Post by delicate on Feb 25, 2012 13:28:52 GMT -5
Regaining consciousness for the first time isn’t the slow, fuzzy-headed sink back through the veil of sleep that most are used to. It’s more like being woken up in the middle of the night by a loud noise, all of his consciousness snapping back to him like an elastic band all at once. When that first fragmented sliver of awareness sounds, deep in the primitive areas of his brain, everything comes screaming back in a split second, but it doesn’t make much sense. Consciousness is full of blaring white lights and noise, and pain. Most of all pain, not localized, just wave after burning, scarlet wave of pain and white noise and cold. There is gravel digging into his forearms, and he tastes blood. Someone is shouting, and then there are hands on him, hauling him off of the ground, and suddenly, gravity shifts sickeningly. Down is up, and the hands are pulling him away from the floor, down into space and away from the lights and the cold. In his mind, one single, lonely thought circulates, but it makes no sense to him: Gone, gone. So very, very gone. It’s safe to say that unconsciousness was far less confusing, so when the great wave of darkness comes up to meet him again, he falls into it gratefully, and without much care about weather he wakes up again.
* * *
When he comes to for the second time, it’s slower, like rising to the surface of the water after holding your breath. Everything fades from black into unnaturally white walls. He blinks. The room is small, claustrophobically so, and the bed he’s lying on has metal rails along the side-a hospital, then. His arms sting where he can feel the imprints of gravel on his skin, and there’s a sick, aching feeling sitting just under his skin. He experimentally lifts an arm, and instantly regrets it, squeezing his eyes shut tight as black spots float past his vision. That was a terrible idea. His bones feel leaden, the muscles pulled tight, skin stretched and badly fitted. He breathes heavily, trying hard to keep a grip on himself. The thin sheet draped over his bed rips loudly as he grips them too tightly in his fists. He concentrates on breathing, feeling the sheet ripping more and more until he’s holding several separate chunks of torn fabric in his hands as the pain subsides. He throws them onto the floor, and tries his best not to move again. Time passes. The clock ticks loudly, deafening, and the drip attached to his arm is starting to itch. He stares out of the window, furiously trying to distract himself. Breath. He can see a few lamp lit roads and in the distance, the beginning of some skyscrapers. Breath. There is snow on the ground, still falling lightly in the skirts of orange light cast by the streetlights. Breath.
The door opens. He jumps violently, cringing at the movement, and cringing away from the unpleasant intrusion. Two people walk in, oblivious to his discomfort as they fill the room with their presence. The woman, a Nurse, immediately comes and messes around with his sheets, tutting at the state he left them in, while the other, a Doctor, mutters to himself over the chart at the end of his bed. The tiny room feels overly full. He wishes they would leave.
“How are you feeling?” Asks the Doctor. His white coat has Dr.Lawrence Brian sewn onto the pocket.
“Like I got hit by a truck.” He grits out. His voice cracks on 'truck' from lack of use. The nurse examines the bruises on his side, probing at the tender flesh with her cold hands. Doctor Brian looks up for a second, barely making eye contact. He’s middle aged, prominent veins visible on his skin, sterile white coat; a textbook example of a doctor who proberbly enjoys golf. He nods. “That’s understandable. You got hit by a truck. ”
He looks blank. Doctor Brian narrows his eyes. “You don’t remember?”
He thinks for a second, closing his eyes. It takes him a second to remember how to think backwards, his brain still partially in fight or flight mode. He remembers lights. One in particular, coming towards him, then a brief, blinding one, behind his eyelids. He remembers the feeling of gravel pressing into the flesh on his arms, and the taste of blood in his mouth. Then, he remembers. He remembers. Nothing. There’s nothing there. Lights, gravel, blood, then. Nothing, just the yawning, black hole he wasn’t aware of, suddenly so huge and obvious in his mind, he wonders how the hell did I miss that? He realises with a jolt and a little, hysterical laugh that he doesn’t know his name. He opens his eyes. The nurse has backed away from him, standing near Doctor Brian at the end of his bed. They glance at each other, with identical little frowns on their faces.
“You don’t remember getting hit?” Asks the Nurse. He shakes his head. His whole body is shaking, cowering away from the emptiness in his head like a little kid curling up against that blind spot just behind his door where the monsters live. The aching worsens. His eyes sting, and he feels the hot course of salt water down his cheeks.
“No. I-nothing. There’s nothing there at all.” It sounds more like a question.
“Nothing about the crash at all?” Says the nurse. He shakes his head again, frustrated. They don’t understand.
“No! Nothing. There’s-my head is empty. I don’t-remember-anything. I don’t remember my own name.”
That horrible, endless black hole in his mind yawns again, like a physical wave over the unnaturally white little room. He backs away from it, crying out and lifting his arms to protect his face, but he forgot about the drip attached to his right arm. He feels the needle ripping his arm, and only just registers the crashing sound the machine makes as it hits the floor before his vision fades, and the empty wave swallows him whole.
* * *
The days pass in a haze of morphine and unfamiliar faces. He has bruises all over him, some small and yellowing already, but some of them are larger, like great purple continents on the pale skin, conquering armies of corrupted blood. The aching gets worse, deeper than the bruises. It feels like there are things mining for calcium in his bones and it makes him irritable. The first psychiatrist they give him is a middle aged woman, with a stiff upper lip and a grim outlook. She never looks him in the eye, not once. She asks him repetitive questions, does test after test, says the same damn thing over and over; “I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself!” She even suggests hypnosis, but that’s where he draws the line. He can’t remember what he said exactly-the morphine has that effect, it blurs everything into one incomprehensible mess-but it has something to do with her PhD and her mother. Whatever it was, it earned him a slap on the face and a ringing in his ears.
She lasts about two days.
The next one, less than one full session.
Nobody else comes after that, only the nurse who comes and tops up his morphine, which besides helping him sleep, isn’t doing much for the pain, so they up his dose. He spends the days staring out of the window in a drugged up haze, watching the sun rise and sink in it’s slow, interminable march across the hazy smoke lined horizon. He rarely looks out of the other window, into the corridor. That’s how he lives. He gets up when they take him to yet another test, he eats his food, he makes a point of staring at the nurse who comes and takes his half empty tray away. None of them look at him properly. He wonders why. He wonders why they haven’t kicked him out yet-what’s taking them so long.
* * *
Four nights after his arrival, he can’t sleep. The clock on the wall reads 2:37am. It’s been 2:37am for hours. His eyes sting, and he’s tired, but something isn’t letting him sleep. Through the window, he can see the darkened outlines of other buildings, and tiny fire-fly like lights from the windows of the few people still awake. From the other window, he sees the hospital corridor, still lit but mostly deserted, apart from the occasional person who wanders past. The only sounds are someone speaking very quietly from somewhere close by, and the soft, almost undetectable sound of the light fixture buzzing. He looks at the drip in his arm, traces the slight bump underneath the white tape where it sits under his skin. He looks up at the bag, and sees MORPHINE printed in small, block capital letters at the bottom.
The bag spins on the IV slowly, throwing a small patch of liquid distorted light onto the wall. He looks at the bag, and for a second, swears he sees something moving in it. He leans forward, intrigued, and is alarmed to see it-whatever it is-moving again, getting larger, changing shape. He reaches out and touches the bag. The shape disappears, swallowed by the dent his finger makes in the soft plastic, and it springs back, warped, when he moves his hand. It moves when he moves. He freezes. It’s his reflection. A cold, liquid sensation drips down his spine, like someone pouring ice-water over his skull. He realises what was missing, and now that he does, it comes crashing down on him like a wave as he repeats, for the second time in a short while, he thinks-How the hell did I miss that?
He manages to yank the needle out of his arm and nearly get to the door frame before his body catches up with his brain, and he staggers, falling onto the floor into a trembling heap, gasping for breath. His legs feel like jelly, stiff and disconnected from not being used properly for nearly five days. This is the first time using his legs properly since waking up, and it shows as stumbles like a new born animal, legs weak and unable to support something half his size. He breathes deeply, and hauls himself up from the floor, trying to control his knees. When the blood stops rushing through his head, he gets to the door and manages to stumble semi-normally, getting more and more balanced as he goes.
He hadn’t noticed when he was lying down or being carted around in a wheelchair, but now he realizes how tall he is. He has to duck to get through the doorways, looking for a bathroom. A nurse stares at him shamelessly as he limps past. Her eyes nearly bug out of her head, but at least she has the common decency to look away when he looks back, pretending to scribble something on a chart.
He soon finds what he’s looking for, and he ducks into the bathroom, lit with surgical white lights, one wall lined with stalls, the other with sinks and mirrors. He pauses at the door, gasping for breath slightly. All the urgency suddenly vanishes like smoke, and he’s left standing just outside of the frame of the bank of mirrors, wondering if he wants to know. Praying that nobody walks in. He blinks hard, and shakes his head, telling himself to suck it up. He feels his hands shaking, and a tense, boiling hot feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. On shaking legs, he walks over to the wall of mirrors and looks at his reflection for the first time since waking up. He doesn’t recognise the person in the mirror, but they look terrified. The mop of messy black hair drains the colour out of his face, making him look as pale as the white tile walls, although that could just be the harsh lighting. The rest of his face, however, could not, in any world, be attributed to bad lighting. His lips are thin and pale, only a slight shade pinker than the rest of his skin. Like a corpse. His hair hangs over his eyes a little, but not enough to cover them up. They’re pale grey in colour, pupils contracted to tiny spots in the light. He’s not worried about their colour but more their size, huge, as ridiculously out of proportion as a cartoon. They’re at least twice the size of what they should be. He sees his hands reaching up moving to touch his face as if to see if it’s really there. It is. He leans over the sink, bracing himself, unsure if he’s about to throw up. Now he understands why people are avoiding him. He looks like a f****** psychopath. He turns away from the mirror, staggering back out of the door, letting it bang against the wall. He stumbles back to his room, ignoring the people watching him, slumping back onto his bed and plugging his arm back into the morphine drip roughly. Anything to get away from the stranger in the mirror.
* * *
When he comes to, his arm stings. The skin around the crooked, angry-looking cut from where the needle had jumped out of his flesh in the night is stained yellow with some kind of disinfectant. He wonders how they did that without waking him up. He has to admit, he’s impressed at the dedication to avoiding conscious contact with him. He would do that same, if he had to deal with himself every day. He looks down at his hands. They look like spiders, long fingered and restlessly picking at the sheets.
“I bet waking up in a hospital bed is getting really old, huh.” Says a voice. He looks up sharply and it’s only now he notices the guy sitting by his bed. Judging by the white coat, he’s a doctor, but that’s about where the resemblance to normal doctors like Doctor Brian ends. He looks young, thirty maybe, with short, wavy brown hair and a mouth too big for his face. He’s smiling lazily through the pen he’s chewing on, leaning back in his chair. He’s on the opposite side of the bed to the window, the back of his chair leaning back to teeter close to the wall, supporting himself with his feet on the side of the bed.
