Jill’s drive home was a blur.  She was deep in thought and thoroughly disturbed.  Had that really happened?  Should she tell anyone?  If she did, would they think that she was the crazy one rather than Tug?

            Her hand pushed the floor shifter into park and when her eyes refocused, she saw the closed garage door in front of her.  Forty minutes had gone by in a blink; she wondered fleetingly how she had gotten home without something catastrophic happening.

            When she walked in her front door, she didn’t call for Aaron.  She knew he was home, but she couldn’t find the spare strength to open her mouth and expel the words. 

            Silently she wandered in, but paused with a jolt at the mirror just inside the entry way.  She had already set down her purse, but her light jacket was still draiped over her shoulders.  Jill studied her own eyes for a moment.  What she saw there, within the dark brown irises, was a hallow abyss.  Her throat tightened and she stepped back, bringing a hand up to her throat.  Life and hope typically lived in her eyes when she studied herself in the mirror each morning before work; that life she saw there gave her hope and the motivation to carry on another day, and it solidified the fact that she had made the right choice.  The void in her eyes just then made her thinking, for a brief second, that she was losing her mind.

            As she stepped back, she tripped over the shoe rack and stumbled into the closet.  Shoes scattered about in a loud ruckus, as well as the smashing of her body into the closet’s folding doors.  A sharp, “Oh!” escaped her lips and her hands flung back to break her fall.  Jill found herself with a stinging tailbone on the cold linoleum floor as she hear a voice from up two flights of stairs shout, “Jill?”

            “Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied, forcing her voice to sound normal and chipper.  It came out flat and she shook her head.  An anger unlike she had felt in years boiled up in her then, and she bolted up to her feet, threw off her coat which missed the rack and fell to the floor, and snatched up her purse in a clenched fist.  She hurried up the stairs, her teeth grinding and her limbs shaking.  What happened today?  She wanted desperately to tell Aaron, but did she dare?

            Jill’s face was still twisted in rage when she turned the corner at the top of the stairs.  She stopped just in time to avoid running headlong into Aaron.  The worry written on his face intensified.  “Jill, what’s wrong, sweetheart?”

            “Nothing,” she choked out.  “Just a bad day at work.”

            She diverted around him and ducked into the kitchen.  The plopped her purse on the counter and leaned over the stove.  As she took in the aroma of the food cooking, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  Get ahold of yourself.

            “I’ve never seen you like this,” Aaron said gently, walking in after her.  He walked with a long, slow gait, keeping his distance.  He leaned on the counter, his eyes studying Jill thoughtfully.  He waited, not wanting to press the issue if she didn’t want to talk about it.

            “I’m sorry,” Jill whispered.  But that was all she said.  Her eyes were still closed, her body leaning heavily over the stove, her head hanging between raised shoulders.  She breathed in deep again.  “You made lasagna.”

            “I did, and not just that frozen Stoffer’s kind, either.  I had a couple hours, so I made it from scratch.”

            A smile twitched one side of Jill’s mouth upwards momentarily.  “And cookies too.  I smell cookies.”

            “Chocolate chip.  They are in the oven now.”  He inched towards her and slipped a hand on to her hip.  Even though she had calmed a bit, he could still feel her shaking.  “So, if we hurry and eat, we’ll be done just in time for the cookies to come out of the oven.”

            “What did I do to deserve you?”  Keeping her eyes closed, she twirled around into his embrace.  Her arms snaked around his neck, and she melted into him, her head finally resting on his shoulder. 

            “Just being you,” he answered quietly into her ear.  He rubbed her back.  “Plus I got to leave work early, and you know how I don’t like to be bored.”

            “That I do,” she replied and absent mindedly ran her fingers through his dirty blonde hair.  “I’ll take it.”

            “You better,” he teased and back away from her, just far enough to see her face, and just close enough to keep his fingers on her waist.  “You go slip into your sweatpants and I’ll dish it up.  Meet you in the living room?”

            She nodded, finally opening her eyes enough to take him in.  He was her big teddy bear.  Dirty blonde hair that he kept a bit long, a beard that he kept nice most of the time, a big nose, and dark rimmed glasses.  Tall, kind of a gut, but she liked him that way.  She didn’t want perfection, she wanted a human-looking human.  He was sweet, strong, and knew her inside and out.  So why was she afraid to tell him what had happened to her earlier that day?

