Song to the Moon
Book Two in the Damnatio Memoriae Series
By Laura Giebfried
Copyright © 2014 by Laura Giebfried
All rights reserved.
Cover photo by Josh Pesavento
(modifications made)
https://www.flickr.com/search?sort=relevance&license=4%2C5&text=Josh%20broma
For my mother,
who is home.
Only the weak are not lonely.
-Tuomas Holopainen
Ch. 1
The view of the outside world hadn’t changed in so long that it appeared to be a photograph hanging on the wall where the window had once been: the sky was brilliant blue but cold, the grass perfectly cut and clear of leaves, and the neighborhood houses all lined up in secondary colors like a scene from a picture-book. Had it not been for the smokers flitting to and from the fence at regular intervals, I would have been certain that they had plastered the serene picture there to keep me from seeing what was really going on below.
A sharp tap came on the door before one of the nurses stuck her head inside the room to peer over at me. Her eyes darted over to where I stood in my standard khakis and white shirt, and the familiar sigh dropped from her mouth.
“Enim, you were supposed to be in Dr. Fisker's ten minutes ago.”
“Was I?”
I didn't bother to mask the lack of concern in my tone as I answered her with vague interest, having been in the treatment facility for long enough to be largely unconcerned with following the schedule as strictly as they hoped that I would, and chose to continue staring out the window instead. One of the smokers had his hands up on the chain-link fence enclosing the yard, and the smoke was billowing up through the air towards my room. I leaned my head against the window and breathed in sharply, but the smell didn't penetrate through the glass.
“Do I have to write you up?” the nurse said.
I tiredly pulled myself from the window and shook my head, crossing the room to where she was waiting with the wheelchair. Though I could walk on it now, my leg still throbbed persistently throughout the day from the fall from the cliffs and prevented me from doing much more than moving from room to room. I was fairly certain that the limited mobility was the only reason that the staff even consented to leave me on my own, as well as the fact that I had taken the medication nearly without fault since my admission into their care months beforehand.
The nurse clicked her tongue as I eased myself down into the chair.
“What’s your excuse this time?” she asked.
“I was tying my shoes.”
She looked down at my boat shoes, notably absent of laces to prevent me from hanging myself, and narrowed her eyes in displeasure.
“Dr. Fisker has a busy schedule,” she reminded me. “If he has to wait for you, then he has to push back his patients for the rest of the day.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said, trying to keep the satisfaction from my voice.
The treatment facility was a low building made up of narrow hallways and too-bright overhead lights. With its controlled doors, motion-activated monitors in every corner, and the nurses station newly enclosed in bullet-proof glass, the layout rivaled that of a prison. The hallway zigzagged around like a labyrinth, and the walls and floors were so white that it was impossible to remember which way was which, especially given that the nurses wheeled me from place to place at an uncomfortably quick speed as though frightened to spend too much time in my presence. On every side of the hall, doors were shut and locked that led to patient rooms, offices, or storage units. At the very top of each was a lone, square window where the doctors occasionally paused to look in on the residents, their eyes just visible between the crisscrossing lattices, in a silent reminder that we were being kept there with no chance of escape.
They had brought me to the facility sometime in late March at the insistence of my father, who, apart from wanting me in a private care facility where no one would know where I was, had grown so intolerant of the extended winter in Maine that he could no longer justify the need for me to be in the hospital. He had found a place in Connecticut that prided itself on its in-patient treatment and the renowned psychiatrists who claimed they gave the best care possible; had it not been a place where he was housing his mentally ill son, he might have bragged about it in the way that he used to do with Bickerby Academy.
“Dr. Fisker had to take a call, so he'll be just a few minutes late,” the nurse said as she stopped the wheelchair in front of the office door. “He'll call you when he's finished.”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling as she walked away. Fisker had a habit of taking calls or starting paperwork directly before our meetings, ensuring that each one started late enough to cut them remarkably shorter than they were intended to be. As his only job was to administer my medication and tweak the dosage depending on how I was reacting to it, I was happy enough to forgo the meetings altogether: he never gave me the type of medicine that I needed, anyhow.
“Enim – come in, come in.”
Fisker was an older man, perhaps the same age as my father, but thin and spindly like some white lab rat that had been forced to circle through a maze one too many times. His hair was thinning and edging away from the corners, making his forehead appear too large for his face, and his mouth was so flat that he appeared to be missing his lips. He hurried me through the door as though I had kept him waiting, and I guided the wheelchair between the two chairs on the opposite side of his desk, keeping myself as far from him as he would allow. The framed pictures of his wife and children glowered over at me from beside the lamp.
“Let's get started, shall we?”
He dug in his drawer for my file and slapped it down upon the desk. As he flipped it open, a wave of pages fluttered from between a paperclip to send a gust of cold air over my skin.