“Doctor Crawley. This is the point when I would normally pretend not to know your name to make a false sense of equality, but I genuinely don’t know your name, and from what I hear, you don’t either.” He smiles wider, the picture of ease.
He narrows his eyes, a sudden dread filling him.
“Oh Christ, you’re not.”
Crawley’s smile changes into a full blown cheshire-cat like grin.
“You’re a shrink.”
“Guilty.” Crawley says, laughing when he groans and puts his head in his hands.
“You would be surprised how much I get that. People just really, really don’t like psychiatrists.”
“You’re a shrink. You’re a paragon of evil.”
Crawley laughs again. “So. I heard you scared off Dr.Mantell, and Dr.Green.”
“Is that what they were called?” He says, barely interested. He stares at Crawley. After seeing his own eyes, he gets why people were creeped out by him staring. He proberbly looks like he’s planning where to bury the body. Crawley looks unfazed. He leans even further back in his chair and stares right back, smirking slightly.
“We really need to think of a name for you. Everyone’s just calling you St.Clair.” He says.
“St.Clair?”
“The bridge they found you on. St.Clair Bridge, not very far from here? It’s really busy during the day. Apparently you were just lying in the road at stupid-o’clock in the morning. You’re damned lucky the truck-driver called an ambulance instead of just driving off, or we would have had to scrape you off of the floor with a spoon.”
He looks blank.
Crawley’s smile fades. “Have they told you anything?”
“I got hit by a truck, apparently.”
“Do you even know where you are?”
“Uh. A hospital?”
Crawley sighs, frowning deeper. “You’re in St.Edwards Hospital, Chicago. Have been for just over a week, with tissue damage, heavy bruising and possible head trauma.”
“Oh, and also total amnesia.”
“So I’ve heard, St. Clair.”
It takes him a second to realise that someone just referred him to by name. When he finally does, his chest constricts. He says it in his head. St.Clair. S-a-i-n-t C-l-a-a-a-i-r-e. He likes it. Crawley is staring at him with that creepy psychiatrist stare that makes him feel like he’s being x-rayed. He doesn’t really care, at this point. He let’s Crawley carry one staring at him, scribbling things occasionally while he tries to deal with the strange, warm feeling of having a name. From what he can gather, it’s his only possession. He wonders again why the hospital haven’t kicked him out yet; it’s not like anybody’s paying for him. Stupid health care system. Right now though, that doesn’t seem important. He likes Crawley already. He seems kind of creepy, and his face is awkwardly proportioned-that’s more than he had in common with the others.
“So.” Says Crawley. “Tell me everything you know.”
St.Clair groans. And he thought it was going so well.
“What part of ‘doesn’t remember anything’ isn’t clear here?”
“I don’t mean that.” Says Crawley. “I mean simple stuff, like the earth orbits the sun, and
dead people don’t talk.”
St.Clair raises an eyebrow. “I’m an amnesiac, not a f****** vegetable.”
“That’s not the point. You keep saying that you don’t remember anything, which is bull because you obviously do. Like, what’s the fourth planet from the sun?”
“f*** off.”
“That is not a planet.”
“This is totally stupid, how w-”
Crawley interrupts. “Just answer the totally stupid question or I’ll assume you don’t know.”
“Of corse I know, it’s Mars!”
“Hallelujah!” Cries Crawley, throwing his arms into the air in exaltation. St.Clair crosses his arms.
“Are you done?” He says dryly. Crawley grins, flipping open his notebook and clicking his pen.
“Not even close. If you remember basic things like that, then there’s a chance of finding some associations or maybe even some memories linked in, if we’re lucky.”
St.Clair is about is reply with something cutting, when he realises that, huh. That’s not actually a half bad idea. He tries not to let it show on his face, and fails, if Crawley’s grin is anything to go by. It’s a victory grin.
* * *
Crawley comes in every day after that, staying quiet while St.Clair ‘um’s and ‘ah’s his way through the torrents of utter, spitting crap. After a few days of doing this, he’s surprised at the amount of it he can spew out, still going strong. His former self was obviously pretty knowledgable, even if half of the stuff is rubbish.
“Um...oh, you can’t see colour out of the sides of your eyes.”
Crawley smirks. “I don’t know how you remember this. I went to med school, and I didn’t know that.”
“They’ll give a degree to anyone nowadays.” St.Clair says dramatically.
“You’re stalling.”
St.Clair sighs. He looks around the room for inspiration.
“I’m attached to a morphine drip.”
“Right.”
“It’s a painkiller.”
“Mmhmm.”
“I need it for the bruising. And the head trauma.”
“The possible head trauma. It’s not conclusive yet.”
St.Clair frowns. That makes no sense to him. “I have total amnesia,-”
“It’s called retrograde amnesia.” Cuts in Crawley. St. Clair tuts in annoyance. He doesn’t know much about himself, but he’s learning fast that he really, really hates being interrupted. Crawley scribbles something in his notebook again.
“Whatever, ‘retrograde amnesia’, and you said possible head trauma.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought that kind of thing could only be caused by like, serious head trauma, and you’re saying I only have ‘possible’”-He makes quote, unquote gestures- “head trauma? What’s the deal with that?”
Crawley chews his pen, frowning slightly. “That’s the problem. You’re mostly right, retrograde amnesia is almost always caused by head trauma. That’s not the problem. The problem, is that they checked your head over, there’s no external trauma, and scans didn’t show any internal trauma either. Aside from your girly bruised tissues, you’re in good physical condition for a guy in his early twenties. You’re a mystery case.”
St. Clair flicks his hair out of his face. It keeps hanging down in front of his eyes. “Why haven’t the hospital kicked me out yet? I could be faking it.”
“Are you faking it?” Asks Crawley, eyebrows raised. St. Clair feel guilty all of a sudden, even though he knows he’s not faking it. He’s reminded of the irrational fear everyone has at airport security gates of being caught even if you haven’t done anything. He looks at Crawley and tries to sound sincere.
“No.”
“That’s all the proof we need.”
St.Clair narrows his eyes. “Hypocrite. You keep complaining that nobody in this place is telling me anything, and you are clearly not telling me something here.”
Crawley smiles easily. “I’m a shrink, withholding information is practically in my job description.”
St.Clair makes a frustrated sound. “Well, I think I have the right to be told shit about what the hell is going on here! It’s bad enough with my own goddamned brain withholding information about, let’s say, my entire life, but you doing it too is just-it’s pretty damned annoying, ok?”
It was outbursts like that that had scared off the last two. Crawley is appraising him again with that now familiar x-ray stare. “What do you want to know?”
St.Clair looks up, and only stops for a fraction of a second before answering. “Everything. I want to know everything.”
“Everything.”
“Yes.”
Crawley is silent for a second, and he suddenly looks tired. There are dark shadows under his eyes that look permanently etched into his skin. He looks at St.Clair for a second, before leaning back in his chair again and speaking in a matter-of-fact tone.
“There’s an unspoken period of grace of about a week after when an unexplainable case comes in when the patient is being paid for by a faction of our emergency response funds. It was some policy the board set up years ago to cash in on some tax evasion. Seeing as we don’t get many unexplainable cases, interest piles up, and suddenly we have a whole pile of money we’re not using, more than enough to cover your medical bills tenfold. Dr.Brain owes me more than a few favors, so I pulled those in as well as a few good words for the board, and ensured that your bills are paid for by the aforementioned pile of money which is currently oxidizing in a bank vault somewhere, and if I did it right, the board should pass on a word to the council rehabilitation group, and they should be able to get you a place to stay when you get out of here. They’ll pay for it, so it’ll be a shit hole but-” He shrugs, as if to say ‘you can deal with it.’
St. Clair opens his mouth, and closes it again. He opens it again.
“When did you do that?”
“After your first session.”
He lapses into stunned silence. He had wondered why the hospital hadn’t kicked him out yet; for a while he had even thought that they had just forgotten about him, but now he knows. Knowing this also makes him realise just how unpopular he must be at the hospital; the creepy amnesiac who might be faking and doesn’t even have to pay. He finds himself grinning. Suddenly, he’s laughing, at first just an inappropriate little giggle, quickly escalating into a full blown fit, laughing like he’s never heard anything funnier than that. Crawley laughs too, his eyes scrunching up, grinning even though he proberbly has no idea what’s so funny. St.Clair isn’t entirely sure though, but it’s a good feeling to know that hey, he might not know anything about himself, but he damn sure knows a lot about everyone else. Finally, he stops laughing, leaning back against the bed, sides aching. His cheeks feel wet. Crawley chuckles. He pulls out the omnipresent spiral-ring notebook from his pocket, looks at St.Clair and says:
“Right. Your turn to answer questions. ”
* * *
“What do you see?”
St.Clair hands the card back to Crawley. “I see an inkblot on a piece of card.”
“Smartass. What do you see in the inkblot?” Says Crawley, handing him back the card insistently. “Look at it. Properly.”
St.Clair takes the card back, and stares at it. “A...panda? It might be a cat. Or a panda eating a cat.”
Crawley nods, as if that told him so much, and gives him another card.
“It looks like...like a person? Like, standing over me, maybe a giant, I don’t know. Can we stop now?”
“One more.” Crawley grins as St.Clair pulls his hospital gown over his face and groans.
“Come on, it helps!”
“I’ve done like ten already! What is this testing anyway?”
“Do the last card and I’ll tell you.”
St.Clair takes the card, muttering under his breath, and frowns at it. He’s quiet for a long time before answering. “I can see a child being thrown into a big pot. There are two people standing over them watching.” He throws the card in Crawley’s face, who scrawls something in his notebook.
“That was the inkblot test. It’s a personality test.”
“How’d I do?”
“Well, the good news is that you’re not schizophrenic, morally sadistic, autistic, emotionally retarded, a psychopath, obsessive compulsive, suicidal, or a woman.” He lists.
“Good to know.” Mutters St.Clair, secretly relieved.
“However, you are pessimistic, moody and possibly asexual. You also have low self esteem, a dislike for authority figures, and there’s a possibility of childhood trauma, most likely abuse, but perhaps of the death of a parent or sibling.”
St.Clair doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to react. Crawley stares at him, and seems to take his silence as good as an answer, because he scrawls more into his notepad.
“It’s only a rough outline, of course. I’m still a little skeptical about these tests. A lot of it almost always turns out to be over-emphasized or just untrue. ”
“Why’d you do them then?” Says St.Clair. Possible childhood abuse. He’s kind of glad he can’t remember that.
Crawley shrugs, and tucks the cards inside his notepad. “Always worth a shot.”
“So, I’m not insane. Mind spreading that around the hospital a little? They don’t seem to like me much.”
