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February 25th, 2022
Max moved his Knight. Tom blinked at the board. Around them the dayroom and the half-drugged murmur of psych ward patients. Really they were inmates, most of them mandated to be here.
At one end of the room was a long horseshoe desk, with nurses working behind it. Maurice, built like a linebacker, watched the goings on through lidded eyes from his high backed swivel chair, right at the head of the horseshoe.
The medicine window behind clear lunatic-proof plastic. Interview and group therapy rooms off to the side. On the other, a row of doors leading into bedrooms with bathrooms with nowhere at all to hang yourself. And if you tried, there was the other hallway, past the row of bedrooms. The separation rooms.
They might talk soft, these nurses, but they could throw down like prison guards. Max had seen it in person. Last time, it had been Alma. This huge Jamaican woman with collar-length locs whose not-so-white tees were stamped Property of LA County. Her first language seemed to be violence. She'd been mad about a juice box, and she'd expressed her displeasure by flinging it across the dining hall. It hit a woman, who cried, and the nurses had moved in SWAT-team style and escorted Alma away.
"So she must have been naked when they arrested her, right?" Max looked at Tom across the board. He'd been staring off at the door to the shrink’s office. She'd gone in for her session close to an hour ago. Who knew what they were talking about? She had never seemed like one for conversation. Max had a hard time imagining her saying more than a few words. "Topless, at least, right?" A smile creased his face. "Maybe she’s a kindred soul," he said. "Perhaps we’ll fall in love."
"You took my Queen," Tom complained. He frowned at the pieces.
"I keep telling you," Max replied, "chess demands your killer instincts."
He made a fist. Tom's head retreated between his shoulders.
"I was using them," he said, shifting as he stared at the board.
"Your killer instincts told you to whine and complain?"
"It’s not fair."
Max sighed. "Those are your prey instincts, Tom."
The dayroom was lit fluorescent-bright, and seemingly from all directions. No shadows here, not even at night, when nurses shined flashlights in your face at regular intervals to make sure you were breathing. There was nowhere, and no-when, to hide.
Max didn't feel like hiding, though. Nor did he feel like dying. Indeed, you might actually say he finally wanted to live.
But Max had discovered, as so many do who try, that psychiatrists have all the wrong credentials for dealing with insanity. They keep trying to fix it, for one thing.
And so it was that the frank and open-minded spirit with which he had launched upon this venture had burned off like rocket fuel and left him stranded in space. He couldn't find up, much less the way home.
"Killer instincts are like..." Max searched for the right words. A smile when he found them. He leaned in and glanced around before he spoke. Tom found he was leaning in too.
"You ever think it would be cool," Max said, "to taste a piece of human flesh? Just to say you did it? Just to find out what it's like?"
Tom blinked.
"I've bit off skin before," he offered. "I tasted that."
Max rolled his eyes. He gave a dramatic guffaw.
"No, Tom, I'm not talking about sucking away the blood after a relaxing evening of cutting yourself. You only do that shit because you won't admit to yourself you yearn to drink the blood of your enemies. I'm talking about cannibalism, okay? Human sacrifice. Shit humans do. Not these zoo animal people we've got in California. I mean the village-burning child-sacrificing kind. The wild homo, half-sapiens, who never asked permission and worshiped whatever blood-drinking monster happened to wander out of the forest. They knew how to play the war drum. They knew how to live, because they know how to die. And how to kill. They understood things we forgot ten thousand years ago. You could learn from them, Tom. We both could."
Tom looked fully awake for once.
"Are you okay, man?"
"I wish people would stop asking me that."
"Are you saying you want to kill and eat people?"
"Only you, Tom."
"I'd be okay with that." Tom looked wistful, like he really was wishing for it.
Max gave Tom a heavy-lidded look, then instead of replying made his move. Checkmate was closing in. Not like Tom had put up much of a fight, though. So besides playing chess, Max played Socrates too.
