Phoenix

I heard voices, but I couldn’t see much. The world looked like muted swirls flashing and spinning just beyond my understanding.

“How did this happen?” a voiced asked. It was a male voice I didn’t recognize.

“I don’t know...I don’t know!” Mom sobbed.

“Calm down ma’am,” the voice said reassuringly. “We’ve got the bleeding mostly contained. It’s not as bad as it looks. It looks like... a bite.”

“No,” Mom said. “It couldn’t be.”

“Didn’t you see that big dog on the way in, Tom?” the reassuring voice asked.

“King wouldn’t,” Mom sobbed. “Not my baby. Not my baby.”

“Calm down,” another man’s voice—Tom--said. “I’m sure it was something else.”

“I told him I had to leave and take care of his brother’s wife,” Mom said. Her voice shook. “This is my fault! I’m so stupid!”

“Tom,” the reassuring voice said, “we might need a sedative.”

“No,” I slurred. “Wolf.”

“This kid’s trying to talk,” Tom said. “Let’s get him in the ambulance. Are you coming with us to the hospital?”

I really couldn’t figure out who he was talking to.

“I...I...,” Mom stammered.

“Ma’am, we really have to go,” Tom said. “We’ve got to go. Are you coming or not?” I guess he was talking to my mom. To his partner he said: “Rob, let’s get him in the ambulance.”

“You’re sure you’re not coming, ma’am?” Rob said. I imagined she shook her head because I didn’t hear anything. “Let’s go,” Rob said to Tom.

Then the lights swirled to darkness and cold swept across my skin. A thump. A siren.

“Do you know who that was?” Rob asked.

“What? That lady?” Tom asked.

None of this is real, Lexia whispered in my head. It didn’t sound like words, it felt like words.

But it feels real, I argued back.

Kill her, a familiar voice replied in my brain.

“Yeah,” Rob said. “Remember the fire last year where half the family died?”

A moment passed.

“No,” Tom breathed. “You’re kidding me!” he shouted. “Same family?”

“What’s left of it,” Rob said. “We gotta make sure this kid lives.”

“It’s weird she didn’t want to come,” Tom observed. “You think she’d be jumping in the truck before we did.”

“Everyone deals differently with crisis,” Rob said.

Blue lights. Red lights. White lights. Swirling all around.

“What have we got?” a new voice asked.

“Possible attempted suicide,” Tom said. “Sixteen year old male, laceration to the lower left arm. Severe bleeding.”

“No,” I said. “Wolf.”

“He’s still awake?” the new voice asked. This one was a woman.

“Kinda,” Tom said. “It’s a little weird. He keeps trying to talk.”

“Okay, boys,” the woman said. “We’ll take it from here.”

White light. Darkness. White light. Darkness.

The Darkness is in your mind.

Kill them all, that familiar voice said.

“Phoenix!” Eremil shouted, pulling me back. His strong hands gripped my shoulders, lifting me up from the forest floor. My head spun. His eyes looked like two bits of the sky pulled down and placed in his face.

“I’m fine,” I said. Drifting shades of light and darkness danced across my vision. The world swam in slow circles, around and around. “Go,” I said, stumbling to my feet. “I’m fine.” Eremil nodded once and barreled off through the ash that remained of the forest. I staggered after him, sick to my stomach. My legs did not work.

The Darkness is in my mind. Why can’t she let me be?

I fell.

I awoke in a strange place. The bed beneath me was too firm to be my mattress at home, too smooth to be the rough ground onto which I had just fallen. The sheets were scratchy on my legs. My eyes felt too heavy to open, my mind slow and thick.

My arm throbbed.

Light crept through my eyelids, striating through my eyelashes. There was nothing in this place except the white light.

I tried to sit up, but failed. My arms strained against leather cuffs on my wrists. My tongue felt so funny, like it was too big for my mouth.

“Hey,” a smooth male voice said. “Easy now. What’s the big rush?”

“The wolves,” I said. “Lexia.” The leather bonds stopped me from rising again. “Where am I?”

“It’s alright, kid,” the man said. I turned my head, the rough pillowcase rubbing my cheek. A black guy sat on a folding chair near the door. The room was simple and white, devoid of stimulus. But there was a door. And a black man dressed in blue scrubs sitting beside it.

“Where am I?” I asked again. He smiled at me.

“You’re in the hospital,” he said. “You had a rough night.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “I feel awful.”

“You lost a lot of blood,” the man said.

My brain felt like it was swimming in a sea of Jell-O. Nothing made sense.

“Where is Eremil?” I asked. “Where is Lexia?” The leather straps stopped me again. I really needed to...to...

“Eremil?” the man asked. “Lexia? Your mom found you in the bathroom and called the ambulance. You are one lucky kid, you know that?”

