The Key to Midnight

psychiatrist said gently. 'Don't continue to make a secret of it. Tell me everything, Joanna. Free yourself of it.'
        Her hands were trembling. She lowered them from her throat to her breasts.
        'The clicking,' she said. 'It's so loud I can't hear anything else. It fills the room. Deafening.'
        'What does he do?'
        'He pulls the sheet away. He draws it to the bottom of the bed. Uncovers me. I'm naked.'
        Her cheeks were wet with tears again, but she was not sobbing.
        'Go on,' Inamura said.
        'He stands there. Grinning. Takes the electrodes off me. Touches me. He has no right to touch me like that, not like that, but I can't do anything. I'm flying high and weak.'
        'Where is he touching you?'
        'My breasts. Stroking, squeezing with those steel fingers. Hurting me. He knows he's hurting me. He likes to hurt me. Then he touches me with the other hand too, the real hand. It's sweaty. He's rough with that hand too… rough… demanding… using me…'
        Joanna's voice faded word by word, until she couldn't speak any more. Her face was wrenched into the most devastating expression of anguish that Alex had ever seen, yet she made only the softest sounds, as though her shame and sense of violation were so heavy that her voice was crushed beneath them.
        The sight of her in such excruciating emotional pain struck Alex with the force of a thunderbolt. In the past few days he had learned to feel things he'd never felt before. In himself, he'd discovered possibilities of which he'd been ignorant all his life. Joanna had sensitized him. But everything that he had experienced since meeting her was only as powerful as a spring breeze compared to the emotional storm that shook him now. He couldn't bear to see her like this. The horror of her experiences with the man she called 'The Hand' affected Alex more profoundly than if her suffering had been his own. If he had incurred the wound himself, he could grit his teeth and stitch it up with the stoicism he had long cultivated, but because it was her wound, he could do little to influence the healing of it. He was shattered by the full and unwelcome realization of his helplessness.
        For a few minutes Dr. Inamura patiently reassured her, until at last she regained her composure. When she was still and no longer crying, he urged her to pick up her story where she had left it. 'What is Herr Doktor doing now, Joanna?'
        Alex interrupted. 'Surely, Isha-san, you don't have to pursue this thing any further.'
        'But I must,' Inamura disagreed.
        'I think we know all too well what he did to her.'
        'Yes, of course, we know. And I understand how you feel,' the psychiatrist said sympathetically. 'But it's essential that she say it. She's got to reveal everything, not for your benefit or mine but for her own. If I allow her to stop now, the ugly details will remain in her forever, festering like filthy splinters.'
        'But it's so hard on her.'
        'Finding the truth is never easy.'
        'She's suffering such-'
        'She'll suffer even more if I let her stop now, prematurely.'
        'Maybe we should give her a rest and pick up here tomorrow.'
        'Tomorrow we have other tasks,' said Inamura. 'I need only a few minutes to finish this line of questioning.'
        Without enthusiasm, Alex admitted the superiority of Inamura's argument.
        The doctor said, 'Joanna, where are Herr Doktor's hands now?'
        'On me. On my breasts,' she said.
        There was a new, peculiar, and disturbing flatness in her voice, as though a part of her had died and was speaking from a dark, frigid place on the other side of life.
        'What does he do next?' Inamura asked.
        'The steel hand moves down my body.'
        'Go on.'
        'Down to my thighs,' she said flatly.
        'And then?'
        'Everything's taken.'
        'What is taken?' Inamura asked.
        'Hope. All gone. Nothing left to cling to.'
        'No, Joanna. Hope can never be taken away forever. It's the one thing in us that's always renewed. He took your hope away only for a short while. He can't win in the long run unless you allow him to win. What does he do now? Please tell me, Joanna.'
        'He touches me there.'
        'Where does he touch you?'
        'Between my legs.'
        'And then?'
        'He's grinning.'
        'And then?'
        'Click, click,