Chapter 1

Fall From Grace

A board creaked. A small shape flinched under the covers in the dark at the break in the silence. She stared at the line of light that had appeared on the floor in front of the door. He was brushing his teeth. The time began counting down in her head.

Unconsciously she drew her knees up to her chest. She felt it happening again. As the fear welled up in the pit of her stomach, something else shifted in her head…a terrible feeling…like a wrinkle of heat in her brain. It germinated…her mind began to fill with a white, hot anger. But it was something more…a horrible, numb rage. "No," she told herself. The feeling scared her; it made her light-headed and she felt like she was going to be sick. Closing her eyes she tried to push it away…push it back. "No, not again."

Instead she thought about her hiding place behind the storage shed. She could see that small space in the old tree now. Just big enough for her to squeeze in and keep out of sight. She could sit there for hours…listening to the breeze brush against the leaves…feel the little black ants crawling on her arm. She watched them searching across her skin; feeling their way with their antennae writhing and their small, thin legs tickling her hands. They didn't know she wasn't part of the tree…she kept so still…so quiet. She WAS part of the tree. No one could see the dark-haired 8 year old as she huddled unseen in the cool womb of the ash tree; listening to the birds and people mowing their lawns.

She had spent everyday so far this summer in the tree. She hated Chicago. She missed the old house; Mommy making peanut butter sandwiches before leaving to drop her off at Cherry's, her old babysitter. It was nice then; not perfect…but nice. Mommy always had to work, but she had Cherry. The large, soft woman felt like the embodiment of Mother. She was always so warm and smelled like baby powder. Cherry had taken care of her almost everyday since she was a baby, Mommy said. Oh, how she missed those days; when there was nothing she had to hide from.

He loudly cleared his throat and spat into the sink. Her eyes shot open. The line of light flickered on the floor as he started to leave the bathroom and instead paused in the doorway. For a silent moment she hoped; gripping the covers around her knees. The light flicked off and she could here the board creak again. She felt so sick; the blood was draining from her face. Then, in the darkness she felt it. The door was being slowly pushed open. Her stomach tightened as a shadow slipped into the room. She felt so cold. She closed her eyes and thought of the tree…of the ants…of the breeze shuddering the leaves…anything but the man making his way to the side of her bed.

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"She's not going to want you in there," said the doctor as she held her hand up to stop the man in front of her. He was a prick; she could tell just by looking at him…the Hugo Boss suit…the immaculate hair cut…the stupid smirk on his face.

"But I told you, I have an order from Judge Claymore. I need to see how far she's been able to come under this…remarkable institution's care." There was that grin again.

She shook her head. "Look, Dr. Graham, she had another episode, but she had been completely cooperative for the past three months until last week's misunderstanding. But she's fine now. You going in there will destroy any kind of ground we may have covered…and you know it."

"I'll be the judge of that, Dr. …Dr. Sheridan," he said glancing at her name tag and moving her hand out of the way. "You have nothing to worry about. The judge needs a second opinion. You see, the governor made some cuts to our funding. The state doesn't want to pay for your experimentation any longer. It's my job to find out whether any progress has been made in the last four years; whether it would be worth it to the board to continue funding your research."

"The board has never held any of my reports in question. All the documentation is there. The results have been slow, but consistent. Dr. Ellis was here last month and wrote a full evaluation then," Alice Sheridan replied.

The man stepped closer. "The Ellis report was inconclusive and neither the judge nor the board can wait anymore. Out of all the patients you have here, the Malone case has been of most concern to them; and of course, has been the subject to the most scrutiny. She is incurable. The board is tired of this game. She needs to be moved to a more suitable institution..."

"You mean cheaper," Sheridan cut in.

The man lowered his face and smiled; scratching his brow. "Dr., she's not getting better here. You and I both know that. But the board is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt." He smiled, wryly. "That's why they sent me, Ms. Sheridan."

She stood toe to toe with him, but she knew she couldn't argue. The board had doubted her methods from the get go. But they had allowed her to conduct her study on the potential rehabilitation of the criminally insane for the past four years. She had begged the institute for the Malone case. The opportunity to recover some kind of positive response in a severely traumatized and homicidal case like Emilie was more than worth the promises she had to make to the board. Even at that time, she knew she couldn't make good on any of them. But, Emilie was a challenge…a risk worth taking, and now…it was over.

The past four years had seen some improvement. Without the negative stimulus of encounters with men, Emilie was much more cooperative. She had even begun to show signs that there was still some humanity behind those cold eyes. Emilie's periods of lucidness were growing steadily stronger; at least to those who spent much time with her.

Dr. Sheridan had brought the young woman a canary about a year ago, and to her surprise, Emilie had responded to the little bird with a startling affection. She still didn't talk much, but she could go for walks alone in the courtyard and would sometimes pick at and eat small portions of food left in her room. One of the nurses had even given Emilie a record of old violin solos, which Emilie seemed to adore. She would sit and listen for hours; and Dr. Sheridan and the other nurses knew she was dancing inside her head. Emilie really had been doing well.

