The Veil

Chapter 7 The Wilderness

Amelia feels the cold vinyl of the chair against her hot skin; sweat drips down the small of her back even as she is on fire. The pain burns away her soul, as every cell of her body ignites and her scream breaks to silence. She is a witch on the pyre. Amelia cannot remember anything but pain, fear, and the chair. Nails dig in as she clings to the chair, and her world collapses, crushing her. The instrument of her torment is a small black plastic walkie-talkie in her hand. She can see them hovering over her like a poltergeist.

Amelia watches as Nurse Song injects something into her IV, and Dr. White watches the monitors. She feels momentary relief from the pain; then, his voice buzzes in her mind like normal. No, that is not right. The walkie-talkie is supposed to use the walkie-talkie. He calls out to her across the abyss of pain and the veil. His voice cut her like a whip, lashing her with every word as she forced the walkie-talkie into her mind's world.

 Amy, focus on the world with the Three Moons, your flying fish, and purple flowers. Amy, you are drifting between your realities.

Amelia glares at the walkie-talkie in her hand; it is the bane of her existence. Yet, at the same time, it is all she can focus on and her only reality. As she stares at it, she wills it into existence in her hallucinatory world. 

It seems like a lifetime ago that Dr. White decides on the next part of her treatment. She had been confused and horrified. The idea that she could bring a physical object into her imagination was supposed to show her she was in control. But failure after failure led Amelia to believe she was anything but in power. Amelia feels like her grip on reality slips further away with each attempt.

Looking down at the talkie in her hand, the purple flower's stern across the mossy forest floor gave way to swamp grass, then to granite, to asphalt, no to stone and sand. Every second she stays in the veil with one hand in reality and one in her hallucination, she feels like she is being torn to pieces. She is frozen in pain, unable to pull herself through the veil as she drifts from World to World. Amelia is caught in a fire of her own making. Dr. White's voice pierces through the pain and fire.

Amy, now, you have to do this. If you fail today, your treatment will be a failure. You will be a failure. 

She longs to let go of everything, to be the failure her mother thinks she is. Yes, she failed at sanity; she let lunacy take her…she felt her grip on the walkie-talkie loosen. But, she wonders, if she let it go and fell into her imaginary worlds, would the pain stop? How she wants the pain to stop.

She loosens her grip on all realities,  only to find herself standing in a familiar location, London. How she wishes she could go back in time before all of this started. Looking up, she sees the blue Rooster of Trafalgar square mocking her.

Looking down at her hand, she sees the walkie-talkie thumbing the button. Amy screams, "work dam you, work." 

Amy ignores the startled people. The walkie-talkie buzzes to life in her hand. Amy laughs in delight, edged with insanity. 

Dr. White's voice crackles across the airwaves. Amy, you are not entirely in your delusion. I need you to finish crossing over.

"Dr. White, I am in London." Static… more static Dr. White, Amy calls into the talkie. 

"Amy, you must try harder. You are almost there. You have the talkie working; now, focus on where you want to be. Commit to this treatment. Do it now!" Dr. White's voice echoes with a crackle and a hiss through the walkie-talkie.

Amelia knows she is so close. She can feel it in her weary bones. Looking down at her hand, the drops of rain soothe the burning, Amy realizes she is entirely in this world. She was pressing the button, salty tears mixed with polluted rain.

 "Doctor…Doctor White, I did it. I am fully in my imagination. I am in London, and it is raining like the last day I was here."

Nurse Song's voice buzzed in her ear like a ghost. "Amy, this is not where we wanted you to go, but it is a step in the right direction. I think that is enough for today." 

Standing in Trafalgar Square, Doctor White's voice oozed with anger as he responded to Amy.

 "No, that is not what I asked you to do. I told you to go to one of your worlds, not a memory. Unless you can bring the walkie-talkie into one of your worlds, this is a failure. Try again. We now know you can make it work. Do it now, Amy."

Amy looks down at the walkie-talkie as if it is a snake in her hand; she wants to toss it away, run, run home to her apartment. It is so close. Amy knows that is impossible. Dr. White is correct, this must be a memory, but maybe she can stay here for just a while.   As she looks around, a nagging sense of deja vu racks her mind. No, not déjà vu. She knows she has done all this before. The Doctor, the nurse, the square, the pain, but why can't she remember? She pushes forward and, as she almost has a grasp of the forgotten memory, the hissing of the talkie pulls her back from the edge.   

"Amy, what are you doing? You need to enter one of your delusionary worlds. I don't care which one. Commit to where you want to be and make it happen."

Looking around the square, she realizes this is where she truly wants to be, and that is right here. Across the courtyard, she sees a man staring at her slack-jawed, with beautiful hazel eyes and sandy hair that falls into his face. He is wearing a navy peat-coat and jeans. Their eyes meet, he calls out her name as she feels herself being ripped from her mind.

The walkie-talkie buzzes, "what are you doing? You are not in your imaginary world."

