Laila

If you dreamed of becoming a time traveler after reading H.G. Wells, you likely wouldn’t want to achieve it the way Laila did-a patient at the Jerusalem psychiatric clinic where I worked.

On an April day in 1996, Laila was returning from an interview at a semiconductor company. She had a PhD in chemistry. At home, her beloved husband and two children awaited her: a 4-year-old daughter and an 18-month-old son.

Everyone has days in their life when they feel like they’ve caught the best wave of their life. The world smiles at you through every passerby, every beautiful flower in a flowerbed, every cloud in the sky.

Even the bus driver didn’t ask for a fare. Laila radiated the energy of a loving and beloved young woman, with a promising career ahead of her, complete with a company car. She had just gotten her driver’s license a couple of weeks ago.

She was bursting with the desire to share the news with David. Rushing up the stairs, she rang the doorbell. But no one answered. Her keys had disappeared somewhere. She rang the bell again and again until finally, the door opened. A strange woman stood at the threshold, holding the hand of David, who was barely recognizable. He had aged noticeably, lost his hair, and looked gaunt.

“Laila? Oh, God... Not again!” he said and closed the door, leaving the stunned woman on the landing.

Fifteen minutes later, the police arrived. It wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the first time David had filed a complaint against the clinic. It wasn’t the first time we received a reprimand from the security officer for letting Laila escape again.

Every time she found herself outside the hospital grounds, she ended up back in 1996. Even though the calendar showed it was already 2006.

How did it happen that this once beautiful, successful, and happy woman was now lying strapped to a bed in dirty linens? She wouldn’t stop screaming: “I want to go to my hu-u-u-sband! Let me go. Please! Bring my husband back to me!”

“Everything is alright, dear. I’ll rid you of the ghosts of the past now,” said the head of the department and gave her an injection.

“Where are my children?” Laila asked a minute later.

“They’ve been in the Givat Shaul cemetery for ten years now. What was left to bury,” the doctor always preferred shock therapy when bringing patients back to reality.

****

What part of her life did Laila forget?

The story doesn’t reveal whether David really cheated on her. At least, the identity of the mistress was never mentioned in the police reports. But at some point in her life, Laila began to be haunted by the smell of another woman in their home.

“Did you call the doctor already? We... talked about this, Laila. Do it for all of us, my dear. You’re a scientist; you know how to accept facts. You know how to take unpleasant but necessary measures,” David hugged his wife, trying to hide his tears.

“When she walks around the house, she touches our children. They smell like her perfume.”

No matter how thoroughly Laila bathed the children, the smell haunted her more and more persistently. Sometimes, when she tightly hugged her sleeping husband, she felt as if the ghost of his sin was literally breathing down her neck.

One day, as she was falling asleep, someone distinctly whispered in her ear:

“Soon you’ll be left alone...”

That’s when she realized it was time to take those unpleasant but necessary measures.

****

“Sit down at the table, dear,” said the beaming wife to David as he returned home from work.

“Have you been to the doctor?? And where are the children?”

“I managed to wash them clean. Completely. Now she won’t separate us. Never. Will you open this?” Laila handed him a bottle of champagne.

David heard a strange sound coming from the bathroom and rushed over. In the steaming bath sat two blackened creatures. One of them rasped:

“Daddy... mommy took my skin...” - this is how the headlines read in the newspapers the next morning.

It was visually impossible to distinguish between the brother and sister.

“Fluoroantimonic acid doesn’t kill instantly. The girl was alive for another fifteen minutes,” concluded one of the forensic experts, who had to work in protective gear, separating the jelly of bones from the remnants of the bathtub.

****

When Laila went into remission, she was transferred to our clinic, where the supervision was less strict. This allowed her to fool the staff and avoid taking her medication. As a result-relapses. And every time, her consciousness would return to that one happiest day of her life, which always turned into the worst nightmare. If there is a hell, it’s arranged exactly like this.

No one dared to hurt Laila. The head of the department would say that there are no bad or good people here. There are only patients and staff.

I worked at the clinic for about another year after Laila managed to escape forever. There has been no information about this woman ever since, although almost twenty years have passed.

But sometimes, during night rounds, I thought I could still hear her desperate scream: “Bring my husband back. Bring everything back! Please! I want my hu-u-u-sband!” I still hear her sometimes in my dreams. Because, as the head of the department said:

“Don’t think you’re better than the patients. Each of us has a Laila inside.”

(Laila, in Hebrew, means night.)