The first thing, the very first thing that I do when I wake up in the morning is I get down from the bed, take a step forward, plant my feet slightly wider apart than my shoulders, lift my arms, fists balled, high above my head, and STRETCH! for the sky. When that’s done I brush my teeth.

            Sometimes I wonder how many times I’ve woken up and forgotten to stretch. It’s such an integral part of my day now that if I weren’t to do it, I don’t think I’d even notice. I was talking about all this with my friend the Painter, as I call him, the other day. He’s one of my patients.

            “My good man!” he said. Whenever he says that, I know something philosophical is coming.

            “My good man! This stretching habit of yours, I’ve been considering it for what it’s worth.”

            “For what it’s worth?” It was around four in the afternoon, a pleasant May afternoon, and I was serving dinner (because crazy folk eat early).

            “Do you ever wonder why you stretch?” The Painter always punctuated his more comprehensible sentences with mumbled nonsense, usually about an FCC conspiracy or poppy seed cupcakes. He continued: “Do you ever consider that no one else in the world stretches every morning in exactly the same way that you do?”

            He looked at me, mouth moving fish-like, eyes round and wide open. He was standing in front of his easel as always, and I was sitting on my cart.

            “No, not really.”

            “I didn’t think so, I didn’t think so.” And then again, “I didn’t think so.”

            I didn’t know what to say at that point, so I left. Being friends with the mentally unsound is not easy. I deal with it, but then again, at this point in my life I’ve come to realize that I am different from your average early-middle-aged black guy. I don’t ask a lot of questions, for one thing.

            That day after work I wandered over to the forest out in front of the hospital, off to the side. There was a swing there and I’d gotten into the habit of sitting and reading until dark. The sun’s setting is a gradual process that I never notice until long after I expect, kind of like life in general.

            Ayla was sitting in front of me on the grass when I next looked up from my book. Ayla was in high school and lived on the other side of the forest. She was wearing a spike bracelet that day and it made her look frivolous, but I didn’t mention it.

            “What are you reading?” she asked. I remember the weather being delicious that day. Her stringy hair fell in front of her face as she spoke, so she blew it away with a puff.

            “Raymond de Capite.”

            “Who’s that?” she asked.

            “A guy.” Ayla had lent me a favorite book of hers when we first met, and liked to gloat that she had turned me on to reading. Of course she was right to gloat, as it was true.

            “He’s an Italian-American who only wrote two books ever, but they’re wonderful. He has a style that’s at once honest and surreal.” I didn’t think she was listening, so I trailed off. Two rabbits had emerged from the forest and were standing a short ways off, facing each other. The female was standing still, but turning and turning to face the other. The male would circle around and around and then, with comical speed, dash at his partner. At the last moment she would jump right over him and the process would repeat. I couldn’t decide if the rabbits were fighting, flirting, or having sex.

            “What are you thinking about?” The rabbits fled as she spoke.

            “You always assume I’m thinking about something.”

            “I’m thinking about something. I’m thinking all the time.” She looked up at me with an open expression. A face that begged me to share the stuff that I usually just keep inside as a matter of convenience.

            “You first,” I said.

            “Alright. I’m thinking about balloons. I’m thinking about two-headed monsters the size of sky scrapers terrorizing our town. I’m thinking about the future. I’m thinking about this forest, the trees, life, nature, hair, spiky bracelets. I’m thinking about you, too.”

            “About me?” A pause.

            “Ethan?”

            “Huh?”

            “Are we friends?”

            My swing settled to rest as I thought about this question. My mind felt foggy and slow, as if it didn’t want to make the appropriate connections. Were we friends? What is friendship? Did I have any friends? Up until that moment I had thought that the Painter was my friend, but suddenly I wasn’t sure.

            “I don’t know,” I finally answered. She looked pained. It was obviously the wrong answer and I wondered how I could have been so stupid. She stood up and walked past the swing, stopped briefly but then seemed to change her mind, and was gone into the forest before I could react. Gone as quickly as she’d come, like the rabbits. I stayed and read until I couldn’t see and I was squinting and tears were running from my eyes, and then I went home.

            I’d been working at St. Ives mental hospital for years, but that next day was the first trouble I’d ever had with the doctors there. It all started out the same as always. I was pushing my breakfast cart, just whistling and pushing that cart, because that was what I did. At that time I think I thought pushing the cart was the apex of my existence. This changed at 10:14 that morning, though, just as I was finishing my rounds. I bumped into the head doctor.

            “Orderly!” he said, in gruff greeting. His deep voice resounded in the hall, impeccable like his doctor’s white uniform and shining black shoes. He’d caught me, yes he had. I’d been enjoying myself in the usual way at the end of a set of rounds, pushing and coasting on the cart, whistling as loud as I could, looping and spinning down the hall, and now I was facing the doctor up close. But what was there to fear? I knew I was indispensable to them. This doctor had a small round pimple left of his nose, on the cheekbone.
            “Orderly, what is the meaning of this?”

            “Of this?” I looked him in the eye, up close. I kept my head at a calculated angle, chin up – but not too high. I felt tense.