            “Sounds great.”  She lifted herself up on to her tippy toes and kissed him on the nose.  He hated that, but she loved to tease him.  They had been together for quite some time, but that flirtatious energy was still there.  That fact was something they both felt, and they both were proud of.  In that weird, cosmic way, they each knew they had found the one.  Against all odds, they had done it, and they both knew they had to hold onto that at all costs.

            Aaron let out an airy laugh as he tipped back his head, and she pranced past him in triumph.  When she disappeared up the stairs, she slumped forward again, losing the strength in her legs briefly.  You need to snap out of it.  NOW.  Or you need to tell Aaron.  Pick one.  Her hands pushed down on each step, assisting her legs in carrying her up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Aaron.

            Her eyes stung.  She pushed the balls of her hands into her eyes.  She thought they might act like corks and stop of the water works.  The tears just rushed around her palms and down her cheeks, her lungs pulsating for breath.  Aaron would know she’d be crying, but she can always deny it.  He was good at giving her space when she needed it.  She twirled around and fall backwards; she felt her hair, that she had let fall down about her shoulders when the raid was over and she could head home, swoosh up around her face, a black curtain shadowing the sides of her vision like blinders.

            Soft comforters sprouted up around her, which was comforting.  She didn’t need to worry.  She didn’t work exclusively in the high security block, and rarely interacted with Tug.  He wasn’t on her case load.  But somehow, despite all of that, she felt she had a moral obligation to tell someone.  What would anyone do to help Tug?  Or to help... what was his name?...  “They call me Brandon, but mostly Tug… My name is Randall Dash.  D-A-S-H.  D-A-S-H.  Randall Dash.  Randall.  Dash Dash Dash. I was working for the Central Investigation Department. Central Investi, central investi… D-A-S-H.”

            Randall Dash.  The tears still streamed from her eyes.  If not for any other reason, she had to tell someone at the psychiatric hospital so Tug could get more treatment.  He was obviously in the midst of some kind of psychotic episode.  Or even schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder.  Maybe he had just started new meds, or needed to switch to a different type of anti-psychotic.  She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling.

            “Jill, please help me, it’s Randall.  I’m trapped and I need help!”  The light blue of the sky shined down on her face from two little circles.  Two eyes, lidless and staring.  The face in which they sat was gaunt and long, the cheek bones protruding high, with dry skin stretched over them.  The pale skin was caked in a thin layer of dirt, the thin lips beneath a mountain of a nose carried the same layer.  Everything about him was cracked and dry; the hair was matted and unkept and sticking up at crazy angles as if hands pulled it up constantly.  Thin eye brows arched over the light blue eyes, the only color dotted in an otherwise drab landscape.  From up above her, as if part of the ceiling, the voice came again from between frail lips.  “Help me!”

            Jill’s abdomen clenched and her body froze as she screamed. 

            The suffocating void came again.  A rush of gravity and wind.  The eery tri-tone sound.  In the distance, a voice.  A different one, though, one she knew.  It was saying, “Jill!  Oh, my God, Jill are you okay?”

            In an instant all the space void sensations swept away, and all that was left was her lingering scream.  How long had she been screaming?  When did she end up on the floor?  Why was she drenched?  And why did her eyes feel like fire?

            She closed her mouth and tried to open her eyes again but could not.  Her fingers felt around in front of her and stopped short by a soft sweater.  Pressure around her intensified, but she realized after a moment of terrified déjà vu that the pressure was caused by contracting muscles of the arms that now enveloped her.  The familiar voice came again, but this time less distant.  “Jill, speak to me, are you okay?”  She could tell he was trying to remain calm and reassuring, although the fear leaked through slightly. 

            “I… I…” Jill felt exhausted, like all the energy was sucked out of her.  “I’m okay…”  Her muscles went slack.

            Aaron looked down on her, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.  One arm encircled her back and shoulders, and the other cradled her in place, his hand ending on her opposite cheek, his fingers touching the fringes of her dark hair.  As much as he wanted to know what happened, he first and foremost wanted to make sure she was safe and taken care of.  His only job now was to make sure she would be okay.  Jill’s face was flushed in a red splotchy rash; the areas around her eye lids were especially red.  Her eyes looked like they had been fused shut by a plethora of dried tears.  She was shaking violently and the voice that came out of her didn’t sound even remotely like hers.  It had stopped before he rushed into the room, but he swore he had heard a man’s voice.  In her screams, he could only make out one word: Tug.  What did that mean?

