It doesn’t take any elaborate hoops or considerable though to strip away the emotional brackets surrounding the order, an embraced logical line of thinking meant to soften the blow as his mind processes police, procedure, and purpose of what has been set on his shoulders. He understands it; that the purpose of suspension is to ensure the safety of his patients – the ones already in his care and those that may come in the future – and that there is an investigation underway, still pending, the hoops of red tape always a tricky, sticky sort of bottlenecked pipeline that all too often stops timely processing; and he understands the worry, the concerns, and the uncertainties that deem him not a danger – no, not definitively – but a risk.
Objectively, he understands it all.
Subjectively, it feels like the floor has dropped out from beneath him and there is nary a rope to hang from, just a deeper sense of loss and isolation no longer imposed by environment or by upbringing, by Kang’s own emotional withdrawal for the sake of survival, but foisted upon him to keep in such stasis.
It feels like a molasses of the mind, time wasted when he could be doing something more – helping someone, anyone - and yet it is here he remains, staring not at the holo-screen which plays any number of requested films or television shows for the patients inclined, but through it in an attempt to ignore the idleness of hands that grow increasingly nervous, twitching and fidgeting for an itch he can no longer scratch. Not here – not in this place where he is not the physician, not the surgeon, not the psychiatrist, but the patient - and in the early days, it seems hard to believe that there is a resolution to be found.
He just has to wait, to comply, to “heal” even when it feels like everything else is twisting apart, the wires and sinew and threading at the seams of all that had been left in the hands of capable bodies, but far away from clinical walls with routine schedules and curfew rules he regularly breaks with a book in hand, his one imposed annoyance the sound of metal tapping against hardback bindings.
“It’s gone,” he states, shaking his head slightly, an attempt to blow off steam that Dr. Engstrom knows is roiling underneath even a calm though not quite stoic demeanor. His comment is hyperbolic, understated despite the exaggeration within, but beyond that, it is emotional, deeply charged in the absence of productive purpose a life and then some in the making; and she takes note of everything – the growing inability to sit still, the restlessness in his hands, the shift of his shoulders or furrow of his brow that accompanies a pinch of his nasal bridge.
“I know that isn’t the case,” he backpedals in that moment, breathes deeply as he sits back, hands flipping over to turn up synthetic palms that only hint at the extensive cybernetic structure of his upper torso – powerful as much as it was a lingering reminder of that he wanted to forget. “But I can’t control it.”
“Do you think that there are positive benefits to that under current circumstances?” Dr. Engstrom doesn’t stall or stutter in her questioning – never has, never does, never will between the ups and lows, the talkative notes and the silent sessions, and thinly veiled attempts by Kang to steer the conversation into his hands.
Objectively, he knows there is, but emotionally?
“It is true I don’t have to manage all the moving pieces,” Kang admits, but it does little to ease the tension of synthetic muscles that seem to respond to the clench of mental strings that wanted nothing more than to do something else than focus on himself, “but that is what I have. It is what I do.”
“It is what you do as a response to deeply buried stimuli,” she replies, “and from all I know about you, Mr. Han, how you have maintained it this long without breaking is intriguing – not healthy, but intriguing. I’d suggest you ‘lighten up’, but that is both crude and far too easy to say versus do; so, just like anything else, we employ baby steps to recognize personal behaviors and the ways and means we can reduce the detrimental outcomes – particularly the incessant desire to keep in control.”
It is procedural though not in a way Kang is familiar with, a game of trial and error that includes everything from recognition to rehearsal to relapse to fix something that, perhaps all along, Kang may not have felt needed repair; and, unfortunately, not everything can be fixed with nuts, bolts, and mechanical parts.
It becomes all about the little things – the things he can do, the control he can exert, the choices he can make; the decision on what to eat during meal hours or whether or not he decides to talk during ordered sessions, some far more illuminating, speaking of progress and struggles and imperfect failings that rip open still-healing wounds he attempts to shield and bury, than others when he decides his voice is simply too loud for his own ears.
Those nights end up being the worst; when escapes into literature, new and old and everything in between, aren’t fruitful and sleep doesn’t come as easy as the hot sting of tears held back behind his eyelids, and the thing he wants nothing more seems like the most unreachable in a place where, despite all security attempts edgewise, they could arguably get anything.
They’re the Alliance after all.
They’re the businessmen and women who have run themselves too hard, too long and finally snapped, hundreds of millions of credits to their names and their assets which are still at their beck and call behind federal walls. They’re the top brass who took their delusions of grandeur too far, felt themselves too strong and too powerful to ever fall until they did in the worst ways, and even a few specialized cases, criminal in nature, far too important to the Alliance, to whatever they may have happening on an agenda light years long, to lock away in a prison colony; and they all have connections – for better or for worse.
It is of no surprise when they’re found to be illegal substances – prohibited alcohol concealed in unassuming containers, synthetic drugs stored in unlikely places, controlled substances only the rich can afford – and far more potentially benign commissaries like extra food, extra money, extra belongings that in a larger institution would be a cause for concern; but once in a while, there becomes something that rings louder to his ears than a semblance of luxury.
Sometimes, it is a holo-device picked up at visitation, overlooked on the pretense that those in minimum security weren’t apt to cause problems or ignored for the sake of a considerable payday, only to be confiscated later when trouble arises or a data chip, its transfer conveniently hidden in something as expectant as legal counsel and installation – a quick flick into systems Kang knows by heart – a window opened in the depths of night perhaps not to the world outside, but what lies within: the staff, the patients, the crimes committed.
And for the seriousness of the request made, the money paid, what he doesn’t expect is the explosion of light that plays across his HUD following standard upload and installation, a few ocular disturbances in jostled vision and static that may have suggested there was something wrong, that the programming or data within was corrupt, giving way to a cartoon in bright rainbow and of no specific origin - almost.
