Disclaimer: I do not own The Listener or any associated characters.
Part Two
Ray managed to get out before Olivia could check in. She greeted him several feet away from the door. "How is he?" she asked.
"Better," said Ray.
Olivia handed him a Styrofoam cup of coffee he'd assumed was hers. "What did you do?"
"I led him through some exercises I taught him awhile ago. If you could, don't disturb him for awhile. He really needs to be left alone."
With a glance at the door and a glance at him, she expressed her doubts. She hadn't liked what she'd seen in her friend, Ray imagined, and was willing to do anything to keep from seeing it again. "I'll tell the nurses," she said. "Look, Toby's partner wants to speak with you. Oz. If that's all right."
Ray ran a hand over his head, exhaled. "Sure."
Oz was in the waiting room. Olivia pointed to him, Ray walked up. "Excuse me," he said. Oz looked up.
"Uh, Dr. Mercer right? Toby's shrink?"
"Yes," said Ray. He sat down a seat away from Oz. "Dr. Fawcett said you wanted to talk with me."
Oz cleared his throat, and shook his head. "Right." He leaned in. "Um, look. Does this have anything to do with Toby's, you know?" He gestured towards his temple. "He told me that you know about it, and if you're coming here I just -"
Ray raised his eyebrows. "You know?"
"He told me, yeah. I'm his best friend."
He couldn't afford to worry about that now. So he moved on. "He lost control. I don't know why."
Oz licked his lips, and leaned back. A cup of coffee stuck up above the armrest. "I guess you know the hits he's been getting recently. Could that have anything to do with this?"
"I don't know yet." Ray glanced at the corridor that led to Toby's room. "You won't be able to visit him until later, although I'd like to get him out of here as soon as possible. As soon as he's more . . . stable."
Oz took a sip from his own coffee. Ray realized he hadn't touched his. "Got it. Gotta keep the secret. He gonna be okay?" said Oz.
"He should be."
Oz nodded. "Look, I gotta go explain all this to Ryder - uh, our boss. Chances are this'll involve a lot of paperwork. So I'll talk to you later." He stood up and shook Ray's hand briefly before heading down the hallway opposite Toby's.
Ray sunk further into his own chair, uncomfortable as it was, and resigned himself to wait.
Toby forced himself to stretch out, and leave his hands by his side. By now he had sorted out the majority of the noise, and was simply trying to keep everything in order. He could still hear Ray, out in the waiting room, albeit more distantly.
This on the day he chose to worry about silence. He'd be grateful for just a little less noise, now. He ran through another exercise.
Finally, at long last, some sort of break was made. The hordes stopped clamoring quite so loudly. His diplomats came back from their cigarette break and Toby was able to relax a little bit. The noise level, at least, was back to normal.
He felt childish and stupid, although he realized he might be the only person on earth who would associate this with those emotions. It was almost like wetting the bed.
He was thirteen the last time he lost control. He had opened the floodgates just a little bit, hoping to nab some test answers off a classmate. Everything came rushing in all at once, and after four days he still hadn't been entirely over it. He had been terrified that he was going to lose it all again. That fear was seeping back.
If now, more than ten years later, he could still collapse in the middle of a job, all for no good reason, maybe he would lose the barrier. Maybe they'd ship him off to a mental hospital, and he'd be left submerged in every deranged fantasy the real lunatics could dream up. He supposed he would eventually become one of them.
Of course Ray wouldn't let that happen. And like he said, if they had to rebuild everything from the ground up, they'd do it. They wouldn't have much of a choice.
A few more thoughts than he could take in comfortably stomped aross the border, and he was forced to fight them off.
Toby decided he needed a distraction. They hadn't gotten him into a hospital gown, not yet, so he had no reluctances about leaving the room. He'd track down Olivia and let her worry over him.
He cracked the door open first, and looked around a bit. Olivia, as luck would have it, was just down the hall. "Hey," he said, and approached.
Olivia lowered her clipboard. "Toby," she said. "Should you be up?"
Wearily, Toby shrugged. "Sure."
"Forty-five minutes ago you were practically semi-catatonic. Dr. Mercer sat in there with you for half and hour."
"I was there."
Olivia pressed a hand to his forehead in a mothering way, and shook her head. "What's going on? Don't tell me you don't know."
"I'm fine, Olivia, yeah? And I really don't know what that was." Toby smiled. He hoped he was charming.
You look like you've been up twenty hours, thought Olivia.
Here came a misstep.
"I'm EMS, Liv; I have been up eighteen." He leaned in. "Perhaps we could make it twenty. How'd you like to come back into that hospital room, eh?"
Olivia gave him a strange look. "Uh, yeah. Look, you should probably get changed. You've already been admitted, and even if you're sure you're all right I really need to keep an eye on you at least for tonight? That was serious, Toby, whatever that was."