"What I mean is this," he said: "How come nobody respectable ever opens fire on the police anymore?"
"Because they’re not stupid and they don’t want to die?"
"Plenty of people want to die, Tom. You of all people should know this. Suicide is a leading cause of death. And nobody thinks that's weird? Nobody thinks that's a sign of cracks in the foundations?"
"The foundations of what?"
Max looked shocked.
"Um, society?! Um, culture?! Um, the structure of human thought?!" Max was getting agitated. He'd have fought Tom, if there was anything in him to fight. But even chess with this man lacked that certain something that normally made battle invigorating.
"You ever think you just think too much?" said the man across the board. Max laughed like a hornet sting. He shook his head in despair.
Tom had lion's mane hair and a teddy bear mien. All of life was an imposition to him. He resented having to live it. From the cuts on his arms, even his suicides had been half-hearted. Max felt a good-natured contempt. And gratitude, that at least he wasn't him.
This game was a confidence race to beat any therapy, even the expensive kind like they had here at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Hollywood. But how did Max at any rate end up in this place, the lap of luxury as locked wards and loony bins go?
"This," Max said, arms raised to indicate the dayroom, "is not life."
"No," Tom said. "It's a mental hospital. It's not supposed to be life."
Max wagged a finger at the man across the board. Something crazed in his smile. Tom couldn’t tell if he was angry.
"I always knew you were smart, Tom. I always knew I just had to say the right words to unlock your genius. But actually you’re wrong." And Max paused. "It’s not a mental hospital."
"It's not?"
"No. What it is is a metaphor."
"A metaphor?"
"Yes, Tom, a metaphor. A metaphor for the fall of civilization."
"You always say that."
"Well, it's always true."
"But why do you care? Why not just get out of the psych ward?"
Max fell silent. More stumped than if Tom had just checkmated him by surprise. Even by accident, it was hard to picture.
"I don't..." Max stumbled. He looked at the board. A few seconds, and he made a move. "Checkmate," he said, slapping his Bishop down. Tom frowned uncomprehending at the pieces. Max took the chance to think. Hopefully of a reply. Put the upstart Tom back in his proper intellectual place.
But nothing came. All he could hear was the old worries. The ones that hounded him at night, between the visits from the nurses with flashlights.
"Hey," Tom said. He looked up from the board. "You skipped my move."
"Why would I want to get out of the psych ward," Max said, leaning back in his chair, "if out there is just a different kind of imprisonment?" He tried to feel like he'd made his point. "Here I can sit around and win game after game against you."
"Go back," Tom said. "I didn't get my turn."
"It's not about whose turn it is anymore, Tom. That's the whole point, to forget turns and fairness and all our high ideals about justice. It's about what's the point of doing anything when society is crumbling around me? Is there even any point in scratching my name on the wall of the cave? Will future generations even give a shit that Max wuz here?"
"I still get to move," Tom said, reaching for the board. "You have to move back, and I get to move here." He slid forward a Pawn.
"It's still checkmate in one, genius."
Tom looked more cut than usual. Max felt guilty.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that. You're not a genius."
"Hey." But Tom was smiling. Max told himself it counted as a real apology.
A shadow fell over him then, as if a cloud had passed before the sun. Max turned to find Maurice standing behind him. Even in scrubs, the man's very presence threatened violence. Max didn't have to be told.
"Perfect timing, Jeeves. Is my private car ready?"
A twitch between Maurice's eyebrows. Just the quickest little wrinkling of skin. Max had been here long enough to be fluent in Maurice’s silent way of speaking. He dropped his cunty smirk for once and stood without further ceremony from the chess board.
Maurice walked a step behind him as they made their way across the dayroom towards the door to the psychiatrist's office. Max saw Alma then. She’d emerged from her appointment and had slumped on the couch in front of the TV. People scooted to make room for her.
She must have felt his gaze. She had that kind of ancient intelligence. Her head turned and they saw each other and Alma’s eyes narrowed in a way that twisted his stomach in knots.
