by ML Gardner
“I don’t know if you can understand, but when something is really important to someone, it’s amazing the lengths they will go to in order to protect it,” I said, casually glancing at Elizabeth. The nurses didn’t think anything of me talking to Ronnie and went about their business, leaving me to talk freely. Even yesterday, I couldn’t imagine myself doing something like this. He continued to stare at me.
“How’s the king, Ron?” I asked. His eyes twitched and he swallowed hard. “You haven’t done anything to make him angry, have you, Ron?” I whispered. I hated myself for this. But I cared for her more. “I heard he’s here to talk to you about the water. The water you spilled. He’s not happy with you, Ron.” Ronnie’s eyes grew wide and he breathed fearfully through his nose. He didn’t snap though. I rubbed my forehead in frustration. Ordinarily, it took literally nothing to set him off. Today he was making me work for it.
“I would hide if I were you, Ron. Hide until he’s gone.” His eyes twitched and he whimpered.
Christ, I hate myself and I hate you, you crazy bastard. Would you flip the table already! I tapped my fingers on the table, thinking. It seemed to irritate him, so I kept it up for several minutes. They didn’t give us much time to eat and breakfast was almost over. The nurses were collecting the trays. I saw he was holding on by the thinnest of threads. I only had seconds to snip it. I leaned forward and whispered, holding the proverbial scissors open.
“I heard he’s brought the queen.”
The scissors snapped and so did Ronnie. He screamed, and when he flipped the table away from him, my tray flew into my face. I tried to roll away before the table came crashing down on top of me. Several orderlies restrained him as two nurses lifted the table off my head. I had a small cut, not deep enough to stitch, but it bled like hell. I looked around frantically for Elizabeth. She remained in her seat, staring at her plate. She had never even looked up.
Good girl, I thought and smiled. I felt a heavy hand pull my head back by the hair and press a cloth to my forehead. It was David.
“Was that really necessary?” his husky voice demanded. I tilted my head back and looked at his upside down face.
“Would you let that crazy bastard come along on a date with you?” I asked, my eyes glancing toward the outside.
He couldn’t help but give a smile and a grunting laugh. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.” He pulled me up and walked with me to the infirmary to get the cut cleaned.
Later that day, all of the male patients sat around in a circle while the good doctor and his student quizzed us. After he asked you a few questions, he would turn to his student and talk about you as if you weren’t even there. I tuned him out as he tried to explain some of the more complicated mental disorders. I watched out the window as the clouds slowly cracked, and the sun began to filter through them. It lit up the courtyard, making the colors of fall vividly beautiful. The few shrubs that clung to their green seemed to burst alive, and even the dead trees of autumn took on an illusion of beauty.
All of the light disappeared from the courtyard, and the room went dark before I had time to panic. I saw the angry waves of rough seas; skies as black as pitch and violent flashes of lightning. Everything was spinning round and round, and I could barely make out the rocky shore in the distance. There was a bright light, like the flash of an exploding sun, and then a deafening noise ripped through the air as a boat split in two in front of me, sending shards of wood and cloth in every direction. I jumped in my seat when I came back to myself; scared and beginning to sweat.
Please, sweet Jesus, don’t let them have seen me, I prayed. My hands shook and I crossed my arms to hide them. I hesitated to look up, for fear the doctor would be staring at me. He would call for an orderly and send me away. I would fight them this time. I would fight with everything I had. They weren’t going to take this day away from me.
“Are you all right, Simon?”
My heart lurched, but I raised my head with a clear face. “Fine.”
“You look odd, Simon,” he said, tilting his head in examination.
I rolled my head away and then back to him. “I’m bored,” I said with dull eyes and a hint of juvenile impatience.
“Simon is one of our more interesting patients,” the doctor said to the intern, still staring at me. Finally, he turned away and I exhaled slow and long. “Except for the disturbing visions that haunt him and keep him from leading a productive life, he is rather sane.” He looked back at me in approval. I could tell he was trying to credit himself for every ounce of the sanity I had walked in here with. I’d let him take it. But he could not have today.
“That was close,” David said under his breath as I walked past. Dead serious eyes met his at the truth of his statement.
“What are you doing here this early anyway?” I asked.
“Working a double shift, lucky for you. If I hadn’t been here, you know they probably would have thrown you in the room,” he nodded down the hall at the small empty room where they took you when you really went nuts. “When I saw you, I called the doctor and asked him a few questions. Kept his attention for a few minutes.”
I shuddered, more at missing a chance to talk to Elizabeth than the thought of them locking me in that cold and dark room.
“Thank you.” He nodded. “What month is it, David?” I asked.
“October.”
“October…?”
“It is October twenty-fifth, nineteen and twenty-nine,” he said.
“Halloween is next week,” I realized aloud. It didn’t matter. Just an interesting fact. “What time is it?”
“Ten-thirty,” he said, glancing at his watch. He held open the door to the bathroom. “Just two more hours,” he teased. There were no locks on the bathrooms here, an orderly simply stood outside and waited for you. He crossed his arms with his back to the door.
