by T. J. Klune
Mike’s the only one in the waiting room this morning, aside from Miss Roberta Addison, a homely woman who handles the front desk for Doc. She’s rather unpleasant, an older crone of sorts who rarely has time to offer even the barest amount of sympathy, but she’s always worked for Doc, so that’s the way things are. It would be odd to come into the office and not see her furrowed eyebrows as she silently judged each person in the waiting room.
And currently, she’s judging Mike, who is doing his level best ignore her. He’s flipping through the newest Life magazine. Judy Garland’s on the cover, but that’s as much as he’s retained. The words are a blur, the photographs unnoticed. He’s thinking about what to say to Doc that won’t make it sound like he’s ready for the loony bin. (“Hey, Doc, so I’m starting to think about what’s outside Amorea and them there mountains and wouldn’t you know, I’m now paranoid we’re on an island! Do you think it’s cancer? What are your thoughts on extraterrestrials?”) He’s thinking about the look on Sean’s face when Mike told him he was going to the doctor this morning, being as vague as possible, saying he wasn’t sleeping much. Sean reached over and put his hand on Mike’s and squeezed until Mike was grounded again, and when Mike left the diner, staying a little later since he wasn’t going into the bookstore this morning, he placed a lingering kiss to the corner of Mike’s mouth. They knew everyone was watching with a smile on their faces, but neither of them cared all that much about it. “You best come back here the moment you’re finished, Mike Frazier,” Sean said, and Mike thought maybe he was a little scared. “You hear me?”
Mike just nodded, but yeah, he heard all right.
He’s lost in thought, and though he’s sure Miss Garland is a lovely woman, he doesn’t much care about what she has to say right now. Certain words are stuck in his head (smartphones and texting and Wüsthof Ikon Damascus) and they’re repeating over and over and over again.
So when Miss Roberta Addison calls his name, it’s with more irritation than normal, and he knows she’s probably had to say it a few times to get through to him. He looks up, and she’s glaring at him, one gnarled eyebrow cocked at him. “The doctor will see you now,” she says in a clipped voice.
“Thank you, Miss Addison.” He sets down the magazine before rising to his feet.
“Don’t thank me,” she says. “For all we know, you’re dying.”
That gives him pause. “Pardon?”
She rolls her eyes before going back to the typewriter in front of her, hunting and pecking out a continuous beat. “You never come here. For anything. You look a little rough around the edges. Maybe you’re dying.”
“Just a little ill. Probably the flu.”
“Or death.”
“That’s… comforting.”
She looks back up at him sharply. “You find death comforting?”
He shrugs. “Shouldn’t we? It’s inevitable, after all.” In fact, he doesn’t find it comforting. It’s more of the opposite, but he’s not going to let her get to him. Not today.
“For some,” she says, eyeing him with barely contained derision. “But I’d think as of late you have quite a few things to live for.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing at all.
“Mr. Frazier, the doctor doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” She goes back to the typewriter, and it’s clack clack clack from there on out.
He passes through the door and into Doc’s office. It’s brightly lit, a window open, a fresh breeze trickling in. Doc sits behind a large mahogany desk. The wall behind him is lined with medical texts, most of which are called things Mike can’t even begin to pronounce. Doc has claimed to have read them all, which is something Mike can understand, because a book is a book is a book.
Doc is familiar to him. Granted, all of Amorea is familiar to him, but Doc a little more than most. He sometimes sits in on a poker game or two, only drinking juice or tea (“Livers, boys, watch your livers”). He’s a big man, almost as big as Mike, but he’s rotund in a way Mike is not. He may care about his liver, but he doesn’t seem to worry so much about his arteries, not with how much he eats.
Doc looks up as Mike walks in, the buttons on his dress shirt straining a little over his chest and gut. He’s in his fifties and bald as the day he was born, or so he likes to say. His scalp is shiny in the overhead light, jowls pulling back as he grins. “Mike, come in, come in. Shut the door behind you, okay?”
Mike does. “Doc, good to see you.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is. I’m a wonderful person to see.”
Mike likes him. Mostly.
“Have a seat. Take a load off. This heat, am I right? I’m ready for a cooldown like you wouldn’t believe. Sweat through both my shirts before the day is usually done.”
“Yeah, sure. That’d be nice.”
“I hear things are going well for you and Sean,” he says, folding his hands and leaning a chin or two on them. “Just happened to be in the park on Saturday. You two looked happy.”
“Just happened to be there?”
Doc shrugs, grinning. “You know how it is.”
“I suppose.” The town is full of busybodies. “And he’s fine.”
“Migraines?”
“Every now and then. The meds seem to help.”
“Good, good. That’s what I like to hear. You tell him to see me if that changes.”
“Will do.”
“I’m going to try and get to a poker game here in the next few weeks. Show you how a real man plays, am I right?”
“Right,” Mike echoes.
“You’re looking a little tired there.”
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
“Why you’re here?”
He hesitates, and Doc’s eyes narrow slightly. He never misses a thing. It’s why he’s good at what he does. “Mostly,” Mike says.
