The White Noise Machine - Pt.2

The shouting, the honking, the footsteps, the descending airplanes, the ascending airplanes, the jackhammers, the tires skidding, the plumbing, the smoke alarms, the horror!

“- again, that’s just an example. We’ll move on after we decide what it sounds like in that room of yours, okay?” The doctor paused to chuckle. “And don’t tell me that your happy place is sound-proofed now.”

Checkmate. Goddammit, I should have thought of that!

In the silence of the pause, Milton scavenged for an answer that would save him. The ceaseless clamour of his apartment building evaporated. He let a hand fall to his side to touch the unfamiliar fabric of the couch on which he sat. He was here. What sounds are here that he could use?

The devil, the patient devil, slipped into the white noise machine and gave its wiring a kick. The poor thing choked on its salt water, gurgled like a drowning sailor, and went silent. Milton and Dr. Finney bore witness, both forgetting the agonies of the happy place.

“Oh, damn.”, Dr. Finney grunted. “Sorry.”, he added, distracted. He removed himself from his chair and knelt to the machine with a haste Milton couldn’t understand. He really does want that thing on at all times, doesn’t he?

“Sorry about this, Milton. It does this from time to time, but that last rattle sounded bad, didn’t it?”

Milton didn’t care...did he? That white noise machine was a constant here, wasn’t it? No matter what curveball or sneak attack Dr. Finney had prepared, at least the white noise machine offered no surprises. It was a dutiful soldier. One purpose and it knew what it was. Emit. Fill space. What a simple function. What a simple life. What simple expectations. The white noise machine would never be asked what its happy place was. He watched Dr. Finney shake and rap on the thing’s plastic hull, beckoning it back to life. The defibrillation was unsuccessful until...suddenly the geriatric thunderstorm was upon them again. And just as suddenly it crackled away. Dr. Milton phoned the rainforest and the monkey. They fizzled and disappeared. “I’m really sorry about this, Milton.”, the doctor fretted. He stood and placed one hand on his hip, the other rubbed the back of his neck. Is he feeling it, too?

“Why don’t you try the, uh…other sound?”

“You had a negative response to the white noise when I played it earlier.”  Did I?

Did he? Whether he did or not, he needed some noise for his happy place and he needed to be hearing it to proclaim it convincingly. Besides, he’d feel uncomfortable now if the doctor didn’t at least attempt the one other option before giving up. Doubtless, he’d be thinking about it in bed tonight. What if that last sound worked? What would have happened?

“Give it a shot.” A command! I’m paying you, aren’t I? You’ll try the last sound if I damn well ask you to…right?

“Alright, why not?”, Dr. Finney nodded, a weak smile stretched across his face, his cheeks lifting  his thick rimmed glasses. He knelt down once more and pressed the button to change the noise. 

Static, once again. Milton listened. Like the Big Bang, all at once the room was imbued with texture and dark matter. You could not see it, but by God, if you knew to listen, it was there. An outbreak of gooseflesh spread across Milton’s arms and legs. Why had he rejected this sound before? Had I? This was the perfect sound! The white noise machine performed its namesake function. White noise. Innocuous. Droning. Background. Unseen and omniscient. As permeable as a cloud and just as out of reach. Milton invited the noise to replace the blood in his veins. 

He experienced his first deep breath.

To Dr. Finney, it looked as if Milton were holding on for dear life. His eyes were closed. His mouth flattened to a perfect line. His fists balled up at his sides. “Milton, are you okay?”, the doctor asked.

Without a word or a shred of self consciousness, and with his eyes still closed, Milton slipped to the floor. He lied on his back. There really wasn’t enough room to do this here, it wasn’t arranged to accommodate this strange act, but Milton wasn’t a large guy and Dr. Milton was fascinated. “Milton -”, he started, a face blossoming through the static mist, “- are we in your happy place now?”

Milton mustered a thumbs up. What words he may have had he left on the shore. He’d done it! 

I beat therapy!

“Good!” Dr. Finney had the good sense to whisper now, respecting the significance of the moment. “I’ll get the headphones.”

The what?

Weren’t they done? Couldn’t Milton now, with his happy place neatly assigned a slot in his utility belt, live happily ever after? It was all so simple now that he was there. Why complicate it? A deep, recessed, scurrying-rat part of his soul assumed that Dr. Finney would have simply turned off the lights, exited the room, and let him be forever. He could already feel his shoulder blades and the back of his head and the small of his back and his heels fusing with the floor. And the room fusing with the white noise. And the whole ordeal coalescing to perfect grey light.

