One

by J. A. Laraque

  “The fall…” I said.

  My words came out slowly. I felt like a coma patient on a television show waking up after years of deep slumber. Disoriented and confused I could remember everything that happened in the school, but I could not say it to him. The pain on my forehead was still there, it was worse than anything else. I squinted my eyes together; the doctor could clearly see it.

  “The nurses cleaned the wound on your forehead. You must have hit it against the edge of the steps. It caused a nasty gash, but you will be fine. If you’re still in pain I can speak to Dr. Leafs about giving your something for that.”

  Listening to his words I understood them fully, but they did not register with my mind. His voice was calm and his explanation absolute as if there was nothing strange that occurred. The room still interested me. It was clearly and older building. Chips of paint were breaking away from the corners of the walls and ceiling. Thick glass windows allowed sunlight in, but nothing else. The ventilation system was out of reach even if I stood up on the bed. Cold air blew directly on my face, which answered why I had still felt so cold even though covered with a sheet and blanket.

  “What happened to me?” I asked.

  A question asked because I wanted, no, needed to hear the answer. The doctor’s eyes told me that no matter what he said the answer would not bring me any comfort. He reached down to the foot of my bed and pulled a metal clipboard from it. He began flipping through the numerous pages held there. I never liked doctors. They would either withhold information until the last possible minute or try to downplay the truth of your condition.

  He wrote something on one of the pages; it was short, no more than a sentence, but seeing that angered me. I never wanted or required emotion from doctors, their job was to diagnose a problem and recommend and/or administer treatment. His look of general concern was unnecessary, while pleased and puzzled to see another human, just the few things I had noticed had unsettled me and I knew it was only going to get worse.

  “You don’t remember what happened to you?” He asked me.

  I knew what I was beginning to accept but refused to fully believe, but was that his question? His eyes searched mine trying to pluck the answer from me before I could give it to him. When my mother and I arrived at the critical care unit after my father’s accident the doctor attending looked at me the same way. He asked the most asinine question, one asked every time someone is part of a traumatic event. Are you alright? A verbal answer was not why the question was asked, they want to see your response in your actions, in your eyes, in your soul.

  I laid my head back against the pillow; its cool soft surface relaxed me, but only for a moment. I wanted to give the answer to his question that would lead to an answer for mine. I thought back to what had happened, my mind felt cloudy as if trying to recollect a fading dream. For a moment I had forgotten some of what I had seen. Images were of my past, what had happened with Jonathan, Christine and my family not the vacant world I had woke up to earlier that day.

  A scent of flowers washed away the images. On the nightstand next to my bed a small crystal vase filled with an assortment of flowers sat with a small card attached. Its bright vibrant colors were such a stark contrast to the plane white room I wondered why I had not noticed them first.

  Looking harder that the arrangement, I recognized the logo on the card, it was from the flower shop I worked at as a kid. Only twelve and I had a job bringing the display flowers from the front of the store to the storage area in the back. I learned a lot about flowers from working there and shopped there many times for gifts given to my mother and Christine.

  “They arrived this morning.” The doctor chimed in.

  My hand shook as I reached for the card the card hanging from one of the flowers. I knew who the flowers were from, but this only brought more questions. The card smelled of perfume; Christine’s favorite brand. I fumbled to open the envelope, finally opening it I began to read the card.

  In time these flowers will wither and die, but my love for you is eternal, love, Christine.

  For a moment the worry was lifted from me. It did not matter that it would be impossible for her to have sent me these flowers considering what I had seen. I did not care that the doctor looked upon me as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. What did matter was that Christine still loved me and if she was here then so was my family.

  “Christine…?” I whispered.

  Emotion was all I had at that moment. Joy wrapped around me and brought a smile to my face. Doctor Stormed’s expression did not complement mine. His look of concern was still there and stronger than ever.

  “It's unfortunate, but many of our patients have family who abandon them. Friends who refuse to visit their loved ones while under our care. They just don't understand that family and community can be the most powerful healing tool we have.”

  If a powerful emotion such as anger can lead to mental mistakes then it must be accepted that pure happiness would have the same affect. All that was left as far as I was concerned was to merge two worlds into one and tie them together with a bow of common sense. A tall feat, but the alternative was not acceptable.

  “The man on the stairs that I saw, was he the one who brought me here?”

  The confused look on Doctor Stormed’s face was clearly telling me that my attempt to explain what happened to me before with what was happening now was failing.

  “I’m sorry, the man on the stairs?” He asked.

  It was becoming more and more unlikely that I would be able to bring both worlds together. If that could not be done then I would accept that. The smell of the flowers and perfume were stronger than ever and the past became less and less important.

  “Is Christine here now? Is my family here?” I asked.

  “No, but they were notified and will be here soon.”

