Static blared down as the creaking wheelchair was pushed into the sterile white room. One person secured it to the interview table while another held the door open, asking an off-hand question that wasn't answered. The table catch was tested with a firm tug. The bindings considered secure, the two left the room, leaving no sound but the buzzing of the single tube-light above to fill the void caused by their absence. The keen of hearing might pick up on another sound; a soft, rhythmic breathing from the chair.
Contrasted against the blindingly white tiled surfaces that covered every surface of the room save the sparse furniture, the inhabitant of the chair was the only source of colour that wasn't a shade of white or grey. Green scales glinted under the harsh lighting, so thin and pallid that they threatened joining the sea of white surrounding them. Yellowed horns, cut at a smooth angle part way up. Three scales were missing from his throat, replaced by a set of ragged, aged stitches. It was several minutes of soft breathing and static before another door opened, letting the busy noise from the opposite hallway spill into the tranquil room.
"Sorry, sorry..." A man said, pushing his way into the room and carefully closing the door behind him. The bolts of the steel chair opposite the green figure groaned as pressure was applied to them. The new man breathed hard, as if he was rushing just before coming into the room. With some need to fill the silence even more, he hummed distractedly to himself as he shuffled through some papers clipped to a stiff piece of wood in one of his hands. It snapped loudly as he placed it upon the table, making the green figure wince slightly.
"So, Jacob." The table shifted almost imperceptibly as he leaned forwards expectantly. "How are we today?"
'Jacob' counted five seconds of blessed silence, or at least as silent as the room could be as the man continued to catch his breath.
"Your file says you've been doing quite well." The man said, casually lifting up one page from the papers. "You'll notice you've earned a few more liberties since our last talk."
The green figure grimaced blindly. They'd given him the laces to his slippers back. That had been a big event. There had been a lot of talk of trust, of security, of threats should the trust ever been broken again.
The reptile slowly rotated his hands so his palms were facing upwards, still bound by the strong cotton bindings tied around his fore-arms. Another moment of silence passed before the man clicked his tongue.
"Yes, well... I also see here that you've been eating well. That's always good to see."
Jacob raised his head to face where he would approximate the man's own to be, and showed his teeth. He didn't grin, he simply parted his lips until he felt the cool air touch his gums. This earned him a soft cough from the man opposite, who shuffled a couple of papers around as Jacob re-covered his teeth and lowered his head once more.
"Jacob... do you remember why you had to be restrained?" The man asked gently. Very gently, far too gently for any of the words to have any kind of genuine tenderness or concern put into them. His words were as plastic and sterile as the rest of the room. "Jacob?" He pressed on, apparently having lowered his head to try to catch a glimpse of the reptile's eyes. "It's the same reason they had to file your teeth down. You were a danger to yourself, do you remember?"
Jacob pulled at his arm bindings weakly, causing his right arm to sting uncomfortably. Rather than attempting to break free, he simply wanted to push them against the chair's arm rests, to feel something different against his scales, to check he could still feel anything at all. The telltale numbness across his left wrist told him he was still bound in more ways than one. The name tag caught on the worn leather of the arm rest.
"Don't worry, you will be released just as soon as this interview is concluded." The man said matter-of-factly, apparently misreading the reptile's slow movements. Jacob grunted quietly enough to be missed amongst yet more paper shuffling.
"Now, it says here that you still have trouble socialising. Does that sound right to you?"
Jacob raised his head again and sneered towards the voice, after which he heard a tired sigh.
"You know we're only trying to help you here, Jacob. Everything will work a lot faster if you would simply let us."
This stirred something in the lizard, who moved his torso forwards so quickly it made the man opposite him pull back, startled by the sudden movement. His sneer grew into a snarl, and with great reluctance Jacob began to open his eyes. The glare of the white florescent light shot pain through to the back of his skull, but he endured, glaring at the man in front of him. His shining golden irises reflected the light harshly in all directions, a blossom of gold in the sterile room.
