Chapter Twenty-Six
Drugs
Dr. Roth hands me a glass of water. I hug it between my palms, thankful for the respite. There is no creepy man here in this office. No black mist or flashing lights or unexplainable temperature changes. I want to stay here for the rest of the evening and shut off my brain.
“You don’t look well,” Dr. Roth says.
I take a long sip. The coolness of the water soothes my throat. Dr. Roth waits, forever patient, never pressing, always waiting for me to reveal something of note. Was it really just last week that he tried hypnosis? It feels like an entire lifetime ago. The clock on the wall ticks away the seconds as I tap my pointer finger against the cup. I count twenty seven of them before I respond. “What do you know about my grandmother?”
He folds his hands over his knee. “Why your grandmother?”
“Because I’d like to know where she is. And I’d like to know what her records say.”
“Do you think knowing those things will change your situation?”
“I don’t know. It could help.” I set the glass of water between us. “I want to talk to her.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“She’s in one of the highest-security mental facilities in the country. There’s no way they would allow you to see her. And even if they did, I don’t think you would like what you saw.”
“Where is this facility?”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you?”
I pause, considering. Surely I have nothing to lose. He’s not going to report me to the government and have me locked up. If that was his goal, he could have had me committed a long time ago. I’m not worried about my safety with Dr. Roth, not anymore.
“Does it have anything to do with your dreams?” he asks.
I don’t respond.
“Did you bring your dream journal?”
I stare at him for an expanded moment, then slowly remove the journal from my bag and set it in front of him.
He raises his eyebrows. “May I?”
I nod.
He puts on his glasses and opens the notebook to the first page. I study his face while he reads, tapping my finger against my wrist while he reads the only dream I’ve recorded. I printed out the news clipping from the internet—a family man who committed suicide, leaving behind his surviving wife and children—and taped it inside. Dr. Roth finishes reading, his face expressionless, then unfolds the printed piece of paper.
“Hmmm …” A simple noise. A common one. It could mean any number of things. Or it could mean nothing at all. “Who do you think the man is? The one with the scar.”
“I don’t know.” I jiggle my leg, pinch my bottom lip, shake my head. I’m a fidgeting mess. “At first I thought he was my grandmother’s doctor.”
“So you believe that woman is your grandmother?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Who else would she be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s a reflection of your fear.”
“Meaning?”
“Perhaps she was a projection of who you think you’ll become.”
“Sounds like psychobabble.” I glance around his office, taking in the fancy degrees framed and mounted on his walls. “Is that what you think it was?”
Dr. Roth picks up a pen and taps it against the news article. “You’re sure you wrote your entry before you saw this?”
“Yes, but if I’m suffering from psychosis then I guess that could be one of my delusions.” I stare down at my hands. They are clenched into fists over my knees. “What would you say if a patient told you that she was starting to believe she could alter reality in her dreams? That the choices she made while sleeping had an effect on what happens in real life?”
He scratches his chin. “I’d probably tell the patient that must feel like a very frightening thing.”
Frustration builds. I don’t want to be placated. I want him to tell me what he’s really thinking. I want to know if I’m crazy. “My grandmother thought the same thing, didn’t she? And she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.”
“Have you had any other dreams other than this one?”
I take a drink of water, then rest the cup in my lap and stare into the clear liquid. “Yes.”
“You didn’t write them down?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to remember.”
“But you do remember?”
I nod and take another drink. “I dreamt that I was in a garage.” I skip the part about Summer and Luka. There’s no need to drag him into this. Not yet. Especially when Dr. Roth no longer thinks Luka is experiencing symptoms of mental instability. “There was a woman and this guy.”
Dr. Roth leans forward. “Go on.”
“There was a car too, and it was running. The man went into the house and came out with the woman’s kids.”
“Where were you in the dream?”
“I was standing off to the side, like a spectator.”
He gets out a pad of paper and starts writing. He pauses for a moment to scratch his chin, then writes some more. “What was the woman doing?”
I imagine her blank, glossy eyes. Her expressionless face. “She just sat there. It was almost as if she was in some sort of trance.”
“And the man? Can you describe him?”
A shiver runs up my spine. “He looked like a living corpse.”
Dr. Roth adds the description to his notes. “What happened next?”
I relay the dream as best I can, including the article I found online the next morning. “So the kids miraculously survived.” Although doctors were very careful not to use that word—miracle. “I got them out of the car in my dream, and somehow, they are alive in real life.”
Dr. Roth writes down every word. When he finishes, he bites the end of his pen and scans the paper, as if checking for missing details.
My restlessness grows. I don’t want to be his next project. I don’t want my misery and torture to be his next mental illness breakthrough. “Is there medicine I can take for this?”
He sets the pen down. “I’m not sure that would be in your best interest.”