“What makes you think that?”
St.Clair laughs a little disbelievingly. “Nobody comes in except for you. Those who do only do because they’re contractually obliged to, and even then they do it as fast as possible.”
Crawley shrugs again. “People will be people. Don’t expect them to be anything more or anything less.”
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that people are always going to take the easy option out. You make people realise that there’s more to life outside of the little bubbles they create for themselves, there’s different things, there’s change. They don’t like that, so they reject it. Pretty simple, really.”
“I look like a psychopath, they avoid me. That’s even simpler, and more true to boot.”
Crawley frowns, and kicks the bed. “Who told you you look like a psychopath?”
“The mirror.”
“What does a psychopath look like?”
“Ask the mirror.”
“Fine.” Crawley gets up suddenly, and jogs out of the room. St.Clair blinks in surprise. He shakes his head slightly, and the room spins inexorably, yet another effect of the Morphine. Before his vision has had time to settle, Crawley is back, carrying a mirror with him. St.Clair curses his smartassing internally as Crawley sets the mirror down carefully on his chair and goes to stand next to it.
“So, general attributes of a psychopath 101, lead by professor St.Clair. Shoot.”
“Nice try.” He says, facing resolutely away from the mirror. Never again. He promised himself as much that night, when his arm was spitting blood from the hastily replaced drip, fresh memories of his own face drifting around his mind. Never again.
“Do it, or I’m cutting your morphine, cold turkey.”
St.Clair narrows his eyes at the opposite door. Bastard. He turns to the mirror reluctantly, and cringes not-so internally. He had kind of hoped that maybe, just maybe it would have improved with time, or that it was the morphine talking. Of course it wasn’t. He looks exactly the same, maybe worse; pale skinned and corpse like, hair a mess, eyes huge and staring. He gulps, intensely aware of Crawley staring at him.
“Uh. What was the question again?”
“You’re a psychopath.”
“Right.”
He focusses on his reflection. “I look dead.”
“Elaborate.”
“My eyes are way too big for anyone’s face, and I’m really pale. I look...creepy.”
“People like creepy.”
“f*** what people like, I don’t like it! Put the goddamned mirror down, Crawley.”
“No. It’s not going away until you look at it, properly, and tell me everything that you think is creepy about your face.”
Screw it he thinks. “Screw it.” He grits his teeth and looks back at the mirror.
“My eyes are f****** huge. I match the bedsheets, and I can’t look at people without giving them severe trauma. Ask any of the nurses that come in here, they’ll say as much.”
“You could do with a haircut as well.”
“That too.”
“And all of those things. The big eyes, fair skin, an enigma...what about that is psychopath-y?”
St.Clair looks at the mirror again. He opens his mouth, and closes it again. “Fair point.”
* * *
It’s after two weeks of hospital stay that he notices that his morphine supply is dwindling. The nurse comes in even less than before, and when she does, the bag seems to get smaller and smaller each time. While some of the bruises are turning yellow at the edges, the aching rears it’s ugly head again. It’s not as sharp as it was before, but more monotonous, like a low constant buzzing somewhere in the back of his brain. Worse than that, Crawley’s treatment isn’t working. He doesn’t seem fazed, saying that it should take time. All they’ve found is that he talks about morphine a lot. Like, a lot. He sits in bed, staring at the door, waiting. The clock says 4:47pm, and Crawley still isn’t here. The door cracks open finally, and he feels a terrifying moment of vertigo, like a drug-rush, until he sees that it’s just a Nurse come to check on him. She comes over, wordlessly checks him over and is moving for the door again in record time.
“Wait.” He stops her. Her back goes rigid, and when she turns around, the surprise is evident on her face. He must have quite a reputation.
“Where’s Dr.Crawley? He hasn’t been in all day.”
“I’m sure he’ll be here soon, Mr.St.Clair.”
“Do you know where he is?”
She shifts uncomfortably, edging almost imperceptibly towards the door. “No.”
“You’ll tell him to hurry the hell up if you see him, please. I’m bored.”
She nods, and vanishes.
“Make you uncomfortable, do I?” He mutters to the empty room.
* * *
When Crawley comes in, it’s getting dark, the skyline visible outside of the window. He looks tired. It’s easy to forget that St.Clair isn’t his only patient. He takes mercy and allows St.Clair to take a rest from listing things. He even lets him ask questions without twitching too much, something he invariably does on the rare occasion St.Clair has asked him about himself.
“Why’d you move to Chicago?”
Crawley shrugs, non-committal. “Lots of reasons.”
“Your powers of description never cease to amaze me.” Says St.Clair, smirking. “That was so nondescript I think you broke the fourth wall of topic evasion.”
Crawley’s smile is weary. “I came to Chicago to visit a friend a few years ago, and never really left. I just really like it here.” He shrugs again, still evasive. St.Clair doesn’t push it, just lets him change the subject.
“Have you thought of name yet?” He asks. Even half asleep, he keeps chewing his pen.
“What’s wrong with St.Clair?”
Crawley rolls his eyes. “You can’t be St.Clair St.Clair, meat-head. You need a first name. What about...Phil?” Crawley suggests. St.Clair snorts. “That’s worse than your name, Darwin.”
Crawley’s pen flies into St.Clair’s face. “Piss off.” He glares at St.Clair as he snickers. “I swear to god I’m going to write Suzie St.Clair on your form if you call me that again.”
St.Clair’s snorts. “Suzie is a lovely name.”
“Fine, I’ll write something really stupid like Walter, or Mycroft. Or Morphine.”
“Mophine?”
“I swear I will.”
St.Clair snickers, but he shuts up, in case he actually does end up as Morphine St.Clair. Crawley’s suggestion reminds him of his dwindling supply of the drug. He brings it up.
“You don’t really need it anymore. It’s addictive, so they’re weaning you off of it.”
His reply is interrupted by a hurried knock in the door, then by a terrified looking blonde intern rushing into the room. Her hair is disheveled. “Doctor Crawley! Oh thank god, I-It’s Mr.Franklyn, I can’t find him anywhere-I left him alone for just a minute, and he wandered off somewhere!” She looks close to tears. Crawley gets up immediately.
“Shit. Mr.Franklyn has dementia, he could be anywhere. I’ll be back soon, don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll try my best.” St.Clair mutters as Crawley rushes off after blonde intern, and the room sinks into silence. He stares out of the window at the corridor, watching Crawley run off down the corridor. Then he notices the red, spiral-ring notebook on the chair by the window. Crawley’s notebook. He glances out of the window again. The corridor is empty, filled with the kind of silence that you can only get in hospitals at night time. He leans over and grabs the book. It has a few post-its sticking out of it at odd angles. S.Green E.Blann. A.J.Jihad. St.Clair. He flips to the last post-it, and squints to interpret Crawley’s barley legible handwriting. There isn’t much written, just a few scrawled lines, after a week of daily sessions.
Retrograde amns. Name reaction-confused, focused. Genuine. Hates being interrupted.
Restless, cut down morphine. Watch for withdrawal sympts.
Isolation, more likely for natural supressed mem. recovery.
Supressed mem. therapy unsuccessful. Very frustrating.
Inkblot test, no illnesses, negative attitude. Childhd abuse poss. linked to asexuality.
Allow experimentation for build up of reality.
Less likely for mem’s to recover after time. Mental cond. improving.
Crawley seems to keep most of his notes in his head. How disappointing. It’s odd though; Crawley is always taking notes during his sessions. Maybe he’s taking notes on other patients. He’s about to put the book back when he notices the opposite page.
The whole page is coloured in black. He holds the page closer to his face, examining it. He tips it to the side slightly, and suddenly the light catches the paper at an entirely different angle.The imprints overlap so many times that he couldn’t see it before, but now, the light catches the raised shapes, so can clearly see them. The whole page is filled with lopsided hand-drawn circles, overlapping so many times that the page is coloured black. He runs his fingers over the shapes, mesmerized, feeling the slight dents they make in the paper. He flips the page to see if there are raised lines on the other side, and there must be, but he can’t see them because Crawley has filled that page with circles too, and the next page, and-he counts-six more after that. That’s nine pages, filled to black with thousands of hand drawn circles. There’s a tenth page, half done.
He raises an eyebrow. Crawley is weirder than the thought. No wonder they get along so well. He puts the book back down, feeling slightly guilty for looking, and it’s in that precise second that Crawley walks back into the room. He flops back down onto his chair,-picking up the notebook first-looking even more tired than before.
“Did you find the guy?”
“Yeah. He was on the roof. Went though the fire exit. He said that he wanted to see the fireflies before they leave again.”
“He proberbly meant the lights. From the city.”
“Mmm.” Replies Crawley, barely coherent. St.Clair kicks his leg.
“You look like crap.” He says. The corner of Crawley’s mouth raises slightly, a shadow of his usual cheshire-cat grin. “Thanks.”
“When was the last time you slept properly?”
“I’m sleeping just fine.” He replies
“Liar. You look like a corpse. No, you look like me.”
Crawley doesn’t say anything for a while, so long that St.Clair thinks he’s fallen asleep, but then;
“Bad dreams. Keeping me up.” His voice is quiet, his eyes still closed. St.Clair wasn’t expecting that at all.
“What happens in them?” He asks, not really expecting an answer, but getting one anyway.
“Sometimes it’s not distinguishable, but for the past few nights they’ve been...different.”
“Different.”
Crawley nods. He still hasn’t opened his eyes. St.Clair prompts him.
“Different how?”
He pauses for a long time again before continuing, his voice now so quiet that St.Clair has to strain to hear him even though he’s right next to him. “It’s not something I can describe.”
St.Clair tries to choose his words carefully. “...Try?”
Crawley’s eyes finally open, and smiles suddenly. The window snaps shut. “It’s not important. I’m fine.”
St.Clair’s mind flickers back to the pages of circles in the notebook currently on Crawley’s lap, and he can’t help thinking Are you? Instead though, he says:
“You need to rest, you’re gonna pass out if you stay here talking to me. Borrow some sleeping pills from the hospital, go home. ”
Crawley frowns. “But I’ve only been here like 5 minutes.”
“Yeah, and if you stay you’ll only be here 5 more before you pass out from exhaustion.”
It shows how tired he is when he doesn’t even try to dispute St.Clair, or his suggestion to take drugs from the hospital. He gets up, mumbling thanks and goodbye, and leaves, taking that goddamned notebook with him.