Sometime later, I blinked hard several times, a dark blur flashed in front of my face. I realized David’s hands were on my shoulders, throwing me back and forth. He was hissing my name. I coughed and choked from spit that flew down my throat with the violent shaking. He looked nervously at the door and back at me.
“Shh! They’ll hear you,” he said, almost as scared as I was. He let me go and I fell forward, elbows on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I felt very tired.
“What happened?” I gasped, rubbing my eyes.
“You had another one,” he said quietly. “After five minutes, I got worried and looked in. You were sitting here, staring. I couldn’t think of what to do besides shake you,” he whispered apologetically. I glanced at the door. We heard neither voices nor footsteps. “I think it’ll be okay.” He stood straight and brushed bits of dirt off his white pants. “Pull your pants up and get back out there,” he said.
“I’ve never had two that close together before,” I panted. I felt like my head was swimming, full, and it started to hurt.
“Maybe excitement,” he whispered, holding his hands out in suggestion. I would be so glad to be able to have a conversation in something other than a whisper one day.
“No,” I said and looked at him while buttoning my pants. “David.” He looked at me and waited while I waged war with myself inside my head. “Don’t take the staff bus to the gate tonight,” I said through my teeth, closing my eyes and damning myself to hell.
His eyes narrowed in question. I tried to convey the importance of what I was trying to tell him without telling him anything more. “No. Just don’t take the bus.” I turned and left the bathroom, fast.
He didn’t ask more, thankfully.
I had seen two things. One I spoke of. One I kept for myself. The pieces were beginning to fit together now, visions and flashes that started days before she arrived were knitting themselves together and just as I knew I would love her before I saw her, I knew she would love me, too.
Sitting in the commons area later, I causally looked around for her. She sat across the room by the window, looking out with another girl. By her descripti
on the day before, I think the girl was her roommate.
“Sane enough to have a conversation with,” she had told me.
“What do you talk about?” I had asked. Her cheeks reddened and she looked away, fighting a smile.
I realized I had been staring at her for too long and looked away, fighting a smile of my own. If this second Elizabeth never came out when I was around her, and I never had visions when she was around me. I looked back at her as she pushed her hair behind her shoulder and smiled at something her roommate said. Then maybe we’re each other’s cure, I thought, this time unable to pull my eyes from her.
The clock slowed just to torture me. I pushed off my bed just as the hand struck noon and waited at my door for it to be unlocked. I hated naptime. Why did they have it before lunch? No one was tired before lunch. I tapped my foot impatiently until I heard the hollow clink of partial freedom. It wasn’t David. It was a different one, and I dropped my smile before he could see it.
This one took his job of ensuring order and compliance to a personal level, and I felt instantly tense. He turned away without a word at the door of the commons and I saw David standing by the food cart. He gave me a slight nod and I returned it discreetly. As I passed him, I said another silent prayer that he would heed my warning tonight.
I looked around and was disappointed when I didn’t see Elizabeth. I sat down with a frown, and the nurse set a tray of unappetizing food in front of me. I hovered over it, picking and pushing it around the dull metal plate, looking up every few minutes at the empty doorway. Finally, she walked in and I straightened in my chair. She walked to an empty table and sat down without looking up at me. My heart deflated a little as she began to pick at her food without even acknowledging me. I caught David out of the corner of my eye. He wiped his fingers across his mouth, reminding me to scrub my own face. It dropped into blankness. Still, I glanced up every few minutes to look at her.
They opened the metal door leading to the courtyard. I lingered in the back of the small crowd and watched her from behind. A few overly excited souls in front of me started whooping and hollering at the illusion of freedom. They pushed to the front, trying to get out, and I took several steps to put myself between Elizabeth and the oblivious. Hard as it was, I walked away without looking back at her.
The cold autumn air bit the edges of my nostrils as I noticed the faint smell of wood smoke. A strong breeze stung the tips of my ears and picked up a handful of dried leaves, swirling them a few feet in the air before scattering them again. I watched for her out of the corner of my eye. She walked with her roommate across the grass, squinting up toward the sun. I looked up and it was an odd sensation; the heat of the sun on my face while my ears burned cold. When I righted my head and opened my eyes, she waiting there for me on the old cobblestone path. I looked around apprehensively and saw David across the courtyard. Another orderly read a magazine by the door, and one of the nurses from the women’s ward sat in the grass, reading a book. I noticed the absence of the real troublemakers–the loud violent ones. I think even the staff wanted to enjoy some time in the sun today without incident. I looked back and smiled as I walked toward her. I stopped a foot away and that was still too far from her.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi.” I couldn’t keep the ridiculous smile off my face. “You’ll still walk with me?” I asked.
“Of course.” I realized she was only a few inches shorter than I was. I thought so, but it was hard to tell when I could never get within five feet of her. She looked smaller from far away. We turned together and faced away from the courtyard.