            His throat began to tighten and close but he perked up when Jill began to speak again.  He studied her face as she struggled to open her eyes which were fused shut.  “I need to tell you something,” she whispered, her voice misty with breath.

            “Anything, Jill,” Aaron said curtly.  “But I’m gonna get you to the hospital.”

            “No!” The volume of Jill’s voice startled him and his back straightened up.  His fingers traveled to feel her cheeks, which were burning up.  “I need to tell you before we do anything else.  I don’t expect you to believe a lick of it, but I need to get it out.”

            Aaron began to stand up, careful not to let Jill jerk around or otherwise fall to the floor in the process.  “You talk, I’ll get ready to leave.”  He stood up, placing her gently on the floor with a throw pillow under her neck.  He walked with urgency over to the closet, pushing aside hangers with dancing fingers when Jill spurted out one sentence that froze his blood.

            “A man named Randall Dash is trapped inside of one the patient’s at the hospital.”

            The two hangers in Aaron’s hand, which held his jacket as well as Jill’s, fell the floor.  He wanted to question her, he wanted to ask her why, and most of all, he wanted to tell her it was probably a psychological disorder, but then he remembered that she prefaced her statement with “I don’t expect you to believe a lick of it” and decided to remain empathetic, but more shocked than anything else.

            “W, why do you say that?” he asked as he awkwardly stumbled to pick up the two jackets on the floor.  He couldn’t seem to make his fingers work in the ways they needed to, so he kicked them aside and sat next to her on the floor again.  Jill pushed herself up on her elbows and reached out a hand in Aaron’s direction.  Without a word, he took it, and she promptly collapsed into his lap. 

            Sobbing, she said, “Randall Dash was in this room.  He was begging me to help him.  I feel like I’m going crazy, but I truly think there is something else going on.  Something isn’t right.”

            The voice.  Aaron swore up and down he had heard a male voice in the room before he had dropped the casserole dish in the kitchen to run up the stairs.  Could it be true?  A couple pieces were starting to fit, as unlikely as it seemed.  He moistened this lips with his tongue and opened his mouth, but his lips fell closed again just as fast.  He honestly didn’t know what to say.

            Jill’s eyes pulsated underneath the lids and finally inched open to slits.  Her eyelashes were crusted together, but she could see him through the criss-cross pattern they formed in front of her vision.  To her surprise, he didn’t look disgusted or dismayed by her admission; he looked pensive and concerned.  This reassured her a notch, though she still felt like the life had been sucked from her from one powerful swipe of a cosmic band aid.  She waited for a couple minutes to see if he’d respond, but he didn’t.  He just looked at her, or rather, through her, and she knew she could go on.

            “The patient was on a rampage, so myself, along with several other staff suited up to confront him.  He had already critically wounded one of the nurses in that ward, so we had to stop him before he killed anyone.  Steve, you know Steve, he suggested that we split up and check each of the individual units in our sweep, so I went into a room and before I could find the light the patient found me and restrained me.  I couldn’t see him that well because it was dark, but I swear to you his insane, homicidal mindset and expression melted away to… a different person.  Whatever lives behind his eyes transformed completely and when he spoke, it wasn’t the patient’s normal voice, tone of voice, vocabulary, or anything.  It was an entirely different person.”  Her eyelids fluttered and opened a bit more.  Aaron was till there, and he was still listening intently.  She couldn’t tell if he was beginning to think she was crazy or making something out of nothing, but his expression was gradually shifting.  “I know it could be schizophrenia or any number of other disorders, but Aaron, I need to…”

            The buzzing began at a quarter past three in the afternoon.  It ripped the relative silence violently, just as Jill’s shaking had broke her coffee mug as it dropped to the floor.  Her heart jumped into her throat, her adrenaline pumping.  The screaming alarm was all at once exciting and terrifying.  It rarely went off, but when it did, she and her coworkers could really show their true colors.  Just like a policeman or an EMT, times like this were what she had been training to conquer for years.

            With no time to check her pockets or to turn off the radio, she jumped up and lunched towards the exit, shards of porcelain crunching beneath her soles.  Both her shoes and her pants were white, but she didn’t even notice the spatter of coffee the cuffs of her pants.

            As she opened the door and entered the hallway, she noticed several other doors were open and others, just like herself, were peering out.  She wondered fleetingly if her face mirrored theirs: spooked yet solumn, determined yet apprehensive.  Without a word to her coworkers, she turned to her right and began to run.