“Hmm,” Doc says. He takes a pad of paper out from a desk drawer. He grabs the fountain pen sitting next to an open text with a drawing of a layer of brain matter. “You know that whatever is said in here stays between us, right?”
And yeah, Mike knows this, knows Doc is good for it. He wonders how many secrets Doc carries about the people of Amorea. But it’s not his business to ask.
He’s thought about what he wants to say, the words he’s carefully chosen. He needs to get his point across without sounding like a crazy person. He’s not. He’s not crazy. He thinks something is happening. He just doesn’t know if it’s real or not.
“I know,” he says.
Doc nods, satisfied. “Okay, then. Tell me what’s going on.”
Mike says, “I’ve been having… hallucinations.”
Doc hums a little and begins to scribble on his notepad. His writing is illegible. “Auditory?
“Yes.”
“Visual?”
“Yes.”
“Olfactory.”
“Um. Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t—” And he’s thinking about the woman, the woman, and he can barely remember it. It’s lost in smartphone and Björn and texting, but can’t he remember the way she smelled when she collided with him? He doesn’t really remember the how or why of it, but there was a woman, and there was glass broken around them, and she was on top of him, and he could smell her. Her sweat, underlying notes of something sweet and floral.
He says, “Yes. I think so.”
“Tactile?” Doc asks.
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” Doc says. “And when did this start?”
Mike doesn’t know. “A few weeks.”
“Sleep disrupted?”
“Yes.”
“Vivid dreams?”
“Yes.”
“Do you find yourself thinking something, but losing your train of thought?”
“Yes.”
“Pockets in your memory? Little bits and pieces—” He cuts himself off, and Mike watches as his eyes slide out of focus, jaw slackening. Then it all snaps back into place like it’d never happened at
all. “—of time that you can’t quite remember?”
“Yes,” Mike says slowly.
“Absolutely fascinating.” His voice is lighter than it was before, a little higher. “Tell me more about these hallucinations.”
“You okay?” Mike asks.
Doc looks up at him and blinks. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” His voice is back to normal.
“I don’t—never mind. It’s… uh. People. In my room at night. Voices that I hear even though I know I’m alone.”
“Do you remember what they say?”
Because when is a door not a door? When it’s ajar, but also when it’s been blown to pieces and there’s nothing between us.
“I can’t remember.”
“Mike,” Doc says. “Do you… know what’s real?”
Mike forces a laugh. “Of course I do.” Not all the time.
“This is real.”
“I know.” Is it?
“Good,” Doc says. “Just kidding with you. How’s your sleep?”
“Mostly good.”
“Mostly?”
“Those dreams.”
“Are you getting full REM sleep?”
Mike thinks, How does one even know that? “Sure.” The scribble of the pen over the paper is the loudest thing Mike has ever heard in his life. He’s sweating a little bit. It’s distracting, because he can feel it trickling down the back of his neck.
“These hallucinations,” Doc says. “Tell me about them.”
“Just… words, I guess. I’m hearing things.”
“What words?”
“Smartphone. Texting. Björn.”
“Hmm. And what do you see?”
“A man, standing at the edge of my bed. Birds.”
“Are you sleeping?”
No. “I don’t know.”
“Are you dreaming?”
Yes. “I don’t know.”
“Is the man with the birds? Or the birds with a man?”
“No. They’re separate. Do you…?”
“Do I what, Mike?”
He thinks, Murmuration. “It’s just. Starlings.”
“Starlings?”
“Birds.”
“I know what starlings are,” Doc says, arching an eyebrow.
“Oh.”
“You see them.”
“It’s called a murmuration.”
“What is?” Doc asks.
“The starlings. When they fly together.”
“How do you know that?”
Mike says, “I don’t know.”
“What do you smell?”
Anger and sweat. “Flowery perfume.”
Doc smiles. It’s not mean, but it’s not nice, either. “A past love, perhaps?”
There’s only been Sean for Mike. That’s one thing he’s sure of. “No.”
“Right, right. You feel them too?”
The itch on my wrist. The glass cutting into my back. “Yes.”
“What do they feel like?”
Pain. Irritation. “Real.”
“Well, that’s certainly interesting,” Doc says. He caps the fountain pen and sets in on the desk. He’s not looking at the notes he’s been taking, but directly at Mike. There’s a queer look in his eye, one that Mike’s never seen before. It’s almost hard. Calculating. It knocks him for a loop. It’s gone before he can even be sure it was there. “We’ll have to do some tests, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Strangest things can cause this.”
“Right,” and Mike’s having a hard time catching his breath.
“You might need more sleep.”
“Sure.”
“It could be a tumor growing right now on your brain.”
Mike says, “Yeah,” because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“Or it could be absolutely nothing,” Doc says, sounding obscenely cheerful. “That’s the amazing thing about the human body. How resilient it is. How much of a mystery it is. How much of a bastard it can be. Why, the brain alone is one of the most complex things in all of creation. There’s the old adage that we only use ten percent of our brain, but that’s just a myth. If that actually were the case, then damaging most of the brain should not impair function. There is almost no part of the brain that can be damaged without loss of abilities. A neuroscientist named Barry Beyerstein determined that.”
