Emptiness.
I’m lost…
My heart pounds and blood rushes to my ears. It’s suffocating, this quiet. Vast but constricting. A little box with no walls.
I read the words within the pyramid. Trapped.
Trapped where?
I don’t know. I don’t know where I am anymore. I can’t remember.
I open my eyes for the first time…
Chapter 6
Jim
My mornings blurred into a routine of sameness. My own endless loop. The alarm went off at six; I made coffee and showered while it was brewing. Poured a cup and took it back to the bathroom. Wiped steam off the mirror to trim my thin beard. The guy in the mirror looked tough. Muscles built up from long hours in the garage lifting weights. Hard eyes. Mouth a grim line that rarely opened to speak.
Tough guy, eh? You’re a coward. Doris sneered. She compared you to Marc Antony? What a crock.
“She’s none of my business,” I said.
The guy in the mirror mouthed along, but I’d been keeping a mental clock in the back of my mind all morning. Making coffee: five minutes. Drinking a cup: five minutes. Showering: five minutes. Shaving: five minutes.
A progression throughout the morning while Thea was trapped in minutes of consciousness at a time. A fucking nightmare. Not mine but terrifying anyway.
I had to believe Thea wasn’t aware of her prison. I’d seen a desperation in her eyes, but I wasn’t qualified to say what it meant. She looked happy enough with her pens and paper, working on her endless word chains, sometimes with a faint smile on her face.
Who was I to say she was suffering?
No one, Doris supplied helpfully. You’re no one.
My shift at Blue Ridge began with a frantic text from Alonzo, ordering me to Mr. Perello’s room on the third floor. Perello was an Army vet who served in Afghanistan. A roadside explosion sent an iron rod through his eye socket. He was a friendly guy until his traumatic brain injury triggered bouts of angry hysteria.
“You don’t know where I’ve been!” he cried, fighting the combined efforts of Joaquin and Alonzo to restrain him while the duty nurse prepared a sedative. “You don’t know what I’ve seen!”
His flailing arm caught Alonzo across the face. Alonzo staggered back, and I quickly stepped in. Quickly and carefully—the man was Army tough, and the rage gave him added strength. It took everything I had to hold him against the wall so he wouldn’t hurt himself or anyone else.
“You don’t know!” Mr. Perello seethed, his face inches from mine. A black eye patch over his left eye. “You fucking assholes think you got it all figured out. But you don’t know shit.”
“Now, Mr. P,” Joaquin said. “Calm down—”
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down. I’ll teach you to show some respect. You don’t know what I know.”
“You’re right,” I said. “We don’t know.”
Spittle hit my jaw as his head whipped toward me. “Shut your mouth,” he cried. “Don’t fucking patronize me.”
“I never would, sir,” I said.
“I’ve seen shit.”
“Yes, you have,” I said. “We can’t even imagine what you saw.”
“I earned some respect, goddammit,” Mr. P said, the fight draining out of him. “I earned it over there in that goddamn desert that you’ll never have to see.”
“You did. And we’re grateful for it.”