Day one of Fraser’s treatment program, and the surgery was a hive of activity.
He reclined in the hospital bed as a dozen doctors and nurses swarmed in and out of the room.
A wiry bearded man in his fifties observed proceedings from the corner. His name was Professor Coulson. He was the architect of this radical form of therapy, the genius responsible for this remarkable rehabilitation program. He had single-handedly transformed dozens of violent offenders into decent law-abiding members of society.
An anesthesia mask was placed over Fraser’s face. A nurse instructed him to count backwards from ten.
The nitrous oxide invaded Fraser’s lungs. He reached six, and the world around him turned to black.
An indeterminate period elapsed, in which Fraser basked in the mellowest high he had ever experienced. A peaceful bliss enveloped him in a warm embrace. He had slipped into another dimension, one outside of time and space. It was the greatest feeling imaginable.
He then awoke to visions of hell.
Doctors stood either side of him, dressed in blood-soaked scrubs and gloves, passing detached body parts between one another. His chest cavity was cut open like a slaughterhouse carcass. His internal organs were exposed. A bone saw dripping with blood sat to his left.
Fraser tried speaking, but the anesthesia had him trapped in the firm grip of paralysis.
He prayed this was all a dream, but even a mind as damaged as his couldn’t have dreamed up a scenario as grotesque as the one he was presently witnessing.
An eternity of pure torture passed, before a doctor noticed Fraser’s one open eye staring straight back at him.
“Is he awake?” the doctor said.
Everyone in the room looked at Fraser.
“I think the patient’s awake!”
A nurse rushed over and plunged a syringe into the side of Fraser’s neck. He was sent back to sleep, his nightmarish ordeal finally drawing to a close.
The electroconvulsive therapy machine was a large, primitive device. A mess of frayed wires spilled out from the back, while an assortment of switches and dials the size of poker chips sat on top. It looked like something that had been gathering dust inside a medical museum since the early sixties.
Two nurses prepped Fraser for ECT, while Professor Coulson adjusted the machine’s settings.
“This may cause some mild discomfort,” the professor said. “But don’t worry. There shouldn’t be any long-term damage. Hopefully.”
The professor gave a slight nod to one of the nurses, and she flicked the machine’s switch.
Five hundred volts of electrical current was shot directly into Fraser’s skull. His entire body seized up. His jaw clenched shut like a bear trap. An invisible knitting needle was inserted into his left ear and forced out the other side.
Fraser regarded the discomfort he experienced as significantly greater than “mild”.
The projector displayed a series of images on the screen.
There was a sunset.
A tiger cub.
An ISIS beheading.
A newborn baby.
An obese naked woman.
A rainbow.
A concentration camp.
Professor Coulson observed the variations in Fraser’s brain activity as each image flashed up in front of him. There wasn’t a great deal to observe; after everything Fraser had endured these past few months, his brain was far from active. He was doped to the gills, pumped full of so many drugs that he could do little more than sit there and drool on himself.
Fraser laid there in a near-vegetative state. He didn’t know what the doctors had done to him, and he was scared to ask. His face was cocooned in bandages, swollen and numb from the multiple treatments and injections. He had tubes coming out of every existing orifice, along with a few new ones the doctors had created.
He was grateful there were no mirrors anywhere in the treatment center. He was afraid to know what he looked like.
The slide show ended, and Professor Coulson compiled his results. He looked to Fraser and smiled. “This indicates that you’ve been fully rehabilitated,” the professor said. “You’re ready to return to society.”
In his mind Fraser knew this was good news, but he didn’t feel anything. His ability to experience any sort of emotion had deserted him long ago. A permanent emptiness had taken over.
Professor Coulson rose from his seat.
“There’s just one more thing we need to do,” he said.
The room was made entirely of dull gray metal. It looked like the interior of shipping container, only smaller. Aside from the one large chair in the center of the room, it was empty.
Professor Coulson’s two assistants strapped Fraser into the chair. The professor punched a sequence of numbers into the keypad mounted on the wall.
The three exited the room. The door closed, and Fraser was alone in the vacant darkness.
A soft whirring commenced. A neon blue panel lit up, providing a small amount of illumination. Fraser felt the room vibrate.
The whirring grew in intensity. Fraser’s entire body hummed, like his molecules were being rearranged.
The motion rose to a climax, then ended with a sudden flash of blinding white light.
Everything stopped.
It was as if the power had dropped out unexpectedly. The room plunged into a vacuum of silence.
The door opened a minute later. Professor Coulson and the two assistants reentered the room. The assistants unstrapped Fraser from the chair, while Professor Coulson studied Fraser’s case file.
Maybe it was the cornucopia of drugs coursing through his system, or the unexpected mind-warping he’d just been subjected to, but something about this seemed a bit off. Fraser was certain the professor and his two assistants were wearing different clothes now to what they were a few minutes earlier.
The thought soon left his mind when one of the assistants pulled a black hood down over his head.