"Tick"

Blood…So much of it… Everywhere…


It’s hard for him to comprehend why there’s so much of it. In conjunction with the spatters on the milky walls and cot, there is a large pool of it on the linoleum, about seven feet in diameter- or at least it would be, had it formed a nice circle, as opposed to an amorphous, amoeba-like formation.

It might have been the very first thing he really noticed when he entered the room. The two male orderlies would be next, as they immediately begin to shoo at him. He acknowledges them only with a quick glance before his eyes fall on the far end of the floor. Upon it lies a white sheet (raised, as though covering something- someone) blotted with blood, soaked through around the edges.

Someone…died?

He glances back at the orderlies. The large one who is balding prematurely flicks his hand at him.

“Get outta here, Eric. Go! Go on!” he says, waxing anguish.

“Cl-Clementine?” he croaks weakly, the blood draining from his cheeks, “Is it Clementine?”

“Goddamn it,” the orderly urges testily to his counterpart, “get him out of here! He can’t see her like this!”

The lanky, confused-looking orderly obviously has no clue what is going on, as his eyes shift between the two other men helplessly, like some small creature caught between a predator and a cliff.

Meanwhile his eyes are fixed on the bloody sheet. He feels sick. His limbs shake and tingle.

“Chuck! I said get him the hell out of here!” shouts the head orderly, either losing patience or beginning to panic. “GO! NOW!”

Chuck slowly begins to approach him, and he is trembling. The numbness rushes out, leaving only a throbbing heat, as though his entire body is a blood-vessel. It feels as though he might lose control of his bladder.

“Okay, Eric, I need you to calm down…”

Oh, God…No…

His body moves, darting toward the body without thought, mowing down Chuck in the process. He feels hands tugging at his shirt, and shouts, but weakly. All he can focus on is ripping the sheet off as fast as he can. And when he does, he finds himself staring into open eyes. A round, brown face- a woman- a girl, with dead eyes locked into a serenely melancholy gaze. He can almost feel his heart shatter.

NO! NO!

His head is ringing…and ringing…and ringing… buzzing…buzzing… an alarm.



Isaac’s eyes sprang open in an instant. It was hard for him to breathe. His knuckles were stark white from gripping the covers. In his mind’s eye, he could still see the girl, and the life that had spilled out of her.

All over the linoleum.

He never knew there was so much blood in the human body. It took the breath from his lungs, even as lay awake.

Is that really what six liters looks like?

But in a dream, six liters and six gallons are interchangeable. The same with names, as in his case.

Within another moment, his mind was back with his body, and he began to feel himself. His entire body was damp with sweat, especially his bottom half. Dismay and disgust washed over him as he lifted the covers to see that he had a dark, wet patch on his boxers, as well as on the sheet beneath him.

“Christ…” he half grunted as he began to gingerly crawl out of bed, trying to lessen the discomfort of his wet underwear.

Trudging to his bathroom to sanitize, he felt sick with himself. It was bad enough that he wet the bed at thirty-one years old, but the fact that it could have been prevented… Somewhere in his mind of minds he had known all along that his recurring dreams- nightmares- would take their toll. Until this point, they’d only caused him to lose an hour or so of sleep- nothing worth panicking about- but every psychiatrist knows the longer an issue is repressed, the uglier it is when it finally rears its head. Curiously, he could not even recall how long he had been shirking his problem.

He washed, bent on removing all traces of the distasteful occurrence. The more he washed, the better he felt- but not exponentially so. Wrapping his towel around him, he crossed to the sink, taking up his shaving cream. He passed his forearm across the mirror clearing it of steam, taking a quick glance at himself before popping the top off the half-empty spray can, granting himself another look up into the mirror.

“You are a wreck…You know that?” he sighed as he ran his hand over his stubble, noticing light bags under pistachio-colored eyes, “And you’re talking to yourself.”

He leaned forward, intently staring into the mirror. There wasn’t anything in particular to look for, but it had been a while since he had really taken a look at himself. Sometimes he would forget exactly what he looked like. The first thing he saw, as always, were his freckles- the bane of his childhood existence. He was sure that he’d spent most of it battling comments about his speckled face, and most of his adult life fighting self-consciousness. Someone once told him that his freckles gave him character- and for a few moments, he desperately wished he remember who. But Isaac gave up trying and/or caring well before his morning routine was over. It made his brain hurt, and he had a train to catch.

He’d arrived at the hospital right on time, despite the train’s tardiness, beginning to think that his lucky star hadn’t flickered out after all.

“Morning, Celia,” he greeted the petite, ginger nurse as she handed him a manila folder.

“Got a new one, Dr. Sanders. In-patient transfer from Dunesbury.”

“Hmm…” he began with light disinterest, “Name?”

“Clementine Daniels.”

What?

“What?”

Luckily, the tone in his spoken voice didn’t mimic the sheer panic of that of his inner voice, yet, his discomfort was not completely concealed. .

“Clementine Daniels. See, right here,” she offered, bringing a slender fingertip to the first line of print of the cover sheet. “Is there a… problem?”

The concern in her lightly aging face was gently exaggerated by the ever-so-slight networks of lines creeping from the corners of her eyes and overly-reddened lips.

“No, no,” he said through the clearing of his throat, “Thank you, Celia.”

