“So, this man came that night. Not Paul. It was no one I knew. He worked at the clinic, but I didn’t know that part yet.” Another big, deep breath. Just keep on breathing. “Neither did Riley. She was scared. The guy took us on one of the paths—they had a whole network of gravel paths through the woods—and we walked for what felt like forever.”
I can still see the pale pebbles, like something from a fairy tale. I inhale through my nose and blow it out my mouth, telling myself I can do this.
“Riley grabbed my hand, and I remember thinking I’d do anything to keep her safe.” I wipe my eyes again, thinking about Riley. How young and innocent she was. Big, hazel eyes and pale blond hair. She was just a kid.
I have to rub my eyes again, and I feel Josh lean toward me. I look at the swatch of couch between us.
“Finally, we saw this big, white building. It was three stories, and it looked like a hotel or…I guess a hospital. But it wasn’t.” Mills’ eyes widen slightly as I look up at him.
“It had been a prison,” I rasp. “The whole place…had been a prison. Decades before. It had big gates and…” I shake my head, looking at the couch again. Miller shifts like maybe he wants to come closer, but I straighten my shoulders and keep going.
“I knew as we were walking in that it was bad news.” Chills pop out on my arms. My throat tightens and stings so bad, thinking of how stupid I was. “Sometimes…in my dreams, we run away and see the chain-link fence with barbed wire on the top.” I glance up at him. “It’s really there.”
I swallow. Set my eyes down on his couch. I shouldn’t look up.
“There were three floors,” I say, tracing the edge of a cushion. “Clinic on the first floor. Girls on second. And the boys on third.”
My eyes flicker up to his on instinct, but I know that if I look at him, I’ll start to lose it more, so I look back down at the couch.
“This part’s bad.” My voice sounds raspy and weak, even though I try to keep it neutral. “What you should remember is that it’s over now.” I look him in the eye again for half a second, to be sure my point is made. “It was bad,” I say. “But now it’s over.”
Josh nods, his face looking graver now, as if he’s bracing.
I blow a breath out, hunch my shoulders, and try to pick out the strands of color in his couch. The little blue threads. Little gray ones.
“We all had our own rooms. And what they mostly did was try to turn my dick straight.” I shut my eyes, cupping my hand over them. “There was a lot of straight porn. They had female nurses for the guys, and they would come and jerk us off and just to help things, we’d get drugs, like so-called ‘party drugs’ to make us come and make us like it. So we maybe felt more straight?” My eyes flicker up to his, and I jerk them back down. “I don’t know. Fortunately—unfortunately?—it didn’t work for me. When they showed gay porn, if you got hard, in your IV you would get what I called barf juice. So your stomach would hurt, and you’d feel pretty sick, and then you wouldn’t get a boner.”
I rub my throbbing forehead again. I wonder what his face looks like, but I’m not brave enough to look.
“It was all fucked up and twisted,” I say, my voice sounding tired and raspy. “They thought if they had those nurses jerk us off enough, we’d all go straight. I don’t know if it worked for the other guys, but I think no, because eventually there were a lot of us down on the first floor. Meaning” —I glance up, not really seeing him— “in the later part of the day, we would be taken down there for more…treatment. And it was never only just me being taken down there.”
My eyes slide to Josh’s face, and it looks stricken. I can tell he’s trying to look neutral, which makes me almost laugh. But I don’t. I rub my palm over my knee and press my lips together for a second.
“Sometimes they would get you pretty high on stuff, and when they took you back to your room from the ‘clinic’ they would run IVs and stuff to cool you down or give you fluids. So, the rooms themselves were like a hospital room, almost.”
I look up at him, feeling brave for just this one breath, and his eyes are red. His face is pale. Because he’s normal. This stuff would be a shock.
“Remember, I’m out now,” I say, at the same time he croaks, “You were scared of hospitals.”