Chapter 21: Nineteen - Vents

Vents

October:

At first, I was confused.

Was I hearing another voice? Or was I really going insane?

I mean, they had put me in solitary confinement, hadn’t they? Taking that particular detail into consideration, there could have been no possible way for me to be hearing Parish’s voice, as if he were standing in the same room with me.

And yet, that’s exactly what I heard. Parish’s voice. So clear and so close that it sounded like he was hiding under my bed.

Weird. I know.

Of course, being the Grade A whack-a-mole that I was, instead of just throwing the single pillow on my bed over my head and ignoring the voice, I rolled off my bed to investigate.

Not entirely sure what I was hoping to find, I dropped down to all fours and poked my head under the bed. “Parish? Is that you?” I whispered.

I waited a few seconds but my question was met with silence. My heart fell. Had I really been having an auditory hallucination?

I was about to climb back onto my bed when, finally, a voice replied my question from somewhere under the bed.

“October?” The voice sounded slightly muffled, as if Parish and I were standing in opposite entrances of an empty tunnel, trying to converse. “Yeah, it’s me. How are we talking?”

I shrugged, and then realized that he couldn’t see me. “Beats me. I was just about to ask you if you were under the bed.”

“The bed?” He repeated, confused. A soft grunt followed by few shuffling noises told me that Parish had just plunked himself onto the ground. “Oh. Your vent must be under the bed, I guess.”

“My vent?”

“That’s how we can talk to each other.” He explained, suddenly sounding closer. Maybe he was pressing his face against the vent? “There are air vents connecting the rooms. Why would they put us in adjoining rooms with these things here?”

I considered this for a moment. “They probably didn’t know that the vents carried sound. It’s not like they’ve ever had two patients in solitary confinement at the same time before to ever find out.”

A relenting “Good point” was his muffled reply.

We fell into silence after that, both unsure how to continue the conversation. If it had been Kara or Sid instead of Parish, we’d have been able to continue speaking without any effort at all. But Parish and I didn’t have an easy relationship like Kara, Sid and I did. Plus, he didn’t really seem to be the conversational type.

A minute passed and, clearing his throat uncomfortably, Parish starts, “So… what happened back there?”

I sighed. I had a feeling that he would ask about that. “What do you think happened? I had an episode.”

“Yeah.” More shuffling sounds. “But it was different this time, right? Or do you usually have screaming matches with your hallucinations?”

“They’re not hal—” I stopped myself from denying the fact that I’d been having hallucinations. The last thing I needed was someone else telling me that I was in denial. “No. I don’t normally scream.”

“Were you about it say that you weren’t hallucinating?” He queried, completely ignoring the rest of what I’d said.

“No, I—”

“October, chill. If you don’t believe you’re hallucinating, then you can say it. I’m not going to psychoanalyze you.”

It took me a couple of seconds to digest this. “You believe me?”

“Why does it matter if I believe you or not?” He demanded. “Look – and I’m saying this at the risk of being killed by Darren for being an instigator – but if you believe something, believe it. Don’t base your beliefs, or your opinions of yourself on what other people think. At the end of the day, the only person whose opinion matters is you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

I blinked in shock. For a person who didn’t really seem to care for conversations, Parish certainly knew how to give a good pep-talk.

All jokes aside, though, he was right. I’d been so worried that people wouldn’t believe me when I said that I wasn’t hallucinating so I’d kept my mouth shut about it. But I wasn’t in denial. I believed that the voices I was hearing were real, and forcing myself to conform to all my therapists ideas was starting to drive me crazy. And possibly giving the voices an advantage over me.

“For what it’s worth, I do believe you.” He mumbled softly before I could form a proper response in my head. “The way you act when you have one of your episodes… it doesn’t look like it’s all in your head. It’s weird and unexplainable, but it seems real.”

And for the second time in the last 5 minutes, Parish had rendered me speechless. Someone believed me. Sure Kara and Sid hadn’t believed that I was suffering from Schizophrenia; but Parish… Parish believed that the voices were real – not just a twisted figment of my imagination.

For a moment, all I could do was open and shut my mouth repeatedly and uselessly – unable to think of anything to say.

Eventually, I managed to stammer out a dumbstruck “thank you.”

When Parish replied a few seconds later, I could tell that, on the other side of the wall separating us, he was smirking. “You’re welcome.”

There was a series of shuffling sounds.

“You should go take a nap now.” His voice sounded distant. Like he’d stood up or something. “A little rest might do you some good.”

“Okay.”

Nodding, I stood up and crawled back into bed.