Blue Anesthesia

by Daniel Lidman

  Humphrey took a deep breath and shoved his hands in his pockets. He felt more protected with naked parts of his skin hidden.

  No answer.

  He stared at the floor, hands dancing inside of the pockets of his blue pants. The nurses had prepared for this, knowing that Humphrey didn’t talk much. They had given him a notepad and a pen. The bear-fish pointed toward the notepad. “I want you to write an answer to my question.”

  Humphrey turned still, full of thought. With eyes observing the bear-fish, watching the blue of his uniform, feeling how it soothed his mind, he made a decision. Humphrey reached for the notepad, hesitating at first, and then began to write. When he finished, he laid the pen down in his lap.

  “I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE INCIDENT.”

  “Very well,” the bear-fish replied and cleared his throat. “On the day that you arrived here, you talked to one of the doctors downstairs in the ER.”

  A llama, Humphrey corrected in his mind.

  “I looked in your journal and I read about your social issues, specifically when it comes to communication. And I read the doctor’s input, as well, which stated that you have trouble with verbal communication. But I’m noticing now that you also have a hard time with eye contact.”

  Whilst staring at the floor, Humphrey gave a tired nod.

  “Now,” the bear-fish continued, staring at Humphrey’s forehead. “I’m not going to be able to diagnose you based on a few meetings. However, I have scheduled appointments for you, which will start as soon as you finish your time with us. These appointments will arrive in your mail with a date and time. The therapy that you are being offered is cognitive therapy, which specializes with social interactions.”

  Humphrey didn’t react to this. He sat and played with his hands in a nervous matter, portraying a motion as if he was washing them under a sink.

  “We’re going to get you the help you need, Humphrey.”

  To this, Humphrey did react. He cast his stare to the window behind the bear-fish, painted with reality. He saw the blue sky swim with haste. In that same image, the bear-fish smiled his warmth. His uniform vibrated with so much blue. In that moment of silence, an idea spawned: the blue sky had entered this room in the form of the bear-fish. The blue sky wanted to talk with him. It wanted to help him. The Verse-of-U wanted to start protecting him from the monsters.

  The blanket, Humphrey thought.

  It surprised the bear-fish to see Humphrey grabbing for the notepad. He watched with interest as Humphrey mouthed the words as he wrote them. Humphrey’s tongue stuck out the side of his mouth like a piece of dead flesh. Humphrey drew his stare upward, met the bear-fish, and showed him the notepad.

  “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?”

  The bear-fish withdrew his position. He knotted his hands and rested them on his stomach. “Well, that’s not up for me to decide. But based on the information I have received, my guess would be along the lines of a social anxiety disorder, a form of autism, or a developmental disorder; but that’s only speculation. It takes a long time to complete an investigation and place a diagnosis based on the results. And at this ward, we simply cannot allow a patient to stay for a few months. There are others who need help. The patients stay for a few days, and we figure out what they need help with, and then we deliver that help the best way that we can. So, that decision is up to the team that’s going to handle your cognitive therapy.”

  Humphrey nodded. His eyes moved around in wonder. Once again, he started writing something down. “I DON’T UNDERSTAND JOKES, OR IRONY, OR SARCASM. I ALWAYS BELIEVE WHATEVER IS SAID TO ME TO BE TRUE. I NEED HELP. WILL THEY ALSO BE ABLE TO HELP WITH THAT?”

  “A lot of people with social issues have that problem. When you’re not around people and taking part in social activities or conversations, things like humor will eventually become abnormal. If you just suffer from social anxiety, then humor can be taught again rather quickly. However, if the issue is deeper than that, and the problem exists in the part of your brain that handles language and communication, learning these standards can be difficult.”

  Humphrey uttered a sad sound. His feet tapped on the floor. He started writing again.

  “WILL I BE ABLE TO START SCHOOL?”

  This time, the bear-fish had to lean forward to read. The writing became harder to read after Humphrey wrote whilst his feet and legs were moving.