“So, let's see here,” he hummed. “There have been no outbursts this week, and the staff says you've been no-less mistrustful of them as always, so it appears that we've found a medication that's working in that regard.”
He smiled at his achievement as he made a mark on the page, not bothering to note the look of dissatisfaction on my face. He had been administering and re-administering my medication since my arrival at the facility, yet since I still maintained that I wasn't wrong about what had happened at Bickerby in February, he continuously altered the dosage and switched the type in the hopes of eradicating my supposed delusions. By the fifth month under his care it was clear that he knew as well as I did that no amount of medication could change what I remembered, and so I was quite certain that the only reason he continued to try was so that he had a reason not to let me leave.
“It's made the dryness in my mouth worse, though,” I said.
Fisker hummed, barely listening to me as he put the concluding notes into his chart.
“Well, try drinking more water. It's important to keep in mind, Enim, that all medications have side-effects. Rather than focusing on what they're hindering, try focusing on what they're helping.”
“Easy for you to say. You're not the one with sores on your gums.”
Fisker raised his eyes to give me a wary stare before capping his pen and putting it down alongside the file.
“No, but I'm also not the one who needs help, Enim. And I think that if you would let us help you, you'd find that you feel remarkably better.”
“I doubt that.”
“Well, I'll make a note of your skepticism – it sounds like something that you and Dr. Graves could talk more about.”
“Graves doesn't want to talk about anything but my relationship with my father.”
> “I'm sure that's not the only thing, Enim,” he said, chastising me for my supposed exaggeration. “Though after that fight that you and your father had in April, I think that Dr. Graves' choice in subjects is an appropriate one.”
I rolled my eyes: Graves still couldn't let the incident go.
“That wasn't a fight. That's just how we are.”
Fisker raised his eyebrows.
“Well, then it seems that you two have a very volatile relationship,” he said. “We were all quite concerned when you … sent him away.”
I flicked my eyes to the framed pictures of his family again, wishing to be anywhere but the stiff chair where I sat. The argument with my father that Fisker was referring to had been no more heated than our typical ones: if anything, I had been much more civil than usual. But to the staff overseeing our visit, the idea that I had insisted that he return to Holland rather than continue to visit me under the pretense that he cared was something of a cry for help that I was still as unstable and mistrustful as they feared.
“I didn’t think it was necessary for him to be here just to visit me when his job’s in Amsterdam.”
“He was in the process of being transferred back here.”
“But it hadn’t gone through yet, so I saved him the trouble.”
“You told him – and I quote – that putting an ocean between the two of you would barely give you enough space to breathe.”
“I might’ve,” I said with a shrug.
“You did,” Fisker corrected. He shut the file and removed his glasses to wipe off on his shirt. The action only seemed to smudge the lenses further. “Now, is there anything else you’d like to discuss before you go?”
I straightened a bit where I sat.
“Can I get more pain medication? They only give it to me in the mornings.”
Fisker made a low humming noise in his throat as he considered me.
“I’m not sure that that’s a good idea, Enim. You get the medication once a day; the injury is from months ago.”
“It still hurts, though.”
“I can see that you’re experiencing some discomfort, yes,” he said, “but I don’t think that more medication would help.” He brought his elbows up to the desk and leaned towards me. “I think that the pain, at this point, is largely psychosomatic.”
“I think it’s from falling forty feet off a cliff.”
“I’m not suggesting that you weren’t injured, Enim. All I’m saying is that more medication won’t help the ... extra pain that you’re feeling.”
“Yes it would. If I could just have it in the mornings and afternoons, then it wouldn’t flare up so much.”
“You misunderstand me, Enim. I mean that more pain medication won’t help with the other pains you’re feeling – the emotional ones.”
Fisker raised his chin as he said it, staring down at me through the dirty lenses with such contempt that it was a wonder he hadn’t refused me painkillers at all. He, like the other therapists, resented me for what had happened to Beringer, but as Karl had secured legal documents stating that I had had no involvement in either Jack's or Beringer's cases and could no longer be questioned about it, none of them were allowed to discuss it with me.
“I just want to be able to walk around my room without stopping every ten seconds,” I said with gritted teeth.
“If it’s that uncomfortable, you should be using the wheelchair more,” Fisker said. “That would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?”
“That would solve nothing.”
He gave another of his tight smiles and stood from the chair. Crossing to the door, he held it open for me to leave.
“I’ll see you next week, Enim.”
“Great.”
I wheeled myself out the door and down the hallway without waiting for the nurse. My hands burned against the rubber with the same sensation that had come to my throat with the mention of Beringer, but I pushed the thought away before it could come and made my way down the hallway to the activity room where I was required to spend the large portion of the day. Other patients were watching a re-run of a television show or doing puzzles and a few were making crafts, but I wheeled past them without joining in as usual. Grabbing a random book from the shelf, I situated myself by the window and sat there without opening it. There were a few people in the closed-in yard smoking and chatting with one another while a lone aide supervised them. Despite having never picked up the habit, I had the sudden urge to go outside with them and breathe in the familiar scent. But regardless of whether I did so or not, no amount of cigarette smoke or careless laughter would ease the tightening in my chest: Jack wasn’t there.
