Her one possesion is a toy - a sooty, stuffed rabbit whose single button eye dangles from a loose thread. Plaything from her time of innocence, and her only link to life before the fire, the rabbit is now sentinel to Alice's deepening dementia.
In the twelvemonth since the conflagration. Alice has dropped further into a grim and darkly quite abyss. It's a wonder the Superintendent didn't bury her deep within the Bedlam catacombs. The surgeons were able to cure the flesh, but they've done nothing to treat the inflammation of her brain. It's not sure what eh expects me to accomplish with her. I suppose he thinks that in my twenty three years within these troubled walls I've mastered a curriculum not taught in Oxford classrooms.
Mute on a stretcher, with her head curiously bandaged, Alice seems to cling precariously to life. Her burns have healed remarkably in the year since the fire, but she languishes in a deep trance like dementia. It's as if the blaze consumed her senses. Deaf, dumb, and blind to all stimulation, she's a fair math for the infirmary's gloom.
In a frenzied insant, a canhered feline pounced on Alice while she was about to be carried inside. Startled by the cat's yowl, the bearers lost their grip and dropped the wretched girl to the ground. Most curious to behold, the cat stood atop Alice as if claiming territorial right, or as if defending a rodent captured in the day's hunt from other hungry predators. Only when an orderly threatened it with a stick did the creature scamper into a nearby hedge. Even then the ct crouched beneath the shrubbery. With eyes agape, it fixed on Alice as if it had some vital interest in our proceedings.
Recieved confirmation from the Superintendent that I will be given the opportunity to treat a very troubled and difficult patient. Dubious honor! Her name is Alice, and her prognosis is not promising. After looking at her file, I'm astonished she has survived that long. She has been nearly comatose for a year.