“How?”
“How?”
“How did he determine that?”
Doc grins. It isn’t the most pleasant of smiles. “Why, by trial and error, I imagine. We use all parts of our brains, but to what extent, we don’t know. There are many secrets that haven’t yet been unlocked. Tell me, do you get headaches?”
“No. Not really.” Mike can’t quite keep up with the conversation with how much his mind is reeling. “No more than anyone else.”
“Numbness or tingling in your arms or legs?”
“No. My wrist itches, but—”
“Topical cream works wonders. Do you have seizures?”
“No.”
“Balance issues?”
“No.”
“Nausea or vomiting?”
“No. Why are you—”
“Has your personality changed?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Good news,” Doc says. “I really don’t think it’s a tumor.”
The relief is so overwhelming, Mike’s hands are shaking. “That’s—”
“What do you know about schizophrenia?”
MIKE DOESN’T open the bookstore at all that day.
Instead, he sits on the sofa in his home, Martin purring on the seat beside him, and stares at the walls.
He doesn’t hear any voices.
He doesn’t see any ghosts.
He doesn’t feel the need to get to them mountains.
Fo sho.
SEAN’S ALREADY waiting for him outside the diner, looking up and down the street, checking the watch on his wrist. He’s not late. In fact, he’s a bit early, but he didn’t go back for lunch after leaving Doc’s, didn’t answer his phone when it rang twice at the house. He isn’t even sure he recognized it for what it was.
Eventually, the shadows started stretching along the walls and he snapped out of it, not wanting to leave Sean to walk home alone.
And it’s worth it. It really is. The look on his face when he sees Mike walking down the sidewalk all cool and calm and collected. It’s relief, it’s happiness, it’s worry all wrapped up into a nervous smile, and even before Mike can get to the diner, Sean’s down the sidewalk full tilt, stopping just before he crashes into Mike. His eyes are bright and he’s flushed, and Mike doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone look as handsome as Sean does right then.
“Well?” Sean demands.
Mike’s amused. He cocks an eyebrow and says, “Hello to you too.”
Sean scowls and slaps him lightly on the chest. “Mike,” he says in warning.
“Sean.”
“Now, you listen here—”
“Oh, I’m listening all right—”
“Back talk? Is that what we’re doing right now—”
“You look nice today.”
Sean gapes at him. “What?”
Mike shrugs, suddenly embarrassed. “Just… I don’t know. I wanted you to know that you look nice today.”
And he does. He’s wearing a checkered shirt buttoned up over a white tank top. The sleeves are rolled up, and he’s got a little smudge of something on his right cheek, probably from wiping his brow. He smells like coffee and cigarettes and Sean, and Mike loves it; if he’s being honest with himself, loves it almost as much as he loves the man standing in front of him.
“I’ve been on my feet for twelve hours,” Sean snaps. “If anything, I look a fright.”
“Still the best thing I’ve seen all day.”
“You should get your vision checked.”
“Already did,” Mike says. “You that forgetful? I went to the doctor today.”
S
ean sputters. “That’s—why you—I oughta just—Mike!”
“Sean.” He’s pushing, he knows, but the longer he pushes, the longer it’ll be before he has to lie to Sean’s face. He can’t take that.
Sean says, “Mike Frazier,” and it’s as far as it’s going to go.
“I’m fine,” Mike says, and he’s even able to put a small smile on his face. “Just some sleep problems. Doc’s gonna get me some sleep pills, and I’ll be right as rain. You’ll see.”
He thinks, But probably not. You see, Ol’ Doc says there’s a criteria. From the Psychiatric Association. He had books from them and everything. Says there are steps you have to go through. Rules that bind a diagnosis. Says you have to have delusions. I’ve had those. Said you have to have hallucinations. Got those too. Catatonic behavior. Might as well be missing time, right?
Sean watches him. “Really?”
“Took some blood, though,” Mike says. “Just to be sure.” He shows Sean the Band-Aid at his elbow, holding down a little piece of cotton.
He thinks, The symptoms have to be there for a duration, though, before it can be diagnosed. He sounded real excited about it, like he couldn’t imagine he’d get to see such a thing. He said these delusions and hallucinations had to manifest for at least a month. Continuous, if possible. Says there will probably be disorganized speech. Grossly disorganized behavior, whatever that means.
Sean rubs his fingers over the Band-Aid, the lightest of touches. Mike’s arm breaks out in goose bumps on this fine evening. “But he thinks you’re fine.”
“Yeah,” Mike says. “He thinks I’m going to be just fine.”
He thinks, He seemed real keen on this too. Didn’t think of much else. Said I’d have to watch close, to keep an eye on these symptoms. Said we’re living in a real progressive time, that there’s such things as insulin shock therapy or some newfangled drug called chlorpromazine that was supposed to be all the rage. Said he could probably get me right on that if I needed to be. Just think. We’ll both be taking drugs. Yours is to clear your head. Mine’s to hold my head together. Isn’t that grand?