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My Nurse takes me Down Stairs. I want to go Outside, but she tells me to sit and listen to the music. Next to going Outside, the music is what I like best. My Nurse plays on the piano, a soft, gentle sounds that soothes me just like her voice does. Others stop to listen too. Today I don’t feel like listening though, the dream is too fresh in my mind and the doors to Outside call and beckon. I am close to freedom, but the men in white stand in my path with watchful eyes. Others are taken Outside by their Nurses. I long to follow. My ears wander and I catch bits of a conversation of two of Them as they watch me. They are men, dressed in white, but they are not guards or the ones who stroll about. They are the ones with tools and cold hands and slimy smiles. They give the needles and the pills. They scribble black scrawls on sheets and sheets of paper and murmur to themselves. They don’t think I hear their words, or understand them. Sometimes I don’t but sometimes I do.

And so I listen.

  “He’s looking restless again today.” The first one says. He is tall, but not as tall as me.

  “Of course he is.” The second one sends his eyes toward the ceiling and makes a grimace. “He’s always restless after a night like that.”

The dreams. Do they know?

  “Do you know why?”

“Who knows? Were you here when they brought him in?” The shorter one pulls out his pad of paper and starts scrawling as he watches me. I pretend not to see them staring.

 “No. What’s the story behind it? Relatives all dead?”

Story. My Nurse tells me stories, but she’s never told me mine. I listen more intently.

  “No one knows for sure. Hamilton diagnosed him with amnesia. Something’s off in his vocal memory obviously. The people who brought him in said they found him wandering around their trailer park with not a soul with him. As far as we could tell, he didn’t have any ID or any emotions.”

“Nothing?”

 “Nothing. He was just like his is now. Placid, except for those random nights. We waited for someone to come looking for him for the whole first year but no one ever did and probably no one will. This sort of thing can happen with drug abuse. Probably whoever his family is they have too many problems of their own to bother with his. The escapes started seven months after he came. I’m assigned to monitor his progress, but if you ask me there’s no hoping for a cure.”

“Apparently Evelyn disagrees.” The tall one motions toward My Nurse, and I notice that the music has stopped. She is looking over at the two in white, and her face is different than it has ever looked before.

  “Max,” She says to me quietly. “Come play.” She stands and walks softly, slowly over to them. By “Come play,” she means the music. I stand uneasily. I can’t remember ever playing the piano before. But when I sit down to play, something feels right. The three of them are speaking too lowly to hear now, so I play. And somehow, the music washes over me and the melody buried in my memory takes control.

And for the first time in my conscious mind, the world feels real again.

 

 

 

 

( In case you want to hear the inspiration behind some of this here is Max's song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9haTFoGcvk )