Moon Knightress

Asylum

"Ahhhhhhhhhh"

I'm screaming but stop when I realize I'm not in the hallway, and I'm not with Jake, Steven, Marc, and a hippo.

Instead I'm in what looks like an office with Harrow and who I'm assuming is Marc.

"Marc! Y/n! Calm down!" Harrow yells over our screams. "I didn't shoot you, your mind is violently vacillating between sense and nonsense."

"Wait."

"Yes Y/n?"

"So your a doctor right? So you should be able to handle this, how is it not a HIPPA violation for me to be here while you are evidently talking to my father about his mental health?"

"Are you not affected by his said mental health?" He's got a point. "Anyway, as I was saying, I want you to picture this, your mind is like a pendulum, swinging between a very difficult reality, that you two are my patients here at Putnam Medical Facility in Chicago, Illinois" Chicago? But I stayed in NYC when Marc went to his moms Shiva " or that you, Marc, are some kind of, I don't know, superhero. All right? You are doing anything and everything possible not to look within."

"You're not really a doctor." I hear him say, but it's not Marc, I'm not sure if it has been at all, there is a thick New York accent that lets me know it's Jake, and now I know that Harrow better not be dumb.

"Is that why you keep starting imaginary fights in our hospital?" Harrow asks leaning back in his chair.

"You're not a docta." Jake repeats

"Look I feel real, I feel like a real doctor." I'm surprised he hasn't noticed the difference between Marc and Jake's voices yet.

"You're not." I say.

"We'll alright, I'm not a doctor, I mean if both of you think that then it must be true right?" Harrow laughs. "It's not about me,  let's retrace your steps Marc. Tell me, how did you come to be here today?"

"How did you get here?" Jake asks, it's just now I notice his nose is all busted up, none of them were like that before, I wonder what happened.

"I took the bus, like I always do." Smartass "you wanna know what you told me, what you both told me, how you got here? You told me you were in a place oddly reminiscent of this office. But that it was in Egypt, right? And that you both were with a rhinoceros and-"

"Hippopotamus." Jake and I say at the same time.

"You're both right it was a hippopotamus, but it talked, now do you think that is sense?" He moves his pen to one side. "Or nonsense?" He moves his pen to the other side, like the pendulum he was talking about.

"Nonsense..." Jake responds.

"And you y/n? Sense? Or nonsense?"

"Nonsense." I say, I hate that what he's saying is starting to make sense.

This goes on for a lot longer, Harrow talking about how encouraging this is, and how struggling minds use organizing principles to shelter themselves from trauma, and the hippo, and apparently Marc was talking about a boy earlier because Harrow asks Jake about that too.

"Do you think you could tell me  about that little boy?" Harrow asks, Jake looks at me and I can tell what he's about to do and go along with it.

"Hey thank you I feel really great, what about you
y/n?" He asks standing up, he grabs a clear pointy desk ornament and holds it like he's ready to stab someone.

"Yeah, thanks a lot Doctor Harrow, I gotta say I don't think I've ever felt better. We'll see ourselves out now thanks!"

I hear a loud buzz and 2 nurses come in, during the struggle I hear a confused "what" in Marc's voice but I feel a small pinch in my neck and immediately am back in the hallway, with Jake, Marc, Steven, and the hippo.