My Control

JD crossed his arms and watched the patient from the window. The man was nervous inside the room, looking around like a scared bird that was about to be eaten by the cat that had just swallowed his canary friend.

Dr. Perry Cox stood beside of him, arms crossed in a similar fashion. "What’s the story, Carol?"

"Tweaker," JD replied absently. "Coming out of rehab, or going in as it were. I’m worried he might be suicidal. He checked himself in, drove himself here apparently."

"God I hate these junkies," Dr. Cox muttered. "I’m going to wager a guess that he’s complaining of some phantom pain, Newbie?"

JD shook his head. "No. From what I could get him to say, he said that rehab would never work for him, so why should he even bother?"

Dr. Cox shrugged. "You gotta let him go on his own. You can’t make him want to try rehab."

"I didn’t think I could."

Dr. Cox patted him on the shoulder. "Listen, Newbie, release him. You can’t help someone who don’t want to be helped." The attending stalked off.

JD sighed and surveyed the man’s twitching and sketchy movements. He entered the room again.

"Hey, Mr. Andrews."

The man jumped and stared at JD with scared eyes. "I’m not Mr. Andrews, nosiree, that’s my dad. My dad’s here isn’t he? I called him hours ago."

JD sighed. "No, he’s not. You’ve been here for three days."

"No I haven’t, no I haven’t. Didn’t you see the pretty lights? The lights are here and they say I called him hours ago."

"Mr. Andrews, I’ve called you a psych consult, and we’re going to try and get you into rehab."

"No, no, no…I don’t want rehab, and rehab isn’t going to help anyway. Don’t you see? I just came here so I could get something to help out. I don’t want anything else."

JD sighed. "We’ll help if we can." He left the room, pinching the bridge of his nose. The man was obviously psychotic to some extent, but some junkies were coming out of a bender. He walked up to the nurse’s station. "Hey Laverne…we’ll need to restrain the man in room 348. I don’t think he’s going to cooperate."

Laverne raised an eyebrow. "So restrain him."

JD sighed and put the man’s chart into the stack of charts still waiting for him. He debated for a moment, and then decided the man really wasn’t safe. He turned to go back to the man’s room.

"Mr. Andrews, are you still with me?" JD asked softly as to not scare him.

But still, the thin, wiry man jumped. He was young, with scraggly brown hair and insanely green eyes. His skin was sallow and hung on his bones.

"My name’s not Mr. Andrews…they don’t call me that anywhere, they call me Josh, don’t you know that? Mr. Andrews is my father, where is my father? I called him hours ago."

"Mr. Andrews, I’m going to try and help you sleep now, okay?"

"I don’t need to sleep, I never need to sleep. Sleep isn’t good, if I sleep, then I hear the lights, and the lights don’t say nice things anymore."

Definite tweaker, JD thought and wondered about the best approach to try and restrain the man.

Trying to keep an eye on him, JD opened the door. "Hey, Anna…would you come help me a minute?" he called.

The sudden loudness of JD’s voice startled the man clean off his bed. He barreled for the door and knocked JD to the floor hard.

"Someone catch him!" JD yelled, which made the man even more enraged.

Josh Andrews took off down the hallway, knocking everyone out of his way and disappeared into the stairwell.

JD stood up, rubbing his back painfully, and ran back into the corridor of patient rooms to make the necessary calls.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Perry punched his pillow in the first-floor on-call room to try and sleep. With any luck, he could snag about an hour before someone else wanted his help on some interminable piece of advice that a nurse could have told them. If nothing else, he hoped choosing the first-floor room would give him more of an opportunity to sleep before his beeper went off.

Perry sighed and crossed his arms over his eyes. Sleep came easily enough.

Sleep was easy enough obtained, but easily broken. He woke with a start, and glared about the room blearily. Sighing, he sat up and rubbed his temples. His stomach felt jumpy and uneasy, and he found that his hands shook slightly.

Not sure what had woken him in the first place, Perry stood and popped his neck. "Jesus…" he muttered.

At his utterance, a sharp sound of someone hitting a wall surprised him nearly out of his skin.

"Who’s there?" Perry called out.

"No one at all…all the lights are gone now, and only the fire talks to me. And we’re all going to burn and then the lights will come back and they’ll talk to me again."

"Hello?" Perry tried again and turned on a low light.

A man jumped in the corner. "Nope, nope…the wrappers aren’t containing the lights of the fires. The fires want to burn me, I can’t feel anything, and someone keeps telling me that I’m going to fry. Aren’t you one to talk though? Can’t you hear yourself? You’re not crazy, I’m not crazy…but I can see the children and they’re burning in the fire, and they’re screaming, and I can’t make them stop screaming, they won’t stop screaming!"

Perry kept his distance, but watched the shaking man. He was about to speak when a nearby phone rang shrilly. Perry jumped to answer it.

But the man seemed to be quicker and hooked Perry around the neck in a death grip. The man slid a forearm across Perry’s neck, and slid the opposite arm to lock on the back of the doctor’s neck.