"My name," he growled in a low, hoarse tone, "Is Joshua." He slouched back in his bound chair just as quickly as he'd pushed forwards, taking in several deep breaths with his eyes once again pulled mercifully closed. Pain blossomed from his back, but that was something he could ignore far more easily than eyestrain.
A few minutes of laboured breathing hung between the two figures. The man, who Joshua had now recognised as the one calling himself 'Doctor Ollie', seemed to be mulling things over. Then, the telltale sound of paper being moved made the reptile sigh angrily.
"We're trying to help you, Jacob." Doctor Ollie repeated in his sickening tone of mock consideration. When it became clear that the doctor would get nothing more out of 'Jacob' on that topic, he sorted through some papers and tried a different topic of conversation.
"Your file tells me that you've been drawing again." Jacob put on a grin on his face as fake as the doctor's concern. "Therapy." The lizard choked out, spitting the word as if it were poison. "Mmm-hm." The doctor responded. "Jacob, drawing is good therapy when you do it in therapy." He said calmly. "We have rules about taking art materials into the rooms, you know this."
Joshua did know this. He also knew what happened when he broke the rules. Just the thought of those cold, barren rooms he had been forced to sleep in made him tense his jaw. The punishments were worse. He had been surprised at the lack of creativity those with unchecked power demonstrated when he first found out. Now, he understood the cruel monotony of always knowing what to expect.
"I didn't." He growled.
"Jacob, you have drawn all over your skin. Are you saying you didn't do that?" The doctor pointed out, his tone unfaltering. Practice, Joshua supposed. He took a few moments mulling over what Ollie was saying before responding.
"Alan." He said, catching a cough in his throat just as he finished the word. The doctor leapt on the response with barely contained gusto.
"Ah, your room-mate, Alan." He said as the reptile recovered from his cough, pausing to add "Of course," through a barely disguised grin. Joshua could hear it in his voice. He gripped the hand rails of his chair to stop the frustration showing on his face.
"Yeah." He whispered. "Alan drew it." A quiet scratching noise pierced the otherwise omnipresent static. A pencil against paper. The doctor was making a note of that in his file. Joshua released his grasp on the chair, forcing his filed down claws to relax. "B-before he left." He added hurriedly. The scratching only paused for a moment.
"I see." Ollie muttered. "Jacob, you know Alan left our care almost two years ago now, yes?"
Joshua couldn't help but sneer again at the wording. It was chosen so specifically, engineered to take all the meaning out of what was being said. "Yeah." He said, almost a whisper. "He... left."
"Yes, almost two years ago." The doctor reaffirmed. "The file says those markings weren't on your body last week, yet today, only two days after your art therapy session, here they are."
The doctor must be so proud of himself for having deduced that little contradiction. Joshua sighed inwardly. He slowly pushed his torso ahead once more, slowly this time, and raised his head to the eye height of Ollie. Still with his eyes closed, he listened hard for the doctor's breathing as he forced out two more words.
"Alan's dead."
The doctor's breathing didn't change at all. It was the steady rhythm of a slightly out of shape man not being surprised in the least. No reaction, nothing. "Yes," he affirmed without emotion, "Like I said, he left our care almost two years ago."
Joshua could do nothing but nod at this. It was, after all, technically true. It's hard to administer arbitrary surgery and mind-bending medications to a dead body, after all. Rather, it was less easily justified.
"So who drew those markings?" Ollie pressed on, unphased.
Joshua sighed. "Me." He grunted, slowly leaning back into his padded chair.
"Then, when you told me Alan did them, you lied. Why would you do that, Jacob?"
Joshua sneered again at the voice. He wasn't in the habit of lying, it wasn't something that'd ever sat right with him, but after six years in hell...
"Before he left." Joshua grunted, trying in vain to clear the soreness from his throat before continuing. "Before he... left, Alan... I let him. It helped. Then he went. Now... I remember."
The strain from speaking so many words in sequence put a strain on Joshua, and he spent almost a minute coughing helplessly into his lap before the pain subsided enough to let him breathe again.
"Jacob, you know you're not allowed art supplies in your room." The doctor responded once the lizard had quietened down once again. As if marking a checklist, he picked up the wooden pad of papers and flipped the page. "Please see to it that all remaining art supplies are returned."
