by S.J. Finch
Chapter 5
The next few weeks brought Ryan as close to normal life as he would ever be again. The days passed uneventfully, with no hint of the looming pothole in the road that Ryan kept feeling was just around the corner. He had fallen completely back into his old routine to the point that sometimes it felt as though the attack had never happened at all, as if it was all just a faint memory of a bad dream. Other times however, when shafts of bright moonlight broke through his curtains, when unseen noises whispered in the dark, or when he caught sight of the bite on his arm, the worst of the memories would come rushing back to him all at once.
The bite itself had finally begun to heal and scar, but the nightmares were still as fresh as ever. Every night Ryan was forced to relive the attack in the forest. In his dreams however, the threat of the woods became a hundred different places. He ran, pursued by the creature, through the halls of school, through his home, through the grocery store. When Ryan closed his eyes, the monster’s hunting ground was as varied as his memories, but it was always, always there. Some nights Ryan got away by barricading himself in the teacher’s lounge, pushing couches and tables up against the doors. Some nights he wasn’t so lucky, and he was forced to watch himself, over and over, bleeding to death under the harsh phosphorescent lights in the frozen food aisle as the yellowed linoleum disappeared under an expanding pool of his own crimson blood.
Some things, smaller things, still hadn’t gotten back to normal and Ryan knew they probably never would. His father did his best to hide it, but Ryan could tell Joseph still blamed himself for what had happened, despite Ryan’s protests. People also continued to treat Ryan more gently than they had before, as though they were trying to prove that they could treat him normally, but in fact they were afraid that he might break down at any moment if they said or did the wrong thing.
Ryan’s return to his old life, the family dinners, the movies, school, hanging out in Eli’s basement, made it harder to keep a firm grasp on the abnormal events of that night. With each day that passed, Ryan was able to remember it less and less clearly.
As the details of the event began to slip away, Ryan was surprised to find the smaller details of the creature were also beginning to fade. In that moment when he had been on the pavement, the moment he thought would be his last, Ryan had been certain that every detail of the creature would remain etched in his brain forever. Now however, he was having trouble creating a clear picture of the animal in his head. He could remember some things vividly, the head and eyes always, but the more time that passed, the less he was able to recall. Sometimes, in the bright of day, when things like monsters seemed impossible, Ryan allowed himself to think, if only for a moment, that perhaps it truly had just been a bear. Perhaps the stress of the attack had caused him to see things that weren’t there. Perhaps he had lost so much blood that he had started to hallucinate.
Even when he accepted what he had seen and put his mind to it, Ryan still couldn’t work everything through. He reasoned that an animal like the one he had seen couldn’t have survived all these years in a national forest without being seen by anyone else, especially since it clearly wasn’t afraid of humans. There was no kind of natural evolution or mutation that would have resulted in what Ryan saw. Nothing on earth could move that quickly or that silently. There were too many contradicting facts, too many arguments on both sides, and Ryan couldn’t tease any of it apart. What he could do was eliminate some of the possibilities, which was why he was now sitting in the waiting room of a Dr. Rebecca Bly, clinical psychologist.
Dr. Webster had initially suggested that psychological treatment might not be a bad thing, considering Ryan’s ordeal, and of course Ryan’s mother had pounced upon the idea. Ryan wasn’t worried about the aftereffects of his “traumatic experience,” and he doubted a shrink could touchy-feely his nightmares away, but he was trying to solve a mystery of sorts, and he figured no one would know more about hallucinations than a psychologist. So, Ryan had agreed almost immediately to see Dr. Bly, much to the relief of his mother.
The waiting room was small, with no more than half a dozen chairs, but cozy. All around him, Ryan could see that the room had been decorated to seem as friendly and inviting as possible. Everything was in varying shades of cream, with dark, expensive-looking wood furniture and fresh flowers in stylish, modern vases.
Ryan approached the desk, where the bottle-blonde twenty-something looked up from her computer.
“Hi, are you Ryan?” she asked politely, her white smile oozing with false sincerity.
“Yeah.” He replied.
“Great. Have a seat and Doctor Bly will be right with you.”
“Thanks.”
He walked over and sat down in one in the corner of the empty waiting room, next to the table piled with magazines.
Ryan was only on number forty-four of the Fifty Sexiest People of the Year when he heard the door behind the desk open.
“Ryan?”
He hastily put down the magazine and stood up.
“Come on in.” Dr. Bly said.
The doctor was much younger than Ryan had expected. She couldn’t have been older than thirty, which couldn’t have been more than a few years older than the receptionist.
She wore a slim black skirt and white blouse, her brown hair pulled back, partially hidden by black-rimmed reading glasses. She was skinny, with a build Ryan figured of a long-distance runner. Her face was sharp and angular with a long, straight nose and a pointed chin. Despite this, her eyes were so gentle that the sharpness of her other features seemed less harsh and gave her a more approachable air than she might have had otherwise.
He walked into her office and she shut the door behind him. It was decorated much the same as the waiting room, but in richer tones. An oversized desk, backed by high bookshelves stood against one wall, and a large couch atop a thick rug sat in the middle of the room.
“I’m Becky.” She said in a practiced voice. She shook Ryan’s hand and motioned for him to sit on the couch. “Please.”
She took the plush, important-looking chair opposite him and leaned back, crossing her legs and resting a legal pad on them. She studied Ryan for a moment.