Oh, I thought. This world.

None of it is real, Lexia’s voice urged. Come back to us.

“Can you do something about these things?” I asked, trying to move my arms. The leather cuffs jerked my hands to a stop. He nodded at me, but then looked at something above my head. I strained to see it. A clock.

“In about an hour,” he said. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? You need rest.”

I had to get back to the camp. I had to find...

What camp? I asked myself.

I’m strapped to a bed, I thought. My mind was swimming, but not very well. There’s a guy watching me to make sure I don’t...what? Try to drown in my own saliva? I’m strapped to a bed, for crying out loud.

I knew this game. I had been here before. When Lexia died. I had been strapped to a bed before, with bandages on my hands and a fog in my brain. The memory appeared in my head and it seemed strange that I hadn’t remembered it till now. It was like it wasn’t there until now. But I knew from that memory that the only way out was to do what they said, whatever they said. I would tell them whatever they wanted to hear. They would fix my medication, and I would stop seeing Lexia and stop having elaborate daydreams. I looked around the white room.

Where is she anyway? I wondered.

I lay watching the ceiling.

“Okay,” the black man said, checking his watch. “It’s time. Are you ready to get those off?”

My nose itched. I nodded.

The black man came over to the bed and gently unbuckled the restraints. An IV dripped into my arm and I felt a little better. He retreated back to his chair and wrote something on his clip board.

I scratched my nose.

I kept waiting for the black guy to ask me something else. I kept waiting for him to tell me something. But he just sat in his chair watching the clock and making little notes on his clipboard.

My head started to clear. It stopped feeling stuffed full of cotton. That made my arm hurt more. I felt like such an idiot. I couldn’t even remember what happened to my arm.

The image of a wolf lunging at me was clear in my mind. No. That’s not what happened.

The black guy’s pen scratched on the paper.

“My arm is really hurting,” I finally said. “Do you think I could get some pain meds?”

Black guy’s face came up, his chocolate eyes wide.

“Let me check your chart,” he said. He walked over to the foot of my bed and picked up a clipboard from a plastic cubby. He turned the pages over.

“No,” he said. “Looks like you don’t get anything for another hour and a half.”

“I guess there’s no way I’ll be able to play basketball tomorrow night,” I laughed. Black guy just looked at me. “I’ve got a game,” I explained.

“No you don’t,” he said. He walked back to his chair. He sat down and watched the clock, making his little notes.

I was pretty sure I was going to die of boredom.

I don’t know how long I lay there on the bed, feeling trapped though nothing restrained me. Black Guy continued to watch the clock and make little notes. I wondered what he was writing.

Suicidal kid asks about basketball, I imagined.

Black Guy popped up out of his seat as the door to the room opened. I sat up. Dr. Banks walked in, dressed in her usual slacks and blazer with a white lab coat over the top. Her appearance was at once both familiar and unfamiliar, as if I knew what she looked like, but it seemed she should appear differently. It was like her body didn’t fit the feel of the soul housed within it. She came over to the bed and looked over the rim of her black-framed glasses at me.

“Phoenix,” she said quietly. I knew her voice. It was familiar to me, though I couldn’t remember hearing it before. “What happened?”

I bit my lower lip. What should I tell her? What was going to get me out of here the fastest? As dumb as it made me feel, I decided to tell him the truth.

“I took a hot bath,” I said. She nodded, watching me. “I looked down at the water and it was pink.”

“Why was it pink, Phoenix?” Dr. Banks prodded, her eyebrows rising above the rim of her glasses

“I was bleeding,” I said. “I fell asleep, I think, and had a dream about a wolf attacking me.” It sounded bad even to me. “Then I woke up and I was bleeding.” From the look on her face, I had just earned a one-way ticket to a straightjacket. But I couldn’t stop talking. “I don’t know what happened.”

“You don’t know what happened?” she asked flatly. Her forehead creased over her glasses. I looked at her face and though I saw the woman looking back at me, it seemed I should see someone else. It seemed her voice should be coming from a different mouth, a different face.

Man, I’m so crazy, I thought.

I could tell Dr. Banks didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either. It was pretty ridiculous.

“I think I dozed off or something,” I said, getting defensive. “When I woke up, the water was pink. And I was bleeding.” Shame rolled over me like a blanket.

Dr. Banks nodded but didn’t say anything. I half expected her to laugh at my idiocy, or call me a liar. She made a note on her clipboard.

“And were there other people in this dream, with the wolf?” she asked. I swallowed hard. My mouth was suddenly dry. Dr. Bank’s eyes came up to meet mine. There was anticipation there, waiting for me in her eyes. But anticipation of what, I couldn’t say.

“Yes,” I finally said, “there are other people.”