What was that about? He wanted to ask Maurice. Hot chills in his head and neck. The sense that something would have to be dealt with. But there was no time to think about it. Maurice stepped ahead of him to open the door to Dr. Sharma's office.
"Thank you, Jeeves," Max said as he strolled past inside. Maurice closed the door behind him.
A plush carpet, dark blue-gray. A swivel chair, a doctor. A couch and a side table. Bright in here, like an exam room.
"Hello, Max," the doctor said. "Why don't you have a seat?"
Dr. Vishnu Sharma had a cinnamon toast complexion and hair like powdered sugar. He wore a happy yellow dress shirt and a floral bow tie. His eyes inviting behind gold-rimmed glasses riding low on his nose.
He sat in pleated khakis, legs crossed above the knee. His tablet balanced on his thigh, and a stylus in two fingers. He watched Max shuffle in.
Max was garbed from the Lost & Found. He wore a huge black Misfits t-shirt; boots flopped laceless around his ankles. Skinny jeans hung beltless at his thighs. One thick lock of hair fell dark across his forehead. The bloodshot gone, his amber eyes were clear.
There was intelligence in his face. But for now it was hid behind an ugly sullen veil. He looked for a reason not to sit down, simply because he'd been asked. But this is no mean feat in a psychiatrist's office, and soon enough Max slid into, rather than onto, the gray leather couch by the wall.
"And how are we feeling today?" Max shifted his eyes away. Stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Really only fingertips.
"Good, I guess." A shrug to go with it.
"Max," the doctor chided. Then, gently: "would you like to look at the Feelings Wheel?"
Max stared at nothing, no expression on his face.
"No," he said. "I would not."
The doctor waited. Max thought about playing chicken. Stretching it out to see how long the doctor could wait. He thought about it so long, Dr. Sharma finally prodded him.
"Have you figured it out yet?"
Max came back to himself with a start, and he forgot where his mind had gone.
"I guess I don't know what I'm doing here anymore," he said all at once, a surprise confession. The doc's eyebrows did a thing.
"Oh?" he said. Max shrugged again.
"All of this is framed like there's something wrong with me."
"Well, this is a hospital," the doctor said mildly. "But it's nothing to be ashamed of. Most people will require some form of therapy during their lifetime. There's nothing wrong with needing it."
"Okay," Max said. "But if I’m not broken, then why's it called therapy?"
"Max," the doctor began, but Max held up a hand.
"I guess I’m starting to wonder how broken I really am," he said.
Dr. Sharma took his time before replying.
"It's hard for me to help you," he finally said, "when I still know so little about you."
Max blinked. A beat, and it sank in. He frowned, looked dismissive.
"How is giving you my social security number going to help you do anything other than track me?"
The doctor shifted in his chair. Leaned in a little.
"Max," he began, like usual, "this is not an interrogation. You don’t have to talk about anything you don't want to."
"But if I don’t—" Now the doctor held up a hand.
"Most patients," he said, a little louder, "come here looking for help. But you've spent our sessions building a fortress about yourself that no one could ever penetrate. What then can you expect to gain from therapy?"
Max smiled. Not a nice smile. Not a natural smile. When he had nothing to say, the doctor went on:
"So I suppose I might put the question back to you. What are you still doing here? At tremendous personal cost to someone, I might add. Your parents?"
"I paid," Max said.
"Really." The doctor waited, but Max didn’t explain. Just studied the floor between them. "You must have a good job."
Max stared him down. The doctor changed tack. He spoke very quietly:
"How about just your name? That's a reasonable question, that any person might ask."
Max met the doctor's eye. Scratched at the sparse dark stubble on his chin.
"I told you my name."
The doctor swiped at the screen of his tablet and scanned.
"So far, you've told us at various times that your name is Max Cool, Max Hot, Max Volume, and Max Fill."
