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cleansed her hand and wrapped it in white bandage strips. A deep voice came from the body with the big hands.  "How did this happen? Has she entered hysteria?"
"I don't think so, doctor. I walked into the room, and she was standing stunned, bleeding. I think she's still borderland. Perhaps I should check on her more often. Do you feel treatment is necessary?" The stocky nurse spoke in a low voice, waiting for a reply from the man with big hands.
She looks very calm to me, but giver a cold shower just in case. We must keep her borderland. Don't need another one entering hysteria around here. Although we've never had great difficulty with this one, have we?"
"No, doctor, just the occasional incident. I'll send her down to the showering area."
Anna looked up, aware that the rise and fall of low voiced had stopped. She was trying to remember something. She looked down at the floor, at her dirty dress and her bare feet. She knew not that she was in the asylum. But she was bothered by the vact that she did not know anything else. She found herself again following the starched nurse down the dark hall, mumbling unintelligible babble to herself. Ann felt herself become more aware of her surroundings, and the weight of mad souls and wild eyes pressed in on her, smothering her. What was it that she had to remember? Something important. She had to remember it before the others pulled her into their world, before she became like them. She pulled at her tangled brown hair, realizing that she had not been in here forever. She had been somewhere before this asylum. Where?
She paid no attention to where she was going until she suddenly found herself in the showers. Thousands of droplets of freezing water pelted her body. She crouched, trembling violently. The icy numbness invaded the cracks of her body until she could no longer feel or think. Her mind shut off.
Later it returned to her. She sat huddled, back alone in her dirty, dark room. She leaned into a corner and pulled her cold legs against her chest. Had she eaten? She was not sure. Had she gone down for her daily activity with the other women? She could not remember that either. It did not matter. She concentrated on trying to remember where she had been before...before this godforsaken place. It hadn't always been winter. She was not mad like the rest of them. She tried to convince herself of that, but she felt the weight of their insanity pressing down and destroying what was left of hers.
A gray hair drifted in front of her eyes. Whe had it turned gray? She knew it had been a rich chestnut before...before this place. Suddenly, she remembered a reflection of herself in a mirror. She was young, proud, and smiling. Smiling?
The doctor had big hands...why were big hands familiar? Oh! The young woman in her mind...she looked into the mirror, and a big hand rested on her shoulder. A young man. Anna concentrated harder. A handsome young man, gazing at the woman in the mirror. But the young woman stopped smiling. They argued, and she got up and ran out of the room.
Anna was growing cold, so cold. She shivered uncontrollably. She wanted to sleep, but she had to concentrate. She had to remember where she had been before. Who she had been before?
She heard her voice yelling; she heard harsh words exchanged. The man with the big hands was bellowing. She remembered feelings of overwhelming anger; she saw him lift his arm and slap her across the face with his big hand. But she had raised her arm to defend herself, to strike back.
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