Shepherds: Awakening

by Damian Connolly

  Dr. Howard held two papers cups for her, one with two thick, white tablets, and one full of water. Feeling as weak as a newborn, she allowed him to pour them, one after the other in her mouth. She gagged a bit on the tablets.

  “That should help for the next few hours, and I’ll give you a prescription, Mrs. Shepherd, so you can take some home with you.”

  There was more talking, but apparently the pills were as strong as he said, as her eyes closed of their own accord and she remembered no more.

  The next day her mother helped her through the door of the apartment. She collapsed into a kitchen chair; her legs still wobbly. She was improved from her hospital stay, but still tender. Her mother set about making a snack, which was good, for her appetite was returning.

  “Shouldn’t you be working?” she asked.

  “I arranged a few days off,” her mother said, with her back still to her. Aisling could tell that she was lying. “It’s only a job after all.”

  That killed the conversation, and she stared out the window until her mother placed a heaped plate in front of her, then sat down opposite. Her mother watched her as she devoured the meal. To say the food at the hospital was bad was a bit of a cliché, but sometimes it was a cliché for a reason.

  When she was nearly done, her mother spoke to her over steepled fingers. “I’ve talked to the school. They’ve agreed to give you some time with the counsellor there.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  Her mother arched an eyebrow at her until she calmed down. “You’re to go for two hours everyday. They’ll arrange it with your classes.”

  “And I don’t get a say in this?”

  “Any say you had in the matter went out the window when I had to bring you half-dead to the damn hospital.” Her mother was furious now. “I. Will. Not. Lose. You.”

  The anger drained out of Aisling as she suddenly saw it from her mother’s perspective. She’d already lost her husband and was now terrified of losing her daughter. Aisling saw how her behaviour could easily be taken the wrong way. What would she do to this woman if she had to leave her?

  “Mam, about Daddy -”

  “Enough! Save it for him that’s paid to listen. You’ve made it clear that your mother isn’t important enough to share whatever’s going on with you. I won’t indulge you with stories about your father. Just know, Aisling; there’s just the two of us here. You and me. I’ve not been around much, and that’s on me, but well, things are going to change.”

  “But -”

  “No buts, it’s going to happen.”

  Aisling fumed, but her mother didn’t care much for her glare.

  When it was time for bed, her mother came in with her, and held out two thick, white pills.

  “I don’t think I need them, Mam, I’m tired enough to fall asleep on my own.” In truth, the pills put her too far under; far enough that she couldn’t enter Limbo. She needed to see her father, let him know she was all right.

  “Take them, or I swear, I will lace them into everything you eat from here on out.” There was a determination that she rarely saw from her mother. When her mind was made up, she wouldn’t budge.

  Aisling took the pills, popped them in her mouth, then tongued them to one side.

  “Do you think I was born yesterday, young lady? Open.”

  Aisling rolled her eyes in frustration. Perhaps she could make herself hurl quietly in the toilet afterwards. She swallowed, grimacing. They were hard to get down. She opened her mouth, and apparently satisfied, her mother let her climb into bed.

  Then sat in the chair beside her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting until you go to sleep. What does it look like?”

  “Eh, I’d like some privacy please?”

  “What you want and what you get are two different things, dear. Now close your mouth, close your eyes, and go to sleep.”

  “I’m not going to go to sleep with you sitting there staring at me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll struggle through, martyr that you are.”

  Huffing as irritatingly as she could, she flounced down under the quilt, her back to her mother. This was going to be hard. She worked her reflux muscle, trying to bring the tablets back up, but the most it was doing was making her gassy. She needed to find a better way to get around…this…

  She slept.

  17

  She was sitting slouched in the chair facing the counsellor’s desk, which was currently empty. She was mortified. News of her hospital visit had spread through the school, and coupled with having to skip certain classes to come here, the other students were sure to think she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. If she’d held any meaningful hope of making real friends, it was now gone. Her mother had made sure all the staff knew, so there was no hope of skipping it and making up something to tell her when she came home.

  It was better when she wasn’t there all the time, she thought bitterly.

  Even Jake knew, and that made it worse. He hadn’t spoken to her about it though, nor stepped up to her defence. She was beginning to think that being a secret girlfriend wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  The door opened behind her and Mr. Smith, the school psychologist-slash-counsellor came in.

  “Good morning, Miss Shepherd! May I call you Aisling? You can call me Danny.”

  She didn’t reply but he didn’t seem to take it amiss. He sat down behind the desk and took out a large notebook and a pen.

  “I understand that your mother arranged for us a have a few chats. Do you mind if I take some notes while we talk? I find it helps keep everything fresh in my mind.”

  “I would probably use ‘forced’ more than ‘arranged’, and yes, I do mind.” The fewer records of this the better. He put the notepad away without fuss.