Max laughed. Real mirth lighted up his face. He looked his twenty-two years then. Much less like a teenage corpse.
"I think I've worked it out," said the doctor. "Max Cool was from the air conditioner. Max Hot from the shower. Max Volume was from the TV. And Max Fill... was from the coffee machine?"
Max wiped away a happy tear. Who knew if it was real? "The side of the coffee machine," he said. When the giggles had subsided, he said, more seriously: "Is it so weird that I don't want to be recorded? Or labeled or tracked? Even, nay especially, for ‘safety’?"
"We have to put something on your file." The doctor was practically begging. A juvenile smirk from the kid with the dark hair.
"Max Radical," he said.
"Max," said the doctor.
"What? It's my name!" Eyebrows high. Dying for an argument. The doctor did not say what he was thinking. Instead he sighed and swallowed and stayed emotionally detached. He made a note on his pad. Wrote Max Radical in big letters off to the right.
Looking at the little shit on his couch, something occurred to the doctor.
"Max, are you hiding from something? Maybe something you feel you cannot talk about?"
"You are the second to last person I could ever talk to about it."
The doctor smiled. He'd clearly struck something. Now to find out what it was.
"And why is that?"
"You're half cop. A regular cop being the first person I'd never talk to."
Dr. Sharma stayed quiet. Left a space for Max to go on.
"We both know your first loyalty is to your license. Not to me. Not to any of your patients. So you aren't really free to act as you see fit. You're free to act as the Ethics Tribunal—or whatever it's called—sees fit. And if the Ethics Tribunal tells you that you can keep my secrets unless I decide to kill myself... then that is what you'll do. You'll stay loyal to me until I break the law. So who are you really serving? Not me. You serve the law. Making you half-cop. And leaving us," he pointed from himself to the doctor, "with nothing to talk about."
He almost sounded like he’d finished. Dr. Sharma went to reply. But Max found the vein again, and soliloquized once more:
"Cause the truth is, you're not even really human, as long as you've got that tablet on your knee. You don't have any free will. You're an instrument, a tool. A cog in a machine you can't even comprehend. It’s really the machine I’m talking to right now. You, the actual man, behind the credentials—" He pointed to the degrees hanging on the wall. "—you're less free than I am. And that's really saying something, cause I'm locked in here."
"Max," the doctor sighed, "your mandatory seventy-two hours ended a week ago. No one is keeping you here any longer."
Max stared at the doctor’s neck.
"It made little sense to treat me as an enemy before. It makes none now."
He could've at least conceded that much. I mean, talk about checkmate. But Max had sworn long ago never again to resign, no matter the game or the stakes or the outcome. He finally found the words.
"If some alien race had done to us… what we've done to the chickens… would we know about it?"
Again he seemed to pause, seemed to wait for an answer. But as soon as Dr. Sharma opened his mouth, Max jumped in again:
"Or would it just seem like something had changed? Like there were suddenly more of us. Many, many times more, in just a few generations. And the environment was somehow different. It might be hard to explain, but we might feel that something was off. Like the way we were living was unnatural. That we’d lost something, our souls maybe. No more predators, but way more anxiety. But we couldn't really complain that hard, because there’s endless food and drugs and video games. And hey, everybody’s doing it—being debeaked isn’t so bad. This is how we do things nowadays. You’d have to have something wrong with you, to want to go back to the old way. Right?"
Yet another pregnant pause. Dr. Sharma broke the water.
"But Max," he protested, "I do not see you in chains. You are free to do as you like. You're much freer than some people."
"What, you mean the inmates? The other crazy people?"
"Now Max," the doctor said, more forcefully than before.
"Okay, the patients. Sorry." But he sounded more caught than sorry.
"No," the doctor said, and more of himself was in the this now. Less neutral, more natural. "I did not mean your fellow patients. I mean the vast majority of the population who are not blessed with your brains, your freedom, and your apparent resources."
"You don’t know me."
