Issue 10 – Fiction

Dr. Demi Diaz, Chief of Psychiatry at the University of Miami’s Jackson Behavioral Hospital, loitered by my office door as I exited the elevator, acting like all was fine. But a rigidity of form and a manic bent belied her dark purpose. I greeted her like nothing was amiss, but when I put key to lock my door wouldn’t budge.

Rusty Rainsford, lead officer in narcotics with the Edmonton Police Service, gathered his team of officers at his house one Saturday in April. Earlier that week, the team had arrested a group of drug-pushing brothers, seizing more than a thousand pounds of marijuana and cocaine each, plus more than $9,000 in drug money. Now, they were preparing another takedown, one that saw them making anti-drug signs, slogans such as “Keep pot illegal” and “You can’t turn illegal drugs into medicine.”

The first thing he recalled on that fateful day that changed his life is the blinding white. The walls, the lights, the ventilator even the doctor’s coats. The memories came thick and fast.