Across the Universe

55 AMY

I AM SITTING IN MY ROOM.

The door opens.

“What are you doing?” Elder asks.

“I am sitting in my room,” I say.

“What are you looking at?”

“The wall.”

“Why are you looking at the wall?”

Elder asks so many questions.

Elder walks to me. He picks up my hand. His fingers trace my bruises.

“Come with me,” Elder says. I stand up. He walks. I follow.

We walk until we stop.

Elder pushes a button. The door opens. I follow him inside. He takes me to a chair.

I sit.

“Amy,” a deep voice says. I look up and see the doctor. We are in his office. He is sitting at his desk. “What seems to be the problem?”

I blink. “Nothing. Everything is fine.”

“Everything is not fine!” Elder shouts.

I look at him. “Everything is fine.”

The chair I am sitting in is blue. It is made of hard plastic. The desk is interesting. Everything is placed so neatly on the desk. The pencils are all straight in their cup.

“What happened to you?” Elder shouts.

I jump. I had forgotten he was there. I stare at him.

Elder growls, like a dog, and it is funny, and I smile.

“There is nothing wrong with her, Elder,” the doctor says. “I think you’ve become too accustomed to being around the mental patients. Perhaps it would be better for you to spend more time with normal people. I recommend…”

The doctor is still talking. I know because his mouth is going up and down and sound is coming out, but the words just jangle around in my head, cluttering it up. The notepad on the doctor’s desk has such neat, even edges. I reach out and run my finger along the edges. They are smooth — so smooth that the paper slices my skin. A tiny line of red sprouts on the end of my finger. Look, the doctor has another notebook on the other side of his desk. That’s nice. Symmetrical. I like symmetrical. See-met-tree-cul. That’s a nice word. I say it out loud.

“See-met-tree-cul.” Yes. That sounds nice.

Elder is staring at me as if I’m crazy, but that’s crazy, ha ha, because he’s the one who hangs out at a mental hospital for fun.

The walls are painted a nice shade of blue. So nice. Like a foggy sky.

Something rattles. I look. The doctor places a brown bottle of pills on his desk. I cock my head, staring at them. The pills lay chaotically on the bottom of the bottle. Piled up like little candies.

The doctor and Elder speak.

“You’re right,” the doctor says. “Her condition is unusually severe. Has she had any shocks recently? Trauma? Increased heart rate? These will sometimes make the reaction more severe.”

“Reaction to what?” Eldest says, his voice loud.

The doctor has a funny look on his face.

“To the ship. You’ve got to understand, things are different now from when she lived on Sol-Earth. We have different meds, different food, take more nutritional supplements and vits.”

“Vits,” Elder says, jumping on the word. “Like the ones Eldest puts in the water?”

“Yeess,” the doctor says, drawling the word out in a funny way.

I giggle at him.

Elder turns to stare at me. I giggle at him, too.

“And hormones. Eldest puts hormones in the water. For the Season.”

The doctor shakes his head. “They wouldn’t affect her. It takes time for the hormones to build up in one’s body. They need several weeks, over a month to be effective.”

“She’s been drinking a lot of water lately, though.” Elder looks at my wrists. “And maybe there’s something to that trauma you mentioned.”

I blink, and realize that time has passed, and for a moment I wonder what happened in that time, but it doesn’t matter, nothing’s changed, I’m still here, they’re still talking.

…

I blink. I was gone again.

…

Blink.

Really, it’s easier when I stay gone. It’s too hard to keep up with the words Elder and the doctor say. They are too intense. Why are they so worked up?

Everything is fine.

Elder snaps his fingers in front of my face.

“Amy, Doc thinks you need medicine,” he says loudly.

“She’s unbalanced, not deaf,” the doctor says.

Elder reaches over and grabs the bottle on the doctor’s desk. “These are Inhibitor pills, mental meds. I’m going to give you one, okay, and we’ll see if that fixes you.”

I open my mouth. The pill sits on my tongue, a bitter taste seeping into my mouth.

“Swallow it,” the doctor reminds me.

I swallow.

“Do you remember the night we met?” Elder says. “You were thrashing around in that cryo liquid, and you fought us every step of the way. I had to hold you down so Doc could give you the eyedrops that made you not go blind. And now you just sit there, swallowing the pill like an obedient dog. Don’t you see how that’s just sad?”

“No,” I say. What was there to be sad about?

“How long will it take to work?” Elder asks the doctor.

“I’m not sure,” the doctor says. “Like I said, her mental state is more extreme than many other Feeders. If it will work at all, it should only be a few hours.”

“If?” Elder asks, choking on the word.

His voice drones on and I fade out.