Suddenly self-conscious, Ryan tried to appear as relaxed and laid-back as possible, though he didn’t know how well he was doing.
After a moment, Becky spoke. “I’ve talked to Doctor Webster and he filled me in on what happened. As I understand it, he merely suggested therapy to possibly get a jump on dealing with some trauma issues, but your mother was insistent. Why do you think that is?”
Ryan was surprised that apparently the head shrinking was to begin immediately. He didn’t like the thought of talking about his problems to a complete stranger. Showing that kind of weakness to a person he’d never met was a terrifying thought. He wasn’t here to talk through his issues, he was here to try and fit a few pieces of the puzzle together then get out. She was blunt and Ryan liked that, but it was going to make it harder to sidestep her “feeling” questions and get to the questions of his own.
“Look, I uh, I appreciate you seeing me, but I’m not really here to talk about my mother…or my feelings…or really anything.”
She smiled. “That’s fine. The mother thing is probably a little Freudian for me anyway.”
“I thought Freud was your guys’ patron saint…”
Becky chuckled. “He did a lot for the science, and he’s a nice figurehead for the profession I suppose, but most of his theories are pretty outdated. Personally I only subscribe to a few of his more basic ideas.”
“Like what?” Ryan asked. He figured that the longer he kept her talking, the less he would have to talk.
“The conscious, the subconscious, things like that. For example, Freud believed that within each of us are these opposing forces: the animal parts of our brain in a constant struggle for dominance with the rational parts.”
“I guess I could see that.” Ryan replied.
D
r. Bly nodded. “It’s an idea that spans disciplines as well as cultures. Psychology, philosophy, theology. Many people believe that there are these two halves of humanity: our savage, animal side and our rational, moral, human side. Some religions teach that the animal side is a source of base temptation and must be overcome by the human side, through faith or worship. Some philosophers and evolutionary theorists believe that morality itself is a purely human construct, and that we only refrain from murder and theft because society would punish us for them.”
“What do you believe?” Ryan asked.
“I believe we all have a little animal in us, some more than others. I believe that the human mind has certain tendencies that are difficult to overcome, certain…natures.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
“Is that what you do here?” Ryan asked. “Help people cope with their basic ‘natures’?”
“Sometimes.” She said with another smile. “But you’re not here for a lecture from Philosophy 101, and obviously you’re not here to answer my insightful, probing questions about the incident, so why don’t you tell me why you are here.”
“I’m…curious. I had questions that I thought maybe you could answer.”
“Well I’ll do my best. That’s what I’m here for.”
“I…” Ryan started, but hesitated. He took a breath and started again. “Hallucinations. What can cause them? Medically, I mean.”
Becky’s eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at him over the tops of her reading glasses. “I’m not a medical doctor, Ryan, so I’m not sure I could say, from a medical standpoint.”
“Could loss of blood, I mean, severe loss of blood, could that cause someone to hallucinate?” He stumbled through, immediately regretting even bringing it up. He knew he wasn’t getting out of here scot free anymore, not after bringing up hallucinations in a shrink’s office.
“Again, all I can give you is my best guess. Blood loss can send you into hypovolemic shock, which can alter your mental state. Still, I don’t think it can cause hallucinations. You’re talking about visual hallucinations?”
“Yeah…” Ryan replied.
She clicked her pen. “These hallucinations, did you experience them after you woke up in the hospital or that night in the woods?”
“I…I’m not even sure I saw anything.” He replied.
“Ryan, what do you think you saw?” She asked, her tone more clinical now than conversational.
“I don’t know what I saw. I don’t even know if I saw anything. I mean, if loss of blood can’t cause hallucinations, then there we go, we know I didn’t see anything.”
“Well you obviously think you saw something or else you wouldn’t have asked.” She said, making her voice as soothing as possible. “And there are dozens of different things that can cause visual hallucinations. It could have been caused by something other than blood loss.”
“Forget I said anything. Thanks for your help-”
“Ryan,” Becky’s tone was forceful, but still kind. “You can relax. I’m not going to tell your mother or Doctor Webster or anyone else. This is all confidential. And I’m not going to call the men in the white coats with the big van. You don’t strike me as a whack job…and yes, that’s a professional term.” She said with a smile. “You went through something no one should ever have to endure, especially not at your age. You don’t have to tell me what you saw or what you think you saw, that’s fine. All I want to do is help you, and to do that, you’ve got to at least give me something. Now if you feel comfortable, tell me this: these hallucinations, are we talking Papa Smurf riding a zebra and robbing a liquor store or just a tree trunk that looked like it might have had a face in it?”
Ryan was nervous and he felt as though he had told too much of the truth already, but he managed a smile. “Tree trunk. Just some weird, little things that didn’t look quite right.”
Dr. Bly smiled back. “Then I don’t think you have anything to worry about. People often see things in the dark that aren’t there in the light. With the amount of stress you were under, the fear I’m sure you were in, your brain probably wasn’t processing everything perfectly.”
Ryan didn’t say anything for a while as Becky’s eyes remained fixed on him.
“One more question?” He asked.
“Of course.”
“Do they really still wear white coats? Isn’t that a little cliché? It seems like if you’re going to be subduing crazy people, the last thing you want to do is give yourself away with such an obvious outfit…”
Becky grinned. “Some wear white, most just wear hospital scrubs.”
“But you don’t think I’ll be finding out firsthand?”
“Not anytime soon, no.” She smiled again.