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He enters the room quietly. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, doesn’t know why he’s doing this. It feels like the right thing, but he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know anything, really.
You’re a marshall. You’re here to investigate on a missing-person-case.
If this is the truth, then why does it feel like a lie pressured onto him by his brain?
Your name is Teddy Daniels.
It’s the truth, it must be. But he can’t shake the feeling that it isn’t the truth after all. It seems fitting. Right. But there’s a tiny alarm sounding in the very back of his brain, telling him it all just fits a little too well.
Several hands push him onto the table. Hard. He tries to lift his head but they hold him down. He wants to fight back, lashes out, hits and kicks everybody around him. He screams even though he knows no one will hear him.
Then he hears the door open abruptly and someone storming into the room.
“Wait.” A familiar voice says. Chuck.
And suddenly he remembers something. An image, nothing more, but it’s the first thing that feels right. He can feel his brain reaching out for the truth.
He’s standing in this same room, facing Chuck. But it isn’t Chuck, not quite. The doctor is there too, sitting at a table, looking at him, with a look on his face that almost seems concerned. Not-Chuck is saying something and so is the doctor, but he cannot understand them. All he hears is…
White noise. People yelling in the distance. Through the thin curtain around his bed he sees the people trying to push Chuck out of the room who’s struggling, trying to get back in but there’s just to many of those white-coated people.
Then there’s something else. Just two words but he holds onto them like they’re a lifebelt.
“Lester Sheehan.”
His voice is firm and loud, cutting through the unsettled stream of words he doesn’t understand coming from people he doesn’t know, medical terms that try to drown him, push his head under water.
But he was right. The words are his lifebelt. And they safe him because the moment he vocalizes them, pushes them into the room like he’s handing them over,
you do with that whatever you will,
that exact moment all eyes move over to him and everybody goes quiet.
He feels at ease, but only for a moment before another big wave, not of voices this time but of something more personal, more colorful but also darker, more quiet but also deafeningly loud, rushes over him and pulls him down and everything goes black except for an image of soft hair and a floating dress, a little girl drifting in the water, her head in the disturbing embrace of the glistening, murderous water as it softly rocks her to her endless, irreversible sleep.
~
Months have passed since that day, but Andrew hasn’t forgotten again. For the first time, he really remembers. And it’s weird, disturbing, he’s not gonna lie. Sometimes he still wakes up, bathed in his sweat, screaming and wishing to be Teddy again. To not know about the horrible things that had happened.
But he knows he has to face his past. And at least now he doesn’t have to live in a cell anymore, so that’s that.
He meets Lester in front of the A-Track and they head north, towards the coastline. It’s a mild summer evening and the sun is low on the almost cloudless blue sky.
The island is really nice, actually, when there’s not a storm and you’re not sitting in a cell, Andrew realizes.
They walk next to each other in quiet for a few minutes, the only sound are the waves that gently hit and wash around the rocks to their right.
He feels Lester eyeing him from the side but Andrew doesn’t turn towards him and instead keeps looking into the distance.
This was one of the hardest parts to accept; that Chuck, the Marshall, his partner, his friend didn’t exist. That in reality he was a guy called Lester Sheehan. His psychiatrist or whatever?
Andrew can’t help but feel, however, that over the course of the last few months, with getting more and more of his sanity back, they also started growing closer and closer. And by now, with Andrew remembering everything and not falling back into old patterns, they have become friends once again.
“How are you, boss?” Lester finally asks.
Andrew can’t help but smile softly at the use of his old nickname.
“Shouldn’t you know that yourself? After all you’re the one hoarding all my files, aren’t you?” He teases. “No but seriously- I’m fine. I’m actually fine.”
“That’s good.” Lester says. He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, really. I’m fine.”
Andrew stops walking. “You’re a terrible liar, you know that, right?”
Lester sighs quietly. He’s a few feet ahead of Andrew but he doesn’t turn around. “Did I ever tell you how I got to work at this island?”
Andrew frowns, confused about the change of topic. “You did not.” he says quietly.
“I used to work in Seattle, actually. I would do therapy sessions, healing people through talking, not feeding them with medication. They weren’t as seriously damaged as most people here, though. Obviously.”
He does turn around to face Andrew now.
“I really loved working there. It was- fulfilling, I guess. I could see people get better. See them heal. That rarely ever happens here, to be honest.”
“So why didn’t you stay there?” Andrew asks.