  “Once you have completed your therapy sessions, yes. It might take time, Humphrey, but you will be able to take part in social environments. Do you have an education in mind?”

  Humphrey immediately started writing. As he held up the notepad, he smiled through his teeth. “I WANT TO BECOME A DENTIST. THEY WEAR BLUE.”

  5

  They talked for forty-three more minutes, and Humphrey found the bear-fish to be bluer than the surface of the ocean. He had been hesitant with bear-fish at first, only touching the water of conversation with the tip of his toes. But after ten minutes of moist thoughts, bursting with positivity, Humphrey felt ready to swim in them. After an additional ten minutes of wet thoughts, Humphrey felt sure. He enjoyed being in the sea of conversation with this hybrid. He hoped that the white doctors wouldn’t take this away from him. He pictured them snatching him out of the sea of conversation, munching on him with their sharp teeth. Their teeth would be needles. In a way, needles were worse than teeth because needles had side-effects. Usually, the negative side-effects outweighed the positive. They would pierce his veins with their magical needle as they held him steady. The needle would solve one problem, but the next day he’d wake up with an additional five. An aching headache would surely be one of them.

  It’s a good thing that they’re easy to spot. The white, it gives them away in an instant. The white makes them monsters. But do monsters run in flocks? If they’re not monsters, what are they?

  Humphrey knew what they really were outside the region of imagination; they were humans. Worse, they were humans with power.

  Are there any species more dangerous than humans with almighty power? What a foolish question that was.

  Suddenly red sirens flashed in his mind, stopping the thought-lanes jammed with mental traffic. The bear-fish grew a serious expression and took a deep breath. As an inappropriate reaction to this, an image spawned in Humphrey’s mind.

  Image if he drew in helium from a balloon and the next words that escaped from his mouth made him sound like a vocal snail.

  But the bear-fish did not sound like a vocal snail that crawled its way onto a musical stage, leaving behind a trail of slime. The image of a snail with four paws, covered in fur, with fish eyes and fished lips, dressed in a top and a tuxedo, preparing his vocal talent in front of thousands of people, faded.

  The bear-fish spoke in a serious tone from behind his sealed lips, deep in a breath. “You’ve had a lot of bumps in your road.” He leaned forward and raised a finger, indicating that the next part should be underlined. “But we get too busy noticing and focusing on our bumps, don’t we? Awareness is the key to life. You must pay attention, for you can miss something that could change your life for the better; one second of laying eyes on something can cause the golden ideas to grow. I call these ideas The Valuables. Always look for them, and their signs. They may appear the minute you leave this room, or they may appear tomorrow, or in ten years. I want you to promise me, Humphrey, that you shift your attention from the bumps to The Valuables. Do you think you can do that?”

  I’ve never broken a promise.

  Humphrey nodded. He promised with his heart. They touched pinkies, shook on it, and the promise had come to life. It could never be broken.

  A pinky promise is for life.

  How could he ever break a promise with the bear-fish? The only psychiatrist he had felt some sort of connection with? He didn’t wear a single piece of white clothing, and he cared. He was, a friend.

  This promise is for life. I shall never break it.

  Indeed.

  Chapter Five

  D
ental Light

  1

  It occurred to Axel Gardner that he might be blind. His vision desperately tried to cling on to color, but it failed to penetrate the thick darkness. Axel had woken up with a musky smell tickling his nostrils, almost causing a sneeze. He tried to breathe through his mouth instead, but when he did, specks of dust coated his tongue, drying out his throat. It felt like a mouthful of sand. He started coughing to the point of retching.

  I’m stuck.

  In his violent cough, he heard the sound of chains rustling. His hands were tied behind his back. He sat on a chair. Cheap plastic screamed along with his movement. Physical discomfort and pain turned out to be the least of his worries. Axel had no idea how long he had been here, or even how he ended up in this dark place. Mentally, he suffered.