Yet, he heard Dr. Finney reaching into a drawer in his desk and retrieving the headphones and saying “Don’t worry, you don’t have to get up. The cord’s long. If you want to take these and put them on, we can start.” The faster I do whatever this is, the faster he’ll leave and let me stay in the happy place. Milton, under the gravity of a dying star, reached up with one hand and took the headphones. He placed them over his ears. Even muffled, the white noise still stroked his eardrums, still played harp on the vellus hair.

“Now, you’re going to hear a series of beeps, okay, Milton?” The doctor was speaking up to beat the muffle of the headphones. “They’ll be soft, so let me know if you can’t hear them. Every time you hear a beep, I’d like you to press a finger to your thumb, starting with your index finger and ending in your pinky. Do this on both hands.” For God’s sake, why? The first beep came suddenly. An intruder. Milton was slow on the draw, hesitating half a second as he tried to remember where his fingers and what the instructions were. He pressed his index fingers to his thumbs as if to crush a bug. “Good, good. No need to press them that tightly, Milton.” Well, you didn’t say not to do it tight!

Another beep. He pressed his middle fingers to his thumbs, gentle this time. He repeated till he hit his pinkies.

“Good. Let’s do that one more time.” They did so. Four more beeps, four more finger presses. Milton’s body tensed, anticipating an electric shock next. His happy place was receding. He was falling through the floor, whirling through space. “Focus on that happy place, Milton.”, the good doctor warned. Milton scrambled back in. The two practiced with the beeps and fingers twice more. A practiced medium conjuring Milton’s apparition from the asphodel fields of The Happy Place.

“Do you have the rhythm down?”, Dr. Finney asked. Milton nodded his head. Thanks, doc. Be seeing you!

“Okay, now, this part’s going to be a little harder, but just stick with me here. On this next round of beeps, I want you to think of a trauma -” What? “ - you’ve experienced. It can be anything, recent or a long time past. Usually, people will focus on an event that made them seek therapy in the first place. I want you to think about that trauma, remember how it felt and how you processed it at the time. At the same time, I want you to remain in your happy place and do the finger-thumb touching. Are you ready?” 

No.

Dr. Finney needn’t have asked Milton if he was ready, as the beeps came almost immediately. The doctor was keeping an eye on the clock and knew they were running short on time but, goddammit, they’d spent so long on the happy place and they needed to get to the real work. Again, Milton almost missed the first finger press. He hadn’t even begun to think of a trauma. 

A trauma? Beep. Middle finger. What does he mean exactly? Beep. Ring finger. Quickly, now, Milton. Beep. Pinky finger. Can’t I just stay in the happy place? Beep. Index finger. Why are you here? What is the cause? Beep. Middle finger. Trauma, trauma, trauma. Beep. Ring finger. There’s blood on the bathroom floor. Beep. Pinky finger. Fuck it all, I’ve done it again. Beep. Index finger. His enormous hand is on my face. You’re supposed to love me, aren’t you? I can’t breathe. Beep. Middle finger. I’m getting my high school diploma. Why does it feel like a death sentence? Beep. Ring finger. There’s a lizard in the mirror when I wipe away the steam from the shower. Who is this? Beep. Pinky finger. Don’t go there. Stay in the happy place. Stay. Stay. Stay. Beep. 

Milton was struck with the sensation of being lowered into a pool of ice water. It started on his heels and ankles. When his brain sent the command to flinch or jerk away from whatever this was, his body refused, as if some molecular welding of himself to the floor had occurred. The freezing - or was it burning? - sensation crept up his legs, over his buttocks, between his shoulder blades and up round the back of his head. Is this normal? Ask if this is normal…but the words were denied exit from his vocal chords. Open your eyes at least. Let the doctor know something is wrong. Communications were lost with his eyelids as well, it seemed. The ice floe was rising. Both hands were now submerged and it was approaching his ears. He hadn’t noticed the beeps had stopped. He realized, scared though he was, that this feeling, this freezing, was preferable by far to the smoldering heat of embarrassment that flushed his cheeks and dizzied him so many times already in this session and in life. In fact I could get used to this feeling. This therapy stuff might be working. He felt a vague voice in another room. It sounded like the doctor asking him to wake up, by God, wake up but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t sure if anything outside this room existed anymore. This, this room, this headspace, seemed to be where he was always supposed to be. Everything else was likely some nightmare, some fever dream he had. What else could explain the confusing, the absurd, the hostile, the great and terrible? What else could conjure the impossible to interpret facial expressions, the duplicitous double-meanings of conversations, the snap judgements and snap cruelties, the chaos and the heat, my God the heat, of a thrush of gasping, warring, blood-thirsty ape-men, searching through each other’s viscera for a mote of kindness, if not a nightmare?

