"You've been in an accident." The voice pierced the warm darkness that I didn’t even know I was in, nor remembered waking into. "You are in the recovery wing after surgery— all has gone well." A pressure on my arm— my mind swam this into reassurance. "We'll unbandage your eyes tomorrow."

A car skidded into my mind. The iron smell of blood slapped my face. Memories crashed. Concerned faces distorted and warped through translucent tubes that wrapped and bound them. My consciousness fled as I was dragged into a hot, silent darkness by tendrils and fleshy ropes from my ghastly vision.

I awoke again, recognizing I was in a hospital bed, a bleep and bandage for company. My head throbbed, my eyes stung, but I could see clearly.

The curtain around the bed acted as a screen for a silhouette show of doctors and nurses as they hurried about their business. Sweat stung me all over as the tentacle-wrapped people echoed in my memories. The shadow people on my curtain showed none of the writhing horror I’d seen before.

A nurse swished the curtain aside. Close up I could see there were three separate thick fleshy ropes around her, and tens of thinner, finer ones that wove over her skin, and vanished into skinny lines up through the ceiling. I gasped and recoiled into the piled pillows. I couldn’t help but stare. My eyes widened until they hurt taking in the view. I shuffled back further from her. She reached for me and said some words I couldn’t digest. My muscles locked as my heart raced. What was wrong with her? Did I have the same gruesome vines swaddling me?

The nurse, oblivious, wrapped a blood pressure sleeve on my arm and pumped it while resting her fingers on my wrist. She measured my pulse against her watch, and I dragged every detail I could about the twisting horrors on this woman in through my eyes. She didn’t appear to be harmed, and nothing was harming me. Was I hallucinating? The lines around her were of either red or blue. What this meant I didn't know— were they like veins on a high school biology diagram? Did something flow in them?

With no thought to how it might seem I reached out to touch one— a thin blue one that jostled amongst many on her arm before stretching up and away. I stroked it, a few centimeters above her arm. It was warm, dry against my fingertips— my heart tickled, and an image of a child popped into mind. Startled I pulled back. The nurse was staring at me.

"Can’t you see them?" I said. She took a step back, turned and dashed out. Less than a minute later I had been needled into somnolence.

When I woke next it was to a cluster of people all fresh-scented and white coats. A light switched from eye to eye— which I followed easily.

"Hi there, I'm Doctor Capo, head of Heads— I like to say." A middle aged, neatly groomed smiling face came into focus as the bright hand-held torch was put away. "Do you have any pains in your head beyond the bruising at the back?"

I slowly shook my head. This man had thick red vines and fewer narrow blue ones that wafted up and away. A thick green one —the color of corrupted copper—started out from his belly and snaked around his torso to disappear into his head through his right eye. I stared. My heart kicked off again.

"When you woke last you talked about seeing something— was it double vision perhaps? Have you had anything like this before?" He sat down on the edge of the bed, bringing him closer to me. I didn't need to touch the green vine to get an impression as I had touching the cord from the Nurse. This green one pulsed and smoked revulsion at me.

"No," I said, glancing around. "You all have them; they are all around you. Do I have them? Can you get me a mirror?" I sat up and held out my hand— I could see nothing on my arms as I saw on theirs.

"Later— we can get you one later. I think you may have something pressing on what is called the occipital lobe— scrambling your vision. We've booked an MRI for tomorrow." He reached forward and gently held my forearm and lowered it to the bed. My hand passed through an angry red vine and brushed the green.

My mind lurched. My body stiffened as though electrocuted. I walked a vermilion landscape of wood char and anger, receiving blow after blow —I was a child— and then meting out the same but I was older with a child and a woman under my fist. Images flickered rapidly, then I walked in sickness, revulsion. Needs and Needles. Tears and loathing.

Instinct kicked in. My arms whipped out from my body to push these visions away. The blade of my left hand severed the thickest red vines, then thudded into the green which shattered and exploded. My consciousness rolled into a dark, and colorless relief as I floated away on a sea of exhaustion.

I blinked, confused. He was almost rambling, but the landscapes of violence and self-harm resurrected in my mind and connected to his words. He looked uncomfortable with talking.

"I don't know what is happening to me either," I said. My rising anxiety colored my tone, just as his discomfort hobbled his words.

"I think that you can see something about people, something that should stay on the inside that has seeped out perhaps. And when you hit me, you broke some of those things. In some ways you freed me. I know I can recover my life. But you left me with a weight of shame and regret. I can see clearly what I have done, and it hurts. It really hurts."

He shook his head slowly, then looked up at me. Not looking for forgiveness or asking anything. He was telling me, for my sake. I lifted an arm against the restraints. "Let me go. But don't touch me."

He nodded, stood and carefully rested a hand on the Velcro bands. "Tell me—are you still seeing the er, colored shapes?"

I sat up, and leant back into the pillows, the proximity of Doctor Capo's remaining bindings made sweat stab my forehead. "They are more like vines, or ropes— though they move like tentacles, and seem to be trying to crush the person they are around. I've seen three colors —you had red, green and blue— the red and green were the biggest and nastiest— but you also had a lot of very fine blue ones." I glanced up. "And they look thicker now— healthier, though that makes no sense. And you have a new purple one. Around your throat."

