Free The Hollow City by Dan Wells

something?”
    “I’m just…” I don’t know what I’m just. “I was expecting a friend, and she hasn’t come, and I just wonder if … I don’t know.”
    “You think she might have come when you were asleep?”
    I look at the window in the door, showing faint light from the hallway. “I guess I’m just worried that she might have come and looked in and decided not to come inside. You know? Like I’m all…” I realize my eyes are wet, and I wipe them with the back of my hand. “It’s like I’m a monster. I can’t do anything, I can’t see anyone, I can’t go anywhere.… It’s like I’m in a zoo.”
    “Easy, Michael,” she says, and squeezes my wrist. I feel stupid and weak. “I know it’s hard in here,” she says, “but you’ve got us. We’re your friends.” She smiles, and I try not to flinch away from the penlight. “You like peaches?”
    “Peaches?”
    She laughs, warm and cheerful in the darkness. “I love peaches—my parents used to have an orchard, and my mom would can them every year. They always cheer me up. I know it’s not much, but if you want some peaches for breakfast I can put a note on your chart and see if the kitchen can send any up in the morning. Make you feel a little more … like a person. You know?”
    I feel stupid and embarrassed, but it does sound nice. I nod. “That’d be good. I like peaches.”
    “Great.” I can’t see her in the dark, but I imagine she’s smiling. I smile back.
    *   *   *
    IN THE MORNING my oatmeal comes with peaches, but they taste wrong—sweet but superficial. I can’t place it exactly. I also have an extra pill; they’ve doubled my dose. I feel depressed, like I’ve somehow ruined everything. The commons room buzzes with conversation, but from what I can tell most of the patients are talking to themselves, not to each other. Which one is my secret ally? I scan the tables silently, trying not to look suspicious, but it’s impossible to tell.
    “Michael.”
    I jerk my head up, surprised, and see Dr. Vanek settle into a chair beside me. “You’re rather deep in thought; I could barely get your attention.”
    “Sorry,” I say, “just … thinking.”
    “Which is why I said you were deep in thought.”
    Another patient sits at our table, a small man with wide eyes and frizzy hair, but Vanek shoos him away. “I hate these hospitals.”
    “Seriously,” I ask. “How did you ever become a psychiatrist?”
    “You might call it a survival mechanism.”
    “You hate everyone here.”
    “I hate everyone out there as well, so psychiatry is no worse than anything else.”
    “Great.” I take a bite. “What brings you here, anyway?”
    “Your psychoses. I find myself increasingly fascinated the more I learn about them.”
    I nod and click my tongue. “I’m glad I’m entertaining.”
    “Tell me, Michael, is there some specific memory of a phone that you find particularly horrifying?”
    “What?”
    “Phones,” he repeats. “You’re scared of them, and I want to know why. Many schizophrenic delusions are based on specific events from the patient’s past—it may be that you see Faceless Men, for example, because of some childhood abuse by a man with an obscured face.”
    “I was never abused,” I say quickly.
    “Yes you were,” he says, “at least emotionally, by that disaster you call a father. It may be that your delusions of Faceless Men somehow come from him.”
    “My father has a face.”
    “I can see that you’re missing every point I try to make,” he says. “We will retreat from the general and return to the specific: why are you afraid of phones? Is it all cell phones? Is it the mere idea of them, or is it their usage? Is it a specific ring that holds some kind of buried meaning for you?”
    “You already know why.”
    “Yes, yes,” he says, “but that explanation applies to all devices generically. Your outburst a few weeks ago, when you attacked Devon, was focused on a specific device.