Empath

by Emme DeWitt

  Brendan was kneeling in front of me, taking up the most room. His hands rested lightly on the sides of my calves, a steady reminder that he was still here and that I was still here, too. I looked around to see a crowd had gathered behind him, noting White Coat tapping violently on her tablet a series of short notes about yet another incident with Patient B.

  “That has yet to be determined,” White Coat ground out through clenched teeth. Her eyes darted up occasionally from her notes to assess my condition from second to second. “We’ll have to run some tests, of course. I’m concerned that you keep losing consciousness during regular activities. We may have to adjust your dosage.”

  “Just give her a second,” Brendan said, his eyes never moving from mine.

  I blushed under his intense gaze. I was mortified he had been front row center for yet another episode of Evangeline: A Space Case Odyssey.

  “I’m sure the tests can wait.”

  “Unfortunately, that is not up to you to decide, Mr. Silva. I deeply apologize for the inconvenience, but I think it’s time for you to go. Evangeline needs her rest,” White Coat said, flicking her wrist at Blue Eyes to retrieve Brendan and escort him out.

  Blue Eyes and I bristled at the same time, and a wave of insubordination rolled off him in a huff. Too bad I had to beat him to the punch.

  “I thought you said you had to run tests? Clearly I’m not going to get any rest, and he’s more of a help than you are in terms of my stress levels.” White Coat stiffened.

  “Also,” I continued, “you can stop pretending you care about me for any other reason than your research paper. You should really save yourself the effort. You’re not very good at faking emotions.” I laid out the last comment with a little added pinch of agitation. Maybe in another context I would have gotten a response from the crowd, but the power dynamic was not skewed in my favor.

  The room remained silent. All the medical assistants were collectively holding their breath, waiting for a response from the boss lady. Brendan emitted a wave of disapproval with a matching stern downturn of his eyebrows, but he gave my legs a reassuring squeeze, trying to direct my attention back to him.

  “Oh, wow, did I miss a proposal?” Quentin said, sauntering into the lounge in his robe and pajamas. His entrance broke the mounting tension in one swift pop. Quentin openly surveyed the scene. His body twisted slightly as he took in Brendan on one knee, White Coat pale with rage, and the frozen school of medical assistant guppies. “Congratulations to the happy couple!”

  “You have literally the worst timing. You know that?” I snarled, directing a bullet of rage toward Quentin, and Quentin alone. His appearance derailed what little control I had gained post-disassociation hubbub.

  He doubled over with my blow, but covered it well with a rolling fake laugh. His face peered up, a knowing grin pulling one corner of his mouth up into a lopsided smirk. His oily forehead shone a little brighter under the harsh lights.

  “I take it she said no,” Quentin directed at Brendan. “Tough break, Romeo.”

  Brendan stiffened, his face stoic as he surveyed the posturing between Patient A and myself.

  “Take a seat, Quentin. We’ll get you some lunch,” White Coat said, her eyes closed to slits in an attempt to read the social interaction between her two surly patients. She tapped distractedly on the case of her tablet, unsure of what note to describe the encounter best. “Everyone else is dismissed.”

  The medical staff gave one another knowing looks but made a swift exit before they could be called back. The gossip mill would be in fine spirits tonight, I realized, and I would be at the very center of it. Quentin sunk into a nearby chair, his legs crossed and bouncing while he was waited upon. I rolled my eyes hard and snorted, completely beside myself with his audacity.

  I took a deep breath to steady myself. I pushed another ounce of strength into my barriers as a soothing reminder that they were in fact there. They couldn’t help what came across my face, though, so I concentrated on removing all tension from my forehead and cheeks. In and out. In and out. I was in control.

  Brendan gave my legs one final squeeze before getting up. I turned my attention back onto him as his aura pulsed through a quick succession of shock, embarrassment, and forced relaxation., much like I had just done internally. He was on edge now because of Quentin, and I glared at the psycho extra hard on Brendan’s behalf.

