Chapter 40: Earth
Devlin Rochester, the head of the Followers of Amun’s army, is Declan Rosenbaum.
Either that, or my fear of Declan, and my own mind, has caused me to dream that he is.
I stumble from my bed to the bathroom. I'm dry heaving into the toilet when Jesse appears in the doorway. He crouches down and holds my hair back. I don't want to be broken. When the dry heaves stop, I grab some toilet paper and wipe my mouth.
“What's wrong?” Jesse doesn't ask whether I'm ill. He doesn't think I have a stomach bug.
He knows it has to do with Terra—which means he believes that it’s something wrong in my brain.
I want to tell him that the man who's been haunting me for years on Earth just showed up as the villain in Terra, the man who wants to capture and probably torture me. A man I unwittingly vowed to kill on sight.
Except, for the first time in my life, I can't bring myself to form the words, to tell my brother the truth of what I believe—or what I’m not sure that I believe. If I tell him a villain from my life here on Earth has shown up in Terra, he'll think it's because I'm crazy.
Maybe he’s right.
“I'll go see someone,” I whisper.
They're the hardest words I've ever said.
Jesse doesn't smile, or grin, or smirk. He pulls me against him and hugs me tightly to his chest. “It's going to be okay. I’m here for you. Always.” He strokes my hair with one hand. “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said. That I’m your anchor.”
He has?
“It’s appropriate,” he says. “A ship is made to sail the seas, to travel, to move, to explore. But sometimes it needs to stop, to refuel, to be repaired, to be improved.”
I need to be repaired. I’ve never felt more broken.
“And when that’s happening, when the ship stops sailing and exploring, they drop an anchor. It doesn’t keep the ship from moving or floating or being, but it keeps it from drifting, it keeps the ship safe.”
Jesse’s right. He is my anchor, in every way.
“Then when the ship’s ready, the anchor lifts with it, and sticks around, ready to keep the ship steady whenever it needs to be still again.”
Our life has been one storm after another, but Jesse has always been there to keep me steady while I refuel, repair, and recharge. I think about that during my shower, and afterward I feel much better.
I sit down in front of a plate of eggs and toast and take my first bite.
Jesse clears his throat. “I found someone for you to talk to, someone who has amazing reviews online. He's actually a specialist in schizophrenia.”
Am I supposed to be excited about that? “When?”
“He said he’ll make time for the initial screening right away. He says it's excellent that you're open to the idea and willing to meet with him. We don't want to lose any momentum.”
Because loony people don't usually want to consider that they might be crazy. Ugh. That certainly fits.
I force myself to go, and I don't go alone. Jesse tells John he'll be a few minutes late this morning—which I’m sure made a stellar impression on his second day—and he goes with me to the Medical Center, where we wait for almost half an hour. I glance at my watch. 9:20. Depending on how long this takes, I may miss work entirely. I text Henry.
-FAMILY DRAMA. MAY BE LATE.
He texts back immediately.
-OKAY. LET ME KNOW.
Ten seconds later, the door opens, and I walk away from Jesse, leaving him to wait for me while a doctor evaluates the inner workings of my twisted brain. Jesse and I agreed I should tell my story as it happened, with only one exception. I won’t admit that I'm still a minor. From Jesse’s Internet research, it seems like being a minor might trigger some kind of reporting requirements.
I lay out my life as clearly as I can. I've never had a single normal dream, not in seventeen, er, eighteen, years. I always wake up in Terra when I go to sleep here. On Terra, I have telekinetic powers. My mom left my dad when I was three, and recently we discovered that my brother and I were adopted when I was three and Jesse was four and a half in real life.
No, neither of us recall anything about our birth parents. My aunt turned us over to the state when our adoptive parents died, claiming I was crazy. Social services found me to be stable, although possibly delusional, and sent me to a group home. I was bullied and abused there, and eventually we both ran. Our social worker pursued me, and we've been on the run ever since. I was too afraid to talk to anyone until now, because we were still minors. Now that we aren't, and I've seen this social worker again, my brother wanted me to be evaluated.
I also don't mention speaking and understanding every language I've encountered or miraculously healing from injuries on Earth while I’m in Terra.
That seems like asking for trouble.
Dr. Agour asks questions now and then, especially about people and places I’ve mentioned, but mostly he leans back in his chair and stares at me calmly while I speak.
Once I've told him everything, I stop.
He still says nothing.
“So, am I crazy? Do I have schizophrenia?”
He frowns. “First of all, schizophrenic people are not crazy. They suffer from an illness. Would you say someone with the flu was crazy for lying in bed? Would you believe they should feel guilty about taking medicine to counteract the side effects of fighting that very real medical illness?”
Uh, no. “I guess not.”
“This is the same. Crazy should only be used to describe impulses that are uncontrolled, unsafe, and unhealthy. Schizophrenic people suffer from an illness as real and as debilitating as the flu. Thanks to modern diagnosis and new treatments, in many instances, it’s as treatable as the flu as well.”
“Okay,” I say. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright—society has not been fair, or kind, to people dealing with mental health issues, mostly because as humans, we fear what we do not understand.”
No one knows that better than me.
“Now that we have that issue laid out, front and center, I can tell you that it is my professional opinion that you do not suffer from schizophrenia. You don't exhibit signs of disorganized speech, catatonic behavior, affective flattening, alogia, or avolition. I understand your concern that these dreams of Terra are a delusion. They may in fact be a delusion, but schizophrenia almost never presents in very young children, and your dreams began when you were quite young indeed. We have no real evidence that you're hallucinating either. You may merely be seeing men who fit the description of this, justifiably, terrifying figure from your past. While that may indicate that you suffer from a mild and isolated paranoia, I'd say the root of your problem probably lies in something to do with your sleep patterns. I also recommend that you find a qualified psychologist and work through a lot of the childhood trauma that still persists in causing you understandable fear and anxiety.”
“Sleep patterns?” I bite my lip. “What does that mean?”
“I’m going to order a sleep study. Sleep specialists will monitor your body and brain signals while you sleep, and they can determine what patterns you’re following, REM or otherwise. They can identify whether you suffer from sleep paralysis.”
My eyebrows climb my face. “I'm never stuck in place. I can always move.”
“If you experience sleep paralysis, you might not even realize you're asleep. You may think you're awake, or. . .on another world.”
Like Terra. “Okay.”
“You're amenable to a sleep study, then?”
I nod.
“I'll have my secretary work with you to set up a time. They're usually booked out for a week or two, but I'll request that they get you in sooner rather than later. Once we have those results, we’ll know whether to put you in touch with a neurologist, or whether we need additional tests run.”
“Can you explain this to my brother?” I ask.
He smiles. “It's hard for the loved ones. They want to support you, and sometimes knowing how to do that is difficult. I'll be sure to explain everything to him. But one of the critical points is this: you have experienced a lot of significant trauma that is very, very real. You seem to place a lot of importance on whether your dreams are ‘real’ or not, but that’s not actually as relevant as how they are impacting your life here on Earth.”
Tears roll freely down my face. Dr. Agour waits until I've dried my cheeks to call Jesse into his office.
As relieved as I was, Jesse looks even more reassured. “Yes, a sleep study. That makes sense.”