“Yes, of course, but—”
The dinner bell chimes, echoing throughout the asylum’s speaker system, and interrupts me. Tiras’s eyes dart to the locked door and back to me, and he lets go of my shoulders. “Send me back, Siren.”
“Wait, what? You just asked if I wanted you to stay—”
“Just do it!”
My hand flashes with light as I dismiss Tiras back to the Ether.
Dinner comes and goes, and I don’t even know what I’m eating. An orderly leads me back to my room for the bedtime ritual of PJs and pills. Nurse Ryan, the night shift nurse, waits for us when we get back.
I take my pills—mundane pills, modern psychiatric meds that don’t affect my magic—and show Nurse Ryan my empty mouth. He grunts and presses on the hinges of my jaw, forcing my mouth further open to double-check that I haven’t cheeked anything. Ryan’s a bit of a “Nurse Ratchet” type. Well, Nurse Ratchet with a penis. A dick with a dick, if you will. He’s tall and gangly, with a brown buzz cut and a permanent sneer. I’m pretty sure he hates his job and hates mages, but from what the pyro twins say about him, he probably can’t find decent work elsewhere in this town. Something about an incident at the last hospital he worked in.
Once satisfied that I’ve been a good girl, he leaves and locks the door behind him; I’m alone again. I want to conjure Tiras for an explanation, but it scares me to think of what he might say when he does come back.
It’s the first night in my ten years at Palmore’s that I don’t even try to conjure him. Instead, I cry myself to sleep, curled into a tight ball of misery.
I wake alone, and fresh tears spring forth. I don’t know how I’ll make it through the day knowing my relationship with Tiras is in this limbo. After picking at my breakfast—and eating none of it—I make up my mind to conjure my love at bedtime and get to the bottom of this. We’ll have all night to talk once they call “lights out,” and he won’t make me dismiss him in the middle of the conversation.
Today’s Thursday, and that means arts and crafts. If I want to keep my magic to conjure him later, I have to behave now. Off I go to play with safety scissors and glue sticks and construction paper and whatever else the arts director has in store for us.
Arts is rather boring today, more so than most Thursdays, but I think it has less to do with the therapy and more to do with wanting to talk to Tiras, to find out what he’s so anxious about. My own anxiety builds just thinking about it, and I almost want to ask for one of those pills they let me take when the serum’s effects drive me bonkers.
After arts and crafts is lunch. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I force myself to eat one, but I don’t really taste it. I’ve got more important things to worry about besides what flavor jelly Ettie slapped on the bread today.
Once lunch is over, I have group therapy. Group therapy is different from the arts and crafts because group therapy is where we all sit in a circle and talk about how to use our magic responsibly. It’s all a crock of shit, but if I don’t go, I’ll get the serum for sure.
The pyro twins are in rare form today. They start in as soon as I enter the room.
“Hey, nympho! Fucked any good conjured beings lately?” Thomas laughs at his own joke.
“I bet that's the commotion we heard down the hall the other night,” Tessa says. She’s got a long leg draped over the edge of the plastic chair she's sitting in, playing with a small flame by running it through her fingertips. Her bright yellow-and-orange hair matches the flame she conjured, and her brother has the same terrible dye job.
“Yeah,” I say as I take my own seat at the far side of the circle, “you’re probably right. You see, I don’t have my own live-in lover like you two do. Must be nice that Dr. Palmore lets you guys share a room.”
Tessa bristles, and the tiny flame expands to encompass her whole hand. “Bitch, if you don’t shut up with the lame incest jokes, I'm gonna fry you to a crisp!”
“Calm down, Tess.” Thomas grabs the flame from her hand and snuffs it. “Don't let her goad you into getting serum'd up. She's not worth it.”
Dr. Palmore walks in just after Thomas extinguishes the flame, so I guess I'll have to wait for another day to see Tess get the serum injection she deserves.
“Good afternoon, mages. How are we all doing today?”
We all mumble our replies, but as usual no one wants to be here, so no one's really enthusiastic. Dr. Palmore isn't deterred by our combined apathy. He starts the therapy session right away, and since I was the latest to be caught in the act of misusing magic, he starts today's session with me.
“Now, I don’t know if everyone has heard, but Siren had a relapse a couple of nights ago. Siren, would you like to talk about it?”
No, I really wouldn’t, but if I don’t, I'll get in trouble—so I guess I will. I do my best imitation of remorse. “I'm sorry, Dr. Palmore. I just—I just missed him.”
“But you could have conjured him just to talk, couldn't you? If the core of the issue was missing your conjured being, a little chat should suffice. Don’t you think that maybe the real problem is…something else?”
Godsdamnit, he's overstepping his boundaries by taking the conversation in this direction in group therapy. This belongs in our one-on-one, not in front of all the residents. He’s also hitting a little too