            Instead of berating me for my childish behavior, he walked around the cart and put his arm around me. “Orderly,” he said, “walk with me.” We walked down the hall and took the elevator to the kitchen, talking as we went. I was reminded of an episode from my childhood involving a friend named Arthur and a brush with Authority. Arthur, Authority – the words flashed through my mind, and suddenly I felt nauseas.

            At first he didn’t talk about anything even though words were spewing from his mouth. I hate that kind of talk. I don’t talk very often, and when I do, I mean when I really speak, you can bet it means something. Then we were out of the elevator and in the kitchen, somewhere I assumed the doctor seldom went. He had not said anything of substance, my stomach felt better, and I was wondering what the point of the whole thing had been. He turned to leave, and then turned back and spoke, as if as an afterthought.

            “I could have you fired in ten seconds. So watch yourself!” Before I could react, he was gone. I was left once again with that queasiness in my stomach, that stink of inaction and the bitterness of seeing power abused. Why had he had to say that? Suddenly, inexplicably, I thought of Ayla. The rest of the day, I only thought of Ayla. After work I jogged to the swing, hoping she’d show.

            By 5:45 she wasn’t there, and the sun was again beginning its decent. I had finished Raymond de Capite’s the coming of Fabrizze. I pushed off on the swing and sighed, and then out of the corner of my right eye there was movement. I turned quickly.

            “Hey!” It was her. “How long have you been here?”

            Slowly, she came out of the trees. Today she was wearing a red bandana over unkempt hair and a blue tank-top with beat-up jeans. She stood a bit away from the swing, hesitant in her body language. She didn’t say a word.

            “Ayla,” I said, “listen, I’m sorry.” She looked up at me, and then down at the ground again.

            “Ayla, I figured stuff out today. It all just came to me at once.” She frowned. I felt desperate. I really, really wanted her to believe me so that we could talk and laugh like before. I really, really wanted that. It was a strange, empowering feeling.

            “Ayla, you’re my only friend.” At that she looked up.

            “I have other friends, you know,” she said.

            “I don’t mind.” She smiled the slightest bit and came closer. Then we heard a noise – it was a noise at once foreign to me and deeply ingrained in my mind, but at first I couldn’t place it. We turned towards the forest and listened, and it came again – a cry. A heart-wrenching, sobbing cry.

            There followed a blind, wild dash through the brush in our haste to find that sound, or rather its source – a sound that drove us towards it without a conscious reason. Scratched, bleeding, panting, adrenaline pumping through my veins I burst through one last thorn bush, Ayla close behind me, and found the baby. Of course it was a baby, a baby boy, seemingly newborn. It was sitting in a cardboard box, wrapped in a cheap, slightly bloody white towel. And it was screaming.

            “There, there.” I stood uncertainly as Ayla lifted it out of the box and held it close. I mumbled and shifted my weight as Ayla took the baby to her chest and rocked back and forth, whispering softly. That was when I realized that night was approaching.

            “Let’s go, Ayla,” I said. “We should find help.” I led us out of the forest without picking a direction, just clearing aside trees and bushes for Ayla and the child. We walked for a time that stretched and elongated – I made sure to let the forest take out its wrath on me in full, so as to spare the other two. By the time we could see through the trees and out onto a busy street on the other side I was covered in blood, and the baby had fallen asleep in Ayla’s arms.

            It was eleven at night when the two of us could finally relax, when we knew that the baby was safe in the hospital and the questions and paperwork were taken care of. We were seated in the ER waiting room, fluorescent lights flickering slightly and injured and sick people moaning in hushed tones.

            “What happens to him now?” she asked.

            “I don’t know. Should we ask the doctor?”

            “I don’t really like doctors.”

            “Me neither.” We looked at each other tiredly. The baby was lost to us, of course. It had to take its place in society. Actually, that idea just wouldn’t leave my head.

            “Ethan?”

            “Hmm?”

            “It was neat to hold a baby in my arms like that.”    

            “You were great,” I said, with real appreciation. “You know we saved its life?”

            “I guess we did.” There was a long pause then, during which I was busy thinking. I felt my mind race faster than it had in years, because I could tell that I was on the cusp of a great change. She could see that something was happening.

            “This time you have to tell me what you’re thinking about,” she finally said. We must have appeared as quite the pair then, tired, scratched and dirty, covered in dried blood, chatting earnestly in the back of the bustling waiting room.

            “I’m thinking about my job. I don’t like it anymore.”

            “You’ve been working there a while.”

            “Years,” I said. “And for what? For what? I think it’s about time,” I continued, “to try something new. A new place – a new country.”

            “Why?”

            “When we first met, you asked me who I was.” She furrowed her eyebrows and tilted her head a bit to the left.

            “Yeah, you said you were the messenger.”

            “That’s right. I’m not sure what the message is yet, but it still needs delivering.” I sat back, surprised, because I hadn’t known that at all until I’d said it.

            “When can we leave?” she asked, her face shining and her eyes totally serious. I didn’t know what to say at first, but then I realized that it didn’t matter so much. Not knowing what to say was something from before, and this was now.

            “Whenever we want,” I said. “We’re free.”