by Joe Derkacht
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Walking into my workshop was about as warm as walking into an early morning fog on the beach. This must be where Ferd had spent the night, since tawny-colored cat hair clung to the top of one of the work benches. Maybe I would have to install a lock; this made the third morning in a row I’d found the door hanging open just wide enough for a cat to squeeze in. Either that or maybe I could remember to scratch out a note reminding me to let him into the house before going to bed at night?
At least the place seems like home to him, I thought. Hands in pockets, I paced the floor. How long would it take to wear a pathway through the warmly gleaming paint to the concrete beneath it? I walked until I was tired, probably not as long as it might have been for most people, with me still recovering from the ordeal the State Hospital’s zookeepers and its shock troops had put me through. Why hadn’t I jumped from Old Baldy, I wondered? Why? Why? Why? What could I possibly have to live for, when the memory of those things most important to me had been wiped clean, along with the skills I needed to make a living? Regardless of what some crazy State doctor thought, what good was it when walking the roads, maybe collecting pop cans, was the only future I saw for myself?
The more I thought about it, the more my chest constricted. The workshop ceiling inched lower and the walls closed in. The place was far too small for me to stay. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t think. I had to get out, run for the door. Now!
Before I could reach it, fog blew in like the breath of some frozen Valkyrie. Though no hand was upon it, the door slammed shut. I stumbled, plummeting headfirst as if felled by an axe. Dark, roiling clouds received me. Forked electricity leapt and danced around my head, crawled down my throat and neck and jammed steel rods down my spine.
Something cracked loudly in my jaw, and then I felt nothing more...
“Let him rest now,” a voice said.
“Will he be all right?”
“For the moment, yes.”
Rest? Who? I wondered. How could anyone rest in this storm? Shouldn’t they be trying to protect themselves, pull themselves into a black hole like I’d done at the first sign of trouble? They should take cover. If the two men with swords, one streaming light and the other shadow, should collide with them in their struggle, I certainly couldn’t take responsibility for them.
“You’ve had a nasty concussion, along with a few nastier contusions, I’m afraid, Jack.”
Someone was leaning over me. It was Doc Schiffman, peering through his gold, wire-rimmed glasses. I was in a strange bed, under crisp white sheets, with walls and ceiling slowly circling around me in matching white.
“You’re safe, Jack, you’re in the hospital.”
He answered my groan with an understanding smile.
“My guess is your old childhood epilepsy has resurfaced.”
I know I looked dumbly at him, because I couldn’t come up with any possible response; I didn’t remember having childhood epilepsy.
“It’s hard to say with complete certainty,” he said, scratching his nose in thought. “I’m guessing it’s what put you in the State Hospital this last time. The shock treatments they gave you could easily exacerbate the problem.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled, before going on. “Fortunately, it’s controllable by drugs, Jack. Unfortunately, you’ll probably have to take them for the rest of your life. Do you understand that?”
I groaned, awful pain shooting through my jaw and spreading up the side of my head like hot flames.
“Another thing,” he said, leaning over me again. “You’re black and blue and swollen from the fall you took in your workshop. I’m afraid you fractured your jaw just badly enough that you may have to eat through a straw for a few weeks.”
“Aahhh,” was all I could manage. The next thing I knew, something sharp pricked my right arm.
“I’m keeping you here another day for observation...” His voice faded, receding into the far distance, his face framed by the hospital’s spinning ceiling and walls.