As a result of Mildred's excessive exuberance Sorrel had been transported to Hadamar; a maximum security institution for the criminally insane; an institution, from its inception, known as the worst possible place any patient might ever be drawn into or in Sorrel's case, compelled to enter. Even the name, taken from a Nazi place of horror, conjured the most frightening images. This was the kind of place a person entered, but from which they never returned.
Originally intended as a staging area for people in need of unique interrogation techniques; a place where inmates could be processed in special ways, usually for departure to foreign countries where more macabre cross examination procedures could be employed. Since its first creation in the 1970's Hadamar had been refined, improved, and reshaped in fiendishly new ways.
With time its first role had been expanded to include more ambitious activities. Secret officials interested in securing additional funds had progressively extended and refined its purpose. Instead of a half way house restricted to the strange bedfellows covert operatives happened across it had grown into a mentally invasive investigative center. From simple investigation it evolved as a facility equipped to employ techniques that encouraged the most exotic extremes in behavior modification. Then from behavior modification came the penultimate attribute, the permanent alteration, erasure, of selected patient's physiologies through the implementation of the most controversial of surgical procedures.
It was this last category of activities for which Sorrel was intended. For Sorrel Hadamar was not a staging area, not a storage unit, nor some benign halfway house. For Sorrel Hadamar was no simple stopover; it was her terminus, her final destination.
At Hadamar Sorrel was to be permanently, biologically, mentally, psychologically changed. Using techniques developed in the 1920's and 1930's Sorrel was to be transformed from a vibrant vivacious active living breathing beautiful young woman to a near lifeless inert expressionless vegetable. In so doing anything she ever knew or ever could know was to be forever eradicated, expunged.
It took special kinds of people to work at Hadamar. Some served as medical personnel, others as security of clerical operatives.
Of course many people, men and women, have entered the medical professions as a way to improve the lives of their fellow human beings. Yet in truth, there have been some who have used their medical training to sublimate baser, more feral, inclinations. Everyone has read the disquieting stories of those doctors who worked for the Nazis during World War Two. No one who studied history could ever forget the 'Angel of Death', Dr. Mengele; his horrid pseudo-experiments at Auschwitz, or the cold blooded way he dispatched countless thousands of children to their deaths.
People can never know how many caring wonderful doctors, world famous surgeons, respected internists might have become sadistic monsters; savages using primitive home made tools to hack, slice and maim innocent lives. Cruder interests in carving meat, human meat, have certainly been redirected by societal prohibitions; the meanest most vicious inclinations sublimated by the medical profession into positive outlets.
Does anyone ever really know what demons might lay at the root of any person's true behavior? It has long been common knowledge grieving ancient Egyptian families withheld their daughters from the Houses of the Dead until rigor mortis had thoroughly set in. Can anyone say how many morticians are at heart necrophiles; interested more in touching, defiling, and debasing their dead clients than in preparing a loved one for their final rest?
Tradition has long held that law enforcement is one of the noblest professions. Yet do some policemen really only join the force for the chance to handcuff nubile young girl's hands behind their backs so unopposed they might fondle helpless supple breasts.
Do some doctors deliberately turn the air conditioning lower when a pretty girl comes for a visit only so they can watch in perverted glee the girl's self conscious discomfort as she tries to conceal nipples deliciously extruding in the cooler environment?
Has there ever been the caring nurse who deliberately waited until well after the comforting affects of the drugs they are trusted to inject had worn off before introducing a new round of soothing medication. Has anyone ever been in hospital knowing there was one nurse who took secret, furtive, delight in seeing the pain, before condescending to the relief the desperately sought medication would bring?
Of course, to even consider that someone in one of the caring professions might derive pleasure from the pain they've been trained to ameliorate would be vigorously, no vociferously, denied. But doctors, nurses, and all care givers, come from the same gene pool that produces society's worst criminals. Is it conceivable once in a while some sick deviant does find his or her way into the healing professions? The answer to that question is a redounding yes!
Then if that is the case, what if there was a place, an institution, where such people might be allowed to congregate. What if there was such a facility where the sickest, most perverted, most muddled minds might gather to feast on the helpless, the infirm, the trusting, and the vulnerable needy? Would, could such a facility ever exist?
Of course, the answer to that question would be obvious to anyone who has read the foregoing chapters of this story. For that was exactly the kind of facility Hadamar had become; yes, certainly a home for the criminally insane! But the real deviants weren't the patients; the real monsters were the care givers!
