Chapter Seven
Cave
I am not built from blood but from choices.
I am a man who digs holes for no reason.
I am hands that fix broken things.
I am the one who centers you when nothing else can.
The mornings always start the same way. Lights turn on at six, followed by the click of the corridor door, then footsteps that stop and start and stop again, working through each room one by one.
I’ve counted them every morning since they brought me here.
Fourteen steps from the main corridor to my door, a pause, the small window fills with a face for a moment, then they are gone.
I lie and wait while we get counted like prisoners.
Which I guess we are, a mere number in the system as they record us, trying to determine how crazy we are. Yet I learned a long time ago that in places like this, the sooner you give them what they want to see, the faster they’ll leave you alone.
Valli told me to hold on. So I’ve forced the Scarecrow down, even though he is what protects me.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time.
I burned down the field when I thought Valli was gone, when the part of me that is not Cave decided that if she’d left, there was nothing worth keeping.
Now I have to get back to her; I need her near me to think clearly.
I need to get home—to be around my people. They are mine, but I’m not there to protect them. I need the smell of the dirt in my field. I want to hear Cipher’s tinkering and the river of words Noa is always saying to Valli.
I need her; she centers me.
I hold on to those things—the memories—to keep me on track.
A second set of footsteps comes down the hall; strange, they never come this soon.
Glancing over at the door, I blink as Shawn’s face appears in the window.
I remember him from back when I was a child.
He wasn’t unkind to me—he simply did his job.
Opening the door, he brings in my breakfast, not making eye contact straight away.
He does it deliberately to give me time to assess that he isn’t a threat, in the hopes I can relax.
But I never will, so I wait until he looks my way.
“Morning,” he says.
I glance at the tray: oatmeal, toast, and a small cup of orange juice that’s not the real stuff.
“You should eat.”
I eat the toast because I’m hungry, and because Valli would tell me to eat, as causing them concern over my nutrition on top of everything else is not useful. I leave the oatmeal—there are some limits.
Shawn collects the tray when I’m done and notes something on his clipboard, then leaves without pushing for anything else. This is why I can tolerate him, unlike some of the others.
I take notice of how everything here works.
I know who is on shift and when, so I am able to predict and manage them.
After breakfast, there is a medication handout, and I take my pills without argument because fighting back is not worth it.
After that, there is free time, which is held in a room with chairs, other patients, and a television mounted high on the wall, and staff monitor our every move.
I sit in the same chair every day, with my back to the wall and the clearest view of the space.
Today a man sits in a chair beside mine, someone I don’t recognize.
He must be a new admission and keeps looking at me, glancing away before staring at me again.
He is deciding if he wants to talk to me, but he won’t make eye contact and must decide not to try, which is the correct decision.
The television says something about the weather, and I think about my cornfield and what it looks like now.
It’s stripped back to nothing. I smile at the thought of Noa digging there, and how I would hate it if I saw it.
Though he knows this, he is at least keeping himself busy.
In the hours when sleep doesn’t come and the ceiling is all I have to look at, I plan what I will do with this blank slate—I plant a new layout, and what the rows will look like.
I only have to get back there and do it.
Evan enters the room at ten; he does the rounds himself, which I didn’t expect. Most of the doctors I have known over the years have sent someone else in to perform the observations. Evan was one of those interns all those years ago.
He stops at my chair and looks down at me. Though I have no desire to entertain him, if I don’t try, he will use it as an excuse to keep me here.
“How are you sleeping?” he asks as I look up at him slowly.
“Any better than yesterday.” I shake my head once, and he makes a note.
“The medication can affect sleep in the first two weeks. It should level out.” He looks up from his clipboard.
“Are you having any side effects? Nausea, headaches?” I look at the exit doors, and he waits.
“If you experience anything that concerns you, tell Shawn. He is on until six.” He closes the clipboard. “Seth will see you at two.”
Before he leaves, he nods at Shawn, who walks over with a trolley.
Every day they change my bandages. The burns are not as bad as it was originally thought when I was taken into the hospital.
Or at least that’s what Evan has told me.
Shawn comes over and gets to work, remaining silent, which I appreciate.
Once he is done, he simply nods and walks away with the trolley, and Evan follows behind him.
The morning goes by quickly, with the television changing from the weather to some sitcom that wasn’t half bad a few decades ago. Lunch is better than breakfast, made with chicken that almost tastes like food. It’s not even close to the food from Ares’s Bar, but it is edible at the very least.
Shawn appears at half-past one. “Ready to head down to Seth’s office?”
I stand. Seth’s office is at the end of the east corridor, past the medication window.
It is a room with soft furniture that they use when someone is having a crisis.