  He thought of his mom and his siblings. He thought about how happy and excited his mom had been when he called her, ready to talk about his depression. She must have been carrying that joy throughout the entire day. She probably clapped her hands after she hung up the phone. Axel must have been the subject of almost every single one of her conversations. Axel imagined her sitting down, sharing a meal with her caretaker. He doubted that she ate fast; her mouth must have been too busy speaking about her own excitement and delightful joy. The caretaker would give her a nod, and trade smiles. The caretaker would say that she’s happy for her and that she must be proud. “Yes,” his mother would reply. “I am most proud.” Dee would then carry that same emotion onto Duncan and Susanne, who in return would share it with their loved ones. There would be relief, and a special kind of bliss; not the kind of happiness that remained on the lips for a few seconds, but the kind that served long-term through days, weeks, and maybe even months.

  Axel cried, feeling disgust and hatred over his current situation. His tears were loud, almost scary, in this dark and otherwise silent room. He couldn’t bear the thought of his family’s disappointment and confusion when they find out that they can’t reach him. Their excitement and relief had brought them up, only to bring them down harder. Eventually, they would be brought down to Axel’s level, where depression lurked. The thought of his family suffering the way he did, sucked the life out of him. He had to get out of here. He realized that his eyes had adjusted a tad to the darkness, but not much. He spotted certain characteristics of the room, but it was like making out the details of a plane soaring through the sky from the ground.

  He looked upward, and what he saw startled him at first. Something hung above him, only inches away from his face. When he lifted his head toward it, he noticed that it was some kind of a lamp. It stood tall and resembled a doctor’s lamp.

  The floor felt somewhat peculiar. It didn’t have the feel of a regular floor, which would be inside of any home. This floor felt gritty and had no carpet. Axel moved his feet around. When he stomped on it, vibrations tickled him through his shoes.

  It’s not made out of wood.

  His eyes, which had been closed in concentration as he moved his feet around, now opened.

  It feels like the floor of a hospital.

  It amazed him how the silent darkness not only disturbed his eyes, but also the living parts behind his eyes. His vision traced for things in the dark, and his mind painted images in his mind of the unseen. He brought his eyebrows down in a flex, trying to increase the contrast of his stare. His head moved around the room, watching for any kind of detail. He even tried to kick with his feet and lean his head over his shoulders to look behind. That didn’t work. The chair he sat on had been tampered to not move. He heard the sound of metal brushing against metal as he tried to move it. Axel sat straight, out of breath and feeling hopeless. He saw something, then: a lesser color in the distance. He couldn’t measure how far, but it was at least a couple of feet. Blackness—like thick smoke—surrounded this entire room, except for that one spot in the distance. Inside of a frame, gray color on the brink of turning black, loomed; it surrounded a rectangle.

  “A door,” Axel mumbled to himself. But no kind of door would have that kind of color. Unless…

  Unless it’s made out of steel, he thought.

  The darkness around him seemed to grow colder. Axel felt panic build. He took deep breaths, despite feeling as if someone fed him with a tablespoon of dust. After having another coughing episode, with saliva splattered on his chin and shirt, he decided to try and make himself heard.

  “LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  His voice echoed; scattering across the room, decreasing in volume by each second until silence swallowed it. His throat throbbed with dry pain, as if someone had brushed it with sandpaper. Axel turned to cough into his shoulder. His clothes had absorbed some of that musky smell. When his glare returned to that gray frame, fright massaged his temples with black, gritty nails

  He wondered if the man who had kidnapped him stood behind that door. Not doing anything but stand there. Axel’s face started to flinch; he expected someone to open that door at any moment, and run toward him. He felt positive that the man stood behind that door. The man wouldn’t open it in a normal manner, oh no, he would push it open. The darkness played tricks on Axel. He saw movement dance around his field of vision.

  Is someone standing in the corner?

  Is that a figure sneaking around?

  His mind raced between conclusions until imagination faded, and reality came out to play instead.

