Mind Over Mind

by Karina L. Fabian

  Joshua replied, asking Rique to tell her he was fine, but nothing more. Sooner or later, he’d have to tell Rique what had happened. So far, the only one who knew was Father Ron.

  And maybe Ydrel. How much did Joshua give away, working with the psychic?

  “Psychic.” Like I really believe that. But did he?

  Sachiko does.

  Even though it was past three in the morning, his eyes kept straying to the telephone. If he could just talk to her—

  You’ll see her tomorrow, and if you want to make any kind of professional showing at work, you’d better get at least a few hours’ sleep.

  Sleep, when it did come, was filled with dreams.

  *

  Sachiko looked at the glaring red digital readout of her alarm clock and sighed. What was she doing awake at three in the morning?

  Stupid dream. She couldn’t even remember what specifically she had dreamed, but she still felt edgy and upset in its aftermath. She laughed bitterly to herself. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been feeling edgy and upset all week, as it was.

  She’d been more worried about Joshua than she cared to admit; all day Tuesday, she had to fight the urge to check in on him as he lay unconscious in the infirmary. Mr. Goldstein’s downturn had actually been a help then, for she was able to concentrate on him, and on Ydrel who’d sat at his side with such dedication. But he had hung on all night and into the next day; when she came in at the start of her shift, he looked so frail and a little afraid and all she could think was how wrong it was, that he didn’t belong there, with no one but a staff and one teenage boy. Then Ydrel had asked in a small voice if she could please see if Joshua would wake up, and she had had to keep from running to the infirmary.

  And he had known just what to do. He thought of the rabbi. He stayed with Isaac and Ydrel through the end. He knew how to comfort Ydrel when he’d rejected all of her attempts. He’d done everything.

  Except comfort her.

  Sachiko rolled over and punched her pillow savagely. It’s your own fault. You just had to tell him, “If we ever get to the point that we’re getting married or something, you can go singing our love in the halls. But until then, we stay strictly professional—even if we’re alone.” Of course, he wasn’t going to go putting his arms around you at work. Besides, Randall all but evicted him. And he did call...

  That call had left her with mixed feelings, too. Here he was, going to church in the middle of the week, actually seeking comfort there; whereas she hadn’t darkened the door of a church since—

  Since you started sleeping with Randall. Actually before. He never cared for “institutional religion,” and you let that sway you. How could you let a man affect you so much? And are you doing it again? She glanced at the telephone. She’d tried to call him as soon as she’d gotten home, but his line had been busy. At 11:30, she’d given up in disgust. He was probably cruising the Internet or playing some juvenile on-line game or something.

  She thought about getting up and having a glass of wine, but wasn’t sure she’d trust herself to stop at one and she needed to get up clear-headed in a couple of hours. Besides, opening a new bottle just seemed like too much effort. Instead she called upon the skills from her martial arts training and years as an emergency room nurse, did some relaxation breathing, and forced herself into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  *

  “Ydrel? Please wake up! Are you all right?”

  Ydrel opened his eyes reluctantly. He was lying on a bed of moss and fallen leaves. For a moment, he was disoriented, then he realized where he was. The Miscria’s netherworld. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  Tasmae, who had been kneeling over him and shaking him, now sat back on her heels with a gusty sigh of relief. “Are you all right? I ‘knocked’ and ‘knocked’ as you asked, but I got no answer, none at all. So I Called you, and it took all I had to bring you here.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, still a little confused. “A friend died today, and I was with him—”

  “Oh!” The slight explanation seemed to calm her and distress her at the same time. “So you were escorting the ilé”—a word that translated to him as soul and psyche—”to the Otherworld? Did I pull you away?” She seemed horrified at the thought.

  “No! We, just, you know, sat with him until, uh, his soul—er, ilé —left.” In fact, he’d been so tightly shielded against Isaac, he hadn’t felt the Miscria knock at all. “We said some prayers for his soul and stuff, but I wasn’t going to go with him. I’m not suicidal.” Her shock and confusion grated on him and he snapped, “What? Did you want me to just send my soul off with him?”