"I know what I can see. I know you are intelligent, and your emotional issues, knotty as they are, pale beside what someone like Alma deals with every day. I don't know if you've been to college, or what you do for a living, but it seems the world is open to you. How many others in the dayroom can say the same thing?"
"I'm not free," he said. "I'm only a little freer than you are. And that's only because I dropped out. I'm not crazy, Doc. In fact, I think I might be the sanest person in this room. At least I admit my ignorance. And I don't pretend to know what's best for you."
The doctor rested his cheek on two fingers. They made twin indents like dimples in the skin.
"I can see you feel passionately about this." He lifted his stylus. Tablet wobbled on his knee.
"And I can see you don't care."
Max lost his momentum and sat back against the couch cusions. He looked away. The room felt close. Dr. Sharma must have worried he might be losing the tiny foothold he’d established with his patient. But Max, fortunately, was not ready to give up.
"Do you see what I'm saying at least?" he tried, a feeble last attempt.
"It seems you are saying it's all pointless and stupid. Would you really want others to adopt this attitude? Shall I resign my position, perhaps join you here as a patient? What about the people who keep the lights on? The ones who feed you here? Should they, too, give up?"
"You don't feel like we've been invaded? You feel like this environment is natural? We used to have powers, man. I'm telling you. We traded them in for cortical intelligence. We learned how to do math, and forgot how to do magic."
"Are you suggesting aliens...?" He didn’t want to finish the thought. There was no way to pose the question that didn’t come off like an insult.
"No, I'm not suggesting aliens." Max rolled his eyes.
"You've mentioned aliens twice now."
"Ugh," Max said, exasperated. "I'm saying something, like aliens, but maybe like a god, or like a force, whatever you want to call it. Something has got humanity by the throat, and we're slowly choking to death with our legs kicking in the air.
"We work like maniacs, eat like maniacs... we're all maniacs, going at a maniacal pace, and it just can't go on forever. You can't just keep accelerating. Reality will crack open. The gods won't allow it. There has to be a limit somewhere, and we’re gonna find it, believe me, headlong like the unsinkable Titanic, and we can all hold each other and cry if touching other people at all isn't too offensive by then as the icy water rises—"
"Max, Max," the doctor was saying. "Breathe."
Max stopped. He tried to catch his breath. Tried to calm down. But he was shaking. His hands, his chest. His heart beat. Heat in his neck. Heat in his shoulders and chest.
"You just," he said, slower now, breathy, "you can't keep accelerating. Eventually, you hit a pothole, and the faster you're going, the further that bike is going to throw you. Right over the handlebars. Watch me faceplant on the blacktop, Mom! And we thought we were so cool. Invincible, we conquered Nature. We didn’t conquer shit. We can't even master ourselves, much less the mother who gave us life. Gaia will reassert her will sooner or later. And we're going to deserve it. Maybe the next civilization won't be so fucking stupid."
"We've had this conversation before," the doctor pointed out. "And yet, for all you’ve said, you've yet to say anything about you."
"This is me," Max said. "Like you said. It’s what I'm passionate about. What else is there?"
"This is not you. You are feelings. You are a personal history and unhealed trauma. You are an identity, a self."
"You don't know who I am," said Max.
"Yes, you've made that quite impossible." Dr. Sharma felt they were at a dead end. He thought about throwing his notes away. "But there is a matter I should bring up with you."
"Oh yeah?" Still a note of challenge in his voice. Dr. Sharma felt tired.
"I just finished my session with Ms. Campbell. Alma. Max, what exactly did you say to her when you arrived?"
Max blinked, at a genuine loss. "I dunno," he said. "What’d she say?"
"You don’t remember having a conversation with her, shortly after you arrived?"
Max was shaking his head. Frowning, trying to remember. The doctor’s eyebrows moved.
"What?" Max said.
"You might want to speak with her," the doctor said. "I understand she is not happy with you just now."
"Why won’t you just tell me what happened?" Max did some considering himself. "I might've been the tiniest bit intoxicated when I came in."