* * *
Crawley doesn’t come in the next day. St.Clair’s not surprised; he looked like crap yesterday, but still, when it reaches ten o’clock at night and he finally accepts that he won’t be coming, it’s a shock. Crawley was something constant; he’d never thought of him somehow ever not being there, or even being able to get sick. This feeling escalates when
he doesn’t show the next day either. After two days of absence, he’s beginning to worry about Crawley-he didn’t look that sick. Those two days drag on seemingly in slow motion; he’s so bored he’s sure his brain is eating it’s self. Crawley would have laughed at that. Another day passes, and he’s still gone; St.Clair is starting to seriously worry about him-what if he’s really ill? What if he got some weird illness from one of the patients? Or maybe he’s just forgotten him, like every other damned person in the hospital. On the fourth day of his absence, Dr.Brain comes in to see him, a rarity that has only happened three times during the whole of his stay. He coughs nervously, and says:
“Mr.St.Clair. How are you feeling.”
“I’m not dying, if that’s what you mean.”
Dr.Brain smiles, forcedly. His brow creases.
“This is about your psychiatrist Dr.Crawley.”
St.Clair’s ears perk up. “Is he ok?”
“We don’t know.” He shifts uncomfortably. St.Clair realises he’s staring again. He blinks, furiously trying to be less intimidating. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Darwin Crawley hasn’t shown up for work for several days now. He’s been an employee here for four years, and hasn’t taken a single day off in that whole time, so naturally, we’re very concerned about him.” Blink.
“So, he’s proberbly got flu or something. Have you sent anyone round to check on him?”
Blink.
“We did. Nurse Jefferson went to his apartment yesterday. She said that the door was unlocked, and he wasn’t home. One of the windows had been smashed. The police have been notified. He was declared missing this morning.”
Blink. “Missing?” He says. Well. For once, he’s not sure what to say.
“Missing.” He confirms. He seems unsure if he should step closer or not; he’s still hovering somewhere between the door and the bed. He settles on standing at the end of his bed, picking up St.Clair’s chart. He frowns at it briefly before putting it back. “Now, Mr.St.Clair, I know that recently Darwin has been spending a lot of time treating you, and to our knowledge, you’re the last person who spoke to him before he disappeared. Did he say or do anything that was at all out of character, or could be considered strange?” He asks, sounding professional and detached. St.Clair thinks about the pages and pages of hand drawn circles in Crawley’s notebook, and see’s his face, exhausted, saying that one word: “Nightmares.” He looks back at Dr.Brian, at his perfectly starched shirt showing through his white coat, at the greying hair receding at his temples and says:
“No. He was acting like normal.”
* * *
The next day, someone other that Crawley comes in to visit him. It’s nearly midnight, and snow is falling heavily outside, covering everything, muffling the usual constant sounds of cars passing. The little flecks of white are endlessly interesting; at one point he even gets up and sticks his hand out of the window, but the air is freezing and the snow just turns to water on his skin. Because snow is frozen water. He knows that, but somehow still finds it disappointing, so he goes back to just watching from his bed. The chair by the window sits unoccupied; the room feels unnaturally quiet. He wonders when they’ll allow him to leave. The bruises are yellowing in most places on his ribcage, and the aching in his bones is all but gone. He remembers the notes he read in Crawley’s notebook, about memories being less likely to be recovered the longer they are left. He wonders if there’s someone right now, wondering where he is. Maybe a friend, or a family member, waiting somewhere, thinking the same things for him that he’s thinking for Crawley; Where the hell are you?
He barely takes notice of her at first. He’s more than used to the coming and going of nurses and doctors, who come and plug new chemicals into his veins or to bring him food. There seems to be a silent agreement among all of the staff at St.Edwards (apart from Dr.Crawley); don’t talk to the creepy amnesiac on the third floor. He’s also been dreading Dr.Brain’s return-in case he brings bad news. So he doesn’t even look at her at first, just continues staring out of the window. Then she makes a tiny sound, almost like an announcement, and he finally looks at her. She’s a child, looks about eight or nine. She’s wearing an over large blue cardigan over her hospital gown, her brown hair hanging limply at her shoulders. She looks thin, and there’s an unhealthy grayish tinge to her skin. She’s makes the little sound again, and shifts her weight to her other foot. St.Clair stares at her. She so tiny, the cardigan dwarfing her frail frame.
“Um, excuse me. Are...are you Mr.St.Clair?” She says. Her voice is wavy, and she sounds unsure. Blink, dammit, blink.
“Uh. Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m Edith.”
“Uh. Hi Edith...?”
“Hi.”
She stands in the doorway, like she’s waiting for an invitation.
“What-can I help you with something?” He says. She makes that little sound again, and he realises that’s she’s coughing. She must be sick.
“You’re friends with Doctor Crawley, aren’t you?” She says, and suddenly it clicks into place. She must be one of his other patients.
“Yeah, I am. Are you one of his patients?”
She nods, and coughs again, sniffling. He frowns. “Should you really be out of bed?”
Edith smiles timidly, and shakes her head. “I snuck out.” She’s still hovering by the door, and she glances out, like she’s worried a nurse is going to come down the corridor and spot her.
“Come on in. I don’t bite.” He flashes her a grin, realising a second too late that with his face, instead of being welcoming, it proberbly just creeped her out, but she steps into the room and closes the door behind her. He expects her to come and sit on the chair by the window, but she climbs up onto the bed and sits down cross-legged on the spare blanket at his feet. At least she’s open about staring-everyone else does it while they think he’s not looking. At closer proximity, she looks even worse. There’s a slight film of sweat on her forehead that she must have worked up from just walking to his room, but her eyes are bright and are looking at him with interest.
“Your eyes are really big.” She says. The way she says it isn’t unkind. It sounds like she’s making an impartial observation, in the wonderful way that only kids can.
“So, you’re one of Crawley’s patients? What’s, uh, what’s he treating you for?”
“I come to the hospital a lot. Everything’s not alright with my bones. I get sad sometimes, but Doctor Crawley says things that make me feel better. I’m his only kid patient.” Edith says, sounding quite proud of that last part. It sounds like Crawley to take on a depressive seven year old. She keeps fiddling with the medical bracelet on her wrist, the skin around the piece of plastic red and irritated-looking. She must pull on it a lot.
“What about you?” She asks.
“Me? I lost my memory. Don’t remember a thing.”
Her eyes widen. “Nothing?”
“Nope. Well, nothing about my own life.”
“But how do you know you’re called St.Clair if you don’t remember anything?” She says, frowning.
“It’s not my real name. St.Clair Street is the road they found me on.”
“They found you on a road?” She says, eyes almost popping. It’s quite entertaining.
“Uh huh. I got hit by a truck too, look.” He says, seeing how much more he can shock her. He pulls down his gown at the shoulder, showing her the beginning of a bruise on his collar bone that has green and yellow patches in it, but is still mostly a brilliant shade of purple. He grins at her horrified expression.
“Did it hurt?”
“I don’t really remember it. Just lots of lights and shouting. And blood.”
She pales slightly. He grins. “So, did you want to come and talk about something?” He asks her. She nods, swallowing. Her eyes flicker back to his collarbone, now covered back up with cloth.
“Doctor Crawley is gone.” She states, matter of fact. He’s surprised that Dr.Brian would have told her that.
“How do you know that?”
“I heard Doctor Brian talking to my mom. He said that the window was smashed, and that the door was open.”
St.Clair nods carefully. “ I heard that too.”
“My mom-” She coughs again, her frame shaking. “My mom says that Crawley jumped out of the window. I don’t think she ever liked him much.”
St.Clair is already shaking his head before she finishes her sentence.
“Crawley wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”
“How do you know?” She says. She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of the same thing that St.Clair is; Crawley would never do that.
“Because if he jumped, they would have found him on the floor outside, right? So he couldn’t have jumped. He didn’t.” He says, with finality. She nods.
“I guess you’re right. But still, what if there was a burglar? The door was open...” She chews on her lip, looking about as worried as St.Clair feels. She looks at him, small and frail looking, a big Crawley sized gap visible in her face.
“He’s proberbly just...taking a break.” He hears himself say. “He hasn’t taken a day off in the whole time he’s worked here.”
“Thanks, Morphine.”
It takes him a second to process what she says. He frowns. “What?”
“I said thanks.” She says.
“Why did you call me Morphine?”
She points at the chart at the end of his bed. “That’s what it says on there.” She turns around, grabs it and shows it to him. She’s right. At the top, it says Morphine St.Clair. Crawley must have written that after the multiple times he called him Darwin. He laughs to himself. It’s doesn’t even sound that bad. Edith takes it back and looks at it, eyes flying fast over the page. She can read well, for her age.
“Morphine is a funny name.” She says. “Isn’t that a paracetamol?”
“Again, it’s not my real name. Doctor Crawley put that there as a joke. And, it’s a painkiller, not a paracetamol.” He replies, laughing at her mistake. He points at the drip attached to his arm. “That’s morphine.” He fails to add how he really doesn’t need it anymore; the nurse hasn’t been in at all today to replace it, and he has a feeling this might be the last bag they ever give him.
“Height: 6 foot, 5 inches. Weight: 179 pounds. Estimated age, 23.” She reads. She wrinkles her nose.
“You’re old.”
“That’s not that old! How old are you, five?”
“I’m nine.” She sounds insulted that he would even suggest she could be anything less that nine. She goes back to the sheet.
“There’s not much written on here.”
“That sounds like Crawley. He never takes notes.”
“Oh wait, there’s one thing.” She squints, holding the page close to her face.
“It says...good mental and physical con-di-ti-on. Fit for discharge.”
“Let me see that.”
He takes the paper from her. There, in the large box marked ‘DIAGNOSIS’ is just one line in Crawley’s unmistakable scrawl; Good mental and physical condition. Fit for discharge.
It must have been written recently. He’ll be getting out soon then. He’s been waiting to see something along the lines of ‘fit for discharge’ for almost two weeks now, and now it’s here, he can’t wait to leave. When he thinks about it, Crawley was the only thing really keeping him here. He proberbly would have run away if he hadn’t turned up. Edith is watching him.
“Does that mean you’re going home soon?” She asks.
“I don’t have a home. Don’t know who I am, remember?” He says.
“Where will you stay?” She says. He shrugs.
“Crawley said that he set up something with the council to get me somewhere to stay.”
She looks wistful. “I wish I could go home. It’s so dull here without Doctor Crawley.”
“What about the other kids? Aren’t they any fun?”
She can’t reply because she starts coughing again, her frame violently shaking as she hacks into her hand. The sounds she makes are awful, like they’re clawing at her throat.
“You should go back to your room.” He says in alarm. She nods through her coughing, eyes streaming. He catches brief sight of flecks of blood on the palm of her hand that she must have coughed up, but doesn’t comment. He helps her down off of the bed, where she clings to his arm, breathing hard. When she finally lets go, and smiles up at him, she looks tiny from his standing point.
“Thank you for talking to me, Mr.St.Clair.”
“Call me St.Clair. Or Morphine, I guess.”