  “Your people don’t have a custom of escorting the ilé of the dying?”

  “As far as I know, I’m the only human could even detect an, an ilé, and I wouldn’t even know how to escort it. What if I got lost?” He thought briefly about how just Monday, he’d been so lost in his own mind that Joshua had had to retrieve him from his catatonia. He quickly squashed the thought. The last thing he needed was Tasmae picking up evidence of his instabilities.

  She nodded seriously. “It has happened, but not often. Often, the one lost simply did not want to return. Sometimes, a healer tries too hard to heal, and will pursue the ilé, trying to reunite it with its body. Some say that is what happened with Alugiac, that he pursued the ilé of a dying Barin, and a part of it returned and shares his body now.” She shivered suddenly.

  “Sounds like a ghost story,” Ydrel commented.

  “Ghost story?”

  “Yeah, tales of the spirits of those who died but never made it to the afterlife. So they hang around Earth and cause lots of trouble. I’ve never seen one, and frankly, if anyone’s qualified to see a ghost, it’d be me. But sometimes, they supposedly possess other people, too.”

  She looked at him with intense interest. “And how would you evict such a ghost?”

  “Uh, an exorcism, I guess. A really holy person or priest calls upon God to force the demon soul out.”

  Disappointment covered her like a shroud. “Then he is not possessed, for I have called upon God, and Alugiac is no better than before.”

  *

  Joshua was on the stage; this time with the mike and out from behind the keyboard. He was singing something hot and a little raunchy. He could see his audience: hundreds of beautiful women, all dancing and waving. LaTisha smiled up at him in a way that made him feel hot and a little raunchy, too.

  Then someone threw a dead baby on the stage.

  Suddenly he was running down a long backstage corridor—behind him a screaming, rabid mob of girls now hideous as they called to him and fought among each other. He dashed into a side room with a star on the door and leaned against it panting, safe. He saw Sachiko in the make-up chair and his heart leapt until he noticed she was curled in on herself, her head bowed. She looked up, held out her hands. There were tears in her eyes.

  There was blood on her hands.

  CHAPTER 24

  Thursday was uneventful, but stressful in its own way. With a hot shower, two lattes and some eye drops, Joshua was able to fake his way through work. Dr. Malachai made such a big deal of Joshua’s “miracle work” that nearly everyone focused on him and didn’t bother to wonder how Mr. McDougal was able to fool such an experienced and observant psychiatrist when an intern had noticed, and one nurse had written in the logs, “Not sure McDougal’s medication is working. Might want to monitor him closely this pm and let Dr. Malachai know of unusual behavior.” Sachiko, he heard, was mad at herself for daydreaming when she should have been paying attention to the logs. He wondered if she was mad at him, too.

  Edith asked Joshua to spend time with Ydrel, to make sure he was all right. So far, he’d rebuffed most offers of sympathy, although he did talk briefly with the rabbi, who had visited early that morning. He seemed to be handling things well, but Edith decided some alone time in a safe environment with Josh would give Ydrel the security to confront his feelings of grief. So they absconded with a w
affle iron and ingredients from the kitchen and took over the nurse’s lounge for an hour. They talked about Isaac and death for a few minutes, in deference to her request, but Ydrel really wanted to talk about his newfound sources of energy. After assuring himself that Ydrel was indeed handling things well, Joshua told him what he knew about ley lines and magic and ESP, most of which came from a lifelong habit of reading science fiction and fantasy. “I’m sure there are non-fiction books out there that treat the subject with more objectivity,” Joshua said as he put a couple of the warm waffles on his plate. “Why don’t you get the librarian to do a search for you?”

  Ydrel laughed derisively as he sat down and thoughtlessly smeared syrup over his waffles, then handed the bottle to his friend. “Yeah, and get it put in my record: ‘sudden interest in the occult after witnessing death of fellow patient.’”