            The lights and atmosphere changed as she entered the maximum security ward.  Jill’s eyes darted around to find the unit supervisor but it was eerily empty.  Had she really been the first one to arrive?  She pushed open a faded green door and entered a small office.  In a cabinet by the corner was the protective gear she and everyone else responding to the alarm had to put on.  Gloves.  Bulletproof vest.  Clear plastic face shield.  Protective plastic coated jacket and pants.  She had only had to don these clothes during drills, but each time she felt like she was going to do a space walk instead of ensure the safety of the unit, and of course, the safety of the inmates.

            Still hurriedly putting on the plastic pants, one side of her mouth raised in a smile.  A sarcastic one, but still a smile.  The people who were housed here weren’t technically inmates, but with the way things were run, she and the others who worked here couldn’t help but call them so.  They were clients, not inmates.

            She tried not to be cynical at work.  That didn’t help her, those she worked with, and all those housed her that she served.  In Jill’s three year tenure, it began to feel like she ran an asylum for the criminally insane.

            “Jill, good, you’re here.”  The bassy voice was that of Richard, the unit’s supervisor.  He quickly approached her, stopped beside her, and began to throw on the gear.  “Are you ready?”

            “I think so,” Jill replied, not looking up at him, but instead finished buckling up.  She put the helmet and guard on her head, plastic shield up so he could see her face.  “What’s the situation?”

            “One of our more challenging clients refused medication, put a knife he carved out of his toothbrush to the throat of the on-duty nurse.”  Jill could see Richard was visibly sweating.  He swallowed.  “He demanded to be discharged, that he no longer wanted our services.  Of course we can’t do that, so he stabbed the nurse and began to aggress towards other clients in the ward.”

            “Okay.”  No further words were needed.  Jill knew that she needed to arm herself, as well.  She hated weapons, but she needed something for the sake of self-defense.  She had an inkling about which client was the perpetrator, as well.  She was sure they all did, so she didn’t even ask.  She reached out and grabbed a hand shield and some mace from the cabinet, and looked up at Richard as she hooked them to her belt.  She wanted desperately to know if the nurse was okay, but she decided, as one of the first people to enter the scene, that she’d know soon enough, and asking would be a waste of precious time.  “I’ll go in when we receive two more people for duty.”

            “Should be soon.”  Richard was almost fully garbed.  His dark eyes looked tired, but pumped up.  It was after midnight, and the hospital was not as fully staffed as it would be during the day.  “When I pulled the alarm I called 911, so police and paramedics should be here soon, too.”  He looked unblinkingly as Jill, and his stare froze her in place, even though she had been heading toward the hallway again to wait for more staff to arrive.  The look she saw behind his eyes scared her more than the story he told or the ear-piercing alarm.  She struggled to ask him what else was going on, what other horrors did he know about, but right then a flood of workers came running in.

            The office became chaotic with activity.  Within minutes eight people were garbed up and ready to enter the scene.  Richard led the way, followed closely by Jill.  He raised his gloved hand and a hush took over the crowd.  He merely said, “River is armed and dangerous.  There may be more than one person wounded in there.  Be alert, restrain himself without use of excessive force.  Understood.”

            Heads all nodded in unison.  It was a strange and somber situation, but no more words were necessary.  They had to take control of the scene as quickly as they could and get things back to normal.  They were in the helping profession, not the criminal justice profession, so it was hard to grasp.  Nothing like this had happened here in over a decade.

            When the door opened, it was like walking into the void of space.  All the air seemed to be sucked into a black hole, along with all the sound.  An intense twisting pressure ripped at Jill’s lungs, and for a brief moment her body paused and begged her to let it float away into the void.  Her ears rang with the strangest melody, like the eery tri-tone of a train horn bent by the doppler effect.  Her cohorts rushed forward into the high security block, and Jill’s body was swept along with them.

            Two and two, they ducked in pairs down each of the hallways and planned to sweep all the way down to the other side.  The block wasn’t too complicated.  Five hallways stretched in straight lines from north to south, all parallel; to the east of these halls were the medication and nurses stations; to the west was the cafeteria and lounge areas.  Once all ten staff were safely on the south end, they’d sweep up either the east or the west side in groups of five and check the adjacent areas.

            It was only early evening, but the light coming in the windows was scarce.  The green light of the florescent overhead lights was starting to make Jill nauseated.  She glanced to her left and saw Richard leading a group down the farthest hallway.  She blinked multiple times as she realized the large protective shield in front of her face was beginning to fog up.  Was she really that nervous?  Was she beginning to panic?  Whatever the cause, she was heating up, and her body heat was screwing up her vision. 