He nodded again and made a humph noise. "What triggered the seizure when you hit me?"

I stared at him, wondering if I could trust him with what I thought I'd seen— was this some elaborate trap to get me committed? I decided to let him know.

"I touched the red and green on you. The red spiralled up and out —to other people I think— and through it I saw you being hit as a kid, and...," I hesitated—unsure, then ploughed on. "You were hitting your wife and child."

Capo sighed and lowered his head again. I carried on. "The green one was different, it looped from your belly, around you and into your head. When I touched it, I saw drugs. You— taking drugs."

He sat back. "All things from my life, past and present. Things I don't want others to know about." He pondered for a moment, then before I could react, he stood and tightened the strap on my right wrist. I thrashed the left one trying to be free, but he reached over and grabbed the Velcro. I lurched forward banging my head into his, a red rope scraped my mind, dumping more livid images —abandonment, neglect— I was momentarily stunned. It was enough time for Capo to tighten the restraints.

"Why?" My voice rose to a shriek. "I thought you said you were getting things sorted."

Capo panted as he sat and rubbed at his forehead where I had smacked into him. "You have a talent, and if people see you use it, they will believe what you say, and if you tell them about me and...my problems then I'll lose this," he gestured around the walls, "all I have worked for. And this shame I now feel— it really does hurt. When you hit me that first time, the shame and understanding hit me like a brick to the head. I don’t know what else you can do with this ability, but I'm not losing all I worked for."

He stretched over my head and pushed the call button. I thrashed and screamed in frustration, the fear started filling me again, a gut liquifying heat. I could join the dots and see what he was planning.

The nurse entered the room. "Doctor?" she said.

"I tried talking with the patient about the MRI results, and, well you can see his state. He head-butted me." Capo rubbed at his forehead to emphasise his claim. "I'd like him sedated and transferred to the protective care unit in Psych as soon as possible. They can deal with him. This isn’t physiological."

The nurse bustled out of the room, and Capo followed. He stopped momentarily at the door to look back— I thought I saw a look of almost regret, almost guilt on his face.

"You can't do this to me!" I screamed, "There's nothing wrong with me —you're the one who had the problems— and I helped you." I threw myself forwards, trying to force my way out of my bindings. He was now freed, and I even more tightly bound. The irony of the situation gripped me. A sad and manic laughter shook me taking the last of my will. I fell back onto the bed.

"I will get out, you know. I don’t know what's in my future anymore, but I'll make sure you are in it." My voice was a rasping whisper, but I knew it had reached his ears by the slam of the door, and the thumps of his weighty run up the corridor.

When the nurse returned with a brace of burly orderlies, I lay quiescent and accepted the sting of the somnolent needle, then slipped with relief into the comforting, billowy grey.

The next weeks were a different horror. I was decanted into a pool of people who resembled multi-hued jelly squid. They were all, staff and patients, a mess of bindings; choking vines in a smash of colors that were at first a heart stopping assault.

I was adrift, alone with no firm plan. All I could do was observe and listen. I considered myself sane and began to sense my way through patterns in the colors of damage I saw arrayed. Throughout the sessions that I was forced to attend I mentioned none of this.

At first, I was recalcitrant and understandably confused by my situation which over a few sessions I spun out into a tale of misunderstanding. Yes, I had reacted badly to the news of the MRI, but I wasn't and had never been mentally ill. My medical record showed this to be true. I showed I was understanding of the position the staff and my personal psychiatrist were put into. However, they wouldn't commit to a release date, or how to judge I was ready to leave.

With each passing day I came to understand the patients. The translucent expressions of their traumas had started speaking to me. There were clues in the colors, and the dry rustle of the winding movements.  I knew I could help them in some manner, but should I? Or was I suffering a hallucinatory psychotic episode. I decided I wasn't— mainly because I could ask that very question.

The day room was my daily challenge. The door into the room was a hatch into hell; all the damaged folk in there were crisscrossed in the colors of venom and anger. Crossing the room to get a magazine was an assault course— I knew I was being observed for any odd behavior, so I had to keep my walk straight and sure, and not itch or twitch if someone brushed against me. I didn't want to fall into a seizure by absorbing somebody's nightmares.

I knew I had altered Dr Capo's life, and that had been an accident. Recalling the episode, my actions —though involuntary— had violently rocked his world, and possibly pushed him off his egocentric perch. I began to see him as a victim, not only of his past, but the new noose I had bound around his neck. I had to be careful, some of these bindings were there as evidence of something deeper, and removing them explosively had a consequence, a backlash like cutting a tightly stretched piece of elastic.

Having burned Doctor Capo, I was unsure about meddling. However, as time went by, I could not resist discreetly extending a gentle touch to Gerald, the habitual rocker with hands curled into knotted stumps who sat in the same chair (as did I, next to him) each day. The backwash from him wasn't an assault as I'd experienced from Capo; his troubles weren't imposed damage, but internal and structural. I could feel the warp and weft of the back looping vines and threads on him, and gradually over a few days I coaxed them into new shapes and then into dissipation.