“Lexia,” Dr. Banks guessed. Her voice rang with satisfaction, like she had been waiting for me to tell her Lexia was there. I nodded and looked away. “I knew she would be there. Who else?”

“I don’t see how it matters,” I said, Dr. Banks’s interest making me wary. “But, see,” I said not wanting to offend her though her silence made me uncomfortable, “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt myself, or whatever happened.”

Dr. Banks nodded.

“I have to tell you, Phoenix,” Dr. Banks said, uncrossing and then re-crossing her knees, “I’m disappointed by this.”

“By what?” I asked. “I’m a stupid teenager. I do stupid things.”

“Not by that, Phoenix,” Dr. Banks said. “We all make mistakes, especially when we are young.” Her eyes darted to look at my scarred hands. I pulled them back, tucking them beneath the blankets on my bed. “I’m disappointed by the lies.” Dr. Banks looked at me through the lenses of her glasses. Her face was stern, disappointed. “I came here hoping to help you and you don’t respect me enough to tell me the truth.”

“I am telling the truth!” I protested. My arm throbbed as my heart sped up. Dr. Banks didn’t believe me. What was I going to do? I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to go home.

I needed to find Light.

Keep it together, I told myself.

“Phoenix,” Dr. Banks said, her voice the voice that adults use when they’re going to tell you something you won’t like. “You know what happened. How could you not know? I thought you trusted me enough to be honest with me.”

“Geesh!” I yelled. “I’m not freaking lying, okay? I fell asleep. I woke up hurt.”

“Phoenix—“

“No!” I shouted. “I don’t know why you don’t believe me! I do everything I’m supposed to do: I go to school, I get good grades. I play basketball. I have friends. I go on with my life like nothing has happened. I take care of my mom.”

“You need to calm down,” Dr. Banks said calmly. How could she be so calm? She was calling me a liar, as though lying meant nothing to her, and as though it should mean nothing to me. But it did. “If there are people in your dreams, dreams that hurt you like this?” she nodded to my arm. “You need to kill them, no matter who they look like.”

“What?” I shouted. Her words had echoed that familiar voice in my head, catching me completely off guard. “You want me to kill them? You want me to trust you and tell you the truth and do what you say? Well, I just did! And you call me a liar and tell me to calm down and try to convince me to kill my sister!”

“Your sister is dead,” Dr. Banks said. “And I can see you’re agitated.” She looked at her watch. “Maybe I’ll come back in a little while and see if you’ve calmed down. Make sure he gets his meds,” she said to black guy.

“Meds?” I asked. “Dr. Lucius told me to stop taking them.”

Dr. Banks turned back to me, her brown eyes curious behind her glasses.

“Lucius?” she asked. My anger dropped away. Dr. Banks was curious. Why was she curious? “Lucius and Lexia both?”

“No,” I said. “Dr. Lucius, the other guy who works at your office? The guy I saw yesterday? You weren’t in the office and I needed a med adjustment because I was seeing her again.”

“On Wednesday?” Dr. Banks asked, confused.

“Yeah, yesterday,” I said, frustrated. “I came to see you and this Dr. Lucius told me my meds wouldn’t do any good because. . .”

“Because why?” she asked. She was beyond curious now, genuinely interested. I had her full attention. But something told me this might not be a good thing.

“Because,” I said slowly. “He thinks Lexia is real.”

“Phoenix,” Dr. Banks said. Her voice was that voice again. She was going to say something I wouldn’t like. “I waited for you yesterday, but the receptionist said you went storming out of the office right after you checked in.”

“Yes I did,” I protested. “I came to your office and then Dr. Lucius came and got me and told me you weren’t in. . .”

Concern colored Dr. Banks’s face heavily.

“What?” I asked.

“You keep referring to Lucius,” she said. “And that is really disturbing.”

“Why? Because the guy’s a total whack-job?” I asked.

“No,” Dr. Banks said quietly. “I waited for you yesterday, but you never showed up. Then you did this to yourself,” she said, gesturing to my wrist. “It really disturbs me because there is no Lucius. Did you meet him in a dream too?”

I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. All the air was suddenly gone from my lungs and I couldn’t pull any in. I could see my life stretching before me. I was never getting out of here. I would be stuck with the black guy who wrote on his clipboard and said nothing. Forever.

“I’m going to go now,” Dr. Banks said. “I want you to think about what you told me. Maybe you will remember what really happened.”

I swallowed as the door clicked shut.

I had told her what really happened, and it got me nothing. I looked around at the white walls, the stiff bed, the clock with its ever-ticking second hand. I watched Black Guy sitting silently on his stool watching the clock, watching me.

The truth I had told was going keep me in places like this. I stared at the ceiling until I drifted to sleep.