  “I see your point. Well, keep it in mind for when you get out of here.” Joshua took the syrup and carefully filled each square. After a moment, he noticed Ydrel staring at him with a look of horror. “What?”

  “Do you—do you always do that?” He pointed at the waffles with his fork as if they were something obscene.

  “What? Fill the holes with syrup? Sure, for as long as I can remember. Why?”

  “That’s not, well, weird or obsessive or anything?”

  Joshua shrugged and took a bite of his waffle. “Why would you think that?” He kept his manner casual, but watched Ydrel closely.

  “Never mind.” Ydrel turned his attention back to his plate, but Joshua had seen it—that pining of the eyes, followed by a quick jerk left and up—visual recall. Someone else’s.

  “All right, who’s sending memos saying that making sure your waffles are properly syruped is obsessive behavior?”

  Ydrel’s head jerked up in surprise. “It’s in my records. ‘January 17th: Patient compulsive about ensuring entire waffle filled with syrup. Indicative of other obsessive behavior?’ So I stopped doing that. Last thing I needed was another label.” He looked down at his plate morosely. “I hardly ever have waffles any more. They just don’t taste as good.”

  Joshua handed him the bottle. “Go for it.”

  They went back to Ydrel’s room, and he hurried in first and went straight to his bed. He straightened out the covers, attempting as he did so to hide the old stuffed bear that normally sat on his headboard. Joshua bit back a sigh. “Let me guess,” he said quietly, and mimed writing on a clipboard. Ydrel nodded glumly. Joshua fought the urge to pull the bear out from under the blankets and formally present it back to the young and grieving boy, but he did decide to wade his way through Ydrel’s records after all. What was one more thing to his schedule, anyway?

  On top of that, Joshua spent the day quelling rumors and jokes: “No, I didn’t rock for five hours,” “No, you don’t need abs of steel to do Neuro Linguistic Programming.” In the afternoon, he had gone to the nurses’ station to see Sachiko, only to overhear her telling Monique about her last class: “It was this litany of every mistake you could make in an abortion,” she was saying, and Joshua decided to just walk on by.

  “Joshua, come here,” she called to him. “You might be interested in this.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve had enough death and pain for a week,” he’d snapped and left the stunned nurses without looking back. He couldn’t; the nightmare image of Sachiko with blood on her hands was still in his mind. He was only too glad to follow Dr. Malachai’s order to edit the tape they’d made in order to demonstrate the methods he used. He and Floyd spent most of the afternoon and a good part of the evening in the editing room, reviewing and cutting out huge portions of videotape. At 8:30, they still weren’t done. They’d called it a night, and Joshua went home, plopped straight into bed and slept fitfully until the phone woke him a couple of hours later. It was Sachiko.

  “You know,” she started acerbically, “you could have at least heard me out about why my class would have interested you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “It’s just, I had a lot of nightmares about people dying: Isaac, my grandfather, babies—”

  “Me?”

  “You weren’t dead.”

  She picked up his unspoken thought. “Ouch. No wonder you didn’t meet me for dinner at the lounge tonight.”

  “No. No, that wasn’t it. I—Malachai set me to editing that stupid video they took of Ydrel and me, and I had to work with Floyd. We were trying to get it done fast so he could go home, so we worked through dinner. When we finally quit, I was so wasted, I just dragged myself straight home. I wish there was some way I could leave you a note at work—”

  “That’s all right. I should have known it was something like that.” Her voice was once again soft and sweet, and Joshua leaned into the phone, a warm feeling easing the tightness in his stomach. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Better now. You have no idea how much better. When can we see each other again—I mean outside work?” He tried to keep the longing out of his voice. He wasn’t sure he was very successful, but for the moment, he didn’t care.