I don’t know how I did it. The experience was as untangling a necklace or old rope— I just worried at it, and slowly the loops fell away. I was aware that my movements, the light touches, and the way I moved my hands over him as I snipped the odd string would have looked bizarre, but if I could make a difference, it would be worth it.

After only a few days of walking the gauntlet to my usual chair next to Gerald I could see he rocked less and had started to look around— a shocked expression developing over each visit. The last time I sat next to him he looked at me. I hadn't realized how deeply brown, nearly black, his eyes were. A feeling of selfishness washed over me— I had interfered in his life without knowing him, without even knowing he had brown eyes.

He spoke. I am sure he had not done so for many years. A voice the color of old wood, the bark ridged with years of harsh experience. "It was you. You've helped me." He did not rock, though his head nodded a murmur of movement keeping time to his lifelong internal metronome.

I nodded briefly and looked around to check we weren't being scrutinized by the staff.

"Thank you." He smiled.

I reached over and patted him on the shoulder, casually clipped a few strands, and smoothed a sinuous loop out of view. He straightened his back from his long-held hunch, and opened a hand, proffering it to me. "Thank you."

I was unsure at first, but tentatively placed my hand in his and shook it. He nodded at me and smiled; a smile that told of secrets to be kept, and recognition that I had exercised a mad magic to lift his sinking boat from a sea of confusion.

The rest of the day he was my near silent companion; checkers, scrabble, four-in-a-row. The next day he was gone. He normally had home visits each week, but he never returned from this one. For a few days I was lost myself— until I realized I had helped him and could help others.

I wondered if there was a way I could undo what I had done to Doctor Capo?

Two months in and it was clear that something was happening in this secure unit. The population had halved. It became more difficult to be discreet, though I suspect that the day staff knew I was a moon driving the tide of patients who had washed out the door.

Over this time my own sessions had tailed off. Perhaps the head of this unit was less career focused, and more outcome focused, so considered having patients recover was a good thing.

There was more space to move in the dayroom now, and I had taken the opportunity to sit alone in a tall wing-back chair and look out of the window. The view of the outside no longer gripped me as a past lost, but more as a future promise— I knew I would be out again someday, though I had no idea what I would do. In many ways I had found a subtle and sly vocation here.

A polite cough from behind roused me from my reverie. I turned to look, and for the first time laid eyes on the unit manager. The usual roil of red and blue, though more the latter, and a new color I had not seen before— a narrow vine of golden white that threaded her hair, and looped around, and back though her sternum. I yearned to reach out and touch it, but restrained myself to a simple "Hello?"

"We were putting through papers for your release, and it seems to have prompted a visitor— the Doctor who first helped you...and referred you here. He's a minute behind me. Sorry— I wanted to give you more warning as it may be difficult. In fact, if you'd rather not see him...I can turn him away." The way she lingered over the last words it was as though she wanted to decline his request— perhaps he had a reputation? This consideration was blown away like cobwebs in a spring breeze; the thousand scenarios I had played out in my mind, the many apologies, and reconciliations flickered like a damaged zoetrope.

"No, that's fine, thank you," was all I managed.

I stood, and as though on cue Doctor Capo walked in. He was still twisted with color, perhaps the blue was stronger, and the purple had shrunk down, though I noted another narrow purple around his waist.

The unit manager raised her eyebrows at me. "I'll leave you to talk then. When you've finished, I'll pop back. There is a final session with your psych and we can talk about signing you out." She smiled and turned, and walked past Doctor Capo, a small nod the merest acknowledgement. The presence of Doctor Capo dissolved the words and the concept of freedom she had just wafted at me.

We sat for a moment. Tension I had been unaware was gripping me leached out. "I think we're about done." I offered him my hand to shake. He stared at it.

"Are you sure— won't you ... suffer?"

"No."

He paused and then reached out and shook my hand. With no attempt at discretion, quickly before he could react, I stretched my other arm out and massaged the purple muscley tendons that wrapped his neck and waist. He recoiled but was trapped by the high wing-back of the chair. I coaxed the smaller one out of sight and relieved the knots of inner tension in the larger. His face was a mask of wonder and relief.

"I hope you feel better. I do." I said.

He nodded, and rose from the chair, the tremor of adrenalin lending him the air of an older man. He turned and opened his mouth, I'm sure he was going to say 'Thank you.' He closed his mouth, nodded, and walked away.

I turned back to the window.

After a minute there was another polite cough. The unit manager with her white gold weave leaned over the back of the other chair.

"Decision time then. You could be out and about by this time tomorrow. Or you could stay here. We have some transfers from other units coming in. Apparently being here is a panacea."

I looked closely at her eyes. Hazel flecked with gold. Intelligent. Assessing. "I'll get a cup of tea sent over and you can have a think." She smiled and walked off.

For a moment I wondered what she saw in me. For a moment there, it was like she knew.

The tea arrived. I took a sip and watched a newly arrived raindrop forging a clean crystal track through the dust on the window.

I knew what I was going to do.