One thing I will never forget is that trip to the Nepenthe Wards, the rooms and rooms full of those who had taken the drug. All now rendered the same. Each room seemed to be worse than the last, tough maybe that was because I was there to visit the final room.
The summons from the state hadn’t come as a complete shock. I had lived to some extent in fear of it. Now it had come to it, my first thought was why I had to be the nominated visitor. Though later that evening I would become glad it was me. And, as the coach took me from our estate through endless similar ones to the walled and imposing hospital that had been chosen to house the Nepenthe takers, I tried to prepare myself for what I would see.
Most of my fellow visitors were obviously supporters of the movement and saw this as a way to congratulate the taker, to pointlessly express their pride in person to them. I was not in the same mood.
I saw Nepenthe as a blight, another way that had been found to ruin an otherwise peaceful existence. There had been other attempts to disrupt the state, of course, most recently the marches on the mounds, and normally they were quite rightly put down.
But this time it had resulted in a standoff between the state and the movement, each with their own hopes of finding the cure to end the situation. I had instead spent the time hoping my brother would not become involved enough to join the hordes who no longer remembered they were waiting for the revolution.
An official met us at the entrance and told us the rules of the visit: not to leave the group, not to talk to any patients except the one we’d been brought to see, not to take anything, those sort of things.
We then followed inside and started to march past the beds in which the patients sat. Through each room, bigger than the last, we walked while our guide told us what we already knew about the drug and its effects before telling us that, though it put a strain on the state, it was easily manageable. “All these wretches do is hurt their families and friends while we find the cure to bring them out of their stupor so that we may punish them before sending them home.”
“Hear, hear,” I thought but, as I said, most of my companions seemed to be supporters and didn’t seem to be listening to what they were told, or, if they were, they rolled their eyes a lot and mouthed corrections to one another: the usual talk of people coming from the alleged empire to fill empty work posts and so on.
The wards smelled of disinfectant, they were very clean and most patients had a nurse or doctor with them as we went through. You couldn’t fault the care of the state, though there were whispers, and then full blown conversations on the way home, that it was all for show. Several people made claims that these “actors” were making simple mistakes but I don’t see how they could possibly know. This was the first such hospital I had ever been in. How any of them could be medical experts was beyond me.
Eventually we reached the ward our patients were staying on. Though we each clocked our one straight away, we had to wait for our name to be called and for a nurse to take us to the appropriate bed.
Most went on cheerily, though one woman broke down the moment she saw her daughter. I was somewhere in between, still in a neutral state, neither happy nor sad, and that didn’t change until I was at my brother’s side.
I had hoped against hope that he would be differently affected. That he might have held on to something as the Nepenthe took hold but he was as blank eyed as every other patient there. He didn’t even look at me, he only stared across the room at nothing in particular. I greeted him with a hug, told him who I was and got nothing in return. Every spark that had previously glowed within him was gone. There was even less knowledge in him than when he had first been born.
Now I started to get angry but, as I walked back through the wards, I remained calm and, still in shock, I took in nothing at all until we were back in the entrance hall and our guide’s voice woke me up again.
He was again telling us, more loudly this time, about how these people were a blight on our nation, that the practice must stop and that they were working hard to cure these people to return them to us.
“And you can help,” he told us, “By volunteering to work with us to find that cure. If you do, you will spare your loved one any punishment. Just stay behind now, or think about it and let your local district representative know, and we can give you a new life away from the estates and the factories.”
Needless to say no one stayed and no one had ever volunteered.
That evening I went to see my sister-in-law. Broken, her pretty eyes staring into her tea, she barely said a word. I imagined my own wife, how she might cope, how I would be unable to cope, if this happened to us, if I or she took Nepenthe.
And my anger against my idiot brother built further up inside me.
How could he leave her and their children like this?
Yes, the state would take care of them, of course he didn’t need to worry about that, but that should not even have come into it: he should have thought about his family first and foremost before doing anything. And that thought should have stopped him.