  “I can see you’re not exactly thrilled about being here, but perhaps try and see it from your mother’s perspective? She’s obviously worried about you.”

  “She’s obviously not the one that has to go through with it.”

  He smiled. “Let’s try and make the most of it, shall we? If nothing more, you have a nice break from English.”

  “I like English.” She didn’t, but she was feeling contrary. It had no effect.

  “Why don’t you start by telling me what you think the issue is.”

  “There is no issue. I’ve been tired lately - I’ve started exercising - and my mother overreacted when I slept in.”

  “You were admitted to the hospital with severe exhaustion.”

  Dammit, she hoped her mother hadn’t shared that part. “I’ve been very tired lately, then.”

  “You must be pushing yourself very hard.” He studied her for a minute. “Looking after your fitness is admirable. So you were just overdoing it?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Then we’re done here,” he said, standing up.

  “Wait, what?”

  “We’re done here. I mean, if it’s just a case of working out too hard, cut back a little, and you’re golden.”

  She didn’t get up. Not because she didn’t want to, but because her mother would go spare if she found out her session had lasted all of five minutes.

  “Is there something else you wanted to talk about, Aisling?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can’t just leave so quickly.”

  “Because you don’t want to, or you’re afraid of something else?”

  He bloody well knew it and all. “Because my mother is expecting a breakthrough on your end, or something,” she said, waving her hand vaguely.

  “Expectations are amazing, aren’t they?”

  She bit her tongue.

  Mr. Smith, Danny to his friends, sat back down. “Tell me a bit about your mother.”

  “What would you like to know? I don’t see her very much; she works a lot. She has two jobs. Had two jobs, I suppose.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “That she works a lot? I dunno…grateful? Why d
oes it matter how I feel? Sometimes you need to do things that you’d rather not do. Case in point.”

  “It matters a great deal how you feel. We might not like what we do, but the why is incredibly important. The why makes the unbearable bearable. Why do you think your mother works two jobs?”

  “Because someone has to.” Because she had no choice.

  “Do you resent her?”

  “No! She’s my mother. She does it for me.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “Fantastic,” she said sarcastically. “Do you have a point about this?”

  “I’m just trying to get a glimpse of your relationship. There seems to be tension there.”

  “Show me a relationship where there isn’t.”

  “Why do you think your mother forced you to come here?”

  “Because she thinks I’m depressed.”

  “Are you?”

  “No! I’m just…it’s just…things change, is all.”

  “Are you changing?”

  Yeah, I deliver dead people to whatever comes next. “Yes.”

  “How do you think your mother feels about that?”

  I’m going to break her heart. “I don’t think she’ll like the result.”

  —

  Different day, different shirt. He was more relaxed today, leaning back in his chair. Besides “hello,” they hadn’t spoken in a few minutes now.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “About what?”

  “Would you like me to pretend to be stupid?”

  Aisling scowled. “There’s nothing to talk about there. I was exhausted, I went to the hospital, I came home. End of story.”

  “There must be more to it that that. You don’t go to the hospital for no reason. They kept you overnight as well.”

  “Observation. They thought I’d taken something.”

  “It’s pretty hard to tire yourself out to the point of a blackout, and while in bed, at that.”

  “What can I say, I’m an active dreamer,” she said, sardonically.

  “Anything interesting?”

  You could say that. “Nothing worth sharing.”

  —

  As she came to her scheduled meeting the next day, she had barely time to sit down before he spoke.

  “Tell me a bit about your father.”

  “There’s not much I can say. He left when I was young. I barely remember him.”

  “Your mother had mentioned you brought him up in conversation a number of times.”

  “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  “What I mean to say is, what sparked the sudden interest?”

  “It’s coming up to Father’s Day, I wanted to send a card.” If I ever find out where he lives.

  “Did she tell you what you wanted?”

  “No,” she admitted reluctantly, “my mother refuses to talk about him.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Hm, I’d guess it has something to do with leaving without a word, but then again, I’m not a psychologist.”

  “Do you think she still loves him?”

  “I don’t know.” But she’d heard her mother crying enough times to take a stab at the answer.

  “Do you still love him?”

  He saved my life. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “That’s dodging the question. What can you remember about the last time you saw him?”

  “The last time I saw him was in a dream. But I doubt that counts. In any case, it was a while ago.” She was still on the meds that the hospital gave her, so she still hadn’t been able to return to Limbo.

  “How does he appear to you in your dreams?”

  She was straying a bit too closely to the truth here, so she had to be careful. “He seems calmer. Kinder.”

  “He wasn’t like that when he was at home?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I don’t know; it was a long time ago.”

  “How do you feel about him abandoning you and your mother?”

  “He didn’t abandon us!” she said hotly, nearly out of her chair. “He had to go. He had his reasons.”

  Mr. Smith was silent for a long time. “What do you think those reasons were?”