            Her legs moved involuntarily and she realized she was paired with a man named Steve.  He was an older gentleman, but that didn’t work against him.  He was one of the most experienced staff in this mental hospital, and if something went wrong, he’d know what to do without a second thought.  Her eyes locked on him, trying to coax some eye contact out of him.  In these situations, verbal communication was the last thing you wanted, silence was your friend and would help you assess the situation.  Firm eye contact and a slight nod was all she needed to know she and Steve were on the same page.  He didn’t oblige her, just held out his stun gun.  He strained his eyes down the hall.  He could be pretty stand off-ish sometimes, but she couldn’t blame him for that right now.  His tiger-like instincts could help them as they made their way down the hall.

            Their footfalls fell dead against the metal walls, which was counterintuitive; one would expect, in a place made out of metal doors and walls, for everything to echo.  Not here.  It was designed that way to assist with those clients who had auditory or sensory disorders.  This was a place to be comfortable, to heal; not to aggravate or make disorders fly off the handle.  Jill again wanted to laugh to herself.  I guess we let one client down in that regard, she thought as they slowly made their way south.

            Suddenly, Steve looked at her.  This startled Jill, as she had resigned herself to thinking he was too obsorbed in the situation to even acknowledge her.  He rushed towards her, and she jumped back, the air pushed out of her lungs in a low whoosh, and Steve grasped each of her biceps with each of his hands.  Jill’s breath rattled and wavered.  What was going on?

            “I want you to listen, as I’m only going to say this once,” Steve said in a tone so low she could barely hear it.  It was laced with urgency.  “We need to find the purp and we need to find him now.  You check all the rooms to the left side and I’ll check the ones on the right.  We can’t risk a surprise attack.  He might be hiding waiting for an ambush.  Do you understand?”

            Jill registered his fingers digging into her skin, his breath reaking of the meatball parm sandwich he had for lunch steaming up her plastic face shield from the opposite side, and that weird fire in his eyes that wasn’t anger, but desperatation, shining through the green-blue gloom.  This was a side of Steve she had never seen, but if she were to put a word to all the strange symptoms she was seeing in that moment, she would have used ‘power-hungry.’  She wasn’t to push him away, tell him that he wasn’t to speak to a superior in such a way, to tell him what the protocol was and that he had no right to deviate from that.  But she didn’t.  She knew her fear was palpable and he could see it.  Plus, she couldn’t argue with his reasoning.  The client had already assaulted another staff person, she he was likely armed as well as dangerous.

            She nodded.  He unwrapped his fingers from her arms and turned his back to her.  Again she asked herself silently, What is going on here?

            Jill turned around.  Her back had been shoved up against a metal door of room 3B.  That seemed like a natural place to start, so she opened the door ever so slightly and creeped through the tiny crack.  The door closed with a muted thud and, to her shegrin, she found herself in blackness.  She didn’t work in this ward very often, so she kept as close to the door and outer wall as she could and lifted her left hand.  It felt along the wall on that side for a light switch.  As she began to wonder if turning on the light was the best idea, something outside of herself made that decision for her.

            Once again she was restrained, but this time more violently.  Tears welled up in her eyes as they scanned the darkness.  She couldn’t see anyone, she could just feel him.  A large hand was pushing up against and covering her mouth.  The pushing was so intense and jagged that the hand was nearly pushing up against Jill’s nostils, threatening to suffocate her.  She breathed heavily, and a rancid smell rose into her senses.  It smelled a lot like dirt, but also like BO.  The tears were now streaming down her cheeks as she tried not to heave from the putrid smell.  The man’s breathing was out of rhythm, which reminded her of an eratic jazz song.  Every so often a snippet of a laugh would seep through, and then a cry of pain, and then grunting.  Jill’s eyes kept scanning the darkness, hoping to find a way to get out of his grasp.

            Before she knew what was happening, the hand whipped away from her mouth, and two hands, and then arms, snaked around her waist.  Muscles engaged and threw her up against the door.  The air was knocked out of her and she audibly gasped for air, her mouth open wide.  Her new location by the door afforded her one thing: a bit of light.  The man’s arms were still around her and in the light Jill could see his face.  She didn’t immediately recognize him due to all the shades of grey and shadows draped over it.  His eyes pierced hers, however; the color of them leaped above the dim light that made the scene look like a black and white photo.  His eyes were blue, like a clear spring sky.  In his eyes Jill wanted to think of freedom, like an eagle gliding on the wind, but all she saw was madness.  As if a hand controlled this man using a remote control or joystick, like a drone.  His eyes seemed lidless as he stared at her.

