stimulate the point that produced in Alice a sensual rush, until once she kissed his hand and told him he was good to her.

“I got to fool those wiseasses,” she told them, “or they going to stick more needles in. I just stringing them along.” But she did not sound as if she believed that. When she tried to fight back, the monitor turned off her rage and left her confused. Alice seemed closer to being mad than she ever had. She made up stories to account for what she did, because she literally did not know what she would do next. Yet she felt as if she were deciding. “You wait and see,” she said, winking blearily, “who come out on top in the end.”

“You ran away because you want to return to society,” Acker was saying to her, his square beard wagging on his chin. “But what you don’t understand is that’s exactly what we want to help you do!”

Ever since she had run away, she had been of particular interest to Acker. She had the feeling he was an uneasy fifth wheel to the project, the psychologist added for some kind of show. He made up reasons for what the others did in terms not exclusively medical. She did not understand more, but she saw his uneasiness, his slippery footing with the doctors. Even the junior partner, Morgan, tried to patronize him. Now Acker took an interest in her. He was proud he had got her to sign the permission forms, but he did not let up his pressure.

“What you don’t see, Connie, is that if it wasn’t for us, you’d face spending the rest of your life where we found you. Now, you don’t want that. Do you? He waited for an answer. He sat with his hands flexed on his spread knees.

As he seemed prepared to wait all day, she mumbled at last, “No, I don’t want to spend my life here. Do you?”

“I certainly wouldn’t. So, Connie, perhaps you can see we’re working for your benefit. After all, why should society care? You’ve proved you can’t live with others. They locked you away where you can’t harm others or yourself. Isn’t that so?”

“But I can be harmed here. Isn’t that so?” She tossed her head.

“You’re together enough to notice what happens to old patients, how they become acclimated to life in the hospital. After a while they can no longer function outside. It’s a secure life.”

“Maybe for you.”

“You know where your next meal is coming from. You have a bed, a roof over your head. All right, you say you don’t want that security. You want to go back to society.”

“I want to go back to my life!”

“This isn’t your life? This admission isn’t the first for you. I think this is likely to be your life for some years to come if we don’t help you. Instead of just warehousing you, we’re prepared to help you. This is the first time in your life you’ve ever had quality medical attention. The affluent hire psychiatrists, but you’ve never had real treatment. We want you to function again, but without risk of committing those out‑of‑control acts. Without danger of your attacking some child again, or some other person near and dear to you.”

Connie ground her teeth. “Any person not in a wheelchair can hurt somebody. Haven’t you ever hit anybody? Ever?”

“Connie, you’re resisting. You’re the patient. You know why you’re here. The more you resist, the more you punish yourself. Because when you fight us, we can’t help you.”

The orderlies brought Skip back from his two days off the ward. Acker scurried off to see the results, leaving her in peace for a while.

“Think of the stories of heroic prisoners who tried again and again to escape,” Luciente said, clapping her on the back heartily. “One defeat is nothing. You must keep on the lookout for other holes in their security.”

“If only I could get out for a weekend furlough! I know I could get away from Dolly easy. Even Luis would have to sleep sometimes.”

“Why not? But try! You’re important to us, we want you to survive and break out. One attempt, one failure–you have to take that for granted. What works the first time? Poof! If I’m stiffing on a task, I may fail twenty, thirty times to fix the proper gene balance. Each time I neglect some crucial factor. But finally it blossoms! So too you must work at escape. Now you’re stronger for the exercise and your feet will heal tougher.”