"See, don’t you see? I can see it, can’t you? They’re all right there, dancing like little stars to answer my call. I can’t let you go now, they’ll never listen to me again."

For the first time in years, Perry felt his stomach drop in absolute terror. "What’s your name?" he asked carefully.

"No one cares about my name, they just want to drug me up so I can see the pretty lights again. But they make the fire go away."

"I can get someone to make the fire go away."

"They all say that!" The man’s grip tightened briefly, and Perry felt his throat close immediately, only to open as the grip loosened. "They taught me that hold at boot camp, did you know that? But no one knows that, no one knows, no one cares, no one thinks…they only want the fires to go away so I can listen to the pretty lights."

The man tightened his grip again and forced Perry over to a window. He shoved the doctor’s face against the window painfully, pressing his own forehead to the glass.

"See all the lights? I can’t hear them anymore…they used to burn for me and sing and talk. Like a thousand miles of fire, they could keep the flames away and I couldn’t feel."

Perry choked in his throat, feeling his airway constrict as the man grew increasingly irritated.

"It’s the moment that I live for…they’ll sing my dying song, they will, I’ve heard it all before, it’s all been done before. But those lights told me what you are, I know who you are, I know what you want."

Perry slapped at the man’s arm in reflex in a struggle to breathe.

The man loosened his grip only enough to let Perry take in air again.

"Can’t you let one of us help you?" Perry wondered idly then if he could overpower a crazy tweaker or not. The man was thin and wiry, but taller and faster. Not to mention he had Perry’s throat in a death grip.

Perry’s thoughts stopped as the man shoved him against the window. It increased his hold so that he could loosen one arm away to fish something from his pocket.

And then Perry’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the flash of metal.

"You’re not going to make me go back, are you? I don’t want to go back and I’ll do anything not to go back to those wrappers, they don’t know anything about me. All they want to do is put me back and I can’t go back, I need to get out of here."

The door shoved open suddenly. The man turned suddenly and replaced both arms so that he held Perry in a death grip, the knife close to his neck.

JD stared in horror and Carla screamed.

"Josh, you’ve got to listen to me," JD said gently, taking one step forward.

"Get away from me!" Josh screeched. "You just want to take away my lights and make the fire get me! The fire already got the children, don’t you see? They’re all dead and I can’t make the lights come back to me now!"

JD stopped immediately, holding both hands out. "Just drop the knife, Josh. No one’s going to get you."

"You just stay away!" Josh yelled, tears running down his cheeks as he headed for the door. "Get away from the door or you’ll burn, I swear to god, it’s gonna kill you!"

JD backed away from the door, pushing Carla back with an extended arm. "Just drop the knife, Josh. No one has to die this time."

Perry felt the handle of the knife pressed hard to his temple, and felt his breathing constrict. He stared at JD and Carla, willing one of them to help him take this crazy addict down.

JD and Carla didn’t move.

"You’ve got to drop the knife, Josh," JD said as calmly as he could, but his stomach felt like it was turning inside out. "Come on, Josh. That man’s not going to hurt you."

"But I have to get him out of here! The fire’s going to burn him and then the lights are going to take him to hell!"

"That man’s not going to hell," JD said. "He’s a doctor here."

"Then he knows what fire can do! If I don’t put out the fire, the lights will go out! The fire wrappers will come and take the lights away from me!"

"JD, please!" Carla sobbed.

A growing number of people watched as Josh Andrews dragged Dr. Perry Cox down the hallway, a knife shoved against the doctor’s head and his throat in a death grip.

"No! No one’s going to kill! No one’s going to stop me; I can put the fires out myself!" Josh shrieked.

JD watched as Janitor started to approach. "Leave him alone!" JD snapped.

Janitor stopped.

"Josh, listen to me! You don’t have to do this! There’s no fire!" JD suddenly yelped in desperation.

Josh’s eyes went wild and he cut off Perry’s airway. "You’re wrong! The fire’s taking my light away! It’s going to kill this man if you don’t let me get him out of here!"

JD nodded to Janitor in a struggle to get the man to back off.

"Let him breathe, Josh," JD said, trying to calm his voice. "He can’t breathe like that."

Josh’s grip loosened a small margin and Perry gasped in a breath of air. "You’ll let me out?"

JD nodded. "If you promise you won’t hurt this man."

"I’m saving him!" Josh screamed. "I’m saving him, can’t you see that?"

"Yes, we all see that," JD went on, and a few scared by-standers managed to nod for Josh’s benefit.

Josh kept the knife at Perry’s head, his forearm locked against the doctor’s throat. "You’ll let me out?"

"Yes, we’ll let you out," JD said even as something in his stomach started to twist horribly.

Perry shot a wild glance to JD and Carla, shaking his head in fear.

Josh’s blade tilted down to Perry’s throat at the movement. He kept heading for the door. JD felt something beginning to slip away.

And it slipped away completely as Josh and Perry backed out the door and left.

Continues with Chapter 2