I realized that with every matter-of-fact statement Maggie made, my story was sounding more and more absurd, even to me.

“No, the flaming corpse was different, more of a skeletal body. I think his name was Omega. The scientist was solid in the middle but with a peeled-back face.”

“Maybe they’re cousins, not identically disfigured cousins,” Maggie said in a singsong.

“That so doesn’t work,” I grumbled.

“Well, since I don’t believe in clairvoyance, maybe you’d actually seen the scientist before, like at sick camp.”

“I’d never seen him before. This is not a face you’d forget.”

“But maybe you had seen him before. Otherwise you wouldn’t have recognized him.”

“This nap is going great.”

“What about during all of those surgeries after the car accident?” Maggie asked. “Maybe you saw him then, and your brain is just dredging up the memory. You were in and out of consciousness, dealing with so much trauma. How much of that do you remember clearly?”

“Not much,” I admitted.

“There you go.”

“I’m telling you,” I said, “no matter my level of consciousness or whatever post-accident stress I was going through, if I’d seen this guy, I would have remembered him. Consciously.”

“Or maybe the scientist looked similar to the guy in your dreams, so your brain just linked them up.”

“Why do you keep arguing with me? Why do you have so much stake in my not seeing someone from my dreams?”

She reached out her right hand and gently brushed my head. “Jordan, I have no stake in your being wrong. I just want to understand what’s going on with you so I can help you. I’m a logic-driven person, so what’s more likely, that you dreamed a supernatural skull man who turned out to be real and tried to murder you with his sword arm, or you’re feeling the easily diagnosed effects of infected wounds and an astronomical fever?”

I didn’t answer. I knew what I’d seen and what I’d dreamed and what I’d done. I’d shot the scientist three times after he attacked me with his sword. I could see the dark spots spreading in his white lab coat from the holes in his chest.

“His blood was black,” I remembered.

“Of course, it was,” Maggie said. “Night-night.”

I lowered the cloth over my eyes again.

“I’m sorry about this,” I muttered. “I didn’t mean for you to get caught up in it.”

“Caught up in what?”

I tried to think of what to call it. Sinister plot? Family melodrama? Supernatural conspiracy? Paranoid thriller? Most of the soldiers had been acting weird, like automatons. Why? Who was controlling them? Why did that repellent scientist keep calling me Rho? Was that short for something? Ro-BOT? Did they think I was a robot, and that’s why they wanted me in “for repair”? But then why would he try to kill me? And how was the running, burning skeleton guy in the forest related to the rest of them?

“This,” I finally responded. “I’m sorry you’re caught up in this.”