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He was let out of the hospital on Friday with heavy pain killers and orders to rest over the weekend. And that was precisely what Dr. Sylvester Ashling did. He didn’t think he could do anything - even though he wanted to. He had slept the two days away, only getting out of his bed for the very necessary, like washing up and eating. The medicine, though dulling the pain, left him aching and tired.
Nonetheless, he went back to work on Monday, explaining his circumstances for missing the last half of last week - the museum ‘heist’ happened Tuesday night, so he was cooped up in the hospital for the rest of it, although he couldn’t remember anything that happened in that time besides falling in and out of consciousness and listening to medical lingo that he found fortunate for understanding easily. And like any establishment - you would hope a serious place like a medical clinic would be immune, but no - word spread and the rest of Monday was full of his co-workers coming in to offer their sentiments. He had two problems with this.
One, it was distracting. He had missed nearly a full week of work. While he was grateful - and he openly told them so over and over again - for them covering him and fixing his patients with new appointment dates, he still had more to catch up on. Medical reports still needed to be updated, forms needed to be filed, emails needed to be sent to the patients’ general healthcare providers, responses from other specialists needed to be analyzed, and so much more.
Although he wouldn’t consider them friends, he did enjoy some of the quick chats he would have with his co-workers, whether on a patient, new study, or just quirky stories of things that happened over the weekend. So, it was important to keep in touch and show gratitude, even if he just wanted to grab a water cup and go back into his office, door locked.
And two, a part of it felt belittling. Hearing that he had come from the hospital because of his broken and sore ribs, they tried their best to help him out with chores like grabbing glasses from the employee kitchen or offering to deliver papers/messages so he wouldn’t have to get up and move.
But, he felt that some of them were taking their worries too far because of his age. He had already struggled in the first few weeks of being hired with their constant gaze and chipper remarks that bordered patronizing. Fortunately, as it was a clinic that specialized in the diagnosis of the mind, many caught on and began treating him as an equal - after all, he wouldn’t have a Ph.D. or a job if he wasn’t mature. But this felt like a repeat of those first few weeks and it was getting irritating rather quickly.
But the worries tampered off as he began declining more of their offers and moving freely around the office and with his patients. The rest of the workweek followed out with him catching up on things, such as a couple of personal phone calls to his patients with apologies and going over any questions they may have had, and preparing for the work of next week.
It was officially Friday; the clinic had closed at 6 PM, but because the work doesn’t end when the patients are gone, most of the staff had stuck around completing any paperwork and only slowly began trickling out at around 9. Sylvie decided to follow his co-workers' unspoken advice and gathered his stuff, leaving the office promptly at 9:34 PM and hitching a ride on the last bus - more often than not, he stayed at the office until near midnight and was forced to walk home. Twenty minutes wasn’t too bad, but he was still scheduled to go back to the hospital and have a final x-ray next Thursday, and it would be bad if the doctor saw that his ribs were in worse condition than before he had originally left.
It was now 10:14 PM according to his phone. The young doctor sighed and slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket while pushing open his apartment’s front door. He deposited his keys and office ID badge on the small table beside the door. Immediately he crossed the apartment, grabbed his light lavender curtains and pulled them shut - they weren’t necessarily his; the previous tenant had left them up and he saw no reason in getting new ones, besides the color had begun to grow on him - before promptly falling face-first onto his couch.
“Oof.”
Sylvie grimaced and reached his hand under himself to simply apply pressure against his chest, but made no other movement to adjust himself. The teen let out a deep breath and lightly shut his eyes, pushing his face further into his cushions.
He would refuse to admit it to anyone else, but this week had exhausted him like no other - which was strange. Not the being exhausted part, that was always a constant. But the heavy need to lie down was rare.
Typically, he would power through for a few more hours, especially on a weekend, to make himself a mild dinner - one of the rare times he cooked besides ordering delivery - tidy around the house if needed, drop off his papers in his second-bedroom-turned-office and work for a bit, and then finally go back to the living room at what would be two in the morning to read a book, complete a couple of pages in his puzzle book, or watch movies/Youtube on his phone.
Many people would assume he wouldn’t do the latter, but he was still fifteen and was still fascinated by the wonders, horrors, smarts, and stupids of the internet. But of course, he would refuse to admit to it, because he felt that it didn't fit his sophisticated and mature image.
Finally, he would either fall asleep on his couch at four or make the journey to his bed and do the same there.