Toby ran his hands down his face. He did want to sleep, but he wasn't sure he wanted to let his guard down that much. "Yeah, sure, I don't really have a choice. Could you give me something to get me to sleep?"
"If you need it."
"I do," he assured her.
The night moved on.
Negotiations were still running smoothly the next morning. With Ray's help, Toby managed to finagle his way out of another night in the hospital - there was nothing physically wrong with him, he was fine now, he'd keep Olivia informed, yes he'd take a few days off work. After an afternoon of MRIs and other tests, Toby climbed into Ray's car.
He shut the door and a thick vapor of privacy descended upon them. They could talk as they pleased. "How are you doing?" Ray asked.
"Better," said Toby.
Ray turned the key. The engine hummed. "I spoke with your partner - Oz, right?"
"Yeah."
"He told me you told him about you." They drove past multiple cars with bumper stickers like 'my kid has more chromosomes than yours' and 'fight the good fight: breast cancer survivor.' Toby shrugged and pressed his back into the leather.
"Yeah, sure. He noticed there was something odd going on and asked for the truth."
"And you gave it to him," said Ray. Toby got the impression he wasn't exactly pleased.
"He didn't believe me at first, but he reacted fine. His first question was about some girl."
Ray spun the wheel, and they pulled out of the lot. "If you trust him, that's your prerogative. I guess you're a bit too old to ask that you consult me first."
"Yes," said Toby firmly, closing his eyes. He reached a hand down between the seat and the door, and released the latch. The back fell two or three notches. He fell with it, then twisted his head around to face Ray. "Thanks for last night. I couldn't have come back on my own."
Ray took his eyes off the road long enough to look at Toby. "If anything like that happens again, even for a second, call me immediately."
"Okay."
"Do you have any idea what happened?"
Slightly disgruntled, Toby sat up without adjusting the seat back. He leaned instead against the car door. "No. I just lost it. One minute I was fine, loading some girl into the back of the ambulance, next I was curled up in the hospital like some kinda kid."
"What did you feel leading up to the incident?"
"Nothing unusual. Look, Ray, I just wanna go home and think things over."
Ray nodded. He knew he didn't actually have to say anything, and he was nearly certain Toby didn't want him to. So he just drove.
Toby almost had a beer. He pulled it from the fridge, popped the cap, raised it to his lips. Then he remembered the first time he drank as a teenager, back when his control was still shaky, and instead drained the thing down the sink.
What had been different recently? Of course he'd been using his gift more often. Less emphasis was placed on keeping thoughts out, more on getting information out of people. And there were the hits. He was still in the dark as to what sparked those.
With a muffled oomph, Toby fell onto his sofa. Ordinarily he hated being alone with his thoughts - or as alone as he ever was. Next door, Mrs. Stein's focus on the novel she was writing interfered with his own concentration. Directly above him the Bhatnagars were having the best sex they'd had in years, which was of course rather distracting.
Usually he was almost grateful for such disruptions in his natural thought process. Today, however, he was glad to have a chance to think. To sort things out. To ponder over what he'd say to Oz, how he'd deal with Olivia, and what he'd do if things went south and Ray couldn't bring him back again.
He passed the night doing this. He jumped through the mental hoops that were necessary for him to get to sleep each night. The next morning, when things were still running miraculously smoothly, he praised a generic deity and began to wonder what the hell he was going to do all day.
As with any morning, he spent fifteen minutes going through control exercises. First he sorted out which dreams had been his and which belonged to his neighbors. Next he determined how much of the barrier had slipped while he slept, and then he made up the difference. He reached out to each of his neighbors in turn while blocking out the rest, then blocked them all out as much as was possible. All this was customarily done without getting out of bed or turning on the lights. Afterwards he slid out from between his sheets and went about the more mundane aspects of his morning routine.
Oz called just as Toby was scraping corn flakes from the bottom of his bowl. He fished his phone out from his pocket and flipped it open. "Hey," he said.
"Hey, Toby. Look, I'm sorry I didn't visit you yesterday. Olivia wanted to finish up all her tests first, and then you left as soon as she was done . . ."
"No problem."
"What happened?" Oz asked. "I mean, you don't have some kind of psychic brain cancer, do you?"
Toby swiped his nose and stood up to place his bowl and spoon in the sink. "No, man, I'm fine. Weird fluke. So who's Ryder pairing you with till I get back?"
"I don't know yet. He wasn't sure yesterday and my shift's not for another four hours."
"Oh, right."
There was a shuffling noise on the other end. Oz cleared his throat. "Right, well. Would you mind if I came over for a bit? I'm kinda worried, dude."
Toby tilted his head towards the ceiling. Things were back in control, as far as he could tell, he could handle a visitor. "Sure. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do all morning, anyway."
"Great, all right, I'll be there in a minute."
Oz did not usually call to ask if he could come over. Half the time he didn't even bother knocking. If nothing else, the guy had excellent bedside manner. Perhaps he would be able to convince Toby the beer wasn't that bad of an idea.
