A familiar clatter of metal: a padlock rattling on its chain. A low, muttered curse. Whoever’s carrying me shifts his grip. He reaches into my right pocket. No, I try to tell him. Right is for unlocked, left is for locked.

Except suddenly I’m not sure if I’m remembering my system correctly—which pocket is for which keys. And what if I accidentally put it in the wrong pocket? Or worse, what if I’m not even remembering right from left correctly?

Dimly, I realize that I’d forgotten this part of OCD. The way it worms into your head, plants doubt, makes you question the most basic, fundamental crap until you can’t be sure of anything anymore, and it is exhausting and petrifying and aggravating as hell because goddammit, I am freaking dying and I still can’t stop worrying that maybe, somehow, I don’t actually know my left from my right.

I try to laugh again. Nothing but a choking sort of wheeze comes out.

The click of tiny metal teeth sliding perfectly home in the padlock: a sound I’ve got memorized. The person carrying me must have found my key after all. I’m taken into a room. I didn’t get to tap the doorway. I need to tap the doorway. I can’t manage to form the words, though.

There’s a clattering, many objects hitting the floor all at once, and then I’m lain—gently this time—on a hard surface. Rough fingers yank up my sleeve, then stop. It’s my left hand. Injured hand. I have no idea how it looks by this point, but it must be even worse than before, because there’s a long pause full of … something. Then the fingers move to my other side and, more carefully, roll up that sleeve. Fingers rest on the inside of my wrist.

“Marty,” he says, which is my name, I think. His voice sounds tight, helpless. “Your … your heart is beating too fast. Breathe. Try to breathe.”

I inhale and choke on the dust that was kicked up by the cave-in. I cough and wheeze and finally manage a breath. Then another.

“There,” he says, the tightness in his voice easing a little. “That’s better.”

The pain is fading. It slinks back across my shoulder, sulks its way down my arm, and recedes to my palm, where it curls up and waits.

I know what it’s waiting for. The next time it comes back—the next time that wave crashes down on me—it’ll kill me.

My eyes are still squeezed shut. Stars blink in and out behind them, twinkling, falling. I know it’s just a symptom of the pain, but they make me remember the real stars, the ones I saw from Mirage’s floor. And the planet in the midst of them—its glowing golden veins, its beautiful aliveness.