Body Surfing

I just want to find out what happened.”
    Qusay stopped rocking. His eyes fixed hers. “It was him. Him.”
    Sue fought the urge to look away. “Who was it, Mohammed?”
    The boy opened his mouth but no sound came out. His eyes were equally wide, equally silent.
    “Mohammed?”
    The look on his face made her want to cry out. Such terror, such…unknowing. He cinched the blanket around his bloodstained torso, and Sue felt as though she were watching someone wrap himself in his own shroud.
    “I can’t tell you his name.”
    Sue had to resist catching hold of the boy’s hand. One of her teachers had told her too much empathy made her ill suited for long-term analysis, which was probably why she’d ended up at a hospital in the middle of nowhere rather than with a lucrative Park Avenue practice.
    “Let’s take it one step at a time, okay, Mohammed?”
    The boy took a deep breath, nodded. “Q. My—my friends call me Q.”
    Sue heard the pause. His friends.
    All at once words started pouring from his mouth.
    “Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re watching yourself at the same time as you’re the person you’re watching? It’s like you’re doing things, saying things, but at the same time it’s not you. And you want to call out to yourself, tell yourself to stop, but when you open your mouth only a whisper comes out and no one can hear you. You can’t make yourself shout any louder, and you can’t hear yourself either.”
    Sue nodded. “People who find themselves in situations where they don’t have control often feel as if they’re under the influence of drugs or—”
    “It wasn’t drugs . There was someone else there . Someone in my mind .” Q. shook his head violently, as if he was trying to rattle out the stranger. “You have to believe me. It wasn’t me . It was him. Him . He made me do it.”
    “Are you saying you heard voices, Q.? That told you to do things?”
    “He didn’t tell me to do anything. He made me. I know it sounds crazy. I’m not crazy, am I? Like schizophrenia or multiple personalities or something?”
    “MPD is more common in novels than in real life. In fact, almost all cases have been found to be induced by the treating analyst—a little like the repressed memories craze of a few years ago. Now schizophrenia? That does manifest around your age, but…” Sue paused, shook her head.
    “What?”
    “It’s just, well, your feeling that someone was inside you isn’t typical. Usually there’s externalization. Paranoia, aural and visual hallucinations. The patient feels as though the threat is coming from outside—a voice only he can hear, a person only he can see. He’s not aware of anything wrong with himself. Thinks he’s perfectly normal and everyone else is crazy.”
    “All he thought about was sex. It was like all he wanted to do was stick my dick in something. But he had to wait till the right time.”
    Sue noted the disjunction. He wanted. My dick .
    “What was the right time, Q.? What were you—I mean, what was he waiting for?”
    Q. looked at her balefully, as if he thought she were baiting him.
    “I used to have a scar.”
    Sue sat back. The boy’s voice had taken an hysterical edge.
    “My appendix burst when I was thirteen.” The boy touched a spot on his blood-splattered stomach. “There was a two-inch scar there. You could really see it at the end of summer because it didn’t tan with the rest of my skin. And now it’s gone.” Q. touched his face, his torso. “I drove into a cliff at a hundred miles an hour . Two of my friends are dead and one’s in the operating room and I don’t have a single scratch on me. Even my scar is gone. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
    “I’m not sure funny —”
    “Knock, knock.”
    Mohinder’s sycophantic face poked through the door.
    “Pardon me for interrupting, Dr. Miller. The boy’s father has arrived.”
    “I’ll release him as soon as I’ve finished my examination, Dr. Mohinder.”
    “Ah, yes,” Mohinder glanced at Q. “It’s just that, well, Mr. Qusay Sr. would like to take the boy now.”
    Something flashed in Sue’s mind. Maybe it was Mohinder’s stilted manner of speaking, but all of a sudden she thought of her old teacher, J.D. Thomas.
    She tapped the clipboard.
    “The boy’s chart is marked 4-20.” Four-twenty being the code that indicated a patient was a suspect in a criminal proceeding, and could only be released with police permission.
    Mohinder’s