Clementine…

Isaac scratched at a sandy sideburn as he drifted up the hall, making up his mind that it was all some terrible coincidence. That Clementine wasn’t that uncommon of a name.

It is in a song, after all. And the oranges are delicious…

And that he had known about the new transfer from their sister-hospital since the day before.

No, the week before. Wait- three weeks-

It frightened him that he could not remember when the dreams began.

That long?

“Dr. Sanders…” Celia called with an impatience that indicated that she had repeated herself, possibly more than once.

“I’m sorry?” Isaac replied, spinning on his feet to half-face her.

“I said that she will come to you…To your office?”

She added her second thought in response to the dimness in his expression. He took to his left and found his eyes spanning the off-white gate (if you could call it that; grate, more so) that marked the threshold of the residential unit. His feet had instinctively carried him there, in the complete opposite direction of his office.

He replied to her with a sidelong glance “…Right.”

His feet were still noticeably unmoving.

“After she has her breakfast.”

“Right,” he nodded again, this time facing the woman.

She stepped to the side and gestured down the other end of the hall, as though she thought he might have forgotten where to find his own office. Isaac’s eyes flickered indignantly at this as he passed, until he reminded himself that he couldn’t remember half the things he tried to lately.

He was due for a quick stop in the men’s room. He would never face a patient with an unclear head. Hypocrisy was one of his pet peeves. Coming up from the sink with a dripping face, he examined himself again. It had become a habit, but not one of vanity- irritable scrutiny if anything.

Isaac grimaced at his softly bristled hair, patting and smoothing it in vain with a damp hand. Any other morning, he took care to brush it down in its moist state in hopes of achieving the look of subtle professionalism that was critical in the early career of a young doctor, but any other morning, he wouldn’t have been scrambling to sanitize his mattress and bedclothes. However, he was sure he would have at least made some sort of last-ditch effort to tame the innately frat-boyish nature of his hair.

“Mornin’, Doc Sanders!”

“Mornin’, Cory,” he nodded to the zealous orderly.

The twenty-something’s tousled hairstyle was blatantly more deliberate than the young doctor’s. Though they resided in a landlocked state, Isaac imagined he surfed on his weekends. Rolling up the sleeves of the shirt he wore under his powder-blue scrubs, the young orderly shifted skittishly.

“Uhm, sorry about the other day, man.”

“Huh?” Isaac squinted dimly.

“Your chicken salad- it had been sitting in the fridge for a couple days and I didn’t know it was yours until Celia told me-“

“Oh- It’s cool. I forgot all about it,” he answered with a sincerity the likes of which Cory could not begin to grasp.

“Awesome,” nodded Cory with a half-witted smirk.

Not particularly caring to watch him relieve himself at the urinal, Isaac brought his eyes back to the mirror and incredulously blinked twice, exaggerating the natural largeness of his eyes each time. He brought a hand slowly to his crown- his smoothed and flawless crown.

What in the hell..?

He snatched a handful of paper towels and blotted his face, taking care to dry around his eyes, but when they opened, the image was unchanged.

He was so brisk in the hustle to his office that he didn’t notice his desk chair was facing the wrong way until it swiveled around.

He jumped, but what sat inside it would take the breath from his lungs. He eyed the familiar round, brown face, framed to the jaw by thick, dark hair. The thin, yet alert eyes reciprocated through bisected bangs.

“So,” began the husky alto, “are you Dr. McDreamy or Dr. McSteamy?”

It sounded as intended, by far more of an amused one-liner than a come-on.

“McSanders-“ He shook himself. “Sanders. Miss Daniels?” he asked as though presuming.

He took a seat in the smaller chair that faced the girl as she simply nodded.

“I rather like this role-reversal,” she quipped, leaning against the high back of the chair, strumming the arms.

He could not bring himself back to doctor-mode. All the protocol, all the icebreakers, everything he learned left him. Everything left him. He was numb. He looked up into the girl’s face once more. She was young- probably not yet twenty. The broad and unyielding cynicism of a less-than-satisfactory youth was written clearly in her face as she leaned haughtily over his desk, her sleeves traveling up her forearms as she pressed forward.

“Well?”

His eyes caught the dark, ugly, tendrils of scars that trailed up along her wrists and the thinner stripes that struck them through crosswise. He gulped deeply (first, his pooling saliva, and then the air) sending his Adam’s apple dancing.

“Blood…” he murmured weakly.

The girl’s eyebrow arched upward into her hair.

“What?”

The only answer he could afford her was the sound of his retching.

He prostrated before the small trash can at the corner of his desk, face reddened, eyes watering, gasping between gagging, “Oh, my God, what’s happening to me?”

He spoke to himself, but still the girl answered.

“Hell if I know, but I’m gonna get somebody. Hold on.”

She sprang from the chair, running into the hall.

It couldn’t have taken longer than a couple of seconds for her to return with someone, likely, Celia (he really couldn’t tell), but somehow his solitude felt as though it were sustained for at least a minute or so. And in that minute, he could hear nothing of the world outside- not the panicky shouts of Clementine Daniels, not the cars below the window. Save for his desperate breathing and the angry thumping of the blood vessels in his head, he could hear nothing but the taunting ticking of the clock on the wall.