The idea that he was gone continued to be as unbelievable to me as it had the moment he had left the dorm room that afternoon at Bickerby, regardless of how many times I was hit with the reality over again. I had found myself slipping into the idea that he was just in Massachusetts like he had always been in summer and that, come September, we would return to the dorm room again and pick up exactly where we had left off. It was too hard to believe that he was somewhere else and we wouldn’t meet up in a month’s time, and worse to think that we might never meet up again.
Graves had suggested that I was simply in mourning for the friendship that we had shared, and that in six months I would come to accept that Jack had been someone else. He had smiled as he said it as though reassuring me of something true that I just couldn’t understand, the way that they all smiled and reassured me of things that they were certain were true, but the sentiments had never done more than bring a cold chill to my skin. The fact that they were all so certain that Jack had killed Miss Mercier when I knew more than anything that it wasn’t true was the only thing that gave me hope that the other things that they thought might be wrong as well.
I had badgered Karl for information on Jack from the moment he had started visiting me after my father's departure, asking him if there was any news on my friend’s whereabouts that had made it into the news or police reports. Karl had grown wearier with every moment with me, no longer willing to argue the truth that I wouldn’t see, and simply shook his head at my questions. Given that Jack had not been caught, I allowed myself to imagine that he had successfully made it over the Canadian border with my passport, and that he was somewhere sheltered now just waiting for me to find him.
I had barely eased back into the chair and shut my eyes when a nurse approached me and leaned down over my shoulder.
“Enim, your uncle is here to see you.”
My eyes reopened and I glanced at the clock in surprise. Karl only came to visit me after work and, with his rigid schedules and neatly ordered lifestyle, it was highly atypical of him to come in the morning. I lifted my feet so that the nurse could wheel me back out of the room, hoping that if I grimaced enough she might allow me an extra dose of pain medication.
“I can’t do that, Enim. You have to speak to one of the doctors,” she said after I asked her. “It’s their call.”
She opened the door to the visitors’ room and I stood to hobble over to the table where Karl was sitting. The room was clean and bare with white walls and metal furniture that successfully made the visits with him even more uncomfortable. He looked strangely in place as he sat there in his dress shirt and straight tie, staring out the lone window on the far wall with a frown beneath tired blue eyes, though he seemed rather more nervous than usual as he tapped the ground with one square-toed oxford.
“Don't you have to work?” I said, alerting him to my presence when he failed to notice me at the table.
He shook himself as though just waking up and squinted his eyes to look at me. Though I had grown accustomed to the tired expression that he always wore whenever we were together, there was something heavier in the lines of his face as he frowned over at me, and while his hair had always been the same blond as mine, there was no denying that it had finally started to go gray.
“I took the day off.”
“Really?” As Karl was
as strict with his own schedule as he was with mine, I didn’t bother to hide the surprise in my voice. “What’s the occasion?”
He shifted uncomfortably across from me and tugged at his collar. There was no need for him to wear the suit if his only plan for the day was to visit me, and I ran my eyes over the blue silk tie that was familiar for an unknown reason. It looked rather like the beach sky on a cold, rainy morning.
“It’s ...” He smoothed the front of his shirt down though it was perfectly pressed. “It’s the fourteenth.”
“Oh. Right.” My tongue grew heavier as I tried to keep the surprise from my voice. “Mom’s birthday.”
We sat in silence for a long moment, both of us looking off opposite sides of the too-small table to avoid facing one another. The air in the room suddenly seemed cooler despite the summer heat outside, and for the first time since entering the facility I wished to be back in the standard blue sweater that I had worn without tiring for years instead of the short-sleeved cotton shirt that didn’t keep the chill away.
“It’s alright that you forgot,” Karl said after a moment.
“Right. It’s not like I should’ve gotten her a present.”
He gave me a cold look at the less-than-humorous poke at her death, and I stared at my fiddling hands rather than admitting my fault. My chest had tightened at the thought of her locked beneath the ground in a dark, damp box, and it occurred to me that I didn’t even know where she had been buried. For all that I knew, she wasn't even hidden beneath the neatly mowed grass of some distant cemetery, and her unexplained absence seemed to push me further back from the world onto some ledge overlooking nothingness.
“She'd be forty today,” Karl said.
“Right. Would have been – except she jumped off a bridge.”
Karl looked at me closely for a moment before breaking his gaze.
“Anyway, I brought you some mail,” he said, sliding an envelope across the table. “It would have been here sooner, but it was forwarded from your – our – old residence.”
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 1
