Banner made by me.
Author: Chad
Disclaimer: Roswell does not belong to me. No infringement is intended.
Rating/Category: Mature/ AU without aliens? Who knows?
Summary: Max Evans is an alien…or is he?
Author’s Note: Hey guys. I know I’m supposed to be working on other stuff right now, but this story was born during the two months that I didn’t have a computer. I’ve worked on it here and there on my wife’s computer, and I just couldn’t get it out of my head. But I promise no more sidetracks after this.
Author’s Note 2.0: For those of you that don’t know much about alcohol, the title of this fic comes from a liquor called absinthe that until recently was banned in most Western countries. In the late eighteen hundreds it was thought to supposedly have hallucinogenic effects, and is believed to be what ultimately led to Van Gogh lobbing off his own ear. Lucid just happens to be the name of the absinthe I tried, and I thought it was a fitting title. The story will take place from two POVs, “The Doctor”, and “The Patient”. Essentially both POVs will cover the same situation, but show how it is perceived very differently through two sets of eyes. So in the interest of conveniences, and so that each chapter is not twenty pages long, chapters will be posted in two parts representing the two POVs.
I hope you all N+JOY it.
One — The Doctor
~Monday, August 3, 2009 — My new patient~I was seeing a new patient today.
His name was Maxwell Evans. He has been in this hospital since he was a child of nine or ten years old. I would have to check his file again to be completely sure. He was seventeen now—an age I considered to be still very young. Though I was not entirely sure of what type of patient he would be, I assumed he was well adjusted after having been here for such a long period of time. Still, I didn’t rest on that assumption. Even though I hadn’t been working here very long, it had not taken me long to come to the realization that every patient was different.
After having spoken with Maxwell’s previous doctor, Dr. Abernathy, I was under the impression that he believed Maxwell to be a very intelligent boy. The doctor had informed me that Maxwell’s comprehension skills were intact. He was able to accomplish tasks that ranged in complexity from relatively easy, to moderately difficult. He did not throw tantrums. He did not yell, or communicate his frustrations by raising his voice to any tone higher than a temperate speaking level. He was able to respond to questions when asked, though his mind tended to wander easily. He was lucid and capable of engaging back and forth in conversation. He exhibited no indications of any learning disability, and on the contrary, showed signs of possessing an accelerated learning capability.
Based on Dr. Abernathy’s assessment alone, one would not have believed a boy like Maxwell would ever have had a reason to be in a psychiatric hospital. To read of him on paper, the boy seemed completely normal, but to be in his presence was an entirely different situation. Regardless of the way things appeared, there was still one thing about Maxwell that made him different from the other five billion nine hundred ninety nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine people on the planet.
Maxwell Evans believed he was an alien.
I had been working at this psychiatric facility for a little over a year, but in that time I had learned a great deal about this boy that believed he was an alien.
According to his file, it had all started when he was a young child, even younger than he had been when he was first admitted here. Unlike other children his age, Maxwell was not active and outgoing. He was a quiet child who spent most of his time in his own company. For the longest time he simply stayed in his room, and in the few times he had ventured outside of it, it was not to play with the other children his age, but to stare up at the sky above him. According to the boy’s family, whenever he was asked what he was doing, he would only answer that he was waiting for his otherworldly family to come and take him home.
Maxwell had only been around the age of five when his family first began worrying about his antisocially peculiar behavior. He didn’t socialize, he barely even spoke, and on top of that, he didn’t seem to do well in the presence of other children his age. But it was not until he started claiming he possessed “otherworldly powers” that his family had him scent away.
Although I had never officially met Maxwell, I had been studying his case for quite a while now. He was one of the longest standing patients we have had to date. According to Dr. Abernathy, his family had never expressed any indication that they wished to consider having him released into their custody, and none of his previous doctors had ever made any recommendation that he be released. Apparently, they deemed that it was more beneficial for him to remain here than it was for him to live among normally functioning human beings.
That was why I was taking over as his doctor.
Unlike all the other doctors that had been assigned to his case, when I looked at him, read about him, or studied him on paper, I didn’t see Maxwell as I saw countless other patients in this hospital. Aside from his delusions that he was a being from another planet, there was still a lucidness about him that suggested there was something more there, and he was not just clinically insane. After first hearing of his case, it had become my number one priority to evaluate him myself. I was not entirely sure what was the driving force behind the idea, but it was my strong belief that Maxwell was capable of living a normal life, if given the opportunity
Today was to be the first of many sessions I intended to have with Maxwell, and if I was correct in my assessment of him, perhaps we would be able to work though his problems together.