She smiles, making her way to the door. “Morphine suits you. You should keep it.” She says, as if as an afterthought. She glances back at him once and then closes the door behind her. He wanders over to the window, watching silently, and it’s there that he suddenly has a thought. The more he thinks about it, the longer it’s roots grow, and the surer he is about it. The blood on Edith’s hand, and the fact that she had a psychiatrist-Edith is dying. It’s not just the way she looks though; there was a certain kind of maturity about her, like some kind of limitlessness provided by the inevitable limit being so tangibly close. He hears more coughing as the cells in Edith’s bones decompose, as his own tissues rebuild themselves, as Crawley’s face get less and less distinct in his mind, and throughout all of it, the quiet, turned in chaos, the snow falls on regardless.
* * *
When he comes to for the second time, it’s slower, like rising to the surface of the water after holding your breath. Everything fades from black into unnaturally white walls. He blinks. The room is small, claustrophobically so, and the bed he’s lying on has metal rails along the side-a hospital, then. His arms sting where he can feel the imprints of gravel on his skin, and there’s a sick, aching feeling sitting just under his skin. He experimentally lifts an arm, and instantly regrets it, squeezing his eyes shut tight as black spots float past his vision. That was a terrible idea. His bones feel leaden, the muscles pulled tight, skin stretched and badly fitted. He breathes heavily, trying hard to keep a grip on himself. The thin sheet draped over his bed rips loudly as he grips them too tightly in his fists. He concentrates on breathing, feeling the sheet ripping more and more until he’s holding several separate chunks of torn fabric in his hands as the pain subsides. He throws them onto the floor, and tries his best not to move again. Time passes. The clock ticks loudly, deafening, and the drip attached to his arm is starting to itch. He stares out of the window, furiously trying to distract himself. Breath. He can see a few lamp lit roads and in the distance, the beginning of some skyscrapers. Breath. There is snow on the ground, still falling lightly in the skirts of orange light cast by the streetlights. Breath.
The door opens. He jumps violently, cringing at the movement, and cringing away from the unpleasant intrusion. Two people walk in, oblivious to his discomfort as they fill the room with their presence. The woman, a Nurse, immediately comes and messes around with his sheets, tutting at the state he left them in, while the other, a Doctor, mutters to himself over the chart at the end of his bed. The tiny room feels overly full. He wishes they would leave.
“How are you feeling?” Asks the Doctor. His white coat has Dr.Lawrence Brian sewn onto the pocket.
“Like I got hit by a truck.” He grits out. His voice cracks on 'truck' from lack of use. The nurse examines the bruises on his side, probing at the tender flesh with her cold hands. Doctor Brian looks up for a second, barely making eye contact. He’s middle aged, prominent veins visible on his skin, sterile white coat; a textbook example of a doctor who proberbly enjoys golf. He nods. “That’s understandable. You got hit by a truck. ”
He looks blank. Doctor Brian narrows his eyes. “You don’t remember?”
He thinks for a second, closing his eyes. It takes him a second to remember how to think backwards, his brain still partially in fight or flight mode. He remembers lights. One in particular, coming towards him, then a brief, blinding one, behind his eyelids. He remembers the feeling of gravel pressing into the flesh on his arms, and the taste of blood in his mouth. Then, he remembers. He remembers. Nothing. There’s nothing there. Lights, gravel, blood, then. Nothing, just the yawning, black hole he wasn’t aware of, suddenly so huge and obvious in his mind, he wonders how the hell did I miss that? He realises with a jolt and a little, hysterical laugh that he doesn’t know his name. He opens his eyes. The nurse has backed away from him, standing near Doctor Brian at the end of his bed. They glance at each other, with identical little frowns on their faces.
“You don’t remember getting hit?” Asks the Nurse. He shakes his head. His whole body is shaking, cowering away from the emptiness in his head like a little kid curling up against that blind spot just behind his door where the monsters live. The aching worsens. His eyes sting, and he feels the hot course of salt water down his cheeks.
“No. I-nothing. There’s nothing there at all.” It sounds more like a question.
“Nothing about the crash at all?” Says the nurse. He shakes his head again, frustrated. They don’t understand.
“No! Nothing. There’s-my head is empty. I don’t-remember-anything. I don’t remember my own name.”
That horrible, endless black hole in his mind yawns again, like a physical wave over the unnaturally white little room. He backs away from it, crying out and lifting his arms to protect his face, but he forgot about the drip attached to his right arm. He feels the needle ripping his arm, and only just registers the crashing sound the machine makes as it hits the floor before his vision fades, and the empty wave swallows him whole.
* * *
The days pass in a haze of morphine and unfamiliar faces. He has bruises all over him, some small and yellowing already, but some of them are larger, like great purple continents on the pale skin, conquering armies of corrupted blood. The aching gets worse, deeper than the bruises. It feels like there are things mining for calcium in his bones and it makes him irritable. The first psychiatrist they give him is a middle aged woman, with a stiff upper lip and a grim outlook. She never looks him in the eye, not once. She asks him repetitive questions, does test after test, says the same damn thing over and over; “I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself!” She even suggests hypnosis, but that’s where he draws the line. He can’t remember what he said exactly-the morphine has that effect, it blurs everything into one incomprehensible mess-but it has something to do with her PhD and her mother. Whatever it was, it earned him a slap on the face and a ringing in his ears.
She lasts about two days.
The next one, less than one full session.
Nobody else comes after that, only the nurse who comes and tops up his morphine, which besides helping him sleep, isn’t doing much for the pain, so they up his dose. He spends the days staring out of the window in a drugged up haze, watching the sun rise and sink in it’s slow, interminable march across the hazy smoke lined horizon. He rarely looks out of the other window, into the corridor. That’s how he lives. He gets up when they take him to yet another test, he eats his food, he makes a point of staring at the nurse who comes and takes his half empty tray away. None of them look at him properly. He wonders why. He wonders why they haven’t kicked him out yet-what’s taking them so long.
* * *
Four nights after his arrival, he can’t sleep. The clock on the wall reads 2:37am. It’s been 2:37am for hours. His eyes sting, and he’s tired, but something isn’t letting him sleep. Through the window, he can see the darkened outlines of other buildings, and tiny fire-fly like lights from the windows of the few people still awake. From the other window, he sees the hospital corridor, still lit but mostly deserted, apart from the occasional person who wanders past. The only sounds are someone speaking very quietly from somewhere close by, and the soft, almost undetectable sound of the light fixture buzzing. He looks at the drip in his arm, traces the slight bump underneath the white tape where it sits under his skin. He looks up at the bag, and sees MORPHINE printed in small, block capital letters at the bottom.
The bag spins on the IV slowly, throwing a small patch of liquid distorted light onto the wall. He looks at the bag, and for a second, swears he sees something moving in it. He leans forward, intrigued, and is alarmed to see it-whatever it is-moving again, getting larger, changing shape. He reaches out and touches the bag. The shape disappears, swallowed by the dent his finger makes in the soft plastic, and it springs back, warped, when he moves his hand. It moves when he moves. He freezes. It’s his reflection. A cold, liquid sensation drips down his spine, like someone pouring ice-water over his skull. He realises what was missing, and now that he does, it comes crashing down on him like a wave as he repeats, for the second time in a short while, he thinks-How the hell did I miss that?
He manages to yank the needle out of his arm and nearly get to the door frame before his body catches up with his brain, and he staggers, falling onto the floor into a trembling heap, gasping for breath. His legs feel like jelly, stiff and disconnected from not being used properly for nearly five days. This is the first time using his legs properly since waking up, and it shows as stumbles like a new born animal, legs weak and unable to support something half his size. He breathes deeply, and hauls himself up from the floor, trying to control his knees. When the blood stops rushing through his head, he gets to the door and manages to stumble semi-normally, getting more and more balanced as he goes.
He hadn’t noticed when he was lying down or being carted around in a wheelchair, but now he realizes how tall he is. He has to duck to get through the doorways, looking for a bathroom. A nurse stares at him shamelessly as he limps past. Her eyes nearly bug out of her head, but at least she has the common decency to look away when he looks back, pretending to scribble something on a chart.
He soon finds what he’s looking for, and he ducks into the bathroom, lit with surgical white lights, one wall lined with stalls, the other with sinks and mirrors. He pauses at the door, gasping for breath slightly. All the urgency suddenly vanishes like smoke, and he’s left standing just outside of the frame of the bank of mirrors, wondering if he wants to know. Praying that nobody walks in. He blinks hard, and shakes his head, telling himself to suck it up. He feels his hands shaking, and a tense, boiling hot feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. On shaking legs, he walks over to the wall of mirrors and looks at his reflection for the first time since waking up. He doesn’t recognise the person in the mirror, but they look terrified. The mop of messy black hair drains the colour out of his face, making him look as pale as the white tile walls, although that could just be the harsh lighting. The rest of his face, however, could not, in any world, be attributed to bad lighting. His lips are thin and pale, only a slight shade pinker than the rest of his skin. Like a corpse. His hair hangs over his eyes a little, but not enough to cover them up. They’re pale grey in colour, pupils contracted to tiny spots in the light. He’s not worried about their colour but more their size, huge, as ridiculously out of proportion as a cartoon. They’re at least twice the size of what they should be. He sees his hands reaching up moving to touch his face as if to see if it’s really there. It is. He leans over the sink, bracing himself, unsure if he’s about to throw up. Now he understands why people are avoiding him. He looks like a f****** psychopath. He turns away from the mirror, staggering back out of the door, letting it bang against the wall. He stumbles back to his room, ignoring the people watching him, slumping back onto his bed and plugging his arm back into the morphine drip roughly. Anything to get away from the stranger in the mirror.
* * *
When he comes to, his arm stings. The skin around the crooked, angry-looking cut from where the needle had jumped out of his flesh in the night is stained yellow with some kind of disinfectant. He wonders how they did that without waking him up. He has to admit, he’s impressed at the dedication to avoiding conscious contact with him. He would do that same, if he had to deal with himself every day. He looks down at his hands. They look like spiders, long fingered and restlessly picking at the sheets.
“I bet waking up in a hospital bed is getting really old, huh.” Says a voice. He looks up sharply and it’s only now he notices the guy sitting by his bed. Judging by the white coat, he’s a doctor, but that’s about where the resemblance to normal doctors like Doctor Brian ends. He looks young, thirty maybe, with short, wavy brown hair and a mouth too big for his face. He’s smiling lazily through the pen he’s chewing on, leaning back in his chair. He’s on the opposite side of the bed to the window, the back of his chair leaning back to teeter close to the wall, supporting himself with his feet on the side of the bed.
“Doctor Crawley. This is the point when I would normally pretend not to know your name to make a false sense of equality, but I genuinely don’t know your name, and from what I hear, you don’t either.” He smiles wider, the picture of ease.
He narrows his eyes, a sudden dread filling him.
“Oh Christ, you’re not.”
Crawley’s smile changes into a full blown cheshire-cat like grin.
“You’re a shrink.”