Sylvie with his eyes shut, breathing, tried to logic out his tiredness.
He finally concluded, ‘It must still be my ribs.’ And it felt pretty valid to him as without a short term goal in front of him like he had in the office or the prior weekend's heavy medication to numb the mind and body, he was consciously aware of the soft pulsing discomfort beneath his skin and the dull ache in his lower back.
He lied there, counting every heartbeat and breath he took, and the more he did, the more he began to decipher some sort of tension in his chest. At the same time, he began to decipher his thoughts as well, speaking out loud to the empty air around him as if he were both a doctor and patient in the middle of crafting a diagnosis.
“How do you feel Dr. Ashling?”
“Tired. Like, really tired.”
“More tired than usual?”
“Yeah. Probably because this is the first time I’ve truly been (a) coherent enough to think,” this led to him thinking back to the prior weekend of constant blackout sleeping, “and (b) not busy with trying to catch up on things I’ve missed.”
At this moment, he paused in his questioning with a new thought throwing itself into the front of his mind. His imaginary doctor persona - who he now was imaging at Dr. Beefton - took this as an opportunity.
“What is it?” egging him on to speak aloud.
“Just realized this is the first time since the hospital return - or well, maybe longer - that I’ve just… rested without doing anything. Just sat down for a second. Y’know?” he said somberly as the teen lifted one hand to rub his eye.
The peace that he wanted to feel was thick and stifling and the silence in the room reverberated in his head.
Suddenly, he groaned and pushed himself up into a sitting position, lifting his glasses and rubbing his eyes.
‘I should at least put up my stuff.’
Sylvie stood and carefully moved in the dark. He neglected to turn on the lights when he first entered and closing the curtains had only added more shadows. Fortunately, the curtains were translucent, so soft moon rays, traffic lights, and car headlights flooded some color and radiance into the apartment.
He took his things and placed them on the desk in his office. Then he moved to the bathroom and slowly freshened himself up by taking a quick jump into the shower. Putting on his pajamas and grabbing the comforter from his bed, he found himself right back on the living room couch. For a moment he thought, ‘Should I get something to eat first? I ate lunch at like one and it's definitely been a couple of hours.” But moving, let alone eating, seemed tiresome - which he couldn’t even understand how, because, ‘I couldn’t possibly be more tired than I am now.’
And with that, he settled into a corner of the couch with his phone, snuggly draping the blanket over himself as a way to answer, ‘Yes,’ to himself for his lack of motivation. Ignoring the fog waiting to settle over his mind, he scrolled through his phone, watching clips of documentaries he liked, jokingly listened to a couple of conspiracy theories, checked his emails and went over his schedule for the next two hours.
As time crawled on, he found himself frequently blinking and snapping his eyes open to stay awake, refusing to lose his battle to the neurons in his brain. Finally, he set his phone down on the coffee table and stretched both arms upward.
“Ugh!”, he squeaked out. Almost immediately, one arm came down to wrap around his side as he doubled over. He took two quick breaths and pain left just as fast as it had come. Sylvie straightened himself and sighed, combing his hair with his hands. The entire week had been littered with random sharp pains stab his side where his bruised ribs were when he stretched too far, but he overall was not too concerned as he had been warned by the physician before leaving the hospital that there was a high probability of the pains happening.
He reached back to his phone, only to click it on to see the time.
12:24 AM.
Another sigh out, he grabbed his glasses and set them beside his device.
He pulled the blankets up to his chin and shifted a bit to further push himself up into the corner of the sofa. The very subconscious movement of doing the opposite of lying down let him in on everything he needed to know.
Slightly frustrated, he huffed and tipped his head back onto the armrest and loosely pulled his legs up to his chest with his arms encircling the appendages.
“So that’s how it’s going to be huh!”
He closed his eyes and grimaced. And merely seconds later, lips tight, he gave a soft shriek, running his hands through his hair and over his face again.
Sylvie was tired as hell , but for some damn reason , sleep was eluding him. In addition, the strange tension and stress that was befalling him had enunciated the ache and pain in his body, frustrating him further.
‘A stupid cycle.’
All too quickly, he felt his head pounding and heat rushing through his body while his heart rate picked up. The teen choked back another scream of anger and exhaustion. His entire brain and body were fighting with some unknown enemy; a fight that Sylvie wanted to lose badly and just go to sleep instead. The soft grazing of the blanket on his skin had become heavy and scratchy, forcing him to start bearing his fingernails and dragging them across his arms. The grounding presence of the sofa on his back suddenly made the room feel smaller and him trapped into a corner. With a small start, he felt his eyes watering-
He tightly shut his eyes to keep the tears from falling, but if anything made them fall faster. He wound his hands into his hair, sometimes feeling his fingernails scratch the top of his head.
