In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  As he chewed, he looked around, working hard to focus on the room around him. The far wall was fuzzy, but he could make out slouched figures in white terry robes like—yes—he himself was still wearing. At the next table over, an elderly man with a face the shape and colour of an unripe radish was hunched over his own half-empty bowl, drooling slightly.

  Jacob ventured, “Terrible stuff, huh?”

  He was not surprised when the man failed to respond. He sighed. He looked back at the girl across the table, still stroking her spoon like a pet. “Do you even have a name?”

  The girl’s fingers paused. Then she nodded.

  Jacob laughed. He couldn’t help it. He thought he actually saw the girl’s lips twitch.

  She held up two fingers of her left hand. Wait, the gesture said.

  So Jacob said, “Okay,” and he waited with a patience borne—he suspected—of rather pharmaceutically inspired curiosity while the girl adjusted the angle of the spoon and fidgeted in her chair.

  The room drifted pleasantly around him.

  “My name,” said the girl, with exquisite care, “is Verity.” She appeared to be studying the tablecloth as she spoke. The skin at the base of her throat trembled, framed by the thin cotton of her gown beneath the terrycloth.

  “Hi, Ver. Veri. Verty.” Jacob found his tongue tangling, his lips moving of their own volition. He shook his head. “Vee.”

  Verity didn’t seem to mind. She shrugged one shoulder; the gesture turned into an awkward roll, as though she were trying to free herself from some invisible strap. Jacob thought he knew the feeling. “Why....” Her voice was still quiet, her words hesitant. “Why are you, um, here?”

  “Iunno.” Jacob sighed and tried again, cautiously. “I don’t know.”

  Verity’s attention shifted to his hands, and he thought that she disapproved of his response. He slid his index finger along the length of the table’s edge.

  “I guess I’m eighteen by now,” he said. “I was supposed to own a company. I think someone didn’t want me to. I’m really not sick.”

  This time, Verity nodded. Something relaxed in the line of her shoulders; her hair fell in her face as she ducked her chin. “Okay.” She tugged lightly at the edge of the navy linen tablecloth. “‘Sick’ is subjective.”

  “What?”

  “You could say ‘insane,’ which is mostly what they call us, and, um, you’re not that, I think, but mostly everyone is just ‘different’ maybe, or....” Once she got started, it was like a landslide, words tumbling over one another as though she was just trying to get them over with as quickly as possible. Verity sighed. Not looking up, she gestured toward the right, taking in the side of the room with a ragged sweep of her hand. “This house is private. Not a hospital. It’s expensive. Our families send us here, mostly, when we make them uncomfortable. The woman in the corner with the yellow hair, she cries a lot. She sees her dead son and she cries.”

  “Her dead son?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think so?”

  “She sees him. They tell her it isn’t real. What’s ‘real’? It is to her. She is sad, though. Maybe if she stops seeing him, she can be less sad.”

  “Hm.” Jacob glanced to the side, to the woman with the streaks of grey in her corn-silk hair who hunched softly weeping over her plate.

  “The man next to her, he’s, um, here because he asked to be.”

  Jacob paused. “Why?”

  “He’s afraid. Of the outside, of people, of himself. He says he likes the quiet.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Verity shrugged a shoulder again. Her motions were a little bit jerky, he noticed through his haze. Her fingertips twitched. He was growing used to the stilted cadence of her speech; when she wasn’t speaking in torrents, she hesitated over words like his language wasn’t her own. “Because,” she said finally, and left it there. He tried to object, but his tongue chose that moment to go thick again.

  In the next moment, big hands closed around his upper arms from behind, and he was hauled to his feet. A voice said in his ear, “Therapy time.”

  It was always the same. A small room. Someone behind a desk.

  He didn’t have an uncle.

  He was starting to wonder if maybe he had an uncle.

  He started screaming at the woman behind the desk. He heard himself—the hoarse animal sounds. Then someone jabbed him with a needle, and he slept.

  He woke in near-darkness. He didn’t have to stretch to know he was lying on a cot. When he shifted, he felt loose bands of untethered straps sliding over his chest. Startled, he blinked in the faint moonlight from the barred window and rolled to his side.