“Guilty.” Crawley says, laughing when he groans and puts his head in his hands.
“You would be surprised how much I get that. People just really, really don’t like psychiatrists.”
“You’re a shrink. You’re a paragon of evil.”
Crawley laughs again. “So. I heard you scared off Dr.Mantell, and Dr.Green.”
“Is that what they were called?” He says, barely interested. He stares at Crawley. After seeing his own eyes, he gets why people were creeped out by him staring. He proberbly looks like he’s planning where to bury the body. Crawley looks unfazed. He leans even further back in his chair and stares right back, smirking slightly.
“We really need to think of a name for you. Everyone’s just calling you St.Clair.” He says.
“St.Clair?”
“The bridge they found you on. St.Clair Bridge, not very far from here? It’s really busy during the day. Apparently you were just lying in the road at stupid-o’clock in the morning. You’re damned lucky the truck-driver called an ambulance instead of just driving off, or we would have had to scrape you off of the floor with a spoon.”
He looks blank.
Crawley’s smile fades. “Have they told you anything?”
“I got hit by a truck, apparently.”
“Do you even know where you are?”
“Uh. A hospital?”
Crawley sighs, frowning deeper. “You’re in St.Edwards Hospital, Chicago. Have been for just over a week, with tissue damage, heavy bruising and possible head trauma.”
“Oh, and also total amnesia.”
“So I’ve heard, St. Clair.”
It takes him a second to realise that someone just referred him to by name. When he finally does, his chest constricts. He says it in his head. St.Clair. S-a-i-n-t C-l-a-a-a-i-r-e. He likes it. Crawley is staring at him with that creepy psychiatrist stare that makes him feel like he’s being x-rayed. He doesn’t really care, at this point. He let’s Crawley carry one staring at him, scribbling things occasionally while he tries to deal with the strange, warm feeling of having a name. From what he can gather, it’s his only possession. He wonders again why the hospital haven’t kicked him out yet; it’s not like anybody’s paying for him. Stupid health care system. Right now though, that doesn’t seem important. He likes Crawley already. He seems kind of creepy, and his face is awkwardly proportioned-that’s more than he had in common with the others.
“So.” Says Crawley. “Tell me everything you know.”
St.Clair groans. And he thought it was going so well.
“What part of ‘doesn’t remember anything’ isn’t clear here?”
“I don’t mean that.” Says Crawley. “I mean simple stuff, like the earth orbits the sun, and
dead people don’t talk.”
St.Clair raises an eyebrow. “I’m an amnesiac, not a f****** vegetable.”
“That’s not the point. You keep saying that you don’t remember anything, which is bull because you obviously do. Like, what’s the fourth planet from the sun?”
“f*** off.”
“That is not a planet.”
“This is totally stupid, how w-”
Crawley interrupts. “Just answer the totally stupid question or I’ll assume you don’t know.”
“Of corse I know, it’s Mars!”
“Hallelujah!” Cries Crawley, throwing his arms into the air in exaltation. St.Clair crosses his arms.
“Are you done?” He says dryly. Crawley grins, flipping open his notebook and clicking his pen.
“Not even close. If you remember basic things like that, then there’s a chance of finding some associations or maybe even some memories linked in, if we’re lucky.”
St.Clair is about is reply with something cutting, when he realises that, huh. That’s not actually a half bad idea. He tries not to let it show on his face, and fails, if Crawley’s grin is anything to go by. It’s a victory grin.
* * *
Crawley comes in every day after that, staying quiet while St.Clair ‘um’s and ‘ah’s his way through the torrents of utter, spitting crap. After a few days of doing this, he’s surprised at the amount of it he can spew out, still going strong. His former self was obviously pretty knowledgable, even if half of the stuff is rubbish.
“Um...oh, you can’t see colour out of the sides of your eyes.”
Crawley smirks. “I don’t know how you remember this. I went to med school, and I didn’t know that.”
“They’ll give a degree to anyone nowadays.” St.Clair says dramatically.
“You’re stalling.”
St.Clair sighs. He looks around the room for inspiration.
“I’m attached to a morphine drip.”
“Right.”
“It’s a painkiller.”
“Mmhmm.”
“I need it for the bruising. And the head trauma.”
“The possible head trauma. It’s not conclusive yet.”
St.Clair frowns. That makes no sense to him. “I have total amnesia,-”
“It’s called retrograde amnesia.” Cuts in Crawley. St. Clair tuts in annoyance. He doesn’t know much about himself, but he’s learning fast that he really, really hates being interrupted. Crawley scribbles something in his notebook again.
“Whatever, ‘retrograde amnesia’, and you said possible head trauma.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought that kind of thing could only be caused by like, serious head trauma, and you’re saying I only have ‘possible’”-He makes quote, unquote gestures- “head trauma? What’s the deal with that?”
Crawley chews his pen, frowning slightly. “That’s the problem. You’re mostly right, retrograde amnesia is almost always caused by head trauma. That’s not the problem. The problem, is that they checked your head over, there’s no external trauma, and scans didn’t show any internal trauma either. Aside from your girly bruised tissues, you’re in good physical condition for a guy in his early twenties. You’re a mystery case.”
St. Clair flicks his hair out of his face. It keeps hanging down in front of his eyes. “Why haven’t the hospital kicked me out yet? I could be faking it.”
“Are you faking it?” Asks Crawley, eyebrows raised. St. Clair feel guilty all of a sudden, even though he knows he’s not faking it. He’s reminded of the irrational fear everyone has at airport security gates of being caught even if you haven’t done anything. He looks at Crawley and tries to sound sincere.
“No.”
“That’s all the proof we need.”
St.Clair narrows his eyes. “Hypocrite. You keep complaining that nobody in this place is telling me anything, and you are clearly not telling me something here.”
Crawley smiles easily. “I’m a shrink, withholding information is practically in my job description.”
St.Clair makes a frustrated sound. “Well, I think I have the right to be told shit about what the hell is going on here! It’s bad enough with my own goddamned brain withholding information about, let’s say, my entire life, but you doing it too is just-it’s pretty damned annoying, ok?”
It was outbursts like that that had scared off the last two. Crawley is appraising him again with that now familiar x-ray stare. “What do you want to know?”
St.Clair looks up, and only stops for a fraction of a second before answering. “Everything. I want to know everything.”
“Everything.”
“Yes.”
Crawley is silent for a second, and he suddenly looks tired. There are dark shadows under his eyes that look permanently etched into his skin. He looks at St.Clair for a second, before leaning back in his chair again and speaking in a matter-of-fact tone.
“There’s an unspoken period of grace of about a week after when an unexplainable case comes in when the patient is being paid for by a faction of our emergency response funds. It was some policy the board set up years ago to cash in on some tax evasion. Seeing as we don’t get many unexplainable cases, interest piles up, and suddenly we have a whole pile of money we’re not using, more than enough to cover your medical bills tenfold. Dr.Brain owes me more than a few favors, so I pulled those in as well as a few good words for the board, and ensured that your bills are paid for by the aforementioned pile of money which is currently oxidizing in a bank vault somewhere, and if I did it right, the board should pass on a word to the council rehabilitation group, and they should be able to get you a place to stay when you get out of here. They’ll pay for it, so it’ll be a shit hole but-” He shrugs, as if to say ‘you can deal with it.’
St. Clair opens his mouth, and closes it again. He opens it again.
“When did you do that?”
“After your first session.”
He lapses into stunned silence. He had wondered why the hospital hadn’t kicked him out yet; for a while he had even thought that they had just forgotten about him, but now he knows. Knowing this also makes him realise just how unpopular he must be at the hospital; the creepy amnesiac who might be faking and doesn’t even have to pay. He finds himself grinning. Suddenly, he’s laughing, at first just an inappropriate little giggle, quickly escalating into a full blown fit, laughing like he’s never heard anything funnier than that. Crawley laughs too, his eyes scrunching up, grinning even though he proberbly has no idea what’s so funny. St.Clair isn’t entirely sure though, but it’s a good feeling to know that hey, he might not know anything about himself, but he damn sure knows a lot about everyone else. Finally, he stops laughing, leaning back against the bed, sides aching. His cheeks feel wet. Crawley chuckles. He pulls out the omnipresent spiral-ring notebook from his pocket, looks at St.Clair and says:
“Right. Your turn to answer questions. ”
* * *
“What do you see?”
St.Clair hands the card back to Crawley. “I see an inkblot on a piece of card.”
“Smartass. What do you see in the inkblot?” Says Crawley, handing him back the card insistently. “Look at it. Properly.”
St.Clair takes the card back, and stares at it. “A...panda? It might be a cat. Or a panda eating a cat.”
Crawley nods, as if that told him so much, and gives him another card.
“It looks like...like a person? Like, standing over me, maybe a giant, I don’t know. Can we stop now?”
“One more.” Crawley grins as St.Clair pulls his hospital gown over his face and groans.
“Come on, it helps!”
“I’ve done like ten already! What is this testing anyway?”
“Do the last card and I’ll tell you.”
St.Clair takes the card, muttering under his breath, and frowns at it. He’s quiet for a long time before answering. “I can see a child being thrown into a big pot. There are two people standing over them watching.” He throws the card in Crawley’s face, who scrawls something in his notebook.
“That was the inkblot test. It’s a personality test.”
“How’d I do?”
“Well, the good news is that you’re not schizophrenic, morally sadistic, autistic, emotionally retarded, a psychopath, obsessive compulsive, suicidal, or a woman.” He lists.
“Good to know.” Mutters St.Clair, secretly relieved.
“However, you are pessimistic, moody and possibly asexual. You also have low self esteem, a dislike for authority figures, and there’s a possibility of childhood trauma, most likely abuse, but perhaps of the death of a parent or sibling.”
St.Clair doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to react. Crawley stares at him, and seems to take his silence as good as an answer, because he scrawls more into his notepad.
“It’s only a rough outline, of course. I’m still a little skeptical about these tests. A lot of it almost always turns out to be over-emphasized or just untrue. ”
“Why’d you do them then?” Says St.Clair. Possible childhood abuse. He’s kind of glad he can’t remember that.
Crawley shrugs, and tucks the cards inside his notepad. “Always worth a shot.”
“So, I’m not insane. Mind spreading that around the hospital a little? They don’t seem to like me much.”
“What makes you think that?”
St.Clair laughs a little disbelievingly. “Nobody comes in except for you. Those who do only do because they’re contractually obliged to, and even then they do it as fast as possible.”
Crawley shrugs again. “People will be people. Don’t expect them to be anything more or anything less.”
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that people are always going to take the easy option out. You make people realise that there’s more to life outside of the little bubbles they create for themselves, there’s different things, there’s change. They don’t like that, so they reject it. Pretty simple, really.”
“I look like a psychopath, they avoid me. That’s even simpler, and more true to boot.”
