Sarah Pearse - The Sanatorium

The invite was unexpected. Since Isaac left for Switzerland over four years ago, contact had been sporadic at best. A few e-mails, a rare phone call. He’d told them bits and pieces—getting together with Laure, his lecturing job at the university in Lausanne, but that was it. Months could pass without them being in touch.

Even their mother’s funeral hadn’t drawn him back. Flimsy excuses: Can’t leave work. Emergency with a student. The memory, sour, rough edged, makes her want to swallow hard; like a piece of gristly meat she can’t get down.

Laure’s watching her with a quizzical expression. “You don’t look like”—she hesitates, rearranges her words—“I remember . . .” Again, she trails off.

“What?” Elin replies, voice brittle. “You remembered what?”

Laure smiles lazily. “Nothing. It’s been ages, that’s all.”

Will gives her a sharp look. She knows why: she hadn’t told him that she knew Laure. That they had history.

“We were wondering, do you want to have dinner together tonight?” Isaac says. “If you’re tired, we can always take a rain check.”

“No. We’d like that. What time?” She flushes, embarrassed by her eagerness.

“Sevenish?” He shrugs . “Before that, we’ll give you the tour. I—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence. There’s a loud bang, the sound of glass shattering. A blast of cold air floods the room. The low hum of chatter stops.

Silence.

Elin turns, heart pounding. A side window is swinging wildly on its hinge. Shards of glass litter the floor along with a spreading pool of water, huge white lilies.

Even though she knows there’s no threat—it’s a window blown open, a vase knocked over—her pulse is still racing, adrenaline flooding her body. Elin feels her hands clench, fingernails digging into her palm.

A staff member appears, closes the window, moves people away from the debris. Elin unfurls her hands, looks down at them.

She can make out the imprint of nails on her palm.

Half-moons. Perfect crescents.

9

Outside, the storm is building. Snow is being whipped by the wind into a fury, sending it lashing against the glass. It doesn’t distract Laure. She’s slick, efficient, seamlessly moving them around the hotel. Restaurant to lounge, library to bar.

More glass. The same stark white walls, austere design.

“Last but not least.” Laure leads them to the end of the corridor, pushes open a door. “The spa.”

Inside, the reception space is vast, one wall clad in huge slabs of gray marble, veined with dark streaks. Another abstract installation hangs from the ceiling above the receptionist—a complex tangle of metal wires, studded with tiny lights.

Laure runs her finger over one of the walls. “The walls are all finished in Marmorino plaster. It’s made of marble dust and lime putty. The effect, it’s like suede. It’s designed to catch the light, change as the day goes on. It’s similar to the effect they tried to achieve on the sanatorium walls—they were matte to reduce glare for the patients, but still light.”

Despite the space, the high ceiling, it’s unbearably warm, the air thick with the scent of mint and eucalyptus. Elin’s eyes dart to one corner of the room. Another glass box is suspended from the ceiling. Inside, there’s a helmet with a peaked brim made of what looks like brass. Walking over, she reads the text inside.

CLIAS HELMET. A fireman’s helmet adapted to become a weight helmet. Used for strengthening neck muscles.

Isaac follows her gaze. “Part of ‘the narrative.’” He makes quotation marks with his fingers. “All the communal spaces have them. Artifacts from the old sanatorium.”

She nods, disconcerted.

Laure murmurs something to the woman at the desk, turns back. “Margot, our spa receptionist, will do a proper tour later, but I’ll just show you the pool. The showpiece.” Her voice is loud, patrician. As assistant hotel manager, she’s clearly used to taking charge.

Elin imagines her with guests, staff. Answering questions. Issuing instructions. Watching her, she’s seized by a sense of inadequacy: Are we really the same age? Laure seems older; a grown-up, a leader. But then, she thinks, maybe she always was.

She remembers the first time they met; eight-year-old Laure small and wiry, two thick plaits like ropes down her back. Laure instinctively knew her role in the world: commander, planner, the one to think up games, designate roles. You’re the mermaid. I’m the pirate. Other kids would immediately acquiesce, desperate to be part of the game.

Elin knew why; Laure gave off a vibe she’d never mastered. Not giving a shit.

Laure was secure in who she was. There was something definite about her, a solidity anchoring her to the world that Elin envied. She was the opposite; she cared too much, fretted about every little thing: Was she too quiet? Too loud? Not enough?

Yet their differences never came between them. Their friendship was tight, fiercely protected by them both, by Elin especially, because Laure was her first proper friend. The first girl who got her, didn’t try to change her, laugh at her for not being like them.

And look how you repaid her , a voice grinds out in her head. She accepted you, befriended you, and look what you did.

Laure opens a large door on the right. Following her inside, Elin blinks, blinded by the light flooding the space. Floor-to-ceiling glass wraps the pool on all sides, so the first thing she sees isn’t the water, but the swirling snow outside, the vast expanse of steely sky.

Just beyond the glass, she can make out a wooden terrace and several outdoor pools. The first, sitting just beyond the glass, is steaming, blurry coils snaking lazily into the air.

Will whistles between his teeth. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“They extended at the end of the building to maximize this view.” Laure’s voice echoes out. “All this glass, it’s deliberate. When the weather’s good you’ve got a 360-degree view of the mountains, the natural light . . .”

“I was telling Elin about the focus on light in the original design.” Will’s still looking out. “They thought it helped recovery, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” Laure turns. “The standard of care for TB at the time was mainly environmental. Fresh air, sunlight. Ultraviolet rays were believed to be healing, so they sat patients out on the balconies and terraces, even through the winter, to take in the sun.”

Elin is struggling to take it all in: Snow. The shimmering water.

It’s dizzying. She still feels horribly exposed; that nothing separates them from the storm raging outside. She rubs at her temples and turns away from the glass, the swirling mass of snow.

“El? You okay?” Will says.

“Fine. Just a bit lightheaded.”

“It’s probably the altitude,” Laure says. “We’re high, for a hotel. More than seventy-two hundred feet.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” Isaac says slowly. “You used to be like this as a kid, if we went somewhere new, you felt uncomfortable.”

“Isaac, stop.” The words are sharper than she intended. “How is that relevant? I’m hardly a child anymore, am I?”

He holds up his hands, flattens his palms in surrender. “Chill, I was just . . .” He shakes his head.

Watching him, anger spikes in her chest. This brotherly concern, it’s an act; she’d clocked the fleeting, superior smile.

As kids, he’d do this all the time: flip the conversation to expose her, lay her bare. She remembers telling her mother over dinner about a friend she’d made, Isaac immediately countering with something derogatory: Isn’t that the new girl? That weird one, who’s always on her own?