Page 51 of The Secret of Secrets

The moments of tranquility she felt immediately following the seizures, while magical in some ways, were outweighed by the emotional pain and physical injuries these episodes brought to her life.

Doctors eventually diagnosed Sasha with chronic syncope and acute mental illness and suggested she be institutionalized. The best her parents could do was a psikhushka—a dilapidated government mental institution located in the middle of nowhere near Russia’s western border. On her tenth birthday, her parents left her there and never visited again.

Sasha had cried for weeks in her tiny room. Her seizures occurred several times a day, and staff members would forcefully restrain her with no show of compassion. The meals they provided were meager, but the medications they provided were copious. By the time she was a teenager, Sasha lived a life of heavy sedation and loneliness.

For more than a decade, she lived this way, forgotten and alone. Her only lasting escapes from reality were the American movies that played nonstop in the common room across the hall. Romantic comedies were her favorite, and Sasha often dreamed of falling in love in New York City. One day I will see America, she promised herself, sensing sometimes that her dream of going to America was the only thing keeping her going.

And then even that dream was shattered.

Sasha was assigned a new nighttime attendant—a pitiless nurse named Malvina—who amused herself in the desolate hours by withholding Sasha’s seizure medications and then watching her spasmodic episodes like a circus sideshow before beating her. For weeks, Malvina abused Sasha physically, mentally, and perhaps in other ways that Sasha’s mind blocked.

One morning, after barely surviving one of Malvina’s more brutal and traumatic attacks, Sasha was crying in bed when three staff members burst in and dragged her down the hall to the common room.

“Priznavaysya!” they shouted at her. Confess!

At Sasha’s feet, on the floor of the common room, lay Malvina’s lifeless body, her head twisted almost entirely backward.

It wasn’t me, Sasha insisted, but the staff had already determined she was guilty. Not wanting to lose any government sponsorship money, they reported Malvina’s death as an unfortunate accident on a slippery floor and locked Sasha in solitary confinement as punishment.

Alone in the darkness, Sasha often wondered who might have killed the nurse. There were other patients here who suffered seizures, and it was possible Malvina had taunted the wrong person. Or maybe, Sasha fantasized, someone killed Malvina to protect me. The idea made her feel less alone somehow.

After two weeks in solitary, Sasha was dragged out, put into a straitjacket, and informed she had a visitor. Sasha had never had a visitor, not even her parents. They left me here to die.

The person in the waiting area was a stranger—a small woman with jet-black hair, expensive clothing, and a stern face. She had an air of authority. The woman immediately reprimanded the orderlies, demanding they remove Sasha’s straitjacket, which, to her amazement, they did.

“Zvířata,” she muttered, shooing them away. Animals.

Sasha squinted her eyes, having not seen daylight for weeks. “Kто ты?” she asked in Russian. Who are you?

“Can you speak Czech?” the woman asked.

Sasha shook her head.

“Any English?”

“Some,” Sasha said. “I watch American television.”

“Me too,” the woman whispered, almost conspiratorially. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Sasha simply stared.

“My name is Dr. Brigita Gessner,” the woman said. “I’m here to help you. I’m a neurosurgeon from Europe.”

“Doctors can’t help me,” Sasha said quickly.

“I’m sorry for that. It’s only because they don’t understand your condition.”

“I have insanity and seizures.”

The woman emphatically shook her head. “No, Sasha, you are perfectly sane. You have a condition known as TLE—temporal lobe epilepsy—which is the cause of your seizures. It’s entirely curable. I have a facility in Prague, and I’d like to take you there.”

“To fix me?” she said, skeptical.

“You’re not broken, my dear. Your brain just has occasional electrical storms. But I can help you control those. I’ve treated many TLE patients just like you, with superb results—including a young man named Dmitri from this very institution.”

Dmitri? Sasha was familiar with the tall, striking man, but she had not seen him in a while. I wondered where he went! “You cured Dmitri?”

“I did indeed. And he has already returned home in Russia.”