Story Four: Silence

In the early hours of the morning, while the sun had yet to rise, Jeremiah had already been awake for hours. He liked the quietness, the white emptiness of the Home when everything was dark; it was the noise, the spurious activity of the daily hours which frightened him. There were words, sounds, colors which Jeremiah did not understand, and he avoided them through solitude, through the sanctuary of this place. It was why he stayed in his room.

The pointer finger and middle finger on his left hand curled, and released. Curled, and released. It was how the nurse would know he was awake. She would come on tip-toe into the room, holding her breath and watching for the smallest sign that Jeremiah was awake. He knew this routine well, and he knew that if he did not move his fingers – curl, and release – she would leave the room again, completely unscathed, as if her coming had been only a dream.

Curled, and released. Curled, and released. There were times when Jeremiah pretended sleep, just to make the nurse go away. He saw no purpose in human company, interaction; he was perfectly happy alone. The doctor did not understand this, and he hated it about Jeremiah: the boy could tell. But it was not so difficult to understand, really, and if Jeremiah chose to, he could easily explain it. When you were alone, no one would die; no one would leave you sitting along on the living room floor, crying and drenched in blood that was not yours, helpless and terrified of every sight, every smell, every sound. It was a strange thing for so young a person to think, but that didn’t make it any less true.

Jeremiah’s parents had been killed when he was five. A group of men had broken into their apartment one night; Jeremiah didn’t remember any of the details except the blood. This was the night that Jeremiah stopped talking.

He could talk, of course, when he had the mind. On very rare occasions, he would talk constantly, all day, to himself or to anyone who happened to come into the room. He spoke in stories, real or imagined, a third person narrative that the doctor found often revealed something about Jeremiah’s own life, whether he claimed to remember it about himself or not. Jeremiah was a charming boy, still young enough to have the naïveté that adults so earnestly adored, and on the days he chose to talk, Jeremiah could attract quite the audience.
Curled, and released. But Jeremiah preferred the silence.

The nurse entered the room like clockwork; he could hear her soft footprints glide hesitantly across the floor, despite her every attempt to be silent. He had become especially attuned to the sounds throughout the Home, and though it had never been officially tested, he believed that he could hear people moving through the halls no matter what floor they were on. This also made the daytime difficult: with so many people running, talking, laughing, screaming, crying, all of the sounds jumbled together in his mind, until nothing was coherent. On particularly nice days, when the residents were kept inside for one reason or another, the noise would drive Jeremiah insane; he would crawl under his bed and curl into a ball, humming to himself and covering his ears. And he would fight if you tried to move him – the nurses had learned this all too well, and they knew now to leave him alone.

The nurse gently nudged his shoulder, and he obediently sat up in the bed. She had two pills in her hand today, and a glass of water that Jeremiah would completely drain, as if he had been dying of thirst until she saved him. There was never any trouble when Jeremiah took his medicine; he found that the more quickly he could take the medicine, and eat his breakfast, the more quickly he would be left alone.

“Doctor Marshall is coming to see you today,” the nurse told him quietly.

His fingers curled, and released. Then they stiffened. Jeremiah didn’t speak much when the doctor came in, but he knew that the doctor wanted him to. The doctor’s questions were normally endless, and unlike the nurses, who would leave if you ignored them, the doctor could sit and wait, sometimes for hours. And what Jeremiah considered to be much worse, the doctor would breathe heavily, the way he always did, as if he had just run up a long flight of stairs. The doctor was not even that big of a man, but he tired very easily, and breathed heavily, a sound which punctured Jeremiah’s silent room with thousands of tiny holes that could never be repaired.

On very rare occasions, the doctor would come up just to sit, would hold his breath in as long as possible and would try to make himself as unobtrusive as the white in the walls. His breathing was still louder than Jeremiah would have liked, on these days, but his willing silence made such visits easy to get through. As much as Jeremiah spurned human contact, these visits were almost comforting, in a way. Sometimes, he would sit on the bed next to the doctor and slide close to him, until their shoulders were touching. He would pretend it was his father, sitting there next to him, and it was the only time Jeremiah ever felt loved.

Curled, and released. He wondered what kind of day it would be.