A visit to Hadamar, even by the most casual observer, would have revealed an institution so fundamentally different in the way it conducted its daily operations, so despicable in its standard patient care, so diseased in the way medical treatment was administered, that it would induce such profound revulsion as to be nauseatingly sickening to even the stoutest of hearts.
Tragically, on the fifth floor of this modern Tartarus, this Twenty-first Century Gahanna, a pretty protagonist lay in despondent half sleep feebly twisting and turning in deliberately over tightened straps and maliciously fitted undersized garments. Had she committed some terrible misdeed, performed some awful crime? No, poor Sorrel's only crimes had been her innocent determination to do her very best, to avoid senseless office complications, to seek the means by which she might reclaim her children, and to work assiduously, determinedly, toward the completion of a project that would have been beneficial to millions.
Sorrel's crimes weren't of her own choosing. Her crimes were rooted in her natural beauty, her selfless grace, her feminine purity, her womanly charm, and her fundamental goodness. The normally beneficent things that brought good people good will had become sources of jealousy and envy for some few of those around her. Her crimes had been her lack of sophistication, her failure to cultivate the influential and the powerful , and these things, in her trusting innocence, contributed to a vulnerability, a belief in the goodness of others, that enabled those same others to exploit, to torment, even perhaps destroy her.
Would this innocent young woman, so pure of spirit, kind of heart, of such gentle nature, be stripped of her identity, her life, her personhood? Was there anyone, anywhere, ready to stand against the malignant forces that had placed her in such jeopardy? If there was such a person, where was he?
Fletcher awakened early. He knew the private detectives would be several hours away, so he used the time to get a good view of the place Sorrel where was confined. The first time around he knew this was no place for someone like Sorrel. The sign 'Hospital for the Criminally Insane' was proof of that.
The front looked like a steel trap; a veritable Fort Knox. He couldn't imagine anyone placing a mental facility above a cemetery. It was as though he were glimpsing a mortuary sitting atop a gruesome field of cadavers.
Thankfully, the rearward areas weren't nearly so forbidding, even if everywhere he looked he saw evidence of high chain linked fencing and electronic surveillance equipment. The fencing didn't worry him; a good set of snips would manage that. He might be in his thirties, and he might not have kept up with his more youthful exercise regimen but he was still a pretty strong fellow, still reasonably agile. Breaking through the fencing could be handled.
What did bother him was the surveillance equipment, and the off hand chance that portions, if not all the fencing was in some way electrified. He realized this was a high security, government operated, interrogation operation; a fortress not easily breached, anything was possible. But his sweetheart, his 'Helen', was inside. It behooved him to batter down its walls.
Fletcher was proud of his country, but he understood what most Americans hadn't; that most of his country's technology had been devoted more for destructive than productive goals. Had this been a college or university corners would have been cut at every turn, but never at a place like this.
He circled the place three times trying to find the most likely place to break in. It looked tight as a drum, but still he imagined he saw at least two places where he, if he had some help, might be able to at least penetrate the outer perimeter.
Actually, where to get in the building once inside the fence was still a mystery; a conundrum he'd have to resolve later. He hoped perhaps Florence, or maybe Warren, would come up with some kind of floor plan; some way to get inside. Once inside he'd figure something out. He'd manage some way to locate her, his Sorrel.
He had to control his emotions. From time to time his imagination got away from him. He imagined what they might be doing to her, and it scared the hell out of him. Were they cutting up her brain? What if they were trying all kinds of sick experiments on her? What would she be like when they finished with her? What would her mind be like? If he didn't get to her in time what would he tell his children, all his children?? It scared him. He had to get in there. Still, even if he was too late, and even if she was some kind of lost soul, he'd care for her, he'd love her no matter what. It frightened him, but he had to put it out of his mind. If he didn't he'd end up so paralyzed with fear he'd be unable to get anything done.
A little after 10:00 that morning several detectives did finally show up. Their overall appearance wasn't very comforting. He thought they acted like this was the last place they wanted to be.
Fletcher asked the lead detective if any of them had ever heard of the place.
The leader, an older, somewhat overweight man, responded that none of them had ever heard of the institution, and none of them even knew anything like it even existed.
At Fletcher's request their boss called his home office to get as much information about the place as they could; it took several minutes before they got a return call. What they found out was most disheartening.
Earlier that very morning, perhaps an hour before Fletcher had risen three nurses entered Sorrel's room and had awakened her. This was the third room she'd occupied in as many days, or at least that was what she thought. For Sorrel the days and nights had somehow seemed to bleed together. Had she been there one, two, three nights? She just didn't know.