His wife and children loved and adored him and, I thought, he did them. I don’t care what he believed in, how he felt about the country. No one should leave their family like this. Even if it was only meant to be temporary.
Filled with anger I went to have it out with the men who had put him up it. Those who had taken him under their wing and led him to the movement. Like all district leaders, ours was to be found in our estate’s pub: the only place, supposedly, that we are able to have something approaching “freedom”, the only place they say we are not watched. Other than our homes, but we are not allowed to congregate in them.
We had known each other for some years- he and my brother had tried to convert me. I had never agreed with their ideas about the world or believed in their stories of how things used to be: of choice, of freedom of movement and speech and democracy or that the mounds and plateaus had not existed before- that underneath them lay whole cities. And I always ignored their name-calling (naive, gullible, etc) and got on with the life I enjoyed, desiring no more and no less.
Neither had I ever got into the whole “drink-to-forget-and-ignore” thing. Drinking until passing out or screwing recklessly in the corner or the alleyway never appealed. Me and my wife left that behind quickly and married early.
Curiously, after Nepenthe came into being, drinking dipped. Instead people talk over only a few pints about the drug and the future. Much in the same way as they did in the run-up to the marches and the massacres, they come together to discuss the future and dream about the man who would find the cure and lead us to the new world they claim we need.
I found my man in his darkened corner; hangers-on close by, whispering in his ear.
When he saw me, though, and the look on my face, he made them go away and ushered me to sit down with him.
I don’t remember the exact words but we spoke at odds for quite a while. He stayed calm and collected, repeating the phrases I had heard so many times before as I got angrier and angrier at this fixed expression of composure and calmness.
I remember I was first to break. Upon seeing that I could get nowhere, I broke down and begged him for the cure, told him I would break into the ward, give it to my brother and then sneak him out, keep him hidden, safe. On and on I repeated this request until I finally just sat sobbing at him.
And his expression then altered, too. His face became downcast as well. And he reached out, touched my hand, told me to calm down. And then he came clean.
I remember this part, word for word. “We never meant for any of this. After the failed marches and the killings, we survivors didn’t know what to do, what our next move would be.
“Then our leaders were given this drug. They thought it would kill them and they all attempted suicide. When the rest of us saw what it actually did we formed a new plan. We never thought it would escalate like this, become a new- what’s that word they call it? Re-li-gin? All we can do is keep it up, hope for the best. Believe ourselves. If protest and fighting do nothing, what else can we do?”
And then.
“But there is no cure. Not one we know of, anyway. We have no way to find out what Nepenthe is, let alone find a cure. I’m sorry, but your brother is, for the time being at least, lost.”
And with that I stopped crying, wiped away my tears, calmly stood, turned around, walked up to the bar and ordered vodka after vodka.
As I drank I thought about the information I had just received and slowly decided upon a new plan of action. A plan I distinctly remember in every single detail.
I would return to the Nepenthe Wards and volunteer, help find the cure and make sure my brother was first. By helping I would be able to secure his release and take both our families away from the estates and start a whole new life- something they had promised and I would ensure we got.
And I remember leaving the pub and that as I left I felt good and happy, hopeful that all would, in time, be fine.
I woke up in a white tiled room, my head pounding, reminding me why I did not drink. Across the cell was an official waiting for me to come round so he could tell me why I was there.
He told me, smiling throughout, that I had strolled up to a policeman late the night before and, in my drunken state, had joyfully told him about my meeting with the movements’ district leader and my plans to conquer Nepenthe.
He then thanked me and let me go immediately.
I returned home to sleep it off, waving away the questions of my concerned wife.
Next time I woke it was at the hands of my wife. She told me that the government had backtracked on Nepenthe, that they had shot everyone who had taken the drug and that they would continue to do so.
Now there is more drunkenness than ever, now there is despair once more in every face. I will never forget these faces either.
Now, in my brother’s room, clearing away his belongings, I find a piece of Nepenthe.
This is my confession.
Written for entry in The Bridport Prize 2013. Edited and posted for the Light and Shade Challenge to accompany the following picture prompt:
