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Lorelai pulled him in close, standing in the shadow of her doorway, and for a moment, Jess, Liz, and Dr. Robusk flew out of his head, and for a minute life was perfect. Perfect can never last long, it's the way life is, and as they pulled away Luke felt his problems rush back at him with enough strength to knock him over. Driving to New York the next day he pondered over the things he could say, the things he would do. How he would react to Jess, he still hadn't mastered it by the time he pulled into the lot of Bellevue. Dr. Robusk was a middle aged slightly portly man, who smiled genuinely smiled as they shook hands. Luke couldn't help but wonder how working with mental patients for your entire professional career affected your mental status.
"How's Jess?"
"Why don't you come in?" He gestured into his office and Luke obediently followed him.
"I briefly spoke with Jess this morning, and I asked him a few questions. One of the things I asked him was to describe the man he assaulted. Jess gave me a very vivid description, what he was wearing, his eye colour, even what he smelled like. The main problem was that the man he assaulted didn't have any of these characteristics. Have you ever heard of transference Mr. Danes?"
"Call me Luke, no I haven't." Luke didn't like any of this, he didn't like the degrees on the wall, he didn't like the book titles he was reading on the doctors desk: Multiple Personalities and You, I'm okay you're okay, Mood tendencies of a sociopath. Luke tore his eyes away.
"Well Luke, transference is when under heavy emotional stress, your subconscious will make a random person take on traits of a person that you have a large connection with. This condition often happens to a parent who has lost a child. Anything can trip this off, a smell, a voice, a location. However, the actual transference is not the main problem, it's the underlying emotional stress underneath. Now you mentioned that you visited Jess yesterday and he seemed unlike himself?"
Luke thought for a moment, was it really only yesterday he had been to Jess?
"He was living in this tiny dark apartment in the basement of where he works, and don't get me a wrong it's a step up from the place where he used to live. But here he's alone and I could tell he wasn't properly taking care of himself, he had lost a lot of weight--"
"How much weight?" The doctor cut him off.
"Probably at least 15 pounds. Then there was the cuts on his arms, the way he acted towards me. He was so shy, he stuttered, almost like he was afraid to be around me."
The doctor made a few notes. "Just one more question and we can go see Jess and the police will probably have a few questions for you. Have you ever met a man named Derek, tall, bulky, with close cropped blond hair?"
Luke had the word no, on his tongue when he remembered that man. "A few years back, Jess was probably about 12-13 I came up to visit him and his Mom, they were living in this dive, the paint peeling off the walls, bars on the window kind of dive. Her boyfriend at the time, his name was Derek, he was built like a football player, but he was menacing, the way he looked at me, he creeped me out. He was a drunk, the entire place smelled like Jack Daniels. This was the guy? This was the guy Jess transferred someone into?" Luke asked slightly confused Derek only a blur in his memory.
"Do you remember how Jess acted around him?"
"I saw Jess when I got there, we said hello and he disappeared and I didn't see him after that."
He made a few more notes.
Following Dr. Robusk down the locked ward made Luke nervous, the smell, the bars, the police officers. Jess' room was part way down the hall. The room itself was tiny, with barley enough room for the bed. Jess was asleep with one arm restrained to the bedpost with a heavy leather restraint.
"Jess." The doctor said loudly.
Jess stirred, turning his head from side to side.
"Jess?" Luke asked. Jess opened his eyes, and looked over at him.
"Hi." He sat up, pulling slightly at that the restraint.
Jess felt groggy, he felt like his head was in a cloud, everything around him seemed foggy and far away. He rubbed his eyes with his left hand, but nothing got clearer.
"What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you, make sure you're okay."
"Oh." Jess felt like he couldn't control his concentration, he found himself drifting off into space, starring at a blank spot on the wall.
"We had to give him a large dose of sedatives last night and he's still a little groggy, if you would like you can stop by to visit him after your visit with the police officers."
"Uh.. Sure." Luke couldn't stop looking at him. The dead way his eyes looked, the look of his scarred arms under fluorescent lights, the way his knuckles were bruised and swelled purple and black.
The door shut and Jess was left alone. He shook his head trying to wake himself up. He couldn't keep a thought in his head. Luke walked down the hall with Jess' face still in his mind. Dr. Robusk dropped him off by two waiting policemen and continued on, disappearing around the corner.
Jess starred up at the ceiling wishing, there was something he could do, somewhere he could go. Anything familiar, anything that he recognized. He longed for his apartment, the quiet, the slight mildew smell, the light of the fish tank, the tick tocking of his pocket watch, the feel of blood on his skin, the prick of a knife, real feeling. He lay on his back, thinking of these things, his mind fading in and out, slipping in and out of consciousness hardly aware of it.
The door squeaked at it opened. All he saw was a huge shadow looming over him, turning, it was just Luke illuminated in the door.
"Hi."
"Hi." Jess felt more alert as he struggled to sit up.
"I spoke to the police." Jess nodded absently, his eyes on the wall above Luke's head.
"You'll be seeing the court appointed shrink later and they suspect that you'll be deemed not fit to stand trial by, I believe, mental defect were the words used."
"Mental defect." Jess echoed.
"In which you'll probably be sentenced to a psychiatric facility until your better."
Jess laughed cynically. "Better? I'll never be better. This is who I am."
Luke could believe the words that were dripping with disdain were coming out of his nephews mouth.
Luke could no longer hold in the questions he had. "Why did you do it?"
Jess' eyes still were not on him. "Do what?"
"You know what. Look at your hands, you beat him almost to death! Why?"
Jess looked down at his hands, turning them in the light. He looked up and met Luke's eyes.
"He deserved it. He deserved it for what he did to me." His voice was low, full of hurt and revenge.
"What did he do to you?" Luke's head was alive with possibilities, none of which he wanted to be true.
Jess said nothing. He picked at his arms, re-opening old wounds, feeling perhaps relief as he saw his own blood.
"This isn't who you are Jess. You're sarcastic, smart, charming, perhaps even a little funny."
Jess looked at him straight in the eyes. His black eyes starring almost emotionless at him.
"I got sick of pretending." He replied flatly, flopping himself down on the bed, and trying his best to turn to the wall with his arm secured to the bedpost.
Luke shook his head, confused, and sad.
"Bye Jess. I'll come back soon." Luke paused at the door waiting for an answer.
"Don't bother." Came the muffled reply.
Luke let the heavy intuitional door slam behind him, as he walked down the hall the sound and voices pounding in his head.