"Yes, Doctor White, but I am in so much pain"…

"This is not the time to whine about pain. You made significant steps in your recovery today. Now is the time to take control."

The Doctor calls out using the walkie-talkie. Dr. White scans the room, and a set of monitors, Amy's vital signs are anything but good. Nurse Song's glare would have killed most men's resolve, but not his. Too much was riding on this experiment. Then, finally, the screech of warning bells and beeps drew him from her deadly gaze. 

From across the room at the newly relocated phase tracking equipment, Dr. Fredrickson calls out, "Amy's current location is in Trafalgar Square, London, with 86% density. But currently, her point of origin is fluxing between various locations, from here, to Ar11 and Ar12." He spun around in his chair to watch the monitors closely.

 "Great, we now know she can take the object with her through a phase shift. We know she can make it work after traveling with her, from one phase back to this one. We are almost there. You keep an eye on her phase density, point of origin, and destination; we will need to recall her in the end."

Nurse Song, "We should stop now. Although Amy performed better than any other participant in this type of experiment, I think she has had enough for today. She is in critical danger of SCA. Her potassium levels are off the chart, and we have already given her epinephrine and more morphine than recommended to stabilize her. Push Amy too far, and you will lose her to the drift or death. Your choice." 

Dr. White thumbs the talkie button. "Amy, what are you waiting for? Why can't you do this simple task after so many treatments? If you fail, I will have no choice but to revert to other types of treatments, as you clearly are not ready to be a program participant."

Amy hears Dr. White's voice coming through the walkie-talkie—but she chooses to ignore him for just a minute. Looking across the quad, she sees the sign to the underground.

The voice whispers like a beacon. "Go to your apartment to see if it is still as you left it: dishes in the skink, clothes falling out of drawers, an almost empty bottle of shampoo in the shower, and a half-drunk pot of coffee; on the stove." As Amy thought about her apartment, it appeared dream-like around her.   But memories of the treatments she endured as a child and the veiled threats from Dr. White washed away her dream. All that is left is her nightmares and burning pain.

Dr. White looks up as the EEG and EKG buzz a warning. Looking back at the chair, they all watch Amy phase back to the medical suite, and then she phases out once more. As she fades, the electrode and heart monitor tabs fall away. The only thing left linking Amy to the suit is the IV inserted in the catheter just below her collarbone and the one in her arm. 

Nurse Song's vexing voice rings across the room. "Doctor, we have to stop the experiment. We have lost control. She has shifted almost entirely from this world. She will either become trapped in the drift, accept a new world as her reality, or die." 

   Doctor White pushes his chair across the room, picking two vials from the drawer. Before Nurse Song can stop his hand, he injects the drugs directly into Amy's catheter. Leaving the room to watch, as the ghost of Amy emerged from the drift, her back arched off the chair, making a perfect bow as her mind and body screamed out in pain. Dr. White glowers at his staff, challenging them. "No, we do not. She is fine. Dr. Frederickson, where is her point of origin and destination currently?"

Looking at the monitor, "SHe is back on track, moving from here towards world AR11, with 68% density."

A smile creeps across Dr. White's face as he turns back to Amy; he leans down to her, whispering into her ear.

"Now, Amy, it is time to travel through the veil to the world of three Moons. Do you smell the flowers in the breeze; hear the stream as it rushes by?"

Amy stands in her apartment. To her surprise, the man from the square was standing there. She wonders what he is doing here. As the thought crosses her mind, she remembers his hazel eyes. No, he can't be here. He was her imaginary friend as a child. He is not real. Searing pain loosens her grip on this reality as Amy focuses on him, wanting to accept this as her new reality. In that moment of terror, every fiber of her being is yanked from this place back into the veil, and in that instant, her whole body is on fire. She smells flaming hair and skin, she is being burnt to bone and ash. Her mind reels, searching for a place to escape any place. Then she hears the Doctor, his voice whispers in her ear like a seraph showing her the road to escape. 

She sees her World with Three Moons, like a forgotten hangover. Her head pounds, her eyes burn, her lips are bone dry and cracked;  she can taste the saltiness of blood on them. Her skin feels as if she had been ripped off. Memories of the smell of burning flesh and cigarettes flood her mind. She longed for that painful past. Anything would be better than this now. Her mind, her thoughts, her very essence are burning away. Once that is gone, what will be left? Her body is in some white room, surrounded by white people, dressed in white, a mind that has broken, its true potential for insanity realized as she drools on a white foam floor. Amelia's screams rip from her body, bleeding through space. Noo!

Nurse Song looks at Amelia and then Doctor White in horror. 

You have to end this now.

Looking up, cold indifference to the pain Amelia suffers etches Dr. Whites face from the monitor and the stream of data that indicated that her Phase shift is almost complete. "No, Nurse Song, I do not. Just look at her. She is magnificent."

Then from his walkie-talkie, a whisper cracked through silence "Dr. White, I am in my Cabin"