He exhaled. "Is there anybody there?"
"Yes," a quick rustling of thin paper, probably a magazine, the gentle friction of one leg uncrossing to release its pressure on the other, a sharp tap of one stiletto hitting the floor. "Yes, I'm the RN on duty here. You can call me Megan."
"Why would I call you anything at all," he said. "I can't even see you."
"You're free to take the bandages off. I'll have to replace them by the end of my shift anyway."
"I think it's better this way."
A moment of silence. He heard the slow clamor of a tray or a cart rolling by in the hall. The noise swelled, peaked, subsided.

"Would you like to know how long you've been unconscious?" she said.
"I don't think it really matters."
"Well I don't really know anyway. I would have to ask somebody. But I guess you're right."
"About what?"
"That it doesn't really matter. Time itself doesn't matter much for you now."
"What do you mean 'for me?'"
She cleared her throat and continued. "Or rather, quantities of time don't matter. The measuring of days and weeks and hours don't really concern you. They were more important when your time was flexible, when you had more options with your time. And when there were consequences to exceeding or failing your deadlines and patterns and breaking points. You've fallen out of that now. Anything that was ever a matter of time is not a matter of time anymore. The state has acknowledged you as a danger to yourself, so your time belongs to them. And it's not the only thing you've lost."
"Just because I didn't make it?"
"Well yes," she said. "if you insist on putting it like that. Even though you're probably the only one who considers a failed attempt as a failure."

"It's not that" he said, under his breath.
"It's not what?"
"I don't see it like that. The failure to do what I set out to do isn't the real failure" he said. "If it wasn't for the consequences, like you said, the consequences of the failure then it wouldn't matter."
"So, the here and now?"
"Yes. And everything that's going to come."
"You think that if people wouldn't have rushed in afterwards to try and protect you from yourself that your failed attempt wouldn't matter?"
"Yes."
"Just because you're embarrassed?"
"No, it's because I'm afraid."
"Afraid of being controlled?"
"Yes. I guess. In a way."
"Even though you know we're just trying to norma...stabilize you."
"Yes. But it's mental hospitals specifically though. And what they can do to people who don't want to be helped."

"Have you ever been committed before?"
"No. But I remember when my uncle did."
"Why was he committed?"
"None of your damn business."
"Sorry. But you have a fear of institutionalization because of him?"
"It's a big part of it. After the first 3 weeks I was the only one who would visit him regularly. It was almost a fascination, how terrible I thought it must be in there. I kept asking him so many questions about his living conditions that he eventually wrote me a letter asking me to stop visiting.
"I guess you won't let me smoke in here?"
"No. You wouldn't have anywhere to get cigarettes anyway. It's a rough part of the initial transition for some people, but there will be special sessions that can help you with that."
"Is that part of the process?"
"Process?"
"The process of 'stabilizing' me."
"We don't look at it as a process. You're a person, you're not here to be processed. You're here to be policed because you can't be considered safe in an unmonitored environment."
"But ultimately, if I can convince these people that I'm not going to try to hurt myself, that I'm as happy and secure as any braindead idiot out there, they'll have to let me go eventually, right?"
"Well, are you going to?"
"Am I going to convince them? Hell yes I am, I can't really do anything else."
"No, I mean are you going to attempt again?"

He blinked a few times and lowered his eyes. Not that this was obvious through the bandages, but the nurse seemed to notice a noiseless change of tone.
"Nevermind," she said. "You don't have to answer that question right now. But tell me this, do you think there can even be such a thing as a failed suicide attempt?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I don't know what you believe in. But I always thought that if a person throws themselves into harm's way like that and doesn't die, that they were meant to survive somehow."
"You think there was meaning behind my survival?"
"I mean," she said, trying to recover slightly, "maybe not some cosmic or divine purpose, but more of an inner purpose. Like you had some internal reasoning behind staying alive? Even if it was something you couldn't see or understand?"
The man fell silent for a moment. He turned his gaze towards the light coming in through the window blinds. "There's always a resistance," he said. "It's part of the balance of the human spirit. My instinct to preserve myself is as natural as my instinct to destroy myself.
"But don't mistake it for causality. A person's thoughts, and intentions, have their own set of causes. A person's actions, another set of causes. And the image of a person's actions in the wake of those actions, yet another set of causes. And those causes are not at all interchangeable."
"You really think so?"
"Nietzsche said that. It makes sense to me."
"Hmmmmm...So that's what you believe in," she said wryly as she picked up her magazine again. He could hear the slide of one leg folding over the other at the knee.

"I thought that's what you were here for," he said with equal wryness. She didn't respond. "Aren't you supposed to be symbolizing some kind of belief-object right now? Some sort of guiding wisdom that's supposed to answer all my questions?"
"No...no, I think I'm representing a kind of judgmental character. Like an authoritative voice, but not an authority on all matters and all the answers. If that makes sense, however it fits into your idea of spirituality and divinity."
"I guess I interpreted you as less of a judge and more as a reflection of myself."
"But," she started, a little apprehensively, "isn't every other person besides yourself a kind of reflection of yourself? Is there any other way you can see the world besides through constantly reproduced images of yourself through the eyes of other people?"
"Hmm" the man stopped. "I don't know.
"I don't think so, but..." he thought for a moment. "I think I want you to be wrong about that, but I think you might be right."
"Suit yourself, either way. The truth isn't about what you want, it's about what you see, and how you apply it to your own reality. You have every right to fool yourself, just as you have every right to doubt what you've been told."