“How are you feeling today, Jeremiah?” The doctor spoke softly, as if goading Jeremiah to sleep. He wheezed particularly loudly today, a sound compounded by someone running heavily down the hallway on the floor below. Jeremiah placed a hand gently against the wall, studying the low vibration of the running, and then wrenching his hand away, he drew his knees to his chest on the best. He had to fight the urge to cover his ears, which he knew the doctor would not allow.

“Would it be alright if we talked for awhile?” The doctor asked; Jeremiah still said nothing. “Is there anything you would like to talk to me about today?”

Is this a game? Jeremiah wondered. It was not he who wanted to talk, and he wished regretfully that the doctor would say what he wanted to say and then move on. It was cruel of the doctor to force Jeremiah to speak, but he had the feeling that it might be the only way.

“Once upon a time there was a boy, and the boy had a dog, and the dog chewed a shoe. And then the boy’s mother got mad because it was her shoe, and she made the dog go outside.” His voice cracked from neglect; he tried halfheartedly to remember the last time he had spoken to anyone. It had been a week ago, at least.

“Well, that’s a very nice story.” The doctor smiled encouragingly at him, as if wanting him to go on. Jeremiah fought the urge to sigh – an action which he knew the doctor would read into – and tried to think of something else. Sometimes, it seemed as though the doctor wanted to make sure that he could still speak, and after one or two stories he would declare himself satisfied and move on. Jeremiah tried again.

“Once there was a boy, and there was a police man, and the police man brought the boy to a big, white building. And the boy called the building home, and he lived there everyday, and he ate the food.”

The doctor nodded vigorously. “That’s right, Jeremiah,” he said softly. “Do you remember why the police man brought you here?”

Jeremiah said nothing, but his finger curled, and released. Jeremiah hated this question; he remembered nothing – it was just a story.

The doctor’s heavy breathing was the only thing which periodically punctured the silence between him and Jeremiah as the morning dragged on. Seconds, minutes, hours; Jeremiah didn’t keep track of time very well. The only thing he could distinguish was between day and night, and he knew that night was still a very long way off.

Finally, the doctor sighed and ran a hand through his silvery-black hair. “Jeremiah, did you know that today is the anniversary of your parents’ deaths?” Jeremiah sat motionless, except for his fingers which curled, and released. Curled, and released. The doctor cocked his head.

“Jeremiah, how does that make you feel?” This was another question which Jeremiah hated, and one which, in all of Jeremiah’s time at Lakeview Home, he had never answered. He wondered why the doctor bothered to ask it anymore.

“Jeremiah, thirteen years ago today, your parents were both shot and killed in your apartment building. Do you remember that this happened?” Nothing.

“Your parents were shot, Jeremiah. Three men broke through the window of your apartment, and they shot your parents. Do you remember that this happened?” Nothing.

“Jeremiah, you used to live with your parents. You had a mother, and a father. Do you remember them?”

“Nothing to remember,” Jeremiah finally stuttered. His fingers were frozen against his knee. “It’s just a story,” he said sternly to the doctor.

“No Jeremiah, it’s not a story. This is your life. This is what happened, why you’re here. Do you remember what happened to your parents?”

“It’s just a story!” Jeremiah screamed, and he felt all the movements in the Home come to a grinding halt. Though his voice was far from loud, and his shout no more obtrusive than the normal voice of the doctor, it had echoed through the room, down the hallway, spreading like some sort of infectious disease. He hated this about sound, normally – the way it spread through everything, contaminating everything, making nothing safe. But his voice had also incurred silence: he didn’t think such a thing was possible.

The doctor was shocked. His jaw hung slightly open, and his eyes were bulging noisily from their sockets; his whole face was awake, alive with emotion, and Jeremiah couldn’t take it anymore.

“Jeremiah –”

Jeremiah placed his hands over his ears, closed his eyes tightly against the world, and began to hum loudly to himself. It’s just a story, just a story, he reassured himself. Things like that don’t really happen. It was just a story that you heard one time. It’s just a story, and I’m insane.

The doctor wanted him to remember, but there was nothing to remember. There were no parents to mourn, no masked men to fear. There was nothing terrible, evil about the world and Jeremiah was safe, safe in his sanctuary. Jeremiah lived in an all-white room with all-white walls and all-white sheets. This is what Jeremiah remembered. Everything else was make-believe, pretend.

“Once upon a time, I stood in a room full of windows, and God wasn’t there.”