  There was no way to explain it rationally. He left because if he didn’t we would have forgotten he ever existed? Taxi for one, please. Next stop; the nuthouse. “He had his reasons,” she mumbled.

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Of course,” she said, and her voice cracked. Keep it together.

  “Is that why you sleep a lot?” he asked gently.

  “When I sleep, I get to see him.” It was out before she realised she’d said it. Damn it.

  “Do you think that’s a cause of tension between you and your mother? That’s she stopping you from doing that?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  —

  “Do you think the dreams about your father are real?”

  “I’m not an idiot.” And they’re not dreams.

  “I’m not trying to diminish their importance. I’m simply asking if you believe that you’re really meeting with your father.”

  She thought of all she’d learned, all they’d done together. She didn’t answer.

  “Is there any way you can prove it to yourself?”

  Now that she thought about it, there wasn’t. She’d only ever entered Limbo asleep. Coldness flooded her spine. Is this all in my head? No, it’s not, there’s things I know now that I never knew before.

  But the seed was planted.

  What exactly did she know now that was new? There was the actor, but there’d been stories about his sickness in the news for weeks. Was there anything that linked the real world and Limbo?

  Mam came back to find me. Daddy did that, I’m sure of it. But even as she thought it, she knew she wasn’t being honest with herself. What happened just before her collapse was hazy at best, and constant drug-induced sleep since hadn’t helped. Why hadn’t her father contacted her since then? It’d been days.

  “Sometimes,” the counsellor continued, “when we find happiness in our dreams, happiness to the point where we want to shun the real world, it speaks to a malaise in our lives.”

  She’d never been popular; that she knew and accepted. Was this all simply a fantasy? Something to say, look, I have a place in the world, and it’s important. Somebody loves me? What it just wishful thinking?

  She’d finished the last of her pills the night before. She’d know tonight.

  —

  “Goodnight, dear,” her mother said, kissing her on the cheek. “You’ll be happy to know my vigilance is over.”

  “You mean I can finally sleep in peace?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it peaceful sleeping; for one thing you snore something terrible -”

  “I do not!”

  “- but you can finally sleep on your own.”

  She lay in the dark after her mother had left. Perhaps it was simply nervousness, but she didn’t feel tired. She closed her eyes, and willed her mind to stop thinking, though it didn’t help much. She was anxious to meet her father again - get back to her training - but at the same time, there was that nugget of fear.

  Breathe.

  She took deep breaths, holding to a slow count of three on each inhalation and exhalation.

  Eventually, she drifted to sleep.

  And dreamed.

  It was a lovely one.

  But most emphatically normal.

  18

  She was in a funk. It’d been two nights now since she’d gone to sleep without the aid of medication, and in two nights, she hadn’t entered Limbo. She didn’t know if it was because the meds had done something to her ability, or if Mr. Smith was right, and this was all in her head. She didn’t know which was the worse option. Was two nights long enough for any residual effects of the drugs to have left her system? The longer she was blocked, the more it looked like option two was the stronger answer.
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  And if it was in her head? That she’d gone that long without questioning the reality of what she was experiencing terrified her. To wake up one day and realise that her perception of the world was off? She would never be able to trust anything again. There’d be no way to tell if it was reality.

  How could she tell if her mind was lying to her?

  Please let it work, she thought as she lay down in bed.

  But it didn’t.

  She ran more and more. For one thing, she was loath to give up her exercise because of the vain hope that this would all resolve itself. For another, it got her out of the house. Now that her mother was home most of the time, tensions between them had been rising.

  Her mother was being insufferable. Hovering over her, watching what she was doing, ready to step in as if she was a child that didn’t know any better.

  Aisling knew she was being unfair, but she couldn’t lift the feeling of blame, laid at her mother’s feet. She’d been happy before. She’d been with her father. She’d had a purpose, a destiny. Then came that stupid hospital trip, and those stupid meds, and that stupid counsellor, and now she had nothing. She couldn’t stop snapping at her mother, no matter how patient her mother was towards her. She wanted to hurt her, and she felt bad for it.

  So she ran.

  She ran no matter the weather, no matter how tired she was feeling. She ran until her legs burned and her clothes were plastered to her. She ran to escape her thoughts. Why hadn’t her father contacted her? Was he even worried about her? Where was he?

  Is it even real?

  The questions would pile up and threaten to overwhelm her, so she ran to escape everything she was feeling, to leave it behind her for as long as possible. There was a calming nature to the rhythmic thuds of her sneakers.

  She jogged up to an intersection, arriving as the light turned green for her. About to cross, she had to jump back, jarring her bones, as a cyclist flashed past.

  “Hey!” she roared after him.

  But he didn’t look back. The man crossing the street coming towards her didn’t look either. Was that the jaded behaviour of city people, or was she still fading from the world?