Subconsciously, Sylvie managed to whisper out, “Counting shee-sheep.”
A chorus of, “Baa!,” met his ears. Little feet were walking around him and on him. Wool, both warm and cool, rubbed against his arms and face. He could even feel a few gently tugging and grazing on his hair and pajama bottoms. The sheep he summoned continued to roam around, gentle steps to not hurt, none keeping the same job for too long with another quickly replacing the first.
Contrary to what people may think that the movement would be worse, Sylvie preferred the movement, considering a sort of brain game to determine how sheep he had summoned with their constant movement. He knows that it sounds lame - which is why he would never tell anyone that - but anything to distract him from the torment he was going through really.
The teen untangled his hands from his soft salmon hair, instead attaching them into the soft curly wool of the sheets beside him. He blearily blinked and looked around himself as he did, and laughed a wet laugh that broke right back into light gasping sobs. The summoned farm animals nipped at his exposed skin, hair, and sleeves gently, trying to pull his focus onto them.
Sylvie continued to sob for another minute or two, before finally trying to regain control of himself. Not wanting to let go of his buddies - his sheep were not just animals , at least not to him - he rubbed his eyes on his shoulder and tried to count the sheep he had summoned.
“1. 2.”
He stopped to wipe his eyes again.
“3.”
His sobs had died down, and it was just him shakily gasping for breath.
“4. 5.”
He let go of the wool and stretched his fingers out, wiggling them to release the tension in them.
“6. And 7.”
He released a long slow breath, stretching out the rest of himself as he did, until he was lying on his back on the sofa. He closed his eyes. The heat of pent up emotions that had built up inside of him was still lingering in his checks, as likely evident by the dark pink tints on them, and much further behind in his mind. As one final act - childish he would think back on - he grabbed the blanket that had been bunched and tagged around him, and tossed it to the ground. The rush of cold air the hit him almost brought about more tears, but instead, Sylvie grabbed a sheep and gently placed it on his chest; the sheep was light enough to apply any force to his ribs, but enough to have a weight to know that it was there. The other six buddies situated themselves on the rest of him with one lying on the armrest right above his head.
Sylvie allowed himself to take another five minutes to draw lazy circles in the wool of the sheep on his chest and listen to the faint rumbles of cars going by and the little slaps as leaves were blown into his windows by the wind. He was gently roused from his loose thoughts when he felt the game of his chest sheep directly him.
He looked the creature in the eye, before giving a gentle smile and mumbling, “Sorry for the, uh,” he paused and scrunched nose, “emotional outburst.”
Every sheep had been looking at him when he began speaking, but at the end of his apology, the fluffy creatures had a small fire in their eyes and their “Baas,” were sharp. Chest sheep roughly - rough was nothing when it was thick wool - bumped his head on the boy's chest.
Sylvie softly chucked and told them, “Yeah, I know. Psychologist, remember.” He vaguely gestured to himself. “This isn’t something that I should be apologizing for. It is normal to have emotional outbursts as a response to internal stimuli. In fact, it can be beneficial by ridding the mind of some tension, thus making you able to think more clearly,” he recited to himself the same thing he would have said to his patients.
All of the animals nodded, satisfied with the amendment. Yet, the sheep continued to stare patiently for Sylvie to continue.
He knew that there was more to be spoken about, such as figuring out what that weight in his chest was that wasn’t the sheep. Or why he still had goosebumps on his skin. Or why there was still lingering tension in his arms and legs so that he couldn’t entirely relax fully.
But that was the end of the conversation as far as he was concerned.
He was startled too by Chest Sheep once again dropping its furry face into his summoner’s chest. The teen gave it a false, wide smile, “I think its time we go to sleep,” in a tone too merry to be honest. All seven sheep glared once again, but the anger dissipated fast as the teen gave out a yawn.
Sylvie shifted to get more comfortable, finally feeling the wound-up energy inside of him loosening its grip. Some of the sheep gave noises of discontent for being moved, but quickly tucked their legs under themselves and settled onto the boy’s body once more.
Eight creatures - one 15-year old boy and seven golden wooled sheep - let themselves drift away into the night.