When I reached Maxwell’s room I knocked softly on the door twice before entering. I always knocked before entering a patient’s room. I felt it was a common courtesy everyone should be allowed, regardless of what clinical condition they happened to be in. It was also my way of testing the affability of the patient. A reserved patient would not answer at all. A more sociable patient would.
Maxwell did not answer my knock, but his gaze did focus on me as I entered the room—another test that gauged patient awareness. However, it was a bit difficult to determine exactly how aware Maxwell truly was of my presence, as his gaze did not rest on my face, but rather honed in on my feet. For the longest time he stared at my shoes as if they had cast some sort of hypnotic spell over him. I glanced down at my feet and twisted my ankles to and fro, watching for his response to the motion. Surly enough, his eyes followed their every move.
Interesting.
“Hello Maxwell,” I greeted him.
He looked away from my shoes before he answered back. “Hello.” His voice was low and monotone and he spoke with no inflection.
Placing a friendly smile on my face, I walked further into the room. He was sitting across from me on the bed, directly adjacent to the door. His room was neat and cozy, though there appeared to be no personal possessions. I wondered about that. According to his visitor log, Maxwell received one visitor twice a month. A woman named Isabel Evans. I was told she was his sister, although there seemed to be no obvious relation between the two of them. She never stayed long, perhaps half an hour or so at the most, and as was apparent by the state of Maxwell’s room, she neither brought him anything, nor took anything away.
“Max,” my patient suddenly said from nowhere, calling my attention back to him.
“Excuse me?” I asked, confused by this sudden breaking of the silence.
His gaze fell back down to my shoes. “You called me Maxwell. Call me Max. I prefer to be called Max.”
I nodded my head in understanding. Dr. Abernathy was right so far. Based on the tone of his voice as he spoke, as well as the structuring of his sentence, there was nothing about him that suggested incoherence. Other than the strange fascination with my shoes, so far, Maxwell appeared to be perfectly capable of following a conversation. “Very well then, Max. Since we’re getting to know each other a little better, you can call me Dr. Parker,” I told him.
He indicated his understanding with a slight nod of his head. “Why are you here?” he asked me next. But before I could answer his gaze finally focused on mine as he added, “With your yellow shoes.”
I was thrown by the odd tag on his question, but I masked the confusion that formed inside me at his strange words as I looked down at the canary yellow pumps I wore on my feet. “Is there a problem with my shoes, Max?”
He continued looking at me, never breaking eye contact for a moment. “Do they hurt your feet, Dr. Parker?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No they do not.”
“Then why would there be a problem with them?”
I paused for a moment, contemplating the best way to respond to that question. “You’re right, Max. There is no problem.”
He nodded again as his eyes shifted away from mine. “Are you new?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m your new…councilor.” I didn’t like referring to myself as my patient’s doctor. I didn’t like the implication it made that they were “sick”. “I’ll be meeting with you three times a week. Is that alright with you, Max?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “If it wasn’t, would you still come?”
He was being snappy, and there was a touch of sarcasm in his tone, but I didn’t let it get to me. I knew better than to allow myself to be bated “Yes, Max, I would still come,” I answered seriously.
“Do you know what’s wrong with me, Dr. Parker?”
I frowned at that question. “Do you know what’s wrong with you?” I returned.
He looked away from the ceiling and back to me. “Yes, I know. You people won’t let me go home.”
There was something startling about that sentence. I could hear a strange hint as he said those words. His tone was not accusing, but there was something about the way he said it that said a lot more than what he was saying. It was not the answer I was expecting, though I was not surprised by it. If he meant it in a conventional way, it was completely normal for him to feel that we were the ones keeping him here. But there was still something that suggested to me that he meant those words in a different way. “May I sit, Max?” I asked him politely.
He paused for a moment and looked at one of the two chairs that were pushed into a small table beside his bed. He looked at me, then at the chair, then me, then the chair again. “No, you should stand,” he said.
“May I ask why?”
He continued looking at the chair. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated.
“Very well then,” I said. We would explore the chair situation later. Right now I had more important questions I wanted to ask him. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
He didn’t look away from the chair as he answered me. “You’ve asked me questions already. ‘Is there a problem with my shoes, Max?’ ‘Is that alright Max?’ ‘Do you know what’s wrong with you?’ ‘May I sit Max?’ ‘May I ask why?’ ‘Do you mind if I ask you some questions?’ Six. You’ve asked me six questions.”
I smiled, impressed, and a bit put off that he was able to remember and recite every question I’d asked him since I had entered the room. He was obviously a very bright boy. “Well then, since we’ve established that I’m a bit of a motor mouth, I think I will take a seat anyway,” I said, reaching for the chair closet to me.