  There were four taps against the door. Someone knocked. Each tap had at least a second to spare before the next. When Axel heard the taps echo within the frame, he felt positive that the door was indeed made out of steel. And what was that other sound? Did someone giggle?

  Axel swallowed. He swallowed multiple times. There seemed to be an endless amount of saliva building inside of his mouth. With each swallow, he could almost taste his own fear. His body played symptoms similar to a fever. Axel felt warm and cold at the same time. Sweat marked its territory on every inch of his body. His eyes were dry, stinging with every rapid blink. His stomach jumped laps. As emotion overcame him, Axel forgot how to swallow. Saliva ran down his mouth—thick rain.

  Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, oh God please don’t throw up.

  Something molten with discomfort, releasing fumes of toxic anxiety, rolled around in his stomach.

  The steel door opened enough for the side of a head to peek into the room. In the darkness, Axel couldn’t make out any of the facial features. A blank face with a pair of eyes stared through his hollow soul. No words were shared, only mutual breathing connected the air. A couple of minutes passed. Axel withdrew his stare from those eyes a couple of times, not daring to face the images that grew inside his head if he remained his contact with them. Every time he looked back to see if they were still there, they were. They didn’t seem to blink. Whoever those eyes belonged to exhaled excitement.

  It’s a person, Axel thought, and couldn’t figure out if that was good or bad. He felt somewhat stupid for thinking that it might’ve been something else.

  An arm slithered through the frame, joining the peeking head. It reached out into the darkness, circling around, calculating Axel’s position before straightening itself. The skin on the arm was pale and easy to make out in the dark. Fingers withdrew in slow haste until one remained, pointing at Axel. Faint giggling disrupted the silence. Echoes carried the giggling toward Axel, making him feel as if the giggling was inches away. Axel’s spine turned into a handle of a lollipop, carrying chills upward to the head—Axel’s mind, which in this case, was flavored with depression. The cold massaged his flesh with fingernails drenched in freezing water. Axel shuddered. With eyes downward, and skin which felt glued onto his face, a single thought multiplied, repeating itself.

  Everything will be okay.

  Everything will be okay.

  Everything will be okay.

  Everything will be okay.

  Axel glanced upward to look at the person peeking through the door. He saw nothing, no one. The door stood slightly open, letting in a
lesser dark into the more concentrated dark. Axel felt confused; he didn’t know if he should be relieved or concerned. He opened his mouth to talk again, feeling the dust attack his moist tongue.

  “Hello?”

  Axel barely heard the word. He had suspected it to come out as a shout, but his fear neglected him and turned it into a whisper.

  Should I try again?

  He decided that he should. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words were once again barely heard. Not by his own doing, however, but by a loud sound coming from behind the door. It approached him, slowly. Wheels produced a high, sharp sound, piercing through the silence. Axel couldn’t measure their distance. They seemed to be all around him, coming from every inch of the walls. He sat, wanting to cover his ears, forgetting that his hands were chained behind his back. He scooted from side to side, grimacing at the blend of sounds. Axel screamed. The scratching wheels were close and loud enough to cause pain in his eardrums. He thought he saw the door move.

  The sound grew closer.

  WHERE—

  The sound grew closer still.

  THE—

  It seemed to be right in front of him.

  FUCK—

  Wheels scratched upon the floor behind the door, stopping. Axel heard his rapid gasping from inside. There were four knocks against the steel door with the exact timing as the ones before. They were intact with the beating of Axel’s heart. A figure pushed the door open. The outline of a man came forward, dragging the handle of a wagon behind him. A switch flipped. The lamp above Axel blinked three times, and then produced a harsh light, temporarily blinding him. It felt warm, and almost burned on top of his eyelids. Axel wiggled in defense. He heard footsteps along with wheels approaching. As the pain of his eyes faded, and he prepared to open them, he knew that someone was standing right in front of him. Axel heard the sound of a rubber glove being snapped on. The bright light trailed off his face, to the side.