But I don’t like to go among mad people, Alice remarked. My thoughts chattered outside my control, and I barely kept my teeth from following suit. Oh you can’t help that, said the Cat: we’re all mad here.
John Doe’s full attention remained on me, and those unbelievably deep eyes grew wider and softer with concern. I also saw him struggle for some sort of recognition, as if he thought he should know me, but didn’t.
“Oh, my God.” My voice didn’t sound like my voice. I really couldn’t breathe now. I barely kept myself upright. My vision blurred and swam, and all I could do was point at the cuts etched across John Doe’s heart.
An odd arrangement of lines, like a phoenix in flight and on fire, burning to death as it screamed its fate to imaginary stars above.
I had seen it before.
I had seen it eighteen years ago in Armenia, when I was twelve, before my American soldier father brought me to the United States.
The same pattern had been carved into my mother’s chest the day I found her dead in our living room.
Two
Run.
The urge was so strong I would have bolted down the admissions hallway and locked myself in my office if I hadn’t had a shred of self-control left from years of martial arts training.
Run.
The cops were staring at me. I made myself breathe normally, but fought an urge to blast my fists into John Doe’s gut and knock him away from me.
“It’s OK,” I told the officers, keeping my voice even and calm no matter how much I wanted to scream. Whatever was happening here, I had to find out what the hell it was - and without the audience. “I’ll take it from here. You can go.”
Both uniformed men regarded me like I might belong on a patient floor.
“Doc.” One of the NYPD’s finest looked hesitant. “Maybe we should cuff him for you. Leave you the key. The way he cut himself up, I’m not sure you’ll be safe.”
I waved them off. “I’ve got plenty of help. I’ll just call a tech down here from the second floor.” The lie came easily and I didn’t know why I didn’t take the officers up on the offer to cuff this Adonis when all of my instincts were saying, Run.
My frown must have let them know I was serious. “You have real sickos to go after and this guy doesn’t look like a threat I can’t handle.”
After a pause they gave me nods and left without argument.
As the metal door swung closed behind them, leaving me in the dimly-lit hall facing a man carved up just like my murdered mother, I growled, “What’s your name?”
John Doe kept looking at me. His lips didn’t so much as twitch. Except for the cuts, the man was as perfect as an Italian Renaissance sculpture. I was caught between a desire to touch him or to slug him and get the hell away from those marks on his chest.
Was this it for me? Was I finally losing my mind?
That design on John Doe’s chest. Right over his heart. Sweet Christ. How could it be there? That picture, in that exact place? I was definitely losing my mind. This wasn’t possible. This couldn’t be happening.
But it was.
I picked at the edges of my lab coat to remind myself I was a doctor, and I did have a job to do.
“Come with me.” I motioned towards my office, then took a few steps back down the admissions hallway and waited to see if John Doe would follow.
He did.
Slowly. Gracefully.
Which was a good thing, because even if I called every nurse in the hospital, shots and restraints notwithstanding, I doubted we could have moved that rock-hard body anywhere it didn’t want to go.
At my office door, I glanced back again, and my senses catalogued every tiny detail about him: the black curls, the tanned face, the greener than green eyes. John Doe’s muscles flexed as he followed me into the room and stood quietly on the polished tile floor.
I walked to my desk, then turned and leaned against the front. The clock on my right and the window on my left felt familiar. Normal. Some kind of balance when otherwise I might just tip over.