  He made an inadvertent sound when he realized he was not alone. His pulse leapt, but then he recognized the shape of the girl sitting on the floor. She was slouched against the wall with her knees pulled up to her chest. She wore the usual thin, hospital-style pyjamas, robe nowhere in sight. She was looking at something long and slender in her hands, turning it over and rolling it between her palms.

  Jacob said, hoarsely, “What is it?”

  Verity’s hands jerked, then paused. She then held up the object for his inspection; he squinted until he could make it out. It was just a pen—generic, probably ball-point, with a plastic cap.

  Jacob sat up, throwing aside the straps that slipped across him. He, too, found himself in hospital clothes. The thin cotton did little to protect against the chill of the room. “Okay. What’s with the pen? And, uh ... should you be in here?”

  Verity spread her hands, quick and nervous, palms up and fingers open. She kept the pen tucked into the crook of her thumb. In the darkness, it should have been less unnerving that she wouldn’t look at him. He discovered it really wasn’t.

  Jacob said, “Do I have an uncle?” And, a minute later, “Look, we already established that you can talk.”

  The girl dropped the pen; it skittered lightly on the floor, and she only wrapped her arms around her knees instead, staring ahead and rocking a little.

  “Hey.” Jacob froze, uncertain, then slid off the cot, finding his feet somewhat unwieldy beneath him. He set a palm against the wall and lowered himself down to sit next to Verity. He didn’t touch her, but he watched, waiting quietly, letting his vision clear.

  Verity sat rocking; she was strange, and a stranger, though her presence was still better than waking alone and strapped down.

  Maybe an hour passed. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t have anywhere better to go, and he was inclined to drift, his head against the wall. He was startled awake again when the girl finally spoke.

  “I—” she said. She had stopped rocking, but then she jerked her chin down, setting her thumbs against her temples and pressing hard.

  “Hey.” Jacob had already tried that. Still, he didn’t know what else to say. He reached down and picked up the pen from the floor.

  “Words,” murmured the girl then. Her voice was tense and low; her fingers were outstretched in razor lines. “Buzzing.” She swallowed a breath. “Burning. I. Am. Sorry.” Her tone was quite even, marked with regret and a hint of embarrassment. She added, “Headache.”

  “It’s okay. I honestly don’t have a lot of friends in here. I can’t afford to be picky.”

  He thought maybe she laughed a little. Verity curled herself smaller, pressing her forehead to the tops of her knees. “Tell me something true,” she said, muffled.

  “What?”

  She only sat with her face buried and her back pressed to the wall behind her.

  “Something true,” said Jacob, puzzled. “Uh.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I’m really fucking scared.” He tightened his hand around the pen and added, more confidently, “I don’t have an uncle.”

  The girl was quiet, unmoving. Jacob wondered if he’d given her what she wanted. He found himself wanting to brush back her hair, but he didn’t touch her. She was curled too tightly against the world. He thought she might break
.

  She gasped in a lungful of air, though, and raised her head again. She was looking straight ahead, but she said, “Okay.”

  “...Okay?”

  “You don’t have an uncle.” Verity was tense, but her words came easier.

  “Just like that? You believe me?”

  “I believe you.”

  “I really wish you were my therapist. Uh. Is she a therapist? Does anyone here have a licence?”

  “Some. Some of them do want to help people. Others want money, or petty power.”

  Since Verity looked less like she was made of glass, Jacob lifted a hand and set the backs of two fingers against her sleeve. The gesture was sloppier than he’d intended. Still, she didn’t flinch that time. He wondered if she noticed him at all.

  His head, he was discovering, still had a tendency to roll against the wall. He closed his eyes.

  “How’d you get in here?”

  “They don’t lock my door.”

  His hand was still touching her arm. He moved his fingers a little, feeling the warm solidity beneath. He reflected that he probably shouldn’t have closed his eyes. “Not an answer.”

