Mirage(25)

“Nolan, no!” Ayida pleads. She is upon us now; her hand, slippery with blood, grasps my arm, turning my bandages pale red. “She didn’t mean to.”

My mother and I are both crying. I’d cover my face, but my father hasn’t let go of me. The pressure of his fingers feels like a pulsing vise around my arms. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I cry. “Help me.”

The voice is there again. I can’t shut it out.

It screams. Help me!





Fourteen


“IT IS NOT UNCOMMON for a latent psychological illness to surface after the use of hallucinogenic drugs. More common, however, is drug-induced psychosis.” Dr. Collier’s deep voice resonates, bouncing off the shiny tiles in the house. My parents called him immediately after I wigged out in the kitchen, and he rushed over.

Nolan’s voice eclipses Dr. Collier’s. “Since she took it, she’s been seeing things, hearing things. If it walks like schizophrenia and talks like schizophrenia?—”

Dr. Collier interrupts him. “It hasn’t been conclusively proven that taking LSD causes schizophrenia, and that’s a diagnosis that takes some time. The same neural pathways?—?like roads in our brains, if you will?—?are stimulated, making the symptoms remarkably similar. Additionally, if a patient already has a marked lack of self-identity, they may, through use of hallucinogenic drugs, invite other selves in, so to speak. It’s possible your daughter was already mentally unstable before taking the drug.”

My mother speaks. “Ryan is the most self-identified person I know,” she says through a wry laugh. “But this all started after she took the LSD.”

That’s not true.

“So,” Dr. Collier says, “you saw no signs of instability, strange behavior, or mental distress in Ryan before the incident?”

I lie on my bed and listen to the painful beat of silence hanging after the doctor’s question. Gran snores in a chair next to me, and Avery sits at my feet. She’s reluctantly been assigned to watch over me while my parents talk to Dr. Collier.

“Is he suggesting that there was a mental illness lying in wait inside your brain?” Avery whispers, looking sideways at me like I suddenly make her nervous. “God. That’s like having a bomb in your head and not knowing when it’ll go off.”

I shove Avery’s thigh with my big toe. “I’m not mentally ill.”

“Looks like I didn’t wait long enough for things to settle down,” she mumbles. “I know you do a lot of things for attention, but this is over?the?top.”

I bury my face back in my arms. I know what I’m seeing and hearing is real. The face that follows me around may show up in flat reflections, but she’s as three-dimensional as I am, as if I could reach in and touch her. I shudder. I have touched her. Every time she appears, she watches me with emotions pouring from her eyes like tears. Her eyes are angry, and I’m the nexus of her focus.

I cheated Death. Now she won’t leave me alone.

Why is she so persistent, though? She’ll have me eventually. She visits everyone at some point. Death always gets her way in the end.

“How do you know you don’t have a mental illness? Do crazy people know they’re crazy?” Avery asks. “And I don’t mean to be rude, but you smell crazy. Like, when was the last time you showered?”

“Shhh,” I hiss. “Don’t upset the crazy person. I’m trying to listen.”

Dr. Collier is speaking again. “Is there any history of mental illness, such as paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, in the family? Addictions?”

There is a heavy silence where I’m sure my mother’s eyes flick to my dad. Addictions. But post-traumatic stress disorder is a response to something awful happening. Nolan has seen the ravages of war, has had his body permanently disfigured. I wouldn’t call that a latent psychological illness. I look over at Gran. Her mouth is slack, fingers twitching occasionally in her sleep. She’s old, not mentally ill.

My disc is scratched, sure, but that’s my fault. I didn’t have to do what I did that night in the motor home. That was when things went very wrong.

The doctor continues. “We cannot overlook the seriousness of tonight’s incident, for your safety and her own. A sedative can be administered for the night, but I’d advise an appointment with me first thing tomorrow. Ryan may require antipsychotic medication.”

Tearful murmurs from my mother follow Dr. Collier’s pronouncement. My father’s voice is loud and clear. “I don’t care if you have to medicate her. Hell, I’m medicated. Whatever’s going on, fix it. This is the last goddamned thing we need right now. Control this shit, doc.”

“Nolan!”

Dr. Collier clears his throat, which he does a lot. “I am committed to doing that, Mr. Sharpe.”

The adults come to my bedroom door. The way everyone moves toward me, like they’re trying to corner a stray cat, makes me want to scramble off the bed and curl into a ball or extend my claws. “The doctor’s going to give you something to help you sleep,” my mother says. My father hovers over me with a look of fierce determination.

“No! You don’t understand. This isn’t my fault. I didn’t mean for this to happen. She was talking to me. I was trying to get away from her, from the eyes?—?the eyes in the knife,” I protest. The room goes silent. When I see the distrustful, wary look on their faces and my mother’s bandaged hand, I’m forced to remember that I’m the one who hurt her. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt. The spirit appeared, but I was the one holding the knife.