When She Was Bad: A Thriller by Jonathan Nasaw

ECT had any idea how their cures had been accomplished—that knowledge had disappeared along with the alters who had undergone the procedure.
    And that was the way Corder intended to keep it until he had compiled such a demonstrable record of successes that even the most virulent ECT critics would be unable to deny the efficacy of the treatment—and even then, he expected there would be a hell of a battle when word finally did get out….
     

    Patty and Corder were alone with the patient when she regained consciousness. Thirty minutes had passed—the clamps and electrodes had been removed, the telltale goo wiped from the girl’s temples, and a Band-Aid covered the puncture on the inside of her elbow.
    “Lily?” Patty said softly, as the girl’s eyelids fluttered open.
    Corder put his hand on Patty’s beefy arm to get her attention, and shook his head forcefully. “Don’t want to plant any suggestions,” he whispered, then tugged her back from the table and took her place in the patient’s line of vision. “How are you feeling?”
    “My head,” she whispered, “Oh God, my head.”
    “We can give you something for the pain in just a second. First though, I need you to tell me your name.”
    A moment of panic; Lilith felt the seconds ticking by as she searched her memory—or rather, searched for her memory. Then it all came flooding back to her—the tent, the circle of ogres, Mama Rose and Carson, the coffee shop, the psychiatrist, the photos, the tape recorder—and somehow, though confused and disoriented, Lilith understood that her very survival depended on these sadists thinking she was that poor little rich girl the shrink had told her about. “Lily,” she whispered, in a rough approximation of the girlish voice on the tape recorder. “Lily DeVries.”
    “Is it?”
    It is as far as you’re concerned, asshole, thought Lilith, nodding her head gingerly. But even that slight motion sent nauseating, purply-black waves of pain sloshing against the inside of her skull. “I think I’m gonna—”
    “Hasten, Jason, get the basin,” recited the mountain of mulleted flesh at Lilith’s side as she slid a curved metal pan under Lilith’s chin.
    Lilith turned her head and vomited clear bile into the receptacle. “Better out than in,” said the other woman, tenderly wiping the clinging strands from Lilith’s chin.
    Fuck you and the ox you rode in on, thought Lilith, closing her eyes to hide the murder in her heart. Just a little closer, she thought—just bring that nose a little closer….
    6

    Lyssy was in love. Lily had been his last thought before he fell asleep and his first upon awakening. Picturing her—those eyes, so big and dark; that rich dark hair, like midnight and cream when the light hit it just so; the soft voice; the shy smile; the promise of a luscious figure under that too-large bomber jacket—filled him with emotions he’d only read about before. He took all his meals that day in the dining hall and wore the psych techs out with repeated requests to visit all the places he might run into her—the arboretum, the library, the pool, the game room. When she wasn’t at any of them, he realized why people said love hurt—and why five minutes of that hurt was preferable to a hundred years without it.
    But the timing! Falling in love just as his life was beginning to crumble around him struck Lyssy as profoundly unfair. He tortured himself with wild schemes and improbable hopes, even allowing himself to consider, for the first time, the possibility of escaping from the Institute before the deputies came to take him away. Then when Dr. Al dropped off the invitation to Lyssy’s own birthday party, hand-lettered and decorated by Alison with birthday icons—balloons, a cake with candles, packages tied up in ribbons and bows—he realized with a heady sense of guilt that that would be the perfect opportunity: freedom would be as close as the front door of the director’s residence.
    But