            Just then, his grip loosened a little and a marked change occurred.  The madness faded away and was replaced by a panicked look; when his eyes registered on Jill, she thought she perceived a look of unadulterated joy.  His lips were cracked and dirty, but they opened and said, “I’m here.  Oh, wonderous Lord above, I’m here.”

            Jill looked puzzled, her eye brows lowering.  He shook his head.  “No matter, I only have a moment.  But wow!”  He smiled briefly, but in a second the smile was gone.  “Please help me,” his voice sounded urgent, rattling with grief.  “Please, I’m trapped, I’ve been trapped here for years and years!”

            Jill had so many questions but all she could squeak out was, “Trapped… where?  Here, all Hillside?”

            “No, in… in here.”  The man’s voice rose in agony, in confusion.  His eyes moved from Jill’s face for a moment, in thought.  Then one of his hands let her go and rested on his chest.  “In here.  This vessel, this body, it isn’t mine.”  Jill’s face began to twist, her lips moving desperately to speak, but he interrupted her.  “They call me Brandon, but mostly Tug.  I have no idea who that person is.  I assume it’s the name of this body.  My name is Randall Dash.  D-A-S-H.  I was working for the Central Investigation Departm…”

            In midsentence the man began to scream uncontrollably, both in pitch and volume.  He let Jill go and fell the floor, moving in small jerks that reminded her of someone getting tazed.  She jumped to her feet and opened the door.  The light spilled into the room and over the man.  She unholstered her pepper spray and held it out defensively.  The man lay on the floor still, miraculously.  She held out the can, her finger on the trigger, until Steve was at her side.  She heard many other muffled echoes approaching her location as well.  The rest of the party was coming to her aid.

    Aaron paced the washed out, white floor in front of the coffee makers and water cooler.  He had been waiting for nearly an hour and at this point, it was nearly 4am.  He hadn’t heard anything besides his shoes hitting the floor and the occasional page over the intercom system.  In a way, he was glad it was so quiet, but in another way, he had hoped that he would have heard some news awhile ago.

    He took his hands out of his pockets, paused, and looked over at the nurses station.  Still empty.  He hadn’t seen a nurse since he had checked Jill in.  What were they doing back there?  Did they have to do emergency surgery or something?  It seems like they would have told him about that, or at least checked with him since he is her power of attorney, before going ahead with anything major.  A heat rushed into his cheeks and he could feel his pulse quick and throb in his temples.  His feet began to move again but not in a pacing pattern, but in a b line to the front desk.  Before he could get halfway there, however, a man stopped him.

    “Aaron Mainor?”

    “That’s me,” Aaron answered irritably.

    “Your girlfriend is Jill Allen, correct.”

    “You got it.”

    “I just wanted to apologize for the long wait, I know how stressful that can be.”  The doctor looked genuinely sorry, but all Aaron could think was Yeah, right, you jerk face.  “We have been doing a battery of tests to see what might be causing Jill’s symptoms.  But with each consecutive test, we get negative results, meaning we can’t find anything abnormal with her vitals, in her blood, or anything else.  We even tested for the least likely culprits, such as tuberculosis and measles, and just as we suspected, those are negative, as well.”

    The man stopped and studied Aaron.  The pulsing in his temples began to move to his eyes.  He blinked and put a hand on his hip, transferring his weight from one foot to the next.  “So… you can’t find anything wrong?”

    “No.  There is nothing we can find to cause a spike in bodily tempurture or the rash or how, as you were telling the nurse, how her voice seemed to change.”  The man, whose name tag that hung on his breast pocket seemed to be Dr. Charles Dow, looked Aaron straight in the eye, unwaivering.  He wasn’t bullshitting, Aaron decided.

    So, the next logical question seemed obvious.  “Can a psychological problem cause physiological symptoms like the ones she is presenting?”

    Dr. Dow’s eyes focused on the ceiling in thought, and when he cast them back on Aaron, he said, “In some cases, yes.  Jill’s symptoms are very severe, and categorizing them as psychological can’t be done until psychological testing has been done by a psychiatrist.  Most of the time psychological problems manifest in things like weight gain, inability to sleep, or muscle pain and weakness.  It’s extremely rare to have Jill’s symptoms and have the cause be psychological, but it’s not unheard of.”