"Yes," the doctor said, "your toxicology report was an adventure to read."
"You should hear my life story," said Max.
"I’d love to," the doctor replied. A smile creeping in.
"Nice try. But I’m still not talking."
Max didn't give up any information, and neither did the doctor. They spent the rest of the session in stalemate.
Alma tried to crush his skull when she found out he wasn't the Messiah. And that the sky reptiles too were hogwash. Dr. Sharma must have given her the bad news during her last session.
Max had been on meds and still buzzing from street drugs, so he hadn't remembered telling her how they'd marooned him on this planet and closed the sky dome, preventing his escape. What was shocking was that Alma hadn't told her shrink immediately.
It wasn't like he'd done it maliciously. Mean as he'd become when the drugs wore off, Max was still in la-la land when Alma had slumped into the seat beside his, during breakfast on his first day. He probably believed it all himself at the time. For all he knew, he might have also rambled about his mother and Tyler and how everything had gone wrong. Might've blurted his last name and social security number and told her his private crypto keys.
He'd been blabbing secrets to anyone who'd listen, even strangers on the street, while the molly that was mostly meth was peaking in his bloodstream. Nine days in the urban wilderness. Living like an animal. Nine days he sort of remembered. The parts he did still troubled him.
So when Alma confronted him, shortly after he emerged from his session, Max was caught off guard.
"You're not Jesus," she said by way of greeting.
"Huh?"
She repeated her accusation. She seemed to feel that Max had tricked her on purpose. Max felt the heat in his chest again. He surprised himself and her when he shot back a nasty rejoinder:
"Oh, you finally figured it out, huh?" Instant guilt. Instant what the fuck? He still didn't know what she was talking about. Rage flushed her face, a red wave up her neck. Max flushed, too. When he did, the voice of guilt grew very faint. The heat grew very hot.
"Why don't you do something about it?" He felt it, between the thuds as his heart slammed against his ribcage. She was going to hit him. Don't run, he told himself. Do not cover your face.
"What?" she said, now caught off guard herself.
"I said," Max said, and he couldn't hear himself over the thunder of blood in his ears, "why don't you do something about it?"
His voice shook. His hands, even at his sides, shook. Alma was crimson going on purple. A look like disgust wrinkled even more ugly into her already challenging face. Max watched as everything went slo-mo, and he could count the hairs on her knuckles in the instant before her fist connected with his eye.
The world spun like a roller coaster and Max hit the floor with a grunt. His face buzzed and his head throbbed and he moved groaning on the hardwood. The bright lights blared in his eyes. He had to find his limbs. He was gathering himself to stand when Alma climbed on top of him. Max said "oof" and what he really meant was finally but still he raised his hands when Alma reared back to hit him.
He was almost disappointed when he heard shouts above him and the crushing weight that smelled like a dirty dryer screen was lifted off his chest. He blinked and the overhead light was in his face but then full eclipsed by Maurice's dark face. The light on his shiny bald head. People all around. Nurses, patients watching. Max felt vaguely that he was the center of a scene. It was all so far away, though.
He blinked until his vision cleared and took the hand Maurice was offering. The big nurse hauled him to his feet. Max barely knew where he was. He wondered if he had a concussion. The whole world was dizzy, not just him. It swung and twisted like vertigo. Maurice was saying something in his high voice. Max couldn't make out the words.
"—hurt?" he finally heard, and shook his head, squinting at the world and reaching up to feel his face. A bump already. No, two. Already tender to the touch. A black eye to come for sure.
"Come on," Maurice was saying. He took Max by the arm. Max jerked away.
"Hey." He fought dizziness. Wobbled, trying to keep his feet.
Maurice was talking but Max couldn't make it out. His mind wandered to crazy things, the news report on the TV behind Maurice. Someone must have turned it on, he thought. While he was in his session. The words on the screen were about the bombing. The one on the Outreach Towers. Draft of manifesto found, he read on the chyron.