  “I don’t have class Saturday. How’s Friday night after work? Maybe we could meet somewhere—”

  “Just come to my place. It’s only a 10-minute drive. We can just hang out and relax. Unless you’d rather—”

  “No. Your place sounds perfect! I mean, I don’t think either of us is up to going out in public. By the way, the reason I wanted you to hear about my class is that, after listening to this awful list of every mistake and complication that can occur, I asked my professor how we go about repairing such damage. What I was supposed to do if I was the e-room surgeon who got stuck with some idiot’s victim, you know what I mean?”

  “Really?!”

  “Really. Floored him, too. He said he’d cover it next week, and a lot of my classmates caught me afterward to thank me for asking. But I never would have had the guts to speak up—and risk adding to what he might put on the midterm—if it hadn’t been for you.”

  They talked a while longer, and when Joshua hung up, he fell immediately into a deep and peaceful sleep.

  *

  Joshua woke at five Friday morning, feeling completely rested and too excited about his upcoming date with Sachiko to just lie around. Because he hadn’t been home for any significant amount of time all week, his apartment was in relatively good shape and in half an hour, he had it completely clean. In the shower, he debated working on Rique’s song over just heading in to work early. He decided on the latter: he had a case study he needed to work on for Edith, and if he could get some early time with Ydrel, he could catch Floyd as soon as he came on shift and get that ridiculous tape finished in plenty of time to get home and get ready.

  As soon as he got through the security gates and heard the screaming, however, he knew he’d be lucky if he got home before Sachiko showed up at his door. With an inward sigh, he made a beeline for the common room. As he got nearer, the words became more distinct. “We’re not like that! You…believe me!”

  Two orderlies were blocking the doorway, holding a straitjacket. Nonetheless, they didn’t seem to be trying to keep anyone in or out; rather, they were loitering, one actually leaning against the doorframe. Biting back his annoyance, Joshua looked between them to assess the situation.

  Carter Doleson was standing on the sofa, yelling at the top of his lungs and gesticulating wildly. Dr. Rose Dover, the mid-shift psychiatrist, a small quiet lady only two months from retirement, was standing near the arm of the couch, trying calmly but ineffectively to get him to come down so they could talk. As with Dr. Hoffman, such soothing tones only made him more agitated.

  “You don’t understand! They have to know we’re not like that!” He waved wildly at the TV, where the news was replaying live footage of a mob scene somewhere in Europe.

  One of the orderlies blocking the door, who smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke and perfume and whose dishwater blond hair was slicked back, sniggered. “Shall we give her a few more minutes bef
ore we jump in and rescue?”

  Great. Wonder if this is the Roger that Sachiko is trying to get fired? What’s he doing on the day shift?

  “That won’t be necessary,” Joshua growled and pushed between them.

  Dr. Dover continued to speak with fraying patience to the agitated Carter. Joshua snapped off the television, touched Dr. Dover lightly on the shoulder to alert her to his presence, then stood up on the couch next to the ranting client.

  “Carter?” he asked softly.

  “Joshua!” He spun, nearly toppling off the couch and grabbed the intern by the shoulders. “You’ve got to help me! We’ve got to make them understand! Humans aren’t all evil or destructive or—”

  “Carter, they have sensitive surveillance equipment, right?”

  Carter stopped, “Yes, but—”

  “It can pick up the slightest whisper, right?”

  “Right—”

  “I think you’ve blown out their system.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” the older man sighed. “It’s just that I can’t stand their thinking we’re all so evil, when there are so many good people, but all we ever see is the violence and the pain and—”

  “Do you really think screaming is going to help? I mean, what would you believe—the evidence before your eyes or one man shouting to the contrary? Standing on a couch and shouting, no less?”

  “But we have to make them understand!”

  “Is this way working? Then you need to think of a better way. How about if we talk about it over breakfast?”

  Together, they stepped off the couch and, after getting a nod of permission from Dr. Dover, turned for the door. Halfway to the door, however, they met the orderlies. One nodded to him and went to Dr. Dover. Roger just stood in their way and sneered. Carter actually shrank back as the orderly held up the straitjacket.