But, undeniably, she still had moments of relapse where there was a visible transformation into another "person". The Emilie that Dr. Sheridan's methods sought to strengthen was the quiet, rather introspective Emilie. This Emilie could play violin and desperately wanted red pointe shoes. This Emilie was shy and prone to tears, but at the same time very reserved, very thoughtful and extraordinarily witty.

The other Emilie, stood out in stark contrast. This Emilie was much more outgoing, much more eccentric and much less forgiving.This Emilie was known to lash out if you turned your back to her. Because of her instability she posed a considerable threat to anyone in her vicinity. She would watch…hate…and mistrust everything anyone said or did. This Emilie was playful, quick to laugh and harshly vindictive.

As a whole, Emilie was divided amongst herself in how to deal with pain. She always accused any man she saw of taken something of hers. She never said what she believed they took from her, but Dr. Sheridan knew. Emilie mourned her theft of innocence, by her own father. And most undoubtedly, she ached for a time before she was lost to her pain, wrath and regret.

Emilie was still the small child who had watched her mother bleed to death in a brutal car crash. She had been trapped in the car, alone and frightened, with her mother's body for almost two days before someone found the wreckage at the bottom of a gully. Emilie was the same little girl who was sent to live with a physically and sexually abusive father; the same Emilie who finally snapped and violently murdered that father. She had stabbed him so many times that the coroner could not accurately make a decision on how many there had been. All that anyone knew was that the girlfriend had come home and found a mangled mess of gore on the floor in the living room. Where his face should have been, was no more than a blood and pulp, and his chest was gutted. The police had found Emilie, unconscious, in an empty bathtub upstairs; covered in blood and with fresh bruises. Her father must have beaten her and she had finally given into that terrible pain and anger; that same unimaginable pain and anger that she was a slave to now.

When Emilie woke up in the hospital four days later, she was not the same little girl that anyone had known from before. She was either completely unresponsive or she lashed with intense violence. One such instance, being an unfortunately orderly at the first institution they placed her in. He took his eyes off her long enough for her to rush him and push him over a chair. He had fallen and she repeatedly hit him over the head with a tray. It had taken four orderlies to pull Emilie off the body. In her senseless rage she shrieked at the men, "I want it back! You took it from me! Give it back!" Even after they medicated her, she still repeated those requests and accusations in a soft voice, her face emotionless. The orderly died of course; and as a result, for the next 8 years, until she was 16, they made sure she existed in a constant medicated stupor.

So, of course a young Dr. Alice Sheridan would jump at the mention of tackling the Malone case. Repairing the years of mishandling and the seriously tormented mind of this young woman would become something of an obsession with Dr. Sheridan. She needed to prove that her proposed methods could completely transform the concept of the state's lifetime incarceration of the criminally insane, to a program of rehabilitation. Who better than the infamous Emilie Malone to prove that the methods could prove successful? Emilie was indeed a challenge, but one that Dr. Sheridan felt confident about. Emilie had been fine at one time; before the trauma, Emilie had been a normal healthy eight year old child. Watching your mother bleed to death at six and being physically and sexually abused for the following two years was enough to make anyone snap.

But now, they were giving up on her. They would put her in another institution; the Smith's Grove Sanitarium in Warren county. It was notoriously understaffed and where most of the hopeless, criminally insane ended up. It would be Emilie's grave. It would be the end of all hope for the rehabilitation of these seriously misunderstood people; the end of Dr. Alice Sheridan's work. It was a strike to her pride and to years of research, and here was this cocky tool coming to carry out the death blow.

She couldn't do anything but step aside as he ushered in three male orderlies. He glanced back at her with a nod and a sneer then quickly followed them into the room.

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"I can't take responsibility for this. I told Dr. Graham that it was more than a bad idea. He instigated the episode." Dr. Sheridan paced with the phone in her hand and gave a deep sigh. "Yes. Yes. I know…Yes, Sir, I understand." She stared at the phone for a moment as she hung up the receiver.

Well, that was that. They wanted Emilie back in Illinois. She would be transported to Smith's Grove within the week.

Alice Sheridan slowly walked out of her office and down the hallway; nodding at the nurse that quickly rushed by. She made her way to an elevator and pressed the button to get to the next upper level. When the doors opened she made a left and walked towards a door farther down the hall, then stopped in front of it. She stared in through the window at a dark-haired young woman seated in a chair looking out of the sunlit window. Her porcelain-skinned face was remarkably pretty and framed in wispy curls. She gave the impression of innocence, but her light blue eyes were cold and empty.

"We all failed you, Em…No one stopped him from hurting you…and now I can't stop them from taking away the last hope you had."