    Aaron nodded.  “Can I see her?”

    “Yes, you may.  We are going to keep her here overnight for observation, and to get her fluids up.  She was a bit dehydrated.  She needs to rest, too.  Seeing as how she’s a relatively healthy woman, she was very weak when she got here.”  As the doctor spoke, he began to walk down the hallway the way he had come.  He motioned for Aaron to follow, and Aaron cracked his knuckles and followed close.  “When we get to her room, remind me to make an appointment for Dr. Weston, that’s our resident psychiatrist, to visit Jill for a preliminary evaluation.”

    “Will do,” Aaron replied blankly, wondering if Jill would even agree to seeing a psychiatrist.  They’d find out in the morning.

    “Do you know of anything that has happened recently that could have caused her trauma?”

    “Well,” Aaron began, not knowing where to begin.  “She mentioned something had happened at work today.  She’s a substance abuse counselor over at Hillside State Hospital in out in Marshfield.”

    “So she works in mental health.  Interesting,” Dr. Dow said lightly, almost to himself.  “How long has she been doing that?”

    “A little over three years.  She had her work anniversary last month.”

    “Are the people she serves severely mentally ill?”

    “Yes, most of them are.  And, as you know, the vast majority of the population she serves are criminals.”

    “Hmm, yes, of course.”

    “She had a run-in with a client.  He had gotten ahold of something that could injure people had was trying to hurt staff.  She was part of the team trying to capture and subdue him.”

    “That could be a very traumatizing experience, absolutely.  I’ll make a note of it on her file for Dr. Weston.”  He pressed his lips together in a meek smile and turned to look at Aaron briefly before casting his eyes down the hall again.  He stopped abruptly, pivoted on his heel, and pressed a button in the elevator bay they now found themselves in.

    “Do you… do you think she’ll be okay?”  Aaron didn’t want the water works to threaten to start up again, but they were.  What had happened to Jill in their bed room had been terrifying.  He thought, even though both he and Jill weren’t super religious, that she had been possessed.  What she had been going through was exactly like something taken straight from a horror film.  Unexplainable rash and heat.  Eyes sealed shut.  A voice coming from her that was not her own.  But that seemed ludicrous.  Even more ludicrous than a man being trapped in another man’s body?  He shivered.  He wished this all would end and they could get on with their lives happily and peacefully, just like they had done for five years previously.

    “In my professional opinion, yes, she’ll be fine.  Physically she seems okay.  Once we know about the mental piece from Dr. Weston, we’ll likely have a better understanding of what she’s going through.”

    As the elevator rose to the third floor, Aaron’s head spun.  His irrational longing for it all to go away was growing stronger, but he knew it wouldn’t.  He had to remain calm and comforting for Jill, but what if she really had snapped?  What if everything she said was a fabrication?  What if her account of what happened really didn’t happen at all?  The last thing he wanted was to go behind Jill’s back, but he had to do a bit of snooping to make sure her story made sense.  She had mentioned Steve in her rant last night.  He resolved, with a heavy heart, to talk to Steve, casually, as to not raise suspicion, about what had happened at Hillside during the lock down.  

    “She’s resting in room 308 right now.  Go on over.”  Dr. Dow began to walk away, presumably to take care of other business, but he stopped and added in a hushed tone, “You can stay and sleep in her room if you want.  Visitors usually can’t do that, but you have my permission.”  He winked and smiled, this time showing teeth and kind regards, not just a meek attempt to comfort him.  Aaron smiled back.

    “Thanks, doctor.  I appreciate it.”  He held up a hand in regards as they parted ways.  Aaron spied room 308 straight ahead and rushed that way.  The third floor was just as empty and desolate as the main lobby floor, and that gave Aaron the heeby jeebies.  

    As he approached the door to room 308, he heard machines puffing air and whirring with electrical pulses.  He hoped Jill wasn’t hooked up to anything scary.  The door was open a crack, so he slowly pushed it with his finger tips ajar enough to enter.  When he stepped over the threshold, the first thing he noticed was Jill asleep in a bed to his right.  It was striking how she looked sprawled there, like she had been placed there while unconscious.  Even though Dr. Dow said she was fine, he somehow didn’t think so.  Her weakness and inability to walk concerned him greatly.