He did not respond.
When he did not make any further protests about me sitting, I pulled my chair closer to his bed and took a seat. “Forgive me, but I’m afraid I have a few more questions for you.”
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.
“I already told you, you can call me Dr. Park—”
“Not that, I mean your real name. Your first name. The name your parents’ gave you.”
I didn’t answer his question right away. With some patients, revealing something as personal as a first name could be potentially dangerous. However, I didn’t see that there was any danger with Max. Still, I knew better than to make assumptions. “Why do you want to know my name?” I asked him instead.
“You know mine. It’s not fair that I only get half of yours.”
“Would it make you any more or less comfortable with me if you knew my first name?”
“Not really,” he answered but there was something about the way he said it that seemed like he was not being entirely truthful.
“Did you know your pervious councilors by their first names?” I asked, though I seriously doubted it. Dr. Abernathy did not seem the type that would reveal personal information, even something as small as a name, to his patient.
“You mean the man with the little glasses, and the ones before him,” Max said.
I nodded.
He shook his head at me. “They were doctors. I called them Doctor. They called me Maxwell.”
“Then why do you feel you should know my first name?”
I watched closely as he looked away from the chair to the pillow on his bed. “You called me Max when I asked you to. You said you’re my councilor. Does that mean you only want to council me?”
“Do you think I could council you?”
He groaned and finally looked back at me. “I think you ask a lot of questions, just like the others. I think you think I’m crazy, just like the others, and I think ‘council’ is a euphemism for ‘help’”
I had to give it to him, he wasn’t going to be easy to deal with. His guard was up and he was hesitant to trust me, but that didn’t mean he did not need my help. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting a little help every now and then. It can be good to get a helping hand when you need one.”
“A helping hand,” he repeated, seemly speaking more to himself than he was to me. “You think you can help me,” he said in a stern tone.
He had not voiced it as a question, but I answered anyway. “I would like to try.”
Max watched me silently with evaluating eyes before he pushed himself to the edge of the bed. “Do you really want to help me?” There was a definite touch of skepticism in his tone, but I was happy that he now seemed to trust me a little.
I didn’t hesitate in my answer. “I really do, Max.”
He stared at me again, this time for a longer than he had before. His eyes darted across from left to right quickly as if he were reading words on the page of a book. Sometimes, when looking into the eyes of my patients, there was a ‘not all there’ sort of look in their eyes. However, I saw nothing like that in the deeply examining eyes that stared into mine.
“O…kay,” he said hesitantly.
I smiled. “Okay,” I echoed him. “Then let’s start with some simple questions.”
“Okay,” he said again as he looked away from me. It wasn’t total assurance, but it was a start.
“Do you know how old you are, Max?” I asked him.
Before answering me, he scooted back on the bed and folded his legs underneath him. “I was ten years old when they brought me here. It has been four-hundred fifty-two days since the third time I lost count of how long I’ve been here.”
“Really?” I enquired, fascinated by that bit of information. I took a glance around the room in search of a clock, but there was none. There were no windows in Max’s room, so there was no way to determine what time of day it was without the aid of a clock. Max didn’t even have a calendar in his room. “How have you been keeping track of how long you’ve been here?” I asked curiously.
“In my head,” he answered, as if it were the simplest method to keep track of something.
Very intriguing. “And do you keep track of a lot of things in your head?”
Once again, he stared at me for a long time before he answered. “I don’t have a calendar. I don’t have a clock. They won’t give me pencils or paper. My head is the only place I am able to keep track of things.”
“Would you like me to get some of those things for you? A calendar or a clock?”
He shook his head no. “If I had those things there would be no reason to keep track of the time that passes.”
I couldn’t say why, but for some reason his answer made me want to smile. “Would you like me to tell you how old you are?” I asked.
He shrugged. “If you’d like.”
“You’re seventeen years old, Max.” I waited to see if that revelation would invoke any response in him. It didn’t. “Do you know what that means?” I followed up.
He looked up at the ceiling again. “It means I’ve been here for two thousand five hundred fifty-five days,” he said. “Give or take a week or so.”
Another fascinating answer. It seemed Max was quiet good with numbers. “Tell me more about your time tracking. How do you judge when one day ends and another begins?” I asked.
Max looked away from the ceiling and back down to my shoes. A frown took shape on his face before he answered. “Each day starts with breakfast,” he said, then his eyes shifted to his own bare feet.
His feet.
My shoes.
The ceiling.
My face.