  It is that momentary relief when you believe your troubles are over that can be the cruelest prolog. The shell you created cracked open by an undeniable problem. At that moment his words took me from comfort to confusion with dread not far behind.

  “How…how were you able to contact them? Where were they?”

  The clouds were cleared away and I remembered everything, even what I tried to forget. The room seemed smaller than just a moment ago. If the hospital were able to contact my family then it would mean one of two things. Either they were able to get my information from my identification card and call my family meaning they are now home or they knew where to contact them and did so. Doctor Stormed looked more concerned with my lack of disclosure.

  “Timothy, what do you remember about last night?”

  In order to put an end to this I had to accept the possibility that everything that happened was a dream or something else. It did not matter why I was unable to escape it before or why I was even trapped in such a nightmare. It was time to tell him exactly what I remembered, no matter how crazy it would sound.

  “I...uh...I remember I was at Lincoln Park, my sister's school. I was looking for other people and thought they may have taken refuge in the bomb shelter. When I was leaving the power went out and my head felt like it was on fire. I was running up the stairs when I saw something... someone. I guess it startled me and I... I fell. Can you tell me what happened and why Chicago was evacuated?”

  The story did not make sense to me and I had not told him what I saw before. The fire, the visions, the empty world I truly believed was real. His expression of surprise sealed a thought I had when I climbed back onto the balcony after failing to release myself.

  “Evacuation…? Timothy… is that was you believed happened? There was no evacuation.”

  When I felt my heart racing, my rapid breathing standing on my balcony, there was a fleeting thought before I moved forward in believing everything I had seen was indeed real. Had I lost my mind? The smell of the flowers, the card stamped with the logo of the flower shop on Wells Street. If all that was true then there was no world void of life beyond mine. Everything was
created by my mind and that fall did not render me unconscious, but had awakened me.

  “Where is this?” I asked.

  “Let’s talk more about this evacuation first. When did you first start having this dream?”

  We were back to my first probable expiation. A dream world I created that I could not escape from, but there was something else. The shadow, the fall, a dream aside, where did I fall from and where was I taken to and if this happened the night before why was it only then that my family had been notified.

  “Please, tell me, where am I?” I pleaded.

  “You’re back in your room. We transferred you about an hour ago from the medical wing.”

  It was beginning to make sense, the private room, the steel door and the reinforced glass. An answer was in my mind, but I held onto it. I did not want to state the truth of my surroundings. I wanted to hear it from an outside source.

  “You said from the medical wing. Then… where is this?” I asked.

  Pending clarity was interrupted. A security lock released, the sound echoed through the room. The white metal door with the small diamond shaped glass window slowly opened. Another older man, a physician, entered the room looking at me as if he had known me for a long time.

  Doctor Stormed immediately stood from his seat. He looked as if whatever he was going to tell me he was ready to convey to him. The second doctor glanced at him, his dark blue eyes acknowledging the situation.

  Doctor Stormed looked back at me as if saying goodbye as he handed the new doctor my chart and left the room without saying a world. The second doctor closed the door behind him. This time I did not hear a lock latch.

  Grabbing a plastic chair next to the door the doctor pulled it next to the night stand and sat down. Laying the chart next to the vase he stared into my eyes.

  “Do you know who I am?” He asked.

  His face was less concerned and more curious. Unlike Doctor Stormed his voice did not sound like my father’s. There was no reassurance in his voice. It was clear, concise and cold. He sought an answer from me that would dictate his next question. While this was the type of physician I respected and preferred, I did not feel better dealing with him. My blank stare gave him his answer.

  “My name is Doctor Nema Leafs. You’ve been under my care.”

  “Under your care...what does that mean? What happened to me?”

  He crossed his arms; the expression on his face was of disappointment. This was not the look my father gave me when I let him down; it was the look a scientist would give when the findings he expected from an experiment did not produce the right result.

  “I hoped you'd be able to tell me that. I overheard what you told Doctor Stormed. This evacuation... you didn't dream it, did you?”

  I knew where he was going, just as I knew what Doctor Stormed was going to say before Doctor Leafs entered the room. Still, I refused to say it or even think it at first. It sickened me, but I shook my head as if I did not know what to say.

  “I…I don’t know what you mean. I just…don’t know.”

  He picked up my chart and quickly found the sentence Doctor Stormed had written. Dr. Leafs looked up from the stack of papers, the look in his eyes, I recognized it; it was the look of failure. He took a deep breath, his eyes relaxed as if he was going down a road he had traveled many times. I waited, knowing what he would say, expecting it.

  “You wanted to know where you are. You are in Lake View Psychiatric hospital. You have been under my care for almost a year now.”

  The Wake

  Often when attending the wake of a loved one the friends and family of the deceased are able to keep some measure of composure. Sometimes this restraint of emotion is for the benefit of the immediate family or spouse. Other times it is one’s own inability to deal with a situation, so in order to make it through the moment they pretend. They are holding back their emotions only to have them spill out. Usually this happens once they view the face of the deceased.