  “Give me a minute?” Brendan asked White Coat, who nodded assent.

  Blue Eyes lingered for a few beats, but followed White Coat toward the door and resumed his stance against the wall, this time a little more defiant than surly. With the immediate space around us vacated, I felt like Brendan and I had a modicum of privacy, at least for a few brief moments. White Coat, taken by a burst of inspiration, began typing out the encounter on her tablet in the doorway, certain to maintain a good vantage point.

  Brendan scooted his chair to face mine, resuming his ownership of the foot of space directly in front of me. He kept his hands folded between his legs, but I saw them flex toward mine but deciding at the last moment to leave our respective hands to ourselves.

  I sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, the air rushing out of me dissipating the remaining fight left in me. “Kind of ruined your visit, huh?” My unoccupied fingers hooked another loose strand of hair around my ear again, and the soothing trail down to my many split ends gave me something else to focus on other than Brendan’s intense stare. Shame rose up to warm my cheeks.

  “No need to apologize,” Brendan said, his thumb tracing around his cuticles in his own absentminded tick. It reminded me of all the times I had seen him do that before.

  I bit the inside of my cheek at the wash of memories that invaded my mind, causing my throat to close up again. I felt like I was failing him. I was still just a burden that needed looking after. At least Brendan bothered to come visit. No one else did anymore.

  “I really am trying to do better,” I said, half to convince him and half to convince myself. I was controlling it better, wasn’t I? Even with the drugs inhibiting my barriers? I just wasn’t going to promise what exactly it was I was doing better. The truth felt too taboo.

  “I know. I can tell,” Brendan said immediately, assuming I meant cooperation and submission. “And I remind your parents every day that you’re working hard. Maybe I can bring them next time.” Desperation muddied the flare of hope in Brendan’s aura. Seeing that so clearly with my abilities only made me feel worse.

  “We both know they won’t come,” I replied, fidgeting with the ends of my hair. “It’s okay. I understand.” I had to remind myself to breathe.

  “No,” Brendan said with a firm shake of his head. “They will come. I’ll convince them.”

  “Brendan,” I said, a heavy sigh escaping my mouth unexpectedly. “I don’t expect them to come for me, ever.”

  “They need you,” Brendan pressed. “Especially with Tomas…”

  “Especially because of Tomas,” I cut in. “I might as well be dead, too. At least to them, I guess I already kind of am.”

  “They only lost one child,” Brendan argued. “The other one is sitting right in front of me.”

  “Just take care of them, okay?” I replied, not wanting to argue any further.

  My mouth spasmed in a brief smile, but the facade was too much for me to maintain for long. Quentin was making too little noise in his effort to eavesdrop, and I didn’t need his rendition of the exchange to be thrown back in my face later. “That was our deal.”

  “I know,” he said. “I am looking after them. Just until you get back. That was the deal.” Brendan’s face searched mine for confirmation, but I had a hard time meeting his gaze.

  Brendan pulled my fidgeting hands away from my nervous hair inspection and cupped them in the tight space left between us. I froze. If I yanked free of him too quickly, I would hurt his feelings.

  “Your brother would kill me right now if he could see what’s happening to you,” Brendan sa
id, a short bark escaping from him. His bitterness leaked into his aura, changing the color and the clarity once again. “It’s my fault you’re not better taken care of. Tomas would be doing such a better job.”

  It was my turn to grab his hands to comfort him. I pulled my hands away from his, bringing them back to cover the outside of his. I raised our hands slightly to draw his line of sight up to meet mine.

  “You are not responsible for me,” I said sternly, keeping his eyes locked with mine. His eyelids drew up a little, and I could tell his resistance was already making my speech futile. “Tomas wasn’t responsible for me either. If that’s why you’re suffering, then just leave me here and don’t come back. I can’t take your life away from you, too. You have so many better things to be doing with your time than visiting your dead best friend’s little sister in an insane asylum.”

