18. Olly
EIGHTEEN
OLLY
Once upon a time, when I was a child, I guess, there was a near-perfect silence and dark for me to rest, in the isolated forest by the sea I called home.
The not-too-distant rush of waves, the crickets, or the call of the coywolves were my only nighttime companions when the house was asleep.
I remembered that when there were windows that opened, instead of stuffy air that reeked of floor cleaner, there was the breeze off the South Pacific in New Zealand, or the spring freshet with the thunderous bellow of the North Atlantic in the distance as it rushed in and out of a nearby sea cave.
There was a king-sized bed in which I curled up alone, or a narrow twin that I curled up in with...
who? Shepard, I harshly reminded myself, both of us threatened by gravity to roll off the tiny mattress and tumble to the floor at any instant.
Either way, there was softness or life in my bed, not panic and plastic.
I remembered when I would be the one watching Netflix until dawn, my cats curled up on my stomach or hogging my pillow.
Cats? Could that be real? I was such a dog person.
But nope, those were my pair of tricksy Hobbitses, I called them Merry and Pippin.
I remembered now, when they crossed the Rainbow Bridge, Shepard and I vowed no more cats.
We had gotten very attached to the little demons, and perhaps that was why I wanted a dog so badly.
What were these so-called antidepressants doing to me?
And the hated mood stabilizers for bipolar or schizophrenic patients, which I keep telling them I wasn’t either, which have given me enough side effects for a Pepto commercial, and then the fucking sleeping pills.
And we mustn’t forget the anti-anxiety meds, and whatever was in that shot many hours ago.
In a few days, I could see that it would work out to a cocktail of about eight meds.
All of these drugs, taken together, seemed to be aimed at taking away my visions, voices, and visitors.
Thank goodness Dr. Bell didn’t order another shot of whatever she’d dosed me with because my mind was slowly coming online, and every time I woke up I could feel myself growing stronger, more in control. More me.
I was doing all of this for Clark and Bea, who I held inside my heart and my body as real.
I knew where Bea was, and that she was miraculously tolerating the medications, but what about Clark?
How did he just vanish that day at Rose?
He existed, dammit! I didn’t invent him.
I hadn’t somehow conjured a ghost like I had with Gemma, and probably Fatima.
I was going to ignore the whole business of my new neighbour, the elderly Edward Evans, because that was a headache I didn’t need right now.
Ditto on the Clark visitor who wound up on East River Beach.
There was enough evidence in my mind that the multiverse was not only real, but that powerful psychics could access it and move through it in dream space.
That old man was right, but like hell I was going to tell him the pieces to the puzzle he was missing.
To traverse the multiverse, you needed to have strong psychic abilities.
Obvious, right? Not unless you were a particularly closed-minded scientist who thought that many things that existed outside of the established rules were paranormal and therefore absurd.
Days passed. They might turn into weeks.
I was so tired that it didn’t seem to matter, as long as I was attached to that pole, wearing a johnny shirt and housecoat, and my right arm slowly healed while my belly grew steadily larger.
I was told that my medications would be changed up periodically, but I was so foggy that it hardly seemed to matter if my hair was ratty or I was the only patient without real clothes.
One day when the snow fell in those slow, big flakes and covered the back hill leading to the forest, I saw a large buck step regally out from the trees and rummage through the snow for the grasses that were there just yesterday.
I watched him, and ignored the indoor snow that fell, matching the snow outside.
Instead of doing anything, I sat in the single chair in the room by the window, and watched the deer, quietly laughing as the snow hit my cheeks and melted, merging with the salt of my tears.
Tears of joy, because for whatever reason, be it the stoppage of outside interference or a steady increase in my own strength, I had access to my psychic abilities.
I wanted to march out there and dig through the head of every staff member I saw, but I would not violate my ethics to do it—though I would definitely look at the surface to see if they were hospital or Organization.
There was, however, someone far more important I wanted to visit, by touching her mind.
Ever so softly, I extended my power like a tendril of light only I could see, and watched it go from my heart to my womb.
I touched her tiny mind just for a moment, and sent her a wave of love.
I got back feelings of safety, of warmth, and of peace.
I didn’t know the long-term impacts of what they were pumping me full of, and I highly doubted any cocktail conjured up by Dr. Bell was considering that.
Unless...it was ridiculous, but what if I wasn’t the actual target, this time?
What if they were doing this because they wanted my baby, my little Beatrice?
The snow intensified, and just as I was about to do something about it, the crying patient, Sylvia, walked into my room.
My first thought was oh, shit. But she continued her slow progress into the middle of my room, put her arms out to her sides, and spun around with pure joy to the point where I was worried she’d tip over.
I hated to spoil her moment and potentially rob that smile from her face, but after she’d gotten a few good twirls in, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, all of the snow was gone and I felt something in me stir for the first time in weeks.
Fuck shuffling around like a zombie, and fuck thinking like one, too.
I took my IV pole with one hand, straightened my housecoat, and made my way to the nurses’ station.
The three nurses were all busy with their heads down, but I had a fortuitous coughing fit which made them raise their heads and look surprised when they saw who it was.
“Yes, dear?” Nurse Nice asked, so I tried to contain my anger when I replied.
“I want this pole gone, and I want real clothing. I know I was brought into the ICU wearing...well, something, so surely there should be a way to get those items back? I know everything in this building gets bagged and tagged at one point or another. And I want to see the psychiatrist, in person. I want to know why I’m being held here, and what is in these drips before I rip them out of my own arm if you all won’t do it.
” Exhausted, I backed up and looked behind me to make sure I was lined up with the vitals chair in the hallway, and plunked down into it, satisfaction burning inside me for the first time since I went into that water at Pauanui.
Well, at East River Beach, apparently, but the specifics didn’t matter right now.
I felt winded after even that short speech and decided to conserve my strength.
My physical strength, anyway. For some reason, it was easier to extend my power and pop into the minds of the nurses than it ever had been in the past. I was actually taken aback by it, reined myself in to surface thoughts only, and narrowed in on me as the subject.
That part was easy peasy. I did have a background in organizing records systems, after all.
I didn’t want to invade their whole minds and plunder their most intimate thoughts and secrets, but I did need information about myself if I was ever going to get out of here.
The nurse who thought I was a drug seeker was incredibly surprised at my display of backbone.
She wasn’t changing her mind about me wanting drugs, but she was intrigued that I wanted to see the doctor.
I want to see The Wizard! she thought, then humming filled her mind. I moved on quickly.
The second nurse, who guessed correctly that I was some kind of psychic, was busying herself looking through my chart, and got up and approached the chair.
Her mind was shielded, and when she reached out an arm for me to grab onto to lift myself out of the chair, my skin felt burnt where it touched hers.
I winced and dropped her arm, deciding that I could make this short journey on my own steam, should the doctor wish to see me.
There was one thing clear, though. In those few seconds of shock she had when I felt burned, I had caught wayward thoughts tumbling out of her mouth and dancing around in the air like wee black soot sprites only I could see.
She was Organization, through and through, and she was pissed because she knew that I had touched her mind. Well, fuck.
As I was trying to tabulate The Organization staff members versus the untainted hospital workers, I noticed that Nurse Nice...
Elizabeth, that was her name, was on the phone, an old landline that was corded.
I took a peek, and she was speaking to the doctor quietly, and through her thoughts I could see that she genuinely wanted to help me.
“Come on, you mean old bitch, just see the girl. Everyone can tell that playing musical chairs with her medication isn’t helping her.
” Now that was more like it. She got an affirmative and smiled as she hung up the phone.