  Still hazy, but I remembered standing at the back of the room at my father’s wake. Watching people walk by my father’s coffin paying their last respects. I knew perhaps ten percent of them. Most were there out of obligation and their expressions showed it. When they looked upon my father their thoughts were not of his premature death or the family left behind, but their own limited existence and future death.

  The few tears shed besides my mother’s and my sisters were from those unable to come to grips with their own mortality. They did not know my father or the rest of my family. Besides Aunt Jackie, those that called themselves family never interacted with us and they would soon disappear back into their own lives where they would quickly forget this day only referring to it in passing, calling it a painful moment.

  I understood death and what had happened to my father. The man who had killed him would be punished and that would have to be enough for me as far as that subject was concerned. My role in this was to bring reason to a death without one. To be strong, to be a man, I did not expect my mother and sister to have the same feelings and understanding that I did. We are all damaged in some way, my damaged allowed me to see the situation for what it was, deal with it and move on.

  Honestly, that day, I did not want to see him. The look on his face in the critical care unit was etched into my soul and I did not want to add another. Truthfully, that reason was based on emotion so maybe I was not as damaged as I believed.

  Naomi, a cousin on my father’s side whom I had never seen before arrived with a rule book on how wakes should be conducted. While I had only heard a few stories about her from my father what I did know was that she was a busy-body with an extremely cold cruel side. She was dressed in a black gown that looked like she spent much more time worrying over how it would look on her than about the death of a family member.

  She made sure her presence was known when she walked in. Gliding over to my father’s coffin like a retired soap opera star she looked down at him and began crying hysterically. There was maybe an ounce of realism in her display, but most of it was for show. Unfortunately, I was most likely the only person who saw through her.

  Her eyes caught mine and her expression changed. It was curiosity and something else. Walking over she embraced me and that was when I noticed there were no trails of drying tears or running eye liner. She whispered something that I cannot remember then pulled away from me looking into my eyes.

  Of all the questions one could ask on that day she asked why my eyes were not red. I just stood there remaining silent looking past her toward the coffin. She turned her back to me and walked away. Under her breath, she said that either you show what is real or you fake it, if you do neither, you will go crazy.

  Plausible Revelation

  I expected Doctor Leafs to tell me that I was crazy. I never expected him to tell me that I had been committed for over a year. While the idea of losing my mind was almost an impossibility to me there was an improbable possibility that my world of one was my mind shutting down, isolating itself in order to heal, but that would have meant that I had lost my mind the night everything started or soon after I awoke that afternoon. To have lost a year was not just impossible to me, but unimaginable.

  “No…you’re lying. I can’t…a year…it’s impossible.”

  “I assure you, Timothy, I am not lying. I will explain everything to you the best way I can. You were sent here not long after your father's death. You were suffering from a type of Schizophrenia. We believe that it may have been something inside you that triggered it after the accident.

  Almost immediately you began to pull away from your family. At first my colleagues believed it was normal depression, but we soon learned it was much worse. You began to have delusions of being left all alone. It started small enough. You stayed locked in your room for days on end. Soon you began having dreams; nightmares of being the last human on earth. All alone, left to wander forever, soon it grew beyond your dreams to the point that even when surrounded by friends and family, in
your mind, you felt you were all alone.

  One night after finding you wandering the streets your mother had you committed here for treatment. I was assigned to you and have been working with you ever since. During our sessions you blamed yourself for not being there for your family. You talked about betraying and abandoning your friends. You said you hurt Christine, pushing her away. You felt as if you deserved to be punished and your mind chose its punishment, exile. It took many months, but in time the dreams stopped and though you still felt withdrawn, you no longer had the hallucinations.

  Your family stood with you through all this and between their visits and your relationship with Christine, you began to accept that no one could make it alone and that it is okay to rely on others and ask for help. We were to the point that we were going to recommend release. That was until last night.”

  Every ounce of strength was sucked out of my body by his words. I did not want to believe it, but my mind was already analyzing what the doctor told me making sense of it. Having my mother and sister worry over me it never made much sense it was almost as if they knew something was wrong with me and was just waiting for it to manifest itself, but even though what Doctor Leafs said was becoming more believable to me there was something missing.

  “That’s not possible. How could I have been here for a year? I… I remember things. Before all this, I remember the day of the accident. The hospital, the funeral; Yesterday... I woke up. Everyone was gone. It was... it was real.”

  It was not just remembering. Everything that had happened since my father’s death, it was not possible it was a delusion. Doctor Leafs placed his hand on my shoulder and looked directly at me. Looking into his eyes I saw the compassion that I had thought was not there. Also, there was something else about him, like a faded memory.