  I was determined to have him hear me this time. If only I could underline my words with a little command. But I had made a promise. No funny business with Brendan. My words alone would have to be enough to convince him.

  “Treatment center,” he qualified.

  “Loony bin,” I shot back, making my eyes bulge out in a goofy face.

  “Treatment center,” he argued, a smile slowly spreading across his face. A pulse of joy cleared away the murky hesitation from moments before.

  “Mental institution,” I relented. “This is a place of learning, after all.”

  A huge pause filled the air between us. The moment felt like a long inhalation, when everything was suspended and the expectation of the next moment left a lag in time. All the judgment, fear, and shame were forgiven for those fleeting seconds, and we could just pretend that life was normal. It was perfect.

  “Behave yourself, okay?” Brendan instructed, the lightness gone from him. Time lurched back into normal speed. His smile faltered as he began the difficult process of saying goodbye.

  “When have I ever behaved?” I said with a small laugh. I squeezed his hands together before I released them.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Brendan said, standing up and putting his chair back in its original place on the other side of the table.

  Before I could get up, he leaned in and placed a kiss on my forehead. Suddenly I was drowning in his aftershave, the smell of home and safety wrapping around me once again. By the time I pulled myself out of my reverie, Brendan was already out of sight.

  I sat there for a minute, biting the edge of my thumbnail in an attempt to reign in the tears that threatened to overflow. Now was not the time. I didn’t know if I had the energy left to pull myself out of another spiral so soon after the last one.

  A derisive snort jarred me from my concentration, and I remembered I wasn’t alone.

  “Honestly, you should have said yes,” Quentin said, harping back on the proposal gag from his overly dramatic entrance. “If I wasn’t so hungry, I think I might have vomited from the sight of the two of you. Sweet Jesus, let a man eat in peace.”

  “Stuff it, Quentin,” I said, my voice bored and distracted as I followed Brendan in my mind’s eye through the building, down in the elevator, across the parking lot, and finally to his car. Once inside, his emotions crackled like fireworks, spinning and flickering through everything he had kept from me during the past half hour. I felt like a voyeur, but I couldn’t look away.

  His emotions cycled in a faltering loop as his mind tried to decode what I had said and how I had acted. There was a lot of worry, but there was also hope and affection. After a while I had to pull myself back. It was getting too tempting to pry beyond recognizing basic emotions, and that fell under our do not disturb pact. Of course the one person I had been dying to know the inner mind of since I was ten was off limits. But a promise was a promise.

  At some point, I was escorted out of the cafeteria and back to my room. I didn’t even register Quentin’s sassy salutation when I left, but I’m sure I would get teased about it later. Ad nauseum. And they wondered where the animosity between us came from.

  I collapsed onto my bed, biding my time until the next test by following Brendan on his winding commute home, the scenic way, the one he showed me shortly after Tomas’s accident to help me relax after a particularly bad series of night terrors. I wondered if he did it on purpose.

  “Evangeline.”

  Evangeline.

  Evangeline.

  My name echoed loudly against the endless variety of institutional white tiles in my room. My fingers clenched the pillow so hard my lips kissed my knuckles, and I suppressed a strong urge to fling one of my lone remaining comforts at the speaker. I was going to pay for my outburst in the lounge, but I was already thinking offense. Whatever White Coat had coming my way, I was ready to parry and then some.

  A great reservoir of rage teemed just under my conscious self. The waves rocked violently enough that I could access it easily at each cresting of every new wave. Part of me was concerned by how readily I could repurpose my growing darkness, but I knew what kept me in check was stronger. But White Coat and I had no love lost. I didn’t feel as morally obligated to protect her from myself.

  “Evangeline,” she said again, a slight edge to her tone.

  “What?” I replied crisply into the air.

  I didn’t have to speak loudly. There was probably one microphone for every one of my fingers and toes. That was true for the cameras based on my mental eaves dropping and limited peeks of White Coat’s tablet screen. Honestly, if they missed the opportunity to bug my bed frame, someone should find another line of work. Observation was clearly not their strong suit.