All throughout our conversation his gaze remained fixated on those places. I would have assumed he lacked concentration, but his gaze remained steely on those things in particular, and when he locked on one he was completely focused on it. “What are you looking at, Max?” I finally asked.
He continued to frown down at his feet, but instead of answering my question, he asked one of his own. “How old are you?”
I laughed at that question. “A lot older than you.”
He looked back at me and his eyes seemed to study my face. “You don’t look it.”
“Well thank you,” I said. But at twenty-nine, I was more than a decade older than him. Rather than go into all of that, I opted for a subject change. “Are you going to tell me what you’re looking at?”
He looked away from me, this time to his hands which he had resting in his lap. “Everything,” he said.
“Everything?” I repeated.
“Everything I can see.” He looked back up at me. “And things you can’t.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Things I can’t?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“What kind of things?”
“You wouldn’t understand, even if I explained them to you. People don’t understand what they can’t see. That’s why I’m here.”
I took a second to stew on Max’s words. For the most part, he was right. One of the core reactions in people was to label the things they didn’t understand as insane, or abnormal. It was not impossible that Max could have been correct with his take of his situation.
But still…
“Max, I want to ask you some more personal questions,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
I cleared my throat and shifted straighter in my chair. “How old were you when you first began thinking that you were different.”
“Different,” he repeated in the same inflectionless tone he’d greeted me with when I’d first come in.
“That you were an alien,” I elaborated.
“I always knew,” he answered.
“How did you know?”
He was silent for a long time, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to answer. When he did speak again, it was not to answer my question.
“Have you ever wondered what colors really look like?” he asked.
I frowned. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Slowly, he began tapping his fingers against his folded knees. “I know what colors look like to me. I know red is red and blue is blue. But how do I know what blue really looks like? Is it the same thing you see when you look at blue? Or are you seeing what I see as another color?”
“Max I don’t think—”
“I’m a different color than human being,” he continued, and for the first time I noticed a far off look on his face as he gazed into my eyes. “I’m not…your blue.”
I let his words sink in, trying to work out in my head what he was saying to me. “You feel like you’re different from everyone around you,” I said.
“Don’t you?” he asked.
I didn’t answer that. “It’s a perfectly normal feeling to have, Max. No two people are exactly alike. It doesn’t mean you’re not human,” I explained.
“It’s more than a feeling,” he said.
“Tell me,” I coaxed.
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Slowly, the corners of his mouth turned up into a smile. “You’d have to be my blue to understand.” He smiled. It was the first time I’d seen him do so, and the sight was…haunting.
“Then let’s pretend that I’m your blue,” I said. I wanted him to keep talking. I wanted to understand what he was trying to say to me.
His smile went away. “I can’t pretend. You’re not my blue.”
“Okay then,” I started, attempting a different approach “Have you ever come across someone that was your blue?”
Max stopped tapping his knees and unfolded his legs. “You mean someone like me?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “Have you ever met anyone else that you thought was like you?”
He looked down at the bed. “Two thousand five hundred fifty five days,” he said. “That’s how long I’ve been here.”
“Yes,” I nodded, waiting for him to go on.
“In all that time I’ve never met a person like me,” he said.
“And what about your sister?” I asked. Is she not like you?”
Max froze ramrod stiff, as if my words had suddenly triggered something inside of him that he did not want to be triggered. He looked at me with large eyes that for a moment seemed as if they were going to tear up.
“You should go,” he said in a very low, almost inaudible tone.
“Max, did I say something that upset you?”
He shook his head. “Please leave,” he said, looking away from me.
In that slight second, and with nothing more than the turning of his head, everything about the Max I had been speaking to was gone, and what remained was a boy I did not recognize. Max sat there, stiff as a board, not moving or speaking, barely even showing any indication that he was breathing. I didn’t know exactly what about what I had said had triggered this reaction, but I could see that attempting any further progress with him right now would be useless.
I stood up from my chair and pushed it back into the table. “Alright Max, we can stop for today if that’s what you want,” I said, speaking in a soothing tone. “But is it alright if I come back tomorrow?”
Without looking at me, Max nodded his head.
“Okay,” I said, walking towards the door. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Once again he nodded inaudibly.
Standing at the door I watched Max silently, trying to determine what had caused this drastic change in him. Touching a hand to the side pocket of my coat, I felt for the tape recorded that had been recording every word of the conversation I’d had with Max. Still Max made no indication that he ever registered my presence in his room. With one final glance at him, I left the room.
Stepping out into the hallway, I closed Max’s door behind me and entered the lock code on the door, then headed down the hall. Halfway to the elevator I reached inside of the pocket on my coat and took out a small recorder and pressed the stop button.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
