frightening.”
“There is nothing to be frightened of,” he whispered in my ear. “Would I ever let anything happen to you?”
He guided me to a straight-backed chair and sat me down, kneeling in front of me. “Doesn’t that make you feel at peace?” he asked, his gray eyes looking up into mine, questioning me. To have said no would have shattered him.
“The goal is to make the patient feel secure,” he said. He reached around and tugged at something on the back of the jacket. “Feel these loops?”
His cheek was so close to mine. I had not taken a breath in some time. My throat and lungs seemed to have shut down. Unable to make myself speak, I nodded. He stood, walking over to the wall and returned with a long leather strap.
“If the patient continues to struggle, we attach the strap to the jacket and hook it to the wall. That way we may calm the patient without confining her to a bed. I want you to know how humane our treatments are. No one is hurt in our care.”
He took another leather strap off the wall, and then came behind me, and I felt two little tugs at my shoulders as he clipped the straps to the jacket. My arms were going numb inside the garment, but the beating of my heart overrode the feeling. He yanked the straps tight, pulling my back straight against the chair, correcting my already impeccable posture. I had the image of using this contraption on my pupils; they would never complain about the backboards again. He hooked the straps to the wall and came round to look at me and admire his work. I was rigid and completely imprisoned.
“Now that doesn’t hurt a bit, does it?” he asked, his voice as smooth as warm butter. “It can’t be any worse than a corset. In fact, my theory is that women are accustomed to submitting to the corset, so it predisposes them to the straitjacket.”
Still struggling to take more than the shallowest of breaths, I could not quite speak. Nothing was smothering me, or physically hindering my breathing, but the feeling of being helpless overwhelmed me. He could do anything he liked to me, and I would be powerless to stop him.
Seward knelt in front of me again. “You are struggling, Mina, but in reality, you are swaddled like a baby in the safety of its cradle. Struggle heightens the very hysteria we try to cure. Don’t struggle, Mina. Submit.”
“I-I want to submit, John, but my body wants to struggle.”
“It’s not the body that is struggling but the mind.” He put his finger under my chin. “Relax, Mina. Relax. Let the sound of my voice relax you.”
He went back to the wall, returning with two black leather cuffs. “When the jacket is not enough-which is rare-we confine the feet. It helps, as you will see.” He knelt, buckling a cuff around each of my ankles, and then hooked them together. He scooped a chain from under the chair and attached it to the buckle that united the cuffs. I could barely move my feet at all.
Seward was on his knees now, staring up at me like a suppliant praying to a saint. He looked at me with the sort of adoration and excitement that he claimed prayer aroused in women. I was afraid, desperate at being denied the use of my hands, arms, feet, legs, but at the same time, I suddenly felt powerful, as if I could demand anything and not be refused.
“How beautiful you are, Mina,” he said, his eyes grazing every inch of my face. “How your skin glows. And your eyes, well, they are devastating.” He let out a loud sigh and moved closer to me. His eyes were focused on my lips, and I was sure he was about to kiss me. I was afraid of what he would do if I tried to stop him, but I knew that I must.
“Was Lucy confined this way?” I blurted it out on hot, fast breath, and he jumped back as if he had been kicked in the stomach, bending over so that I saw the top of his head, and the funny way that his hair was parted on a diagonal, like an incision across the scalp.
“Lucy.” He said her name, looking at me with emotions I could not identify-pride? loss? humiliation? weariness? anger? “No, not like this.”
He did not meet my eye but began to unfasten the buckles and ties that bound me. Once loosened, I slipped the jacket off and handed it to him. “Rub your arms to bring back the circulation,” he said.
I did as he instructed, and the blood flowed back into my arms.
“I do not think it wise to speak on a subject that will undoubtedly cause pain,” he said.
I did not know if he meant to me or to himself.
“She was my dearest friend. I thought that knowing about her final days would help. I need some satisfaction, John, or my grief will go on and on.” My eyes began to well up with tears.
He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief, but he did not look at me. “I must finish my morning rounds with the patients. I think it best if you rest before lunch.”
Sniffling, I followed him out of the room, where he handed me over to a hall supervisor, who escorted me back to my quarters, where Jonathan was in good spirits after his first examination by Dr. Von Helsinger. “I believe he can help, Mina. I believe he can get to the bottom of what happened to me, and why the experience has left me in this weakened and melancholic condition. He uses the method called hypnosis to lull the patient into a relaxed condition where memories return and are easily related.”
“Has he given you any medication?” I asked. “Or any treatments?”
“Nothing of the sort,” he replied. “We talk, that is all. Unburdening myself to him leaves me feeling uplifted and more hopeful, though when it is all over, I barely recall what I have said.”
I satisfied myself with this offer of hope, remaining confident that I had done the right thing in bringing him to the asylum. At least Von Helsinger did not seem to be harming him.
I sent a note to John Seward asking him again to allow me to volunteer in some way, and he sent a note back suggesting that I might read to the more lucid, calm patients. I was happy with this idea; I thought that if I could be alone with some of the patients, I could question them about Lucy.
The following morning, Mrs. Snead came to fetch me, and I accompanied her on her rounds to deliver breakfast trays to the patients. The wealthier patients, I had learned, had private rooms, while the others slept in dormitories, “where they fight like dogs, madam, sometimes tearing the hair out of each other’s heads. The medicines calm them, though, so most sleep like babes.”
I tried to inure myself to the pervasive moans, screams, and shrieks filling the atmosphere, but each loud cry released a fresh burst of pain or anger into the air, rattling my nerves. “Why are they screaming?” I asked.
She looked at me as if I were the crazy one. “Because they are out of their heads, madam. The worst ones are shackled to the beds and they do not like it.” Yet Seward declared that he calmed patients without strapping them to their beds. What else was he lying about?
“Do you remember the patient Lucy Westenra?” I asked.
“I do, indeed. The poor thing was as thin as a rail and refused to eat. They did what they could for her, madam. Tended to her day and night. The doctors did it all themselves. No, none of us was good enough to touch Miss Lucy. Broke the young doctor’s heart when she passed. The old doctor’s too. And the young gentleman who was her husband, all of them sat up with her for so long. Didn’t want to give up the body. ’Twere all so sad.”
I wanted to ask her more questions, but she was fumbling with her great ring of keys. She found the right one and opened a door, gesturing for me to go into the room where a lone woman sat, face upturned and lips moving, talking into the air. I had seen this lady, Vivienne, playing cards the day before, and something about the way that she had held my gaze with her deep green eyes had intrigued me.
“Mrs. Harker is going to visit you and read to you, Vivienne,” Mrs. Snead said. “Be a good girl, now.”
“You finished your porridge, I see,” I said, looking at the empty bowl on her tray as Mrs. Snead whisked it away. She shut the door, locking it behind us. The openings with bars on them ensured that a cry for help would be heard immediately. Nonetheless, I did not like the sound of the key twisting in the lock. But looking at the elderly lady wrapped in an old shawl with moth holes, I could not see a reason to be afraid.
Vivienne waited until she heard Mrs. Snead’s footsteps recede. “I always take every scrap of my meal,” she replied. “I must be strong when he comes for me. He is going to take me away.” She smiled like a little girl with a secret.
Seward had said that Vivienne had been in the asylum for many years. Was she actually being released? “Who is coming for you?”