Crawley frowns, and kicks the bed. “Who told you you look like a psychopath?”
“The mirror.”
“What does a psychopath look like?”
“Ask the mirror.”
“Fine.” Crawley gets up suddenly, and jogs out of the room. St.Clair blinks in surprise. He shakes his head slightly, and the room spins inexorably, yet another effect of the Morphine. Before his vision has had time to settle, Crawley is back, carrying a mirror with him. St.Clair curses his smartassing internally as Crawley sets the mirror down carefully on his chair and goes to stand next to it.
“So, general attributes of a psychopath 101, lead by professor St.Clair. Shoot.”
“Nice try.” He says, facing resolutely away from the mirror. Never again. He promised himself as much that night, when his arm was spitting blood from the hastily replaced drip, fresh memories of his own face drifting around his mind. Never again.
“Do it, or I’m cutting your morphine, cold turkey.”
St.Clair narrows his eyes at the opposite door. Bastard. He turns to the mirror reluctantly, and cringes not-so internally. He had kind of hoped that maybe, just maybe it would have improved with time, or that it was the morphine talking. Of course it wasn’t. He looks exactly the same, maybe worse; pale skinned and corpse like, hair a mess, eyes huge and staring. He gulps, intensely aware of Crawley staring at him.
“Uh. What was the question again?”
“You’re a psychopath.”
“Right.”
He focusses on his reflection. “I look dead.”
“Elaborate.”
“My eyes are way too big for anyone’s face, and I’m really pale. I look...creepy.”
“People like creepy.”
“f*** what people like, I don’t like it! Put the goddamned mirror down, Crawley.”
“No. It’s not going away until you look at it, properly, and tell me everything that you think is creepy about your face.”
Screw it he thinks. “Screw it.” He grits his teeth and looks back at the mirror.
“My eyes are f****** huge. I match the bedsheets, and I can’t look at people without giving them severe trauma. Ask any of the nurses that come in here, they’ll say as much.”
“You could do with a haircut as well.”
“That too.”
“And all of those things. The big eyes, fair skin, an enigma...what about that is psychopath-y?”
St.Clair looks at the mirror again. He opens his mouth, and closes it again. “Fair point.”
* * *
It’s after two weeks of hospital stay that he notices that his morphine supply is dwindling. The nurse comes in even less than before, and when she does, the bag seems to get smaller and smaller each time. While some of the bruises are turning yellow at the edges, the aching rears it’s ugly head again. It’s not as sharp as it was before, but more monotonous, like a low constant buzzing somewhere in the back of his brain. Worse than that, Crawley’s treatment isn’t working. He doesn’t seem fazed, saying that it should take time. All they’ve found is that he talks about morphine a lot. Like, a lot. He sits in bed, staring at the door, waiting. The clock says 4:47pm, and Crawley still isn’t here. The door cracks open finally, and he feels a terrifying moment of vertigo, like a drug-rush, until he sees that it’s just a Nurse come to check on him. She comes over, wordlessly checks him over and is moving for the door again in record time.
“Wait.” He stops her. Her back goes rigid, and when she turns around, the surprise is evident on her face. He must have quite a reputation.
“Where’s Dr.Crawley? He hasn’t been in all day.”
“I’m sure he’ll be here soon, Mr.St.Clair.”
“Do you know where he is?”
She shifts uncomfortably, edging almost imperceptibly towards the door. “No.”
“You’ll tell him to hurry the hell up if you see him, please. I’m bored.”
She nods, and vanishes.
“Make you uncomfortable, do I?” He mutters to the empty room.
* * *
When Crawley comes in, it’s getting dark, the skyline visible outside of the window. He looks tired. It’s easy to forget that St.Clair isn’t his only patient. He takes mercy and allows St.Clair to take a rest from listing things. He even lets him ask questions without twitching too much, something he invariably does on the rare occasion St.Clair has asked him about himself.
“Why’d you move to Chicago?”
Crawley shrugs, non-committal. “Lots of reasons.”
“Your powers of description never cease to amaze me.” Says St.Clair, smirking. “That was so nondescript I think you broke the fourth wall of topic evasion.”
Crawley’s smile is weary. “I came to Chicago to visit a friend a few years ago, and never really left. I just really like it here.” He shrugs again, still evasive. St.Clair doesn’t push it, just lets him change the subject.
“Have you thought of name yet?” He asks. Even half asleep, he keeps chewing his pen.
“What’s wrong with St.Clair?”
Crawley rolls his eyes. “You can’t be St.Clair St.Clair, meat-head. You need a first name. What about...Phil?” Crawley suggests. St.Clair snorts. “That’s worse than your name, Darwin.”
Crawley’s pen flies into St.Clair’s face. “Piss off.” He glares at St.Clair as he snickers. “I swear to god I’m going to write Suzie St.Clair on your form if you call me that again.”
St.Clair’s snorts. “Suzie is a lovely name.”
“Fine, I’ll write something really stupid like Walter, or Mycroft. Or Morphine.”
“Mophine?”
“I swear I will.”
St.Clair snickers, but he shuts up, in case he actually does end up as Morphine St.Clair. Crawley’s suggestion reminds him of his dwindling supply of the drug. He brings it up.
“You don’t really need it anymore. It’s addictive, so they’re weaning you off of it.”
His reply is interrupted by a hurried knock in the door, then by a terrified looking blonde intern rushing into the room. Her hair is disheveled. “Doctor Crawley! Oh thank god, I-It’s Mr.Franklyn, I can’t find him anywhere-I left him alone for just a minute, and he wandered off somewhere!” She looks close to tears. Crawley gets up immediately.
“Shit. Mr.Franklyn has dementia, he could be anywhere. I’ll be back soon, don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll try my best.” St.Clair mutters as Crawley rushes off after blonde intern, and the room sinks into silence. He stares out of the window at the corridor, watching Crawley run off down the corridor. Then he notices the red, spiral-ring notebook on the chair by the window. Crawley’s notebook. He glances out of the window again. The corridor is empty, filled with the kind of silence that you can only get in hospitals at night time. He leans over and grabs the book. It has a few post-its sticking out of it at odd angles. S.Green E.Blann. A.J.Jihad. St.Clair. He flips to the last post-it, and squints to interpret Crawley’s barley legible handwriting. There isn’t much written, just a few scrawled lines, after a week of daily sessions.
Retrograde amns. Name reaction-confused, focused. Genuine. Hates being interrupted.
Restless, cut down morphine. Watch for withdrawal sympts.
Isolation, more likely for natural supressed mem. recovery.
Supressed mem. therapy unsuccessful. Very frustrating.
Inkblot test, no illnesses, negative attitude. Childhd abuse poss. linked to asexuality.
Allow experimentation for build up of reality.
Less likely for mem’s to recover after time. Mental cond. improving.
Crawley seems to keep most of his notes in his head. How disappointing. It’s odd though; Crawley is always taking notes during his sessions. Maybe he’s taking notes on other patients. He’s about to put the book back when he notices the opposite page.
The whole page is coloured in black. He holds the page closer to his face, examining it. He tips it to the side slightly, and suddenly the light catches the paper at an entirely different angle.The imprints overlap so many times that he couldn’t see it before, but now, the light catches the raised shapes, so can clearly see them. The whole page is filled with lopsided hand-drawn circles, overlapping so many times that the page is coloured black. He runs his fingers over the shapes, mesmerized, feeling the slight dents they make in the paper. He flips the page to see if there are raised lines on the other side, and there must be, but he can’t see them because Crawley has filled that page with circles too, and the next page, and-he counts-six more after that. That’s nine pages, filled to black with thousands of hand drawn circles. There’s a tenth page, half done.
He raises an eyebrow. Crawley is weirder than the thought. No wonder they get along so well. He puts the book back down, feeling slightly guilty for looking, and it’s in that precise second that Crawley walks back into the room. He flops back down onto his chair,-picking up the notebook first-looking even more tired than before.
“Did you find the guy?”
“Yeah. He was on the roof. Went though the fire exit. He said that he wanted to see the fireflies before they leave again.”
“He proberbly meant the lights. From the city.”
“Mmm.” Replies Crawley, barely coherent. St.Clair kicks his leg.
“You look like crap.” He says. The corner of Crawley’s mouth raises slightly, a shadow of his usual cheshire-cat grin. “Thanks.”
“When was the last time you slept properly?”
“I’m sleeping just fine.” He replies
“Liar. You look like a corpse. No, you look like me.”
Crawley doesn’t say anything for a while, so long that St.Clair thinks he’s fallen asleep, but then;
“Bad dreams. Keeping me up.” His voice is quiet, his eyes still closed. St.Clair wasn’t expecting that at all.
“What happens in them?” He asks, not really expecting an answer, but getting one anyway.
“Sometimes it’s not distinguishable, but for the past few nights they’ve been...different.”
“Different.”
Crawley nods. He still hasn’t opened his eyes. St.Clair prompts him.
“Different how?”
He pauses for a long time again before continuing, his voice now so quiet that St.Clair has to strain to hear him even though he’s right next to him. “It’s not something I can describe.”
St.Clair tries to choose his words carefully. “...Try?”
Crawley’s eyes finally open, and smiles suddenly. The window snaps shut. “It’s not important. I’m fine.”
St.Clair’s mind flickers back to the pages of circles in the notebook currently on Crawley’s lap, and he can’t help thinking Are you? Instead though, he says:
“You need to rest, you’re gonna pass out if you stay here talking to me. Borrow some sleeping pills from the hospital, go home. ”
Crawley frowns. “But I’ve only been here like 5 minutes.”
“Yeah, and if you stay you’ll only be here 5 more before you pass out from exhaustion.”
It shows how tired he is when he doesn’t even try to dispute St.Clair, or his suggestion to take drugs from the hospital. He gets up, mumbling thanks and goodbye, and leaves, taking that goddamned notebook with him.
* * *
Crawley doesn’t come in the next day. St.Clair’s not surprised; he looked like crap yesterday, but still, when it reaches ten o’clock at night and he finally accepts that he won’t be coming, it’s a shock. Crawley was something constant; he’d never thought of him somehow ever not being there, or even being able to get sick. This feeling escalates when
he doesn’t show the next day either. After two days of absence, he’s beginning to worry about Crawley-he didn’t look that sick. Those two days drag on seemingly in slow motion; he’s so bored he’s sure his brain is eating it’s self. Crawley would have laughed at that. Another day passes, and he’s still gone; St.Clair is starting to seriously worry about him-what if he’s really ill? What if he got some weird illness from one of the patients? Or maybe he’s just forgotten him, like every other damned person in the hospital. On the fourth day of his absence, Dr.Brain comes in to see him, a rarity that has only happened three times during the whole of his stay. He coughs nervously, and says:
“Mr.St.Clair. How are you feeling.”
“I’m not dying, if that’s what you mean.”
