Me & Her

Me

I'm going home today, a lot earlier than I expected. The cops have advised the hospital to release many of the recovering patients in my ward for their own safety. Mum wakes me up at six, tells me that I'm returning home in an ambulance. Safety reasons. Besides, I'm not sure I can muster the strength to heave my body into a wheelchair. For some reason, I fear that they're going to sedate me and kick up a fuss. Obviously, that only brings the Doctor to drug me quicker. The prick of the needle seems strangely familiar, as if my veins are greeting the drug as an old friend. My world short-circuits, but I remain conscious – just about. They wheel me out of my room on a gurney into the corridor, cops lining each side of the steel railings. Grabbing my hand, my Mother rushes along with them. For some reason, I'm thinking of a fancy-dress party I went to when I was six. I don't remember much beyond the party's opening, only that I ruined it. Or she ruined it. Maybe we both did. Everything she's done, she's done using my body, my face. Thanks to her, I ruined my own life. No more. Mother breaks away from me and I panic, the drugs gradually weighing my system down like anchors hanging on my blood vessels. I catch her last few moments of conversation with Doctor Steele.

"I'll be coming around personally to check on her in a few days, but for the long term..." I lose track, only catching 'him' and 'light' before the words, the blankness, and the scraping of being loaded into the ambulance fades away.

I don't dream much anymore. My conscious mind hasn't been used in so long my subconscious doesn't know what to do either. That white room appears again, like a friendly ghost inside my head, but the doors to it are wide open. Maybe she's just trying to scare me, the remnants of her at least. Whatever my other-self was, she's nothing now. Non-existent. Sometimes I think I created her, but then I'm reminded of my disease – or so people call it. It's like everyone knows that I shouldn't be here. It's like they're saying I'm wrong. Perhaps it would have been easier having a nice dual personality, instead of one that gravitates to murder the first chance she gets. Once, when I was being tested at the hospital, a woman in a white coat – all the people in my life wore white back then – said that dual personalities were influenced by your subconscious even though they use different parts of your brain. She said they appear as a defence mechanism. It doesn't feel that way. In a sense, I was just as much like my alter ego as she was like me. At the time I refused to believe her, but now, now I know that I must have secretly wanted her to exist. Wanted to her protect me. I should have been more careful about what I'd wished for.

Light burns my eyes and the rocking of the ambulance eventually brings me back to life. My Mother is holding my hand and peering down at me.

"We're nearly there now, don't worry". She speaks slowly, or maybe it's just the drugs making my surroundings freeze. I want to call out to her, to ask her why she let them drug me. Like I'm a problem child. I guess I am. The sting of antiseptic prickles at my nose, forcing my mouth to scrunch up.

"Are you alright sweetheart?" Mum gives my hand a squeeze. I am now. Moving my mouth takes some effort, in fact moving my whole body feels as if I'm trying to deflect a meteor. Finally, my mouth obeys.

"Who's the man that Doctor Steele was talking about? Back at the hospital?" Mum blinks in surprise, as if she's already forgotten.

"Oh, Dr. Light. A psychiatrist". Someone else to analyse me. Not even a friend or a therapist who could at least try to understand. Another scientist. Someone made to study people who have been deemed freaks like me. Whether we want that label or not.

"I heard he went to Harvard you know". That means nothing to me anymore. It might have done once, when I'd had a future in education. When I'd had the scratchings of a normal life. Not anymore. No university would accept me – it was hard enough trying to get into high school. I think I did. It's all a little fuzzy, like static on a television or being caught in a blizzard. Most of my memories are obscured. I'll be lucky if I can remember my name. I'm sure I will. Part of me feels like it's already been said, but I've chosen not to hear it. An ME pokes his head through a window that separates the front seats from my gurney.

"We're here Ms."— Again my mind cuts out our last name and I can hear the whispers of my alter – that's what the doctors called her - spitting lies in my head. But she's gone. The echoes of her voice linger, but they're only echoes. They can't hurt me anymore. That's why I'm special, I suppose. Not many people with my condition can communicate with their personality. Typical. I'm even abnormal to people classed as abnormal. What does abnormal even look like? Anything different, I suppose. It's ironic, how people claim to want to help us and, in the end, all they want to do is eradicate impurities. Stick us in separate groups or schools, away from the 'normal' kids. The ambulance glides to a halt and the ME yanks open the backdoors and starts to unload the gurney. As I'm pushed carefully down the ramp, the Canadian sun hits my face. Simultaneously, a blast of cold wind tears through me and I'm almost overwhelmed. I can't remember the last time I felt the sun on my skin or the wind on my cheeks or anything. All I felt was nothing. Sometimes I still feel that way even with my Mother by my side and the prospect of returning home. Despite everything I still feel numb. In that white room, I'd tried to convince myself that it was better this way. Now I miss being able to feel. I think I, no, I do. 

I want to feel again. 

Craning my neck, I stare up at my home.