Joshua nodded. It's all he could do at this point to move the conversation along. You can't argue with a flow chart, and the doctor was exactly that in physical form.
"Let's see..." Ollie took some time looking over something on the pad before speaking again, though his tone had been transitioned into a slightly chirpier version of mock concern. "Ah, it says you apologised to the attendant who was present at your last incident, that's good."
Joshua turned his head to the side, unafraid to show his shame. Yes, he had apologised, as much as it had hurt to do so. The man was doing his job and had been hurt in the process. He didn't deserve what happened to him, and Joshua didn't think people should be subjected to pain they didn't earn themselves.
"Your file says you still didn't take responsibility, however. Hmm, that's unfortunate." The doctor was speaking to the pad now, Joshua could tell. He was right, though; the 'incident' hadn't been Joshua's fault. He hadn't caused that man to be hurt, he had simply been one part in a much bigger, absurdly complex machine. A machine designed by mad men to hurt others for profit. A machine Joshua was stuck in, like the cog he was.
Another check-point pushed the unpleasant thought from Joshua's mind. "Now, Jacob, it says here that you aren't taking very well to your medication, is that right?"
This was going to be a sticking point, Joshua could tell. Swallowing painfully, he grunted out a response. "Not for me." The doctor sighed, and put down his pad again. It seemed as if irritability was slowly beginning to creep into his voice, and Joshua for one couldn't wait to see how it would manifest when it eventually bloomed.
"Jacob, the medication is meant to help you. If you're getting side-effects, you need to tell us about it."
Joshua sighed heavily, and opened his eyes to look at the doctor. He bore the burning light, the unimpressed and condescending look of the man in front of him, and tried to convey the truth of his words through his eyes. After all, eyes are meant to be the windows to the soul, right? Joshua had heard that somewhere, and if ever he had wished for it to be true, it was now.
"I am Joshua." He said, pausing as his throat retched from the pain. He bore on, "I am not Jacob. Your... medicine. It is not for... me. It can't work. On me." He took a moment to compose himself and close his eyes, letting them water the sting out before opening them again and continuing. "Not how it is... supposed to. I am not like you."
The doctor nodded along with Joshua's words, but the reptile could tell none of it was sinking in. He closed his eyes and relented, leaning back with a wince. Of course it wouldn't work. It never did. Explaining sight to a blind man would be easier.
"You must take the medication if you want to get better, Jacob." The doctor insisted. "Will you try in future to take it as prescribed? For me?" His words came as hollow and emotionless as ever, but Joshua couldn't help but let a single, frustrated tear fall down his cheek. His eyes watered from the light that still burned them, even under the safety of his eyelids. He nodded silently, and the doctor seemed happy enough with that response to move on once again.
"One last... thing." Ollie's voice wavered for a moment, which made Joshua's heart flutter. What was that, confusion? It sounded like something, certainly. A hesitation, the briefest of glimpses of something resembling real concern. Real, actual concern. Joshua opened his eyes once again, and looked at the doctor. His expression, from what the reptile could make out from between bleary-eyed blinks, was one he hadn't seen before.
"Your file says you've been... talking to attendants about your surgeries." The doctor muttered, as if finding this information out for the first time himself. Joshua nodded a little faster than he was intending to, surprised himself by the encroachment of an entirely new topic. "Yes." He said as clearly as he could, pushing his words through his pain-addled throat. "My surgeries."
"Well, according to your file..." The doctor took a few moments to flip through the last remaining pages, pause, and then go back through them again. "...Jacob, I can't find any history of surgery here, besides the filing of your teeth just a few days ago."
Joshua was now leaning as far forwards as the chair's bindings would allow, straining himself as non-threateningly as he could as his wide eyes stared at Ollie. "Yes!" He said as softly as he could, fighting against the pain in his neck and his excitement. "M-my surgeries! M-my neck, my h-head, tail, my w-... my..."
"Your wings?" Ollie said flatly, looking up at Joshua with an incredulous expression. Joshua sat motionless, hoping against all hope. "Yes." He whispered weakly, barely able to push the air out of his lungs at all.