    He toyed with the idea of waking her up for several minutes.  While he thought it over, he said in a chair next to her bed, directly in front of a night stand.  He made his decision and placed a hand on her arm.  It seemed clammy and cold, but he nudged her a bit anyway and whispered, “Jilly bean.  Earth to Jilly bean, it’s Teddy Bear.  Ground control to Major Jill.”

    As if those were the magic words, her head lolled over and her eyes flew open.  A radiant smile came to her face and in a groggy, sandpapery voice, she answered, “Teddy Bear! I’m so happy to see you!”

    “You look great!” Aaron was taken aback by how different she looked from when they first arrived at the hospital.  The red rash was gone entirely and her eyes were back to normal, lit up and full of life.  Even as his fingers lingered on her skin, it turned from pale and clammy to warm and healthy.  He raised his other hand and grabbed hers, which was hindered by an oxygen meter strapped to her index finger.  He didn’t mind.  “How do you feel?”

    “Surprisingly well.  Now that you’re here, even better.”  Her smiled lingered and he couldn’t help but be at ease.  “Did the doctor say anything?”

    “Just that after a battery of tests, he couldn’t find anything wrong with you.”

    Jill sniggered.  “Figures.”  She tightened her grip on Aaron’s hand.  He felt that her palm was sweaty.  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

    Aaron hesitated.  This made Jill look away and loosen her grip on his hand.  He cursed himself for hesitating and said pleadingly, “No!  Jill, I don’t think you’re crazy.”  She sighed as he added, “Do you want to know why?”

    “Because you love me?” she teased, sarcastically.  He shook his head and tried not to roll his eyes.

    “That, too, but… and I hope you believe me when I say this, but, I heard a man’s voice coming from the bedroom when you were up there and I was dishing out the lasagna.”

    Jill’s eyes widened.  She moved around in bed, trying to straighten up.  “Really?”

    “Yes, really.”  He flashed her a reassuring smile as he pushed his glasses, which were slowly sliding down his nose, back into place.  “I couldn’t tell what it was saying entirely, but I got one word.  And it has haunted me ever since.”

    “What word?”  She sounded anxious, her voice strained, a half step higher than her regular tone.

    He took in a deep breath and held it for a moment.  After he uttered this word, there was no going back.  Things would get worse before they’d get better, and there would be no possibility for their life to go back to normal any time soon.  Aaron let out his breath slowly through barely parted lips, producing a hissing noise reminiscent of a balloon with a leak in it.  “…Tug.”

    She bit her bottom lip and her eyes lit up.  Her stomach flip flopped in her abdomen.  “So, you get it, then!”

    “Not really,” Aaron admitted, languidly.  

    “Have I ever told you about Tug?”

    “Tug is a person?”

    “Yeah, Tug is a nickname for one of the patient’s at Hillside.”

    Aaron raised an eyebrow.  “You never tell me about patient’s by name, sweetheart.  HIPAA.”

    Humbled, she bit the inside of her cheek.  After all these years, she’d never used a patient’s name outside of the hospital.  She knew all the stories, played them over and over again in her head, but if she ever mentioned them to Aaron, she omitted names for privacy and confidentiality of those she served.  “Wow.  Yes, HIPAA.”  She sighed again, followed by a short giggle.  “Well, you know what, screw HIPAA.  His name is already out there, and I think it’s in every body’s best interests if I spill it.”

    “So, Tug is the patient you had a run in with…”

    “Yes, the one who turned into a pleading Randall Dash.”

    A memory flooded into Aaron’s mind right then, just four letters, but they stood out and chanted in his head like an incantation.  He said them out loud.  “D-A-S-H. D-A-S-H.”

    “You heard that, too, eh?”

    “Yes, and it was the man’s voice saying it, not yours.  As well as ’Tug.’  Why in the world was it in our house?”

    “I have no idea.  But I need to find out why.  I almost feel like… whatever is wrong with Tug is beginning to become wrong with me.  Why else would I, out of the blue, become so deathly sick?”

    The quiet ward began to creep in on Aaron, and he got the heebie jeebies again.  He lowered his voice.  “Your doctor suggested that a psychiatrist come see you in the morning, to see if your symptoms are psychologically…”

    “No, we have to go, I’m certain a shrink won’t find anything amiss, either.  I have this feeling it’s beyond medical science.”

    Aaron only nodded.  As awkward and impulsive as it may have seemed, and as against his character as it was, he nodded and Jill swung her legs out of bed.  They would start their research tomorrow.