Episode 7: Voices- Fighting the Voices is Futile

Episode 7: Voices

Grant fought nausea. It started as a deep rumbling in his stomach, and wasn’t a product of bad food or recent escape from drug induced abstensia. Loud uncontrolled burps helped momentarily. He wanted to vomit his heart all over the room, covering the walls with blood and bile; he needed to relieve the pressure. The pain was a cement mixer of guilt and shame and loss and regret. He didn’t know how to stop the onslaught of emotion, and the voices were back with a vengeance. Their hours sans communication were catching up, and they overlapped one another speaking too fast or agonizingly slow.

He could not decipher their messages.

Grant wanted to melt and cry and disappear into the Linoleum; he longed for death as escape. Anything was better than this pale shadow of life. He wanted more drugs; he needed to forget.

“Grant? You can’t blame yourself for Hamilton’s actions. You didn’t know he was going to get hurt.” Dr. Jill’s sympathetic voice cut through the waves of inaudible cadence caressing the center of his brain. Grant slowly sat up, removed his fingers from his mouth and smiled to see her in his room. She fluttered back into her chair and returned a grin.

“When I don’t listen to them, bad things happen. Hammy’s eye getting poked out was distinctly bad, wouldn’t you say? They told me to let him in. They told me to take his pen. They told me, and I refused. I HAVE to listen to them.” Grant tried to keep his pace calm and tone steady. He didn’t want to scare her out of the room or appear flustered. She made the nausea and pain disappear. He felt suddenly “normal”.

“I’m glad you’re talking again, Grant. Do you know how long it’s been since you last spoke?” Dr. Jill met and held his eyes with hers. Grant felt her delving into his soul massaging away his hurt. He wanted to tell her everything.

“A couple of hours? Hammy was tackled at, what, 7:30ish?”

“It’s been six days, Grant. You haven’t spoken to anyone in six days.”

Grant thought it impossible, but touched his fingers to his roughly bearded face. His teeth were fuzzily sweatered and his hair a mass of matted grime. He blushed with embarrassment. He would not be getting laid.

Grant wanted her to move three feet closer and wrap herself around his torso. He imagined her delicate arms around his neck and perfect ass nestled in his lap with knees cradled on his thigh and legs draped across his bed. He wanted to nestle his nose into her neck and smell her slight vanilla scent. He drifted to thoughts of her nakedness submerged in floating flower petals.

Dr. Jill saw him thinking; his eyes glowed ravenous. She was certain he wanted to tear flesh from her bones and destroy her. How could she make him feel this way? She only wanted to help. He was the first patient she had fucked, and it was incredible. Since they started, she created an amazing break-through, until his six day silence. Now she saw it in his eyes. He wanted her, possibly for breakfast.

If they weren’t watching, she’d have already thrown him to the floor.

“Grant? You’ve barely moved in six days. I’ve, we’ve been afraid.” She glanced over her shoulder through the window into the hallway. A small audience viewed and smiled at her progress. Pens scribbled and heads nodded. She was the best doctor on the floor; she had an unparallelled rapport with the patients. With a mere word she brought a patient from a six day catatonic state. Her peers were amazed and planned published papers; “Horizon Dawn” would finally be on the cutting edge of psychiatry.

“I feel better now. I need to clean up.” He wanted her pressed against him in the shower. He wanted her to clean his body and his mind, immediately.

“It does smell distinctly of corn chips, Fritos specifically. Where is Jenkins, anyway?”

“You tell me, I’m the one who’s been catatonic for six days.”

She leaned in as close as she dared feeling sparks dance between their bodies. She didn’t care about the smell; she wanted him. “When can we meet again for a “private session”? The last few days have been killing me. I’ve missed you.”

“Again Doc, you tell me. I think you actually make the rules around here, don’t you?” They smiled brightly at one another until Grant’s face dropped to the overwhelmingly loud sound of truth.

No Grant. We make the rules.