Dr.Brain smiles, forcedly. His brow creases.
“This is about your psychiatrist Dr.Crawley.”
St.Clair’s ears perk up. “Is he ok?”
“We don’t know.” He shifts uncomfortably. St.Clair realises he’s staring again. He blinks, furiously trying to be less intimidating. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Darwin Crawley hasn’t shown up for work for several days now. He’s been an employee here for four years, and hasn’t taken a single day off in that whole time, so naturally, we’re very concerned about him.” Blink.
“So, he’s proberbly got flu or something. Have you sent anyone round to check on him?”
Blink.
“We did. Nurse Jefferson went to his apartment yesterday. She said that the door was unlocked, and he wasn’t home. One of the windows had been smashed. The police have been notified. He was declared missing this morning.”
Blink. “Missing?” He says. Well. For once, he’s not sure what to say.
“Missing.” He confirms. He seems unsure if he should step closer or not; he’s still hovering somewhere between the door and the bed. He settles on standing at the end of his bed, picking up St.Clair’s chart. He frowns at it briefly before putting it back. “Now, Mr.St.Clair, I know that recently Darwin has been spending a lot of time treating you, and to our knowledge, you’re the last person who spoke to him before he disappeared. Did he say or do anything that was at all out of character, or could be considered strange?” He asks, sounding professional and detached. St.Clair thinks about the pages and pages of hand drawn circles in Crawley’s notebook, and see’s his face, exhausted, saying that one word: “Nightmares.” He looks back at Dr.Brian, at his perfectly starched shirt showing through his white coat, at the greying hair receding at his temples and says:
“No. He was acting like normal.”
* * *
The next day, someone other that Crawley comes in to visit him. It’s nearly midnight, and snow is falling heavily outside, covering everything, muffling the usual constant sounds of cars passing. The little flecks of white are endlessly interesting; at one point he even gets up and sticks his hand out of the window, but the air is freezing and the snow just turns to water on his skin. Because snow is frozen water. He knows that, but somehow still finds it disappointing, so he goes back to just watching from his bed. The chair by the window sits unoccupied; the room feels unnaturally quiet. He wonders when they’ll allow him to leave. The bruises are yellowing in most places on his ribcage, and the aching in his bones is all but gone. He remembers the notes he read in Crawley’s notebook, about memories being less likely to be recovered the longer they are left. He wonders if there’s someone right now, wondering where he is. Maybe a friend, or a family member, waiting somewhere, thinking the same things for him that he’s thinking for Crawley; Where the hell are you?
He barely takes notice of her at first. He’s more than used to the coming and going of nurses and doctors, who come and plug new chemicals into his veins or to bring him food. There seems to be a silent agreement among all of the staff at St.Edwards (apart from Dr.Crawley); don’t talk to the creepy amnesiac on the third floor. He’s also been dreading Dr.Brain’s return-in case he brings bad news. So he doesn’t even look at her at first, just continues staring out of the window. Then she makes a tiny sound, almost like an announcement, and he finally looks at her. She’s a child, looks about eight or nine. She’s wearing an over large blue cardigan over her hospital gown, her brown hair hanging limply at her shoulders. She looks thin, and there’s an unhealthy grayish tinge to her skin. She’s makes the little sound again, and shifts her weight to her other foot. St.Clair stares at her. She so tiny, the cardigan dwarfing her frail frame.
“Um, excuse me. Are...are you Mr.St.Clair?” She says. Her voice is wavy, and she sounds unsure. Blink, dammit, blink.
“Uh. Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m Edith.”
“Uh. Hi Edith...?”
“Hi.”
She stands in the doorway, like she’s waiting for an invitation.
“What-can I help you with something?” He says. She makes that little sound again, and he realises that’s she’s coughing. She must be sick.
“You’re friends with Doctor Crawley, aren’t you?” She says, and suddenly it clicks into place. She must be one of his other patients.
“Yeah, I am. Are you one of his patients?”
She nods, and coughs again, sniffling. He frowns. “Should you really be out of bed?”
Edith smiles timidly, and shakes her head. “I snuck out.” She’s still hovering by the door, and she glances out, like she’s worried a nurse is going to come down the corridor and spot her.
“Come on in. I don’t bite.” He flashes her a grin, realising a second too late that with his face, instead of being welcoming, it proberbly just creeped her out, but she steps into the room and closes the door behind her. He expects her to come and sit on the chair by the window, but she climbs up onto the bed and sits down cross-legged on the spare blanket at his feet. At least she’s open about staring-everyone else does it while they think he’s not looking. At closer proximity, she looks even worse. There’s a slight film of sweat on her forehead that she must have worked up from just walking to his room, but her eyes are bright and are looking at him with interest.
“Your eyes are really big.” She says. The way she says it isn’t unkind. It sounds like she’s making an impartial observation, in the wonderful way that only kids can.
“So, you’re one of Crawley’s patients? What’s, uh, what’s he treating you for?”
“I come to the hospital a lot. Everything’s not alright with my bones. I get sad sometimes, but Doctor Crawley says things that make me feel better. I’m his only kid patient.” Edith says, sounding quite proud of that last part. It sounds like Crawley to take on a depressive seven year old. She keeps fiddling with the medical bracelet on her wrist, the skin around the piece of plastic red and irritated-looking. She must pull on it a lot.
“What about you?” She asks.
“Me? I lost my memory. Don’t remember a thing.”
Her eyes widen. “Nothing?”
“Nope. Well, nothing about my own life.”
“But how do you know you’re called St.Clair if you don’t remember anything?” She says, frowning.
“It’s not my real name. St.Clair Street is the road they found me on.”
“They found you on a road?” She says, eyes almost popping. It’s quite entertaining.
“Uh huh. I got hit by a truck too, look.” He says, seeing how much more he can shock her. He pulls down his gown at the shoulder, showing her the beginning of a bruise on his collar bone that has green and yellow patches in it, but is still mostly a brilliant shade of purple. He grins at her horrified expression.
“Did it hurt?”
“I don’t really remember it. Just lots of lights and shouting. And blood.”
She pales slightly. He grins. “So, did you want to come and talk about something?” He asks her. She nods, swallowing. Her eyes flicker back to his collarbone, now covered back up with cloth.
“Doctor Crawley is gone.” She states, matter of fact. He’s surprised that Dr.Brian would have told her that.
“How do you know that?”
“I heard Doctor Brian talking to my mom. He said that the window was smashed, and that the door was open.”
St.Clair nods carefully. “ I heard that too.”
“My mom-” She coughs again, her frame shaking. “My mom says that Crawley jumped out of the window. I don’t think she ever liked him much.”
St.Clair is already shaking his head before she finishes her sentence.
“Crawley wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”
“How do you know?” She says. She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of the same thing that St.Clair is; Crawley would never do that.
“Because if he jumped, they would have found him on the floor outside, right? So he couldn’t have jumped. He didn’t.” He says, with finality. She nods.
“I guess you’re right. But still, what if there was a burglar? The door was open...” She chews on her lip, looking about as worried as St.Clair feels. She looks at him, small and frail looking, a big Crawley sized gap visible in her face.
“He’s proberbly just...taking a break.” He hears himself say. “He hasn’t taken a day off in the whole time he’s worked here.”
“Thanks, Morphine.”
It takes him a second to process what she says. He frowns. “What?”
“I said thanks.” She says.
“Why did you call me Morphine?”
She points at the chart at the end of his bed. “That’s what it says on there.” She turns around, grabs it and shows it to him. She’s right. At the top, it says Morphine St.Clair. Crawley must have written that after the multiple times he called him Darwin. He laughs to himself. It’s doesn’t even sound that bad. Edith takes it back and looks at it, eyes flying fast over the page. She can read well, for her age.
“Morphine is a funny name.” She says. “Isn’t that a paracetamol?”
“Again, it’s not my real name. Doctor Crawley put that there as a joke. And, it’s a painkiller, not a paracetamol.” He replies, laughing at her mistake. He points at the drip attached to his arm. “That’s morphine.” He fails to add how he really doesn’t need it anymore; the nurse hasn’t been in at all today to replace it, and he has a feeling this might be the last bag they ever give him.
“Height: 6 foot, 5 inches. Weight: 179 pounds. Estimated age, 23.” She reads. She wrinkles her nose.
“You’re old.”
“That’s not that old! How old are you, five?”
“I’m nine.” She sounds insulted that he would even suggest she could be anything less that nine. She goes back to the sheet.
“There’s not much written on here.”
“That sounds like Crawley. He never takes notes.”
“Oh wait, there’s one thing.” She squints, holding the page close to her face.
“It says...good mental and physical con-di-ti-on. Fit for discharge.”
“Let me see that.”
He takes the paper from her. There, in the large box marked ‘DIAGNOSIS’ is just one line in Crawley’s unmistakable scrawl; Good mental and physical condition. Fit for discharge.
It must have been written recently. He’ll be getting out soon then. He’s been waiting to see something along the lines of ‘fit for discharge’ for almost two weeks now, and now it’s here, he can’t wait to leave. When he thinks about it, Crawley was the only thing really keeping him here. He proberbly would have run away if he hadn’t turned up. Edith is watching him.
“Does that mean you’re going home soon?” She asks.
“I don’t have a home. Don’t know who I am, remember?” He says.
“Where will you stay?” She says. He shrugs.
“Crawley said that he set up something with the council to get me somewhere to stay.”
She looks wistful. “I wish I could go home. It’s so dull here without Doctor Crawley.”
“What about the other kids? Aren’t they any fun?”
She can’t reply because she starts coughing again, her frame violently shaking as she hacks into her hand. The sounds she makes are awful, like they’re clawing at her throat.
“You should go back to your room.” He says in alarm. She nods through her coughing, eyes streaming. He catches brief sight of flecks of blood on the palm of her hand that she must have coughed up, but doesn’t comment. He helps her down off of the bed, where she clings to his arm, breathing hard. When she finally lets go, and smiles up at him, she looks tiny from his standing point.
“Thank you for talking to me, Mr.St.Clair.”
“Call me St.Clair. Or Morphine, I guess.”
She smiles, making her way to the door. “Morphine suits you. You should keep it.” She says, as if as an afterthought. She glances back at him once and then closes the door behind her. He wanders over to the window, watching silently, and it’s there that he suddenly has a thought. The more he thinks about it, the longer it’s roots grow, and the surer he is about it. The blood on Edith’s hand, and the fact that she had a psychiatrist-Edith is dying. It’s not just the way she looks though; there was a certain kind of maturity about her, like some kind of limitlessness provided by the inevitable limit being so tangibly close. He hears more coughing as the cells in Edith’s bones decompose, as his own tissues rebuild themselves, as Crawley’s face get less and less distinct in his mind, and throughout all of it, the quiet, turned in chaos, the snow falls on regardless.