I opened my eyes. A man in a white lab coat stood at the foot of the bed. He glanced up once to regard me, then went back to scribbling on a clipboard.

The next time I came round, there were two men. One of them was hanging an IV bag of clear liquid from the pole at the side of the bed. I moved my head, trying to shake the sleep off, and he spoke.

“Don’t fuss. You’ll loosen the bandages,” he said, his voice small and tight, the words too close together. I had to concentrate to force them into sequence so I could make sense of the message.

Everything was soft around the edges, like the room was backlit by moonlight. I smiled, then closed my eyes again, remembering a yellow moon cut through with pine lace.

I finally woke up, back in the dark.

“No.” It was a croak. I felt the shape of my body tucked under a rough woolen blanket. “No!”

I was back in my godforsaken room, back on the small bed, back in the dark. Had I ever even left? I reached up and felt the stubbly contours of my shaved head. My skull, just above the neck to the top curve, was covered by a large padded bandage. My hand was sore; I felt the edges of a smaller Band-Aid above my knuckles. I remembered the IV needle, now gone. So I had been out of this room—that much was true. How long had I been here? And then I wondered if I was the only one here. Oh, holy shit, had the others been brought in? That pushed adrenaline into my veins, and I jerked into full consciousness.

I yanked the blanket off, the cool air rushing to replace it. I was wearing a T-shirt and loose cotton pants with a drawstring waist. There were different low socks on my feet, ones without holes. I felt like a baby learning how to control my movements as I swung my legs off the side of the bed and stood. I turned to the right and, with arms stretched out, felt my way to the door. I knew it was delusional, but I tried the handle.

Locked. I pushed and pulled, and there wasn’t the slightest give. Then I knocked.

“Hello?” I coughed a few times and tried again, louder. “Hello, is anyone out there? I need to speak to someone.”

Hearing my voice, small and beseeching, just made me angry. What if my family was here—Chi Boy and Slopper and Rose…oh god, Rose. I had a quick vision of her in a dark room with a faceless man in the doorway. I banged again with my fist, then two fists.

“Answer me, goddamn it!”

Anger decanted into my limbs, thick and powerful. It made me slam into the metal, to kick and yell. “You cowards, you fucking cowards! Why don’t you show yourselves?”

And that’s when my mother came back.

“Oh, my boy. What is all this yelling around?”