"You're going to the separation room." Those words, at least, had come through loud and clear. Max's face wrinkled and he tried to duck back as Maurice reached for him again.
"Why?" He heard himself as if from another room. The heat was still there. Jesus, still there. You already got yourself hit. Wasn't that enough? Are you gonna make them break you?
"Starting a fight" was all he picked out from whatever Maurice said.
"I didn't start it," Max protested.
"I watched you."
"It wasn't me—"
"You didn't tell her to hit you?"
Max said nothing.
"Starting a fight," Maurice said. "Come on."
"I'm going, I'm going. You don't have to drag me."
A twitch between Maurice's eyebrows. The quickest wrinkling of skin.
"Come on," he said, "Let's get you to that private car." Maurice made a sound that could've been a chuckle, and Max let himself be led towards the separation rooms. Grown ups in time out, he thought. No wonder nobody gets better here.
He felst the spotlight of all eyes on him. The patients were gathered around. There was Tom, an awkward hulk. He stood among the others.
Max searched the crowd for a sympathetic face. If he'd realized he was doing it, he would have stopped. He would've called it weak. Impotent, the young man dreams of bloody conquest. But this is only a mama's boy.
I doubt I have to explain it, that his armor is brittle and his façade so thin because a thorny vine of pain twists around his heart. He still has nightmares of punching helplessly at a pale advancing face. Still dreams of being suspended a mile underwater. In the dreams, his limbs move slowly, helplessly, and he lands only glancing blows.
The fingers on his arm were real. Real and strong as pliers. They steered him through the crowd. Max's eyes roved. They caught something unusual, a sight he did not expect. A color green you never see, at least not at Cedars-Sinai.
He double-taked. He stared. The girl by the door was like no one he had ever seen. He couldn't look away. His feet slowed and he stopped and Maurice tugged him forward but he came unwillingly, a dog at the end of his leash. He watched the girl, pale with dark hair in a bob that curled slightly out at the ends. Her hair was tousled, and she wore a big black shirt that came halfway down her skinny bare thighs. Fuzzy white slippers like two balls of cotton on her feet. Loose bits of fuzz stuck to her shirt. Bandages ran up her forearms. She spoke to a nurse, and stood by the head of the horseshoe desk. A suitcase stood beside her.
"Who is that?" Max asked Maurice, forgetting the crowd and himself.
Maurice didn't deign to reply. But he might have tightened his grip on Max a little. To make sure he didn't lose him.
Max watched over one shoulder. The girl looked up, their eyes met. Max got lost in green. A weird feeling in the back of his neck. Not lust. No, not love either. What was it? He was reminded of his vision. What he saw in the water of the pool.
The girl cocked her head. A crease appeared in her brow. She squinted, as if to see him better. Max started to raise a hand, but then they rounded the corner and Maurice was pulling open the door to the separation room. He heard a door close down the hall and realized that must be Alma. Not that it was fair. He hadn't even got a hit in. Not that it would've done anything. Just like in the dream.
"What's her name? Is she new?" Maurice let go of his arm.
"You can talk to her when you're out," he said.
"How long?" Max asked, as Maurice pushed closed the door.
"Until you've calmed down," Maurice said. Was the fucker actually smiling? No time for a second look. The door slammed shut and Maurice was gone and that had to be a good enough answer. Max sat down on the padded floor and thought about her. He pulled his knees up to his chest.
His heart beat for a different reason now, and he reminded himself it was just a glimpse, just a fleeting glance. She saw him looking from the corner of her eye and looked up to see who it was. That was all. It wasn't special. It wasn't destiny. Maybe it was just embarrassment.
Max did not reflect on his actions, nor how they'd brought him here. I'm sure most of those imprisoned never do. They just stew on the injustice. But Max, for once, had better things than injustice to occupy his mind. He passed the time imagining what he would say to her, when they finally let him out of here.
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