  The girl’s fingertips brushed the inside of his wrist, quick and light as a butterfly, and then she moved away. The cotton of her pyjamas rustled.

  Jacob thought she said, “I’ll help you,” but he was losing himself again.

  He dreamed of the pen, writing loops and whorls across his skin in a language he didn’t understand. When he woke, it was still in his hand, and the morning guard was prodding him awake with one toe. “You don’t stay in bed, buddy, we’re going to have to strap you in.”

  He didn’t see Verity that morning. When he was allowed out after breakfast, he went to sit in the garden, though the sky was cloudy and the wind nipped at his bare ankles. He sat listlessly, waiting for his pills, vaguely satisfied that no one was interrogating him about relatives he may or may not have had. It occurred to him to wonder about Stevens. He felt a distant pang for home—even for school. He wondered if he’d graduated.

  When the guard came with the little paper cup, the pills were white instead of blue. Jacob paused with the little capsules an inch from his lips. “Are these right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe ‘right’ is the wrong word. I’m not sick,” Jacob reminded the guard.

  The man said, “Look, they’re fine,” and it seemed like there was a flush running up his neck. He swiped the cup back and walked off without checking to see if Jacob had swallowed.

  Jacob swallowed anyway. He had a morning of therapy to get through.

  He had given up on telling the person behind the desk—it wasn’t always the same person, though he’d seen the woman with the glasses more than once—about his family arrangements. He had almost given up on asking for a phone. That morning, he asked to talk to Stevens, then sat quietly after he’d been refused. It was a man that morning, who wanted to know if he heard voices or what he remembered about his father. Jacob stared at the wall. He wasn’t really paying attention, but neither was he managing to find his usual wave of comfortable apathy. He found himself rather distressingly awake.

  “That twitchy girl,” he said, interrupting a question about his deepest childhood fears. “Verity. What’s her deal?”

  The man behind the desk was hazel-skinned and thick-bearded. His age was indeterminate, but lines tightened around his eyes. He tapped a finger against the edge of his keyboard.

  “That young lady has been here for some time. If you wish to avoid the same circumstance, I might suggest treating this session more seriously.”

  Jacob rubbed at the bridge of his nose. His skin felt annoyingly constrictive. “You’re not going to let me out of here,” he said, irritably. “Can we just stop pretending? Look, maybe you’re really a shrink. Maybe you have a lousy job. But you can’t really think anyone’s going to let me go.”

  “Mr. Shepard—”

  “Seriously. Stop it.”

  The man was staring at Jacob with an air of bland but palpable disapproval. Jacob didn’t particularly care. He continued, “I’m not sick.”

  “Mr. Shepard. Until we can begin addressing the root of your problems, we’re never going to progress.”

  “What happens if we progress?”

  “Well, then we’ll consider different types of ther—”

  “No. I mean, what do I have to do to get out of here?”

  Jacob thought he saw the corner of the therapist’s eye tic.

  He sighed. “Can I please make a phone call?” He didn’t really have to wait to see the other man’s frown. “Listen. I’m gonna go outside.”

  He rose and walked into the hall. Somewhat to his surprise, no one stopped him. He tugged at his robe, pulling it close, and moved in the direction he thought the garden was in.

  The halls seemed like less of a blur than usual. He went out the front steps and squinted in sunlight that was too harsh on his eyes.

  He wasn’t surprised to find Verity outside. She wasn’t on a bench, but she was sitting next to one, legs crossed, palms pressed to the grass beneath her.

  Jacob considered, then he sat down on the bench. Verity ignored him; she had her eyes closed. He nudged her shoulder with his knee. It didn’t make a discernible difference. He was pleased, though, that she felt solid.

  “That guy hates me,” he said. “My skin feels like it’s crawling off.”

  “Eric changed your pills,” she murmured. “Placebos. I’m sorry it will be uncomfortable for a while.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  She cringed slightly. “No.”

  Jacob muttered something he had not been allowed to say in school. He scrubbed his hands through his hair. His scalp irritated him. “I can’t think.”

  “You will.”

  “How did you—how can you change my meds?”