But it’s small, and since he is a man with a lot of things, the office feels cluttered.
Seth stands when I come in and gestures for me to sit in the chair across from his.
I do as he asks, and Shawn takes up his position by the door, something Seth has told him to do and which I don’t object to, seeing as I can, after all, be unpredictable.
Seth sits and straightens his notepad on the desk in front of him. He looks at me for a moment, and I stare back. “You want to start with a riddle today?” he asks.
I go still; I didn’t expect that.
Every session since I have been here, Seth has opened with a question about how I am feeling or what I have been thinking about. Even though I’ve never answered him—he knows I can’t—he has still asked. Yet not today.
“Evan told me about how you communicate, that you use riddles. I looked into it a little. The tradition of riddles as a way of saying something you can’t say directly.” He leans back in his chair. “I thought it was interesting.”
I stare at him, and he holds my gaze. “You don’t have to. I simply thought if that was a language that made sense to you, then maybe it was worth trying.”
I smirk; does he not realize the implications for him if he answers it wrong? Only Valli gets to answer my riddles for free. I don’t give him a riddle—I just keep my eyes locked on his, so he knows I heard him. It’s more than I have given him in any other session.
“Alright,” he says, shifting in his seat. “We’ll come back to that. I want to ask you something, and I want you to know that you don’t have to answer verbally. A nod or a shake of the head is enough—even nothing is fine. So, is there anything in here that is harder than you expected?”
I genuinely think about the question and then nod once.
“Okay, is it the people?”
I shrug.
“Is it the place?”
I nod.
He makes a small hum in his throat—one I don’t think he knows he has made.
“The last time you were here, was it the same as it is now?” I look past him this time at the wall behind him. “I’m not asking about what happened, more if the structure is the same.”
I don’t nod, even though it’s mostly the same. I don’t like to think about that time, and I can feel the Scarecrow wanting to protect me, but I shove it down.
“Okay,” Seth says. “A different question.” He leans forward a little. “What do you think about when you’re not in a session? When you’re sitting in the common room or lying awake at night. Is there something you keep coming back to?”
I look at him, and he waits patiently. This is where I expect my Scarecrow to protect me, but instead Valli pops into my head, blowing me the kiss I caught and put in my pocket.
Then I remember what it feels like when Cipher comes and forces me out of the cornfield to shower and eat, or the sound of Noa’s voice.
I put my hand flat on my chest, and Seth looks at me quizzically.
“Something in there?” he asks, and I shake my head. “Someone, I mean.”
I nod, and he is quiet for a moment, then I hear Shawn shift on his feet behind us.
“That’s good,” Seth says. “That is something worth holding on to.”
He spends the next fifteen minutes asking me more questions, and I respond to each one.
Valli would be happy, though I personally couldn’t care less.
I would prefer to rip his limbs off and beat him with them, rather than sit here and entertain his stupid questions, but for her I would sit here and smile all day if I had to.
When our time is up, Shawn opens the door and I stand.
“Same time Thursday,” Seth says.
I walk out, following Shawn down the corridor and back to my room.
Thankfully, I have time to lie down before dinner and not have to be in a room with other people.
I hate these gray clothes they make us wear—gray sweats and a gray hoodie.
We also get a white shirt; mine is tight around my chest and arms. Silly Sally—well, that is what the others here call her—makes crude remarks about me, though nothing Noa hasn’t said before.
But I like when he says it, whereas she just makes me want to watch the Jester cut out her tongue—and I think he would enjoy it.
Evan stops by my room around five, and it’s his last round before the evening staff come on shift. He stands in the doorway and runs his eyes over where I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. He doesn’t ask how I am, like he does most other days.
“Seth told me you had a good session today. I will make sure I put that in the files.”
He leaves, and it feels like I am one step closer to going home. I lie back on the bed and look at the ceiling, thinking about what they would be doing right now.
Noa will be getting back from the graveyard—he likes to do a final sweep before the night guests arrive.
Then he’ll talk Cipher and Valli’s ears off about his day.
I used to find it irritating in the beginning, before I understood Noa talks because silence scares him.
It’s no different from why I don’t. We simply handle our trauma in different ways.
Cipher will be at his workbench, working on the music box.
He’ll be listening to Noa talk while he tinkers.
He communicates similarly to me, and I think it’s why I was immediately drawn to him.
Cipher wants to use the music box to surprise Valli with the key to our new house.
Even thinking about a house scares me, but if they are moving in there, so will I.
And of course Valli will be listening to every word Noa says, while pushing Cipher to finish up for the day so he can eat.
All that matters is that I am one step closer to going home, and all it cost me today was a few head nods. I just have to hold on long enough to get back to my family.