The thought of his own failings were being broken down. How silly the invisible walls he navigated seemed now; the ones placed there for him and the ones he put there himself. They were nothing in the happy place. The walls here stood strong and defined and protected him. They kept out the heat. He was born anew in the happy place, something fetal, something comfortable. Old Milton was somewhere on the other side clawing to get in, but he didn’t matter. New Milton was fresh and unburdened and had never known anything other than happiness and the white noise machine that sat in the corner and cocooned him with its whisper. 

New Milton smiled, though his lips and teeth could not display it. The freezing, though he no longer felt it as such, had shrouded his body up to his face. The white noise vibrated through him without friction. Entropy was shed.

The thing formerly known as Milton had not noticed when Dr. Finney clocked that a strange, ink-black fluid was trickling from the speaker of the white noise machine and had just reached the carpet. 

When he kneeled down to investigate, the machine sent forth a deluge of the ichor. Dr. Finney saw the stuff reach Milton and start to pool around his body. He had called out to Milton, loud, unplugged the headphones even, but it was no use. The doctor agreed to let the ethical ramifications of touching a patient be damned as he grabbed Milton by the collar and tried to lift him up. It was no use. He may as well have weighed a ton. Dr. Finney noticed that he was up to his ankles - “Ah! That’s cold!” - in the fluid now. The legs of the chair, couch, and desk were now stuck fast. If anyone were in the waiting room, they’d have seen it pass under the threshold of the closed door like a shadow.

He gave Milton a brisk slap across the face. It produced nothing. With every ounce of his strength, his feet now cinder blocks, he trudged towards the outlet where the white noise machine was plugged in. The machine, although it too had disappeared within the muck, droned on with impossible consistency. Dr. Finney yanked the cord out of the wall and…nothing happened. The paralyzing cold was at his shins now. He abandoned any notion of saving Milton. He was completely covered and, though the doctor didn’t know what this stuff was, he imagined getting it in your orifices meant death. 

Then he remembered the window. Milton had asked during their first session that the window be shut and the curtains be drawn. Considering this was one of the only things said during that first session, it was easy for the doctor to remember for the second. Now it was his only way out. He was shivering, his teeth were clacking with enough force to cause pain. Taking steps, foot after foot, was a Herculean effort. It was all too slow as the room filled. He snatched his cellphone off his desk as he passed it and dialed 9-1-1. 

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“I n-n-n-...need an a-a-a-mbul-l-lance and a h-h-hazm-m-at t-team.”

“Okay, sir, what’s happening? Where are you?”

“S-six, s-six, eight, I-Inglewood A-a-v-v-enue, S-s-suite…t-t-trace the c-call and h-h-hurry!”

He lost his grip on the phone and it plunked into the fluid without a ripple. He trudged past where Milton laid in stasis. He may have stepped on Milton’s frozen hand but couldn’t be, nor cared to be, sure. Sweat oozed from the doctor’s forehead. The veins of his neck pulsed with violence. He made it to the window and unlatched it. Air! Freedom! But, alas, his office space was on the third floor of this building. He didn’t have the time to create some sort of rope. He didn’t have the strength for a laborious climb. He scanned the ground level and found what he was praying would be there. Bushes! Summoning the last drops of his adrenaline, he thrust his hands upon the windowsill and lifted. The void at his thighs, making great strides towards his groin, pulled. In the veritable tug of war, Dr. Finney freed himself and went toppling, head first into the bushes thirty feet below. 

Passersby saw the fall. Several ran to the bushes to rouse the unconscious doctor. Tears streamed down his face. From almost the waist down, his body and clothes were black as pitch. As two pulled the doctor from the bushes, one got their phone out to call 9-1-1 not knowing they were already on their way. A fourth pointed at the encroaching nether-liquid - “The hell is that? Do you see that?” - as it streamed out the window and crept down the wall. Towards the ground. Towards them.

Somewhere far away from all of it, Milton drew his knees to his chin and breathed deep.