The doctor sighed. "Jacob, you don't have wings." He said plainly. Joshua nodded emphatically, straining against his bindings in an attempt to turn his back to the doctor. "Y-yes! Surgeries! Filed down... down my horns, and now m-my teeth, and before, my wings, so I can't... so I couldn't..."
Joshua faltered to a stop. He could tell by Ollie's unchanging expression that none of this was sinking in. He bowed his head in frustration, letting his eyes close tightly as tears slid down his smoothly scaled face.
The doctor sighed deeply. "Jacob, your file says quite plainly that you're a canine. Now, I may not be an expert on biology-- well... I suppose I am, in a way." The doctor allowed himself a slight chuckle at his own stupid joke. "But I don't seem to recall any canines with wings."
Joshua opened his mouth straight at Ollie and strained, strained harder than he ever had before in his life, pushing his second diaphragm as hard as it would go to let something out. He wanted to see flames burst outwards, engulfing the chuckling doctor in a maelstrom of chemical heat.
If his second diaphragm were still there, maybe it would have pushed upwards. If his tertiary lungs were still attached, maybe he'd have pushed something out. If he'd been allowed to eat the sulphuric minerals he'd been craving for the last six hellish years, he may have even been able to manage to burn the indignant man in front of him. Instead, all that he could accomplish was a gargled wheeze, followed by the worst pain he'd felt since the last time he'd tried.
He collapsed into himself, wracking coughs punishing him for his attempted honesty. By the time they succumbed, he felt as though he'd been punched a dozen times in the stomach. None of it hurt as much as knowing he was still trapped in this building, in this ward, in this room... in this chair. Tears rolled down the reptile's face as he silently sobbed into his lap, his arms unable to come to his face and cover his shame.
"...Yes, so." The doctor cleared his own throat, unintentionally salting Joshua's freshly torn wounds. "You haven't had any previous surgeries. If you feel like these delusions are getting any worse, please let our staff know." He said with a plastic smile. The chair creaked once again as he stood up. "Please, Jacob, you must know we are only here to help."
Between sobbing breaths, Joshua whispered something barely audible. The doctor paused mid-turn, and asked the lizard as pleasantly as his sterile voice could. "Could you repeat that for me, please?"
Joshua opened his eyes once again, blinded by his own rolling tears, and spat between his sobbing breaths. "J-Joshua. Please, please, my... my name is Joshua..." He closed his eyes and hung his head once more. Leaning back against the chair, he could feel the soreness from the stumps on his back burning him, even through the padding on the chair.
The doctor sighed quietly to himself, and opened the doors. Sounds of administrations once again filled the room, drowning out the reptile's quiet sobs. "I hope your file improves by the next time we meet, Jacob." With that, the doctor departed, pulling firmly on the door to ensure it shut securely.
Joshua sat there sobbing into his lap, with nothing to console him but the harsh, hissing static of the light above. "Joshua..." he whispered quietly to himself. "I-I'm... Joshua..."
Even as he whispered these words to himself, they became garbled. They began to sound alien to him. His anger, hope, and confidence had drained away long ago, and he had managed to keep himself sane by making sure of what few things he knew for sure.
"J-... Joshua..."
Eventually, even that hoarse whisper was empty of truth.
The door behind him opened quietly. The catch on the table was removed to allow the chair to move freely. The warmth of a head was felt just above the reptile's left shoulder. "Ready to move, Jacob?"
Jacob opened his eyes, if only to stare at the floor. He nodded, and was wheeled back out into the hallway. He watched the table as it pulled away from him, and just before the door shuts fully, he catches the last visage of his former self. A green dragon, horns in tact. Wings intact. Tail trailing down to the floor. The ghostly visage appears only for a moment, but the expression it wears is one Jacob recognises. It's the same expression everybody else who had seen him had worn. Part worry, part concern, worn down with sadness.
The door closed, and Jacob closed his eyes. One last tear found itself steering a path across his fictional scales. It ran down his false chin, then fell into oblivion.
