DOCTOR EL

CHAPTER 4

Retribution came swiftly. The next day, Ethan was forcibly sent to the capital under police supervision. Dr. Roman Polanski, his brain specialist, accompanied him to the station.

Roman was explaining something to the police officer driving, but Ethan wasn't listening. Traitor! he thought. Sycophantic traitor! He could've stayed silent and left me alone. I'm not planning to commit suicide. Why do they think I would?

Oddly enough, by the end of their journey to the station, Dr. Roman was talking about just that. Ethan tuned into his chatter.

"…You know, they believe in it. Unfortunately, it's the only way out for them. How else can they get 'there' if not through death?"

"Seriously, Doc?" The policeman sounded surprised and even added a reasonable argument, in Ethan's view. "Why do they all have to kill themselves? Seems to me you're lumping them all together, professor."

"I'm not a professor. It's inevitable. It's already proven that they end up the same way sooner or later if we don't help them get rid of the suicidal complex…"

Ethan shook his head, stopped listening, and withdrew into himself again. Idiots. Kill himself? For what? How would that get him any closer to his goal? It made no sense…

The conversation between the two men in white orderly uniforms that Ethan overheard could be classified as a particular type of humor. However, the humor of the situation was lost on him. As a victim of involuntary therapy, it felt like he had ended up in some nightmarish place, and although he wasn't scared—how could he be with Saber by his side?—the future looked very bleak, if not tragic. They don't understand me, and they want to ruin me here, he thought as they led him down a long corridor past half-open rooms from which various sounds emanated: radio, arguing voices, even the twang of a guitar.

"Where to?" asked the orderly on his left. "Room sixteen? It seems to have a free spot."

"To Darth Vader?" the second orderly asked doubtfully. "No, this one's an anime fan. They have their own group on the fifth floor."

"Damn!" the first orderly muttered under his breath. "Another nutcase obsessed with Japanese cartoons. There's been a surge of them lately. I'm sick of it."

"Shut up and stop swearing, Walter. These are patients, not lunatics. Poor kids need our psychological help. If our psychologists hear you, you'll be out of a job without severance pay. They might even slap you with an 'administrative' charge."

"I… I… what… I didn't do anything," stammered the orderly named Walter, clearly frightened by his colleague's warning. But he quickly added with poorly concealed malice, "Is it my fault? They bit me once. I still have a scar on my arm. You wouldn't believe it, blood everywhere. They're all mad there. I'm glad I now work in the other wing, where the real loonies are. They're a hundred times less dangerous than these ones."

"Who bit you?"

"Some guy named Kirito. At least that's what they call him among themselves. A dark-haired kid, always wears black. Just a brat. And that other one with the black notebook once threw a cup at me. Almost hit my head. For no reason! And I can't respond according to the rules. I have to put up with it. In our zone, he'd be thrown into solitary in a moment. They'd teach him not to pull stunts like that."

"You're not in prison, Walter. The rules are different here. You need to get used to it. These guys aren't your inmates. They're not even prisoners."

"In my opinion, they're worse," Walter muttered under his breath, barely audible, and his colleague pretended not to hear. So did Ethan, who was listening to their conversation in silent amazement. Darth Vader! he thought. And who is this Kirito? A Japanese name, it seems. Probably a character from some anime…

About five minutes later, the elevator brought Ethan and the two accompanying orderlies to the fifth floor. To the "crazy anime fans," as Walter had put it. Ethan looked around with curiosity. The rooms were not much different from those on other floors. Another corridor with rooms on either side. At the end, there was a hall behind a glass door, something like a huge recreation room filled with chairs, shelves packed with board games, and electronic toys. There was no TV, but the shelves were lined with books. At the far end, there was something like a staff room with a large mirror instead of a window. Ethan immediately guessed it was one-way glass, like in police movies. He had never seen one in real life before.

Without stopping, his escorts knocked and then opened the door to the mirrored room. The orderly who had reprimanded his colleague gestured for him to enter. Ethan hesitated for a second before stepping over the threshold.

Inside sat a doctor, white and pale as an angel. About thirty-two or thirty-three years old, he appeared to Ethan like an angel descending from heaven due to his dazzlingly white clothes, emphasized even more by the bright daylight lamps on the ceiling. The overly bright lighting for such a small room with white furniture and a computer on the desk created a strange effect, almost swallowing the space of the equally white walls, expanding them with the illusion of even more space. Only a gray laptop lying on the desk marred the kingdom of white in this room; a white MacBook would have fit the scene harmoniously. In the far corner was another door, but what lay behind it was anyone's guess.

"Hello, Ethan," the "white angel" of psychiatric medicine greeted him gently, nodding to dismiss the escort while taking their folder. "I'm Doctor Elliot. You can call me Doc or El, as almost everyone here does. I like it. How was your journey? Are you tired from the road?"

Ethan didn't respond. He remained silent, like a guerrilla under interrogation. But this didn't seem to discourage Doctor El. Smiling another disarmingly kind smile, he tilted his head questioningly, waiting for some kind of response.

As mentioned earlier, Ethan was wise beyond his years. The confusion caused by the UMW had slightly eased its pressure on his mind, and in a moment of clarity, forgetting his foolish predicament, he gave a sharp and cunning reply.

"Did you train for this?" he asked, instead of answering the doc's trivial questions.

Ethan had already played out the rest of the dialogue in his imagination four seconds before it actually happened. The doctor was supposed to ask in bewilderment what Ethan meant and what he had trained. To which Ethan, of course, would sarcastically reply with something like, "Your smile. I've never seen such a genuinely fake smile."

But the doctor immediately killed his cunning plan, showing top-notch skill by reacting completely differently than expected. Smiling again, Dr. El gave a disconcerting response: "No, my smile is natural. From birth. I've never tried to train it. Maybe it's a talent."

Ethan blushed, slightly at a loss. Clever devil! How difficult it would be to shake him off!

Dr. El seemed to read his thoughts from his facial expression. "Yes, Ethan. It won't be easy to establish our relationship…"