A frantic rapping just outside interrupted the meeting, and the door squeaked open. A breathy female voice inserted itself. “Pardon, Doctor. It’s the man in the male long-stay ward—he’s suffered another attack.”

“Very well.” After a blustery exhale, footsteps shuffled, then the door slammed shut.

But it did not lock.

Did not lock.

My heart pounded, three beats for every second that swept on silently, drawing those men and their footfalls farther from my cell and its unlocked door. My skin grew clammy, a line of moisture gathering along my legs where they lay cemented together. No one came.

I slowly activated my stiff muscles and pushed up on the bed, swinging my heavy limbs down and feeling about the cold floor for shoes as I fought the oddest sense of imbalance and heaviness. I could feel the blood recirculating, as if I’d lain comatose for a week.

Maybe I had.

Whiteness closed in around the edges of my vision as I lifted my head a bit too quickly. I saw two of everything, then four, then two, then back to one again, and the air felt thick. I forced myself to stand, holding out my arms for balance.

I could do this. I could. The woman who played an entire piano concerto without a scrap of music, who drew more listeners than her male counterparts, who survived a man like my father, could certainly stand up and walk out the front door of this rotten place. Especially since no one had a valid reason to keep me here.

They didn’t.

Stretching my neck, my legs, I eased myself up, preparing for whatever would come.

“You’re getting on quite well.” A voice to my right slid under my skin and chilled my bones.

I turned on wooden legs to see the bassoon-voiced doctor, who had apparently sent his partner on, remaining to observe me from against the door.

Thornhill. This was Thornhill, the superintendent, and a shadowy fear began to overtake me. Why, though? I couldn’t remember the details. The gears of my mind groaned into movement. Such fog, clouding what I needed to remember. “Where . . . Who . . . ?” I worked my mouth, but there wasn’t enough voice to come out. My throat was dry. A cotton-lined tube.

“Hurstwell Asylum, and your father.”

“My . . . father?” I clutched the back of a wooden chair. I began to shake. Impossible. Impossible.

Now I knew for certain this was all a catastrophic mistake. He couldn’t do this to me—not anymore.

1

I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.

~Frantz Lizst

THREE MONTHS EARLIER, MANCHESTER