  Verity only sat there, her palms resting in the green grass, a breeze ruffling the ragged edges of her hair. Just when Jacob had decided she wouldn’t answer, she said, “I know things. About the orderlies, the doctors. They tell me when they touch me. They know I know.”

  “So what—you blackmail them?”

  One of her shoulders rose, then fell. It was an uncharacteristically normal gesture, though a moment later, her fingers spasmed, her chin jerking to one side. Her shoulder bumped against his leg, but she didn’t move away. “It’s, um—a fine line. I can ask for little things. More, and....”

  “You’ll piss them off?”

  “Maybe they don’t lock me in at night.” The girl said it under her breath, like a confession. He had to strain to hear her. “Or maybe they don’t let me out at all. It’s a balance.”

  He leaned forward, then back, his skin itching. “Are you feeling better today?” He wanted to grind his palms into the hollows just under his eyes. He forbore.

  Verity raised her right hand and rocked it slightly in the air, palm down. She opened her eyes, glancing at Jacob’s knee before turning her head to watch what might have been the passage of some invisible bird. “Everything’s too loud sometimes. I get headaches.”

  “Yeah. I have one right now.” Jacob hissed in air through his teeth. “Look, thanks, but—I think I like the pills. Gotta pass the time somehow.”

  “No.” She was low-voiced but implacable. He fought the urge to kick her. He fought the equal urge to hug her. He shook his head.

  “Please—”

  “No. It will be better, um, tomorrow. The day after. They aren’t helping you.”

  “You’re killing me.”

  “No,” she said instantly; her spine bowed. She pulled away from him with an unexpected violence, as though he had kicked her. “Don’t.”

  “Hey.” Jacob reached out, then thought better of it. His fingers quivered, outstretched, not touching. “What’d I do? Look, I am in a shitty mood. Hey. You’re the only friend I have in here.”

  Verity whispered, “Don’t lie to me.”

  Jacob was taken aback.
“About what?”

  “I’m not killing you,” she said. She reached up, barely glancing in his direction, and touched her fingertips to his wrist as though she were checking his pulse. That single connection was fragile as a bird’s wing. “Do you want to go home?”

  Irritation roiled at the question. He meant to say something flip. Instead, he said, “More than I can possibly say,” and Verity dropped her hand back to the grass.

  “Okay. Then Eric switched your meds, and, um, I’m not sorry.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I gotta—I don’t even know.” He couldn’t sit still. Jacob rose and left the girl sitting on the ground. He paced the garden for a couple of minutes, but the sun was too bright and the wind was rough on his skin. He passed other patients—an old man, a young woman, a boy who might not have been more than six—and was struck by the man’s staring slackness, the woman’s tentative smile, and the boy’s intense engagement with a small plastic truck.

  He walked back inside and would’ve gone to his room, but suddenly realized that he wasn’t sure where it was. He was not about to ask the orderly, who was glaring at him. Instead, he picked a door to the right of the lobby that looked vaguely familiar, and found himself in the empty dining hall.

  He stared at tables lined with plastic trays and flimsy utensils, then he tried the next door and found himself in a downstairs hall that seemed right. It was lined with doors on one side and a bay of windows on the other. Sunlight streamed in as he walked past names handwritten on whiteboards: Larouche, Richards, Pereira. He stopped at Shepard and turned the knob, opening the door to find a cramped room and the cot with straps dangling. There was a dresser he’d never noticed before. He opened the top drawer and found it empty.

  He threw himself down on the bed and wrapped his arms around himself. He wanted to sleep. After a while, he started to shiver.

  Time passed. He dreamed, maybe, of the girl who came in the night. He dreamed of straps and men swearing. He wasn’t hungry, but he tasted vomit. His insides tried to crawl out his throat.

  He woke with a peculiar sense of timelessness; he wasn’t certain whether days had passed, or only minutes. His hospital gown was damp, and his skin was sweat-sticky. He stared at the ceiling, the popcorn plaster and the small water stain in the corner, and he found himself angry. It came to him with a shaking clarity. He wasn’t certain how he hadn’t felt it before.