“Why not?”
He turns around, opens his filing cabinet and removes a manila folder. He reads something inside, sticks in the notes he took about my dream, closes the folder, and puts it away. “I want you to try something for me, Tess. If it doesn’t work, we’ll consider medicine.”
I narrow my eyes.
“I want you to record every single one of your dreams. I want you to write down as many details as possible. The people. The faces. All of it.”
“How will that help?”
“I have some theories, but before I’m comfortable sharing them, more evidence is needed.”
My eyes narrow further.
“I need you to trust me.”
“How do I know I can?”
“Because I’m a doctor, Tess. And I want to help you.” He opens the front drawer of his desk and removes a prescription pad, scribbles something on the first page, tears off the sheet and holds it out for me to see. “If in a month, you still want medicine, then I will talk with your parents and I’ll prescribe what’s on this sheet.”
“I don’t understand why I can’t have it now.”
“I told you why.”
“Because it isn’t in my best interest?”
He nods.
“That’s not an adequate explanation.”
Sighing, Dr. Roth folds his hand. “How about we make a deal, then?”
“What kind of deal?”
“You give me one month. You write down your dreams. Every single one. And at the end of the month, I promise to tell you more about your grandmother.”
His words hit their mark. I’m so desperate to know more about her, a month could almost be worth it.
If I wasn’t crazy already, Dr. Roth’s deal makes me so. My d
reams turn into an obsession. The harder I fight in them, the darker my waking hours become. There seems to be a direct correlation—the spiritual and the physical. The fact that I call it spiritual at all may be proof of my insanity.
On November 4th, I dream about an overweight man with bad breath, idling in a rundown van while students file out of an elementary school. He looks like a regular man, except his eyes. They are all white. No irises. No pupils. When a small girl with curly brown hair approaches, he rolls down his window and beckons her over. When she’s close enough, he grabs her and drives away. I wrestle him away from the wheel with a strength that shouldn’t be mine and the car careens off the road. The next day, there’s a story on the news about a kidnapping gone awry in a town nearby. The kidnapper was apprehended by police after his car ran off the road. The child was unharmed and reunited with her parents.
I write everything down in my journal.
Somebody spray paints Freak Show on my locker. Luka is furious. Principal Jolly is appalled. Summer and her friends whisper and laugh whenever I walk past. Nobody gets in trouble. My dark circles grow darker. My parents worry. And my headaches get worse.
On November 16th, I dream about a sick woman in a hospital while a man with a receding hairline weeps by her bedside and a doctor shakes his head, as if there’s nothing he can do. Neither the doctor or the husband see the skeletal man standing on the other side of the woman’s bed, pressing his cold, pale hands against the sick woman’s skull. I sweep his legs and fight him away and the next morning, there’s a story on the news about a woman suddenly healed from the final stages of brain cancer.
I write it all down in my journal.
Mean things are written about me in the girls’ bathrooms. Luka can’t see them and I don’t tell him. I have a hard time eating. My parents’ worry turns into bickering. I hear them at night, their voices escalating through my bedroom walls. I am at the root of each argument. Luka grows increasingly protective. Men with empty, white eyes haunt me during the day—appearing at unsuspecting moments, so I make a fool of myself by jumping or gasping for no reason my classmates can understand.
On November 28th, I dream about a teenager dressed in army combat boots, a trench coat, and a ski mask, with a familiar symbol tattooed on the back of his neck, only I can’t remember where I’ve seen it before. He enters a mall in the middle of Black Friday—the biggest shopping day of the year—and as he’s about to open fire with a semi-automatic in a crowded toy store, I jump in front of the gun. Bullets riddle through my body, but I can’t feel them. The next morning, it’s all over the news. A seventeen-year-old boy tried to wreak havoc in a mall in San Francisco, but his black-market gun locked up and a security guard tackled him before any bullets could escape. Not a single person was injured.
I write it all down in my journal.
Someone starts a rumor that Luka is using me. That his attention is all part of some bet. Pete takes the opportunity to reopen our line of communication. Instead of ignoring me, he goes out of his way to assure me the rumor is true. My parents are at each other’s throats, which never happens. Mom wants to move. Dad doesn’t think moving is the answer. Dr. Roth cannot contain his fascination.
And for the first time, I die in Luka’s dream. He is unable to save me.
Then he does something that surprises us both.
In the middle of the locker bay, right before history class, when the skeletal man nobody else can see lunges at me, Luka steps forward and something bright—like visible sound waves—radiates from his body. The skeletal man’s unseeing eyes go wide with shock as the bright, radiating force slams into him. He topples backward and disappears into a shock of brilliant light.
Thankfully, Mr. Lotsam gives us the entire period to work with our partners on our project. Luka and I make a beeline to the library and find a private corner to talk.