Lester laughs sadly. “I wanted to, you know? But... You know the thing is, talking to people about their problems and deepest fears, that’s something real personal. They tell you things they barely admit to themselves. Which is why it’s so important to remain a professional distance between therapist and patient ... privately.”
Andrew raises his eyebrows in disbelief. “So what, you- you fell in love?”
Lester sighs, blushing slightly. “I fell in love, yeah.” He combs through his hair with his fingers, a nervous gesture that Andrew recognises from himself. “So obviously what I had to do was make a decision. I could choose love and give up everything - or I could run away from love -and myself, really- and then just keep pretending. Which is why I went here of all places. I figured this would be the last place where I’d fall in love again.”
This is a lot to take in, so Andrew just asks the first question that comes to his mind. “I- I don’t get it, I mean ... why didn’t you just - marry her and keep working as a therapist? Couldn’t you have made a new start in a new city?”
Lester chuckles sadly. “Under those circumstances, yes, I could have, I guess. But, you see, the problem was that she was a he.”
It feels like a slap in the face for a moment as realisation dawns. Then Andrew feels a sting of sympathy for this man, who ran away from everything he knew just to fit in. Because people were discriminated and considered filthy just because of who they loved.
He feels like there’s more to it. A distant memory of himself as a little kid on the playground, another kid calling him a bad word. He would ask his mom about it later and she would just frown at him, where did you learn that word?, but wouldn’t explain what it meant.
It was his brother who told him eventually. And little Andrew understood that it was something people said to each other to be mean, but he couldn’t quite wrap his head around why a boy shouldn’t be allowed to kiss another boy.
“So you ran away?” He asks, mainly to distract himself from his thoughts.
“Yeah, I ran away.” Lester runs his hand over his face, chuckling softly.
“ Okay.”
“Okay?” Lester sounds hopeful.
“Yeah, okay.” It really is, Andrew decides.
They walk in silence for some minutes.
“Did you ever regret going?” Andrew finally asks.
“From him specifically, no, not really. I barely remember what he looked like to be honest.
From love, though, I definitely regret. You know, this island... the patients aren’t the only unhappy people here. Finding happiness here is ... particularly hard, I’d say.”
The way Lester looks at him while saying this, how he holds the eye contact, makes Andrew’s stomach flip and knees go weak.
Oh shit. Andrew thinks, as he realizes just how close they’re standing.
Oh shit. He thinks, as he leans in even closer.
Some noise in the distance startles them and Andrew draws back with a cough. He looks at Lester, careful to not meet his eyes. He’s flustered and his cheeks are red, but Andrew is sure that he must look just the same.
“So...” Andrew coughs, desperately trying to find a topic to talk about. “I was told that I can leave the island soon, if I want to.” He locks his eyes at the horizon over the sea, trying to look anywhere but Lester’s face, anything but meeting his eyes. “If I go to regular therapy sessions or maybe into daycare if necessary, that is.”
“I know.” Lester says quietly. “You gonna do it? It’s a great chance. You could- finally get away from this island.” There’s something else in his voice, the way he says these words, that Andrew can’t quite name.
“Well... I’m not sure yet.” Andrew says. And then, because he feels like it isn’t enough: “I guess I just... I don’t know... I like not being insane, you know?” (Lester chuckles) “And I don’t know if I’m - healthy enough , you know? I guess I’m just afraid that- that I’ll fall back, you know?” He has never admitted this to anyone before, not even to Lester. “God, I just feel like I’ll never be healed.” He says, burying his face in his hands.
Lester stays quiet for a second, then he reaches out, cups Andrews cheek with his hand and says: “Andrew... the thing is, maybe you won’t be healed. Maybe you never will be. But maybe that’s not the point, you know? What if the point is just to wake up every morning and think, hey, I’ve been worse before, haven’t I? ?
You don’t have to be perfectly healthy. You just have to be better. That’s enough.”
Andrew does kiss him then, right there by the sea, waves crushing against the cliffs, a telltale sign of an upcoming storm, and the sun setting in the background, almost gone, only minutes away from darkness. Not that he would care right now.
“Honestly, even though you did convince me there, I think I’d rather stay with you.” He whispers onto Lester’s lips.
“I mean... they would let you go away from here so technically you’re not my patient anymore, so...”
Lester smiles, and as Andrew leans in to kiss him again, he realizes that Lester was right. Things don’t need to be perfect. They probably never will be. But they’re better and for now, that’s enough.