  “We’re going to need to run some simulations,” White Coat said. “Please present yourself at the door for your escort.” The speaker squawked when she disengaged her microphone. On second thought, maybe the budget didn’t allow for updated audio surveillance from this century.

  “And if I don’t?” I asked, unable to keep the waver of fear from my overspent bravado. The fingernails of the hand buried under my pillow dug into my palm. I tried to slow my heartbeat from its gallop. Simulation was the best euphemism for torture I had ever heard.

  I was curled on top of my bed and had been dealing with Quentin’s wheedling monologue for the past hour. Apparently, our lack of interaction at lunch had really ruffled his feathers because he would not stop talking over our unfortunately crystal clear psychic hotline. Quentin had many thoughts and opinions about young marriage, particularly within the supernatural community. My nerves were already beyond raw.

  “Then your escort will be forced to retrieve you. Staff have been instructed to use whatever means necessary to make you comply. It’s up to you,” she said, clicking off again.

  “I’ll show you whatever means necessary, you psycho bitch,” I mumbled.

  Okay. Deep breath. Options?

  I could resist, but I would have a second episode in so many hours. My guilt over ruining Brendan’s earlier visit was still fresh. Doors were not going to magically open for me if I made a run for it. Running wasn’t really my style. Or strength. My only strength was currently in need of desperate recharge. Rage licked up at me, but I pushed it back down reflexively.

  No decent excuse for this outburst came to mind. I wanted to save my rebellions for worthy moments to maximize impact and energy expenditure. This one was not passing the bullshit test.

  White Coat was saved for this round, but I couldn’t keep up this saintly act forever. Following directions that were against my best interest really irked me. I may comply today, but the balance owed to me by The Association was getting higher and higher the longer I stayed.

  The beep of the security badge sounded from the other side of my door, and I sighed.

  Before they could open the door fully, I had rolled myself out of bed and stood, sulking at my escort. Blue Eyes looked equally as pleased as I was that we got to spend so much time together.

  “Don’t you ever get time off?” I asked him. “Your compensation package sucks. You should really consider
renegotiating that at your next review.”

  His face remained blank as he held the door open for me. I moved out into the hall, and his inner monologue filtered into my head as clearly as a podcast.

  Oh, you have no idea. Pay seemed worth it at the time, but damn, this place gives me the creeps. Damn Johnson spraining his ankle. He owes me for covering his shifts. Damn know-it-all kids and the spooky science shit’s got my skin crawling. Once the debt’s paid off, I’m gone.

  “Same,” I said out loud, eliciting a full body spasm from Blue Eyes. I savored a smirk and used the opportunity to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

  We continued down the hall that would lead to our final destination: my least favorite room in my least favorite hall on my least favorite floor of my least favorite place. On my numerous visits, I had counted the floors of people in the building around me. I could track their movements, whether horizontally along the floor or in the elevators in manic little short trips between the only occupied floors.

  No one took the stairs.

  Of all ten floors, only the top three seemed to be occupied. We never left the eighth floor, so I assumed the other floors mirrored this one in terms of offices and rooms. I wondered if some day all of the rooms would be occupied. If, just like Windermere, The Association had kept them, knowing full well who would be coming and when.

  I shook my head to dislodge the thought. It was not one I wanted to keep ruminating on. Blue Eyes cycled through his complaint list again, and I tuned out of his emotional feed as well. It was time to wall off as much as I could anyway. Some part of me needed to survive to piss Blue Eyes off another day.

  He opened the door to the observation room, which was dark except for the eerie blue glow of the open sensory deprivation tank. I bit the inside of my cheek hard and reminded myself to breathe.

  God, I really hated this wing.

  “You know the drill,” Blue Eyes said, not waiting for me to get in the door before he started to close it behind me. I scooted in quickly, an indignant yelp escaping from my lips as the coldness from the steel door neared the thin cotton of my pajama bottoms.