“Did you just—?”
“I think so,” he says.
“How?”
“I have no idea.” He looks down at his hands, as if they, and not the radiating waves, had shoved the man back. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Luka, you made him disappear.”
“I know.”
My heart gallops inside my chest. Forget a wave of hope. This is a stampede. “Can you teach me how you did it?”
“I would if I knew. It was like a reflex.”
I scoot closer. “Maybe you should try it again.”
He looks doubtful.
“You had to have done something. Let’s replay it.”
“I saw him coming at you, but you weren’t looking and I … I don’t know. It just happened.”
“Do you remember what you were thinking?”
He turns his hands over and stares at his knuckles, shaking his head. There’s a long stretch of silence. The longer it carries on, the more my stampeding hope dwindles away. I want, more than anything, to learn how to do what Luka did. But how can I if he doesn’t even know?
“You have your appointment with Dr. Roth today,” Luka finally says.
I nod.
“It’s been a month.”
I nod again.
“Are you going to ask for medicine?”
“I can’t live like this.” Sure, the medicine will not fix my problem in school with my increasingly hostile classmates. But at least I won’t be fighting two battles.
Luka takes my hand beneath the table. “You shouldn’t have to.”
A book drops. We turn around. Summer picks it up, her eyes bright and frenzied, and hurries away. My mouth goes dry, because I’m pretty sure she heard everything.
I plop the journal onto Dr. Roth’s desk and sit in the chair, trying to push away the memory of Summer’s face. He grabs the notebook like it’s a hot meal and he’s a starving man. I wait impatiently while he reads my latest.
“May I make a copy of this?” he asks.
“You can have the entire journal. I did your experiment and now I’m done.”
He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Are you sure you don’t want to continue recording your dreams? We could—”
“No.” I shake my head adamantly, appalled that he’d even suggest it. Can’t he see how close I am to losing it altogether? “I’d like to go on medicine now.”
“What if the dreams are real?”
His question draws me back, because surely he doesn’t think any of this is real. I am obviously crazy. I’ve studied up on schizophrenia. The things I write in that journal—they have to be delusions and I cannot handle any more of them. I’m done with being Tess the Freak. Even if it means getting rid of whatever mysterious connection Luka and I share, I have to try if it means a shot at a normal existence. “If the dreams are real, then medicine won’t make any difference.”
He takes out the prescription he wrote last month with a sigh.
I wipe my palms down the thighs of my jeans. “Will there be side effects?”
“Medicine of this nature has come a long way in the last few years. Side effects have all but disappeared. There is a very, very rare chance of nausea and fatigue, but that’s about it.”
“How long will it take to kick in?”
“Another perk of medical breakthroughs. It should take effect as soon as the second dose. If not, we’ll consider this particular medication ineffective and try another.” He holds the prescription in his left hand. I can’t take my eyes off of it. “Of course, I’ll need to speak with your mother about this in the front office. There is a specific pharmacy where you will want to purchase it.”
“A specific pharmacy?”
“They are not required to report to the state department. They are safe.”
Safe. With his own word he has confirmed how vital it is that I get this sickness under control. If the wrong people find out how out of hand it’s become, surely I’ll be removed from society. “What about the rest? I held up my end of the bargain.”
He leans back in his chair.
“A deal??
?s a deal.”
Dr. Roth folds his hands beneath his chin. “Your grandmother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.”
“I already knew that.”
“She suffered from the same symptoms that you are suffering from.”
“Like?”
“Dreams that seemed to come true.” He reaches for the folder on his desk—the one with my name on it—and pulls out a stack of photocopied papers all stapled together.
“What’s that?”
“You aren’t the only person who has kept a journal, Tess.”
My eyes go wide. “You mean that’s …?”
“Your grandmother’s dream journal?” He hands it over. “Yes.”
I take the cool pages slowly, reverently. When Dr. Roth promised to tell me what he knew about her, I never imagined this. “How did you get it?”
“Let’s just say some rules were bent.”
I look up from the pages in my lap. “Where is she?”
“Eugene, Oregon. But I wouldn’t get any ideas about going there. It would be a wasted trip.”
“Why?”
“She’s not allowed visitors. Nobody in that facility is.”
Coldness settles into the pit of my stomach. “Why not?”
“Because the patients there are among the most deranged and delusional in the country. The director doesn’t believe visitors would be safe.”
“Is she really that dangerous?”
“I can’t say. She was never my client.”
I stand from the chair, shoving the stapled papers into my backpack. The thought of being locked away, not allowed any visitors, permanently separated from my parents, my brother, Leela, Luka? The cold lump in my stomach expands. “I can’t end up like her.”
Dr. Roth hands me the prescription, his expression solemn. “Don’t make this decision lightly.”
“There’s nothing light about any of this.”