"But if you're a reflection of myself...if everyone else is a reflection...then what does that make me?"
"What does that make you to yourself, you mean?"
"Yes."
"A refraction."
"Refracted through what?"
"Your eyes. Your waking sense of self. Refracted through a concept you might understand as 'the present.'"
"I thought you said that doesn't matter anymore."
"It doesn't," she said a little coldly. "You're not home anymore. In your human, bodied life, you don't belong to yourself."
"Because of the choices I made."
"Because of the choices you're trying to make."

"Fine," he said, wanting to change the subject as much as he wanted to get back to the previous topic. "So what's the difference between the refraction of myself and the reflections of myself?"
"Your refraction is true. It's the energy of existence which you emanate. You can't discern it from everything else you see, and you have no perspective on it, because you're the one that's producing it.
"Your reflections can't help you. They're a lot more clear and a lot easier to understand than your refraction, but that's not a good thing."
He frowned, invisibly. "Why wouldn't it be a good thing to understand myself through other people?"
"Because you can't see know and understand yourself if you can't see know and understand all people at once. All of them--living, dead, and yet to be born. If you can only see one person at a time it just gives you a lot of biased and incomplete information about yourself. You're bound to develop a lot of false assumptions and skewed understandings if you can't see the whole picture."
"But don't you think it's possible?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Wait," she faltered, "what are you referring to?"
"Do you think it's possible to have a complete understanding of the self?"
"Not *as* the self, or rather, not *from* the self. Not as a refraction."
"But if I were to destroy the self?"
"You mean you want to gain the perspective of all your reflections by destroying your refraction? You want to achieve total singularity?"
"Yes."
"Is that why you tried to kill yourself."
He closed his unseen eyes and swallowed. "Yes."

She sighed. "Well, I'm not sure. If that's the gift that's waiting for you after death, then I guess that would be appropriate. But I don't really know. I don't think so though. I don't think you were ever meant to understand that."
"But that's the thing, isn't it? You say 'you were never meant to understand that' but the 'you' that you're talking about is what's going to be sacrificed to gain everything else. 'I' in the conscious sense, in a sense of ego, in a singular sense, will be given up to see, to become, everything."
"Do you really think it's worth the risk?"
"What risk?"
"The risk that singularity isn't going to be what's waiting for you on the other side of the veil."
"Yes. It's worth more to me than anything I could do or gain in my existence."
"And you really think it's worth it to destroy your refraction, even if you did gain everything else?"
"Yes."
"Well, we don't see it that way" she said sternly. "That's why we're here. And that's why you're here, too."

The man stopped. He turned his head in the nurse's direction, very slowly. He raised his hands and began to peel off his bandages. As we went, he started ripping through them faster and faster until he was tearing away at the last pieces of shroud on his face. When the last of the bandages had been ripped away he revealed a scarred, open-sored and bloody face that snarled in a fanged, seething contempt unlike any image of ferocity and anger that he had ever produced.
He spoke slowly, through clenched teeth. "I. Do NOT. Need. Your HELP."

"Well, we're not here to help you," she said, as she placed her pencil and crossword puzzle back down on the cabinet. "We're here to protect you."
"I don't need that either!"
"But we do" she said softly.
The man blinked, taken aback.
"Can't you see that you're already everything else?" she said, the passion slowly collecting in her voice. "Can't you see that your refraction is the most important part of the everything you're trying to become? And that your sacrifice of yourself is only for the sake of a curiosity and an ego that you're going to lose in the process? The destruction of yourself is destroying a piece of my refraction, my reflections, my understanding. And everyone else's.
You have to be among the people while you're still alive. It's the only rule of this place. Whether it's inferno, purgatory, or paradiso, or if it's all three to everyone in an ever-rolling wheel, it's all the same place. There's no separating heaven and hell, it's all one thing - one shared space. The only rule is that you cannot remove yourself. You can't leave. You're a part of all of humanity when you're here, and when you're gone. Whether or not you can see it."
"You can't just deny me of the questions that I can only answer with death."
"Yes, yes we can," she said, her mouth and voice tightening. "And we will. We will hold you down by your skin until we've sunk our grip down to your bones and then we'll hold you down by your bones, and your organs, and your spirit, and by whatever else you have left that you haven't taken away from yourself, we will bolt it down until you can't feel anything anymore. And we will see you. And we will keep you," as she rose to her feet. "Right here."

"Now lean back, and keep still" she said as she walked towards the man, clutching a syringe loosely between her fingers.
The man smiled. He would not resist. "Alright," he said, as he reclined further into his bed, still conscious of the fact that he was not directly engaged in reality. "Alright...Megan. Go ahead.
"Death," he said softly as he gazed into the lights. "Is it like falling asleep? Or is it more like waking up?"
"You'll have to tell me if you ever find out," she said, as she began to administer the anesthetic. "But I wouldn't venture a guess in the meantime, because it's not the right time for you understand. Now try to relax. It's time for you to be blind again."

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