After a few paces, I turned to look at her and then turned away with a nervous laugh. Now that we were here, I had no idea what to say. I had only rehearsed this conversation with her a hundred times in my mind. But now that I finally walked beside her, free to say anything, I was stupid and mute.
“Why are you here?” she asked, breaking the silence. “I’ve always wondered.” She looked down as if she’d asked something wrong.
Great, I thought. I was hoping to start with something easy–the weather or the food at hotel le manic. I had already admitted a vision to David because I had to, self-damning as that was. I guess it was time to add the eternity part. I was taking forever to answer her, and she looked over, waiting.
“I see things,” I blurted out, not sure how to clarify.
“Things that aren’t there?” she asked as casually as if she was asking the time.
“Not exactly. I see things that haven’t happened yet.” I had never said those words aloud, and I steeled myself for her reaction.
“So you’re a fortune teller,” she said, nodding her head slightly.
“Not exactly.”
“Well, explain it to me. I want to know.” She looked over at me with genuine curiosity. I glanced over both shoulders to make sure no one was near.
“I don’t see it coming, and I don’t have any control of it. The room just goes dark and I see images. Sometimes they move, like a picture show, and I watch like a fly in the corner of a room.”
Her eyebrows knit together as she thought. “So what types of pictures? Good things? Bad things?”
Now it was my turn to frown. “Almost always bad things,” I said.
“What type of bad things?” She had stopped walking and turned toward me.
“Accidents, deaths.” I paused and thought back to one I didn’t understand, “explosions.”
“Never good?” She started walking again.
“Only recently.” I smiled at the ground. “Until a few weeks ago, they were never good. Until you came.” I glanced at her with a nervous smile, and she looked away, embarrassed. “Sometimes, no, more times, the good comes in dreams, not visions.”
She nodded as if she understood before asking her next question.
“How do you know then? If the good is going to come true or if it’s just a dream?”
“I don’t.” I shrugged. “I just have to wait.” I looked around the serene courtyard. “And hope.”
A few birds chirped loudly as they did some last minute work on their winter nests.
“How did you get here?” she asked. I didn’t mind telling her these things; in fact, it felt wonderful to talk to someone without that deep paranoid feeling. I knew she would take what I said for what it was and not twist into something else.
“My father brought me,” I told her.
“Does he come to visit you?” She stopped to pick wild weeds that were the closest thing to flowers we had. I shook my head.
“Your mother?” she asked.
“She’s sort of the reason I’m here,” I said hesitantly, and she looked at me curiously. “It’s not her fault, that’s not what I mean.” I sighed. I really wanted to talk about her, ask her questions that required long answers, so I could commit her voice to my memory. Store it safely to pull out later when I needed to hear it. I decided to give her the condensed version, so we could move on to the subject of her.
“I saw something, and I told my father to keep a close eye on my mother that day. He was always suspicious when I tried to warn them of things. I hadn’t for a long time. ” I shrugged and stared at the other end of the courtyard. “It was my mother. I had to.”
She stopped walking and turned to face me. “What happened?”
“I told my father not to let her out of his sight. I told him that she shouldn’t go anywhere near the horses, no matter what.” There was a long ominous pause. I squirmed under her concentrated gaze.
“What happened?” she repeated.
“I learned that I couldn’t change the outcome of the things I saw. Even when I warned someone.” My heart sank as David came into sight. “I still try,” I said with a sigh. “So, with what happened to my mother and the fact that I foretold it, my father thought I was crazy. Or possessed. It was the same difference in his mind. He wanted me gone before I could bring any more bad things to his house.”
“I’m sorry,” she said,
squinting at the sunlight behind me. I shrugged and changed the subject.
“So, besides me needing someone more beautiful to look at than Twitchy Tamera or Sobbing Susan, why are you here?”
Her amused smile lingered for a moment before it faded. “The last time you asked me that, I told you I didn’t know. I still don’t, for myself. But I can tell you what they tell me,” she said with a nod toward the building.
“What do they say?”
“They say that when I get angry or sad another person comes out. I talk in a different voice and I act strange. I don’t remember doing it, so it’s hard to believe them.”
“Did they tell you what you say?”
It was her turn to squirm. “I talk about my father’s work.”
“What does your father do?” I had to find questions with lengthier answers.
“He runs a tannery on our property.”
“A tannery?” I played dumb.
“We raise cows and then we,” she hesitated and swallowed, “we turn the hides into leather.”
“Ah.”
“We sell the beef, too. What we don’t use, anyway. We eat a lot of beef,” she said with bugged out eyes.
“Why would your other voice talk about that? Seems boring to me.”
“I don’t know. They tell me what I talk about, but not what I say exactly. Then they demand to know what I meant. What the other person meant. How can I know that, when I don’t remember what it says? They say it’s me, but it’s not. It’s all very confusing.” she said, exasperated. I resented the few moments of silence that followed.
“Maybe they think you’re faking?” I suggested, feeling immediately stupid.
She confirmed that with a hard look. She took a deep breath and then faced me.
“I’ve been looking forward to today,” she said.