There was only so much a person could take in the hospital. The drugs were really bad this time; his head always seemed to be pounding and he could see red at the edge of his vision. His hearing was muffled, he’d fall asleep at odd intervals and have dreams full of darkness and metal that he’d wake up from in a cold sweat, screaming. It wasn’t fun. Sure, he could get used to some of the stuff they gave him, but this was beyond his tolerance and he said so time and time again.

“It would really help us if you’d stay on it just a little longer. This will be very helpful if it goes through the tests.”

“But it’s really drivin’ me batty. You watch the results. How can you recommend I still stay on the stuff?”

“It’s just a few more weeks, son, and then you’ll be switched to something else.”

Three times he’d heard basically the same thing. From the same doctor. It was like the guy couldn’t hear, just vomited back the same response for the sake of his results.

Juu hugged his pillow in the dark. His roommate was somewhere else tonight, and even though the rakwulf never spoke to him it made him sleep a little better just to have someone else in the room. Someone was screaming down the hallway. The kind of shrieking that anyone could tell came from someone seeing something they hadn’t expected. It made his ears hurt.

Two people had died on the drugs this week. Two. None of them had been the same ones Juu was taking, but it made him nervous anyway. Made him regret that consent slip he signed every time he got checked in to this place. It was so cold in this room; he just knew he had a fever. His vision had that wide-open quality to it, his eyes burning with heat and the back of his brain pounding as the gurney wheeled by the door.

He got up anyway, vision going black with that massive vertigo he kept getting every time he didn’t take his time standing up. He stretched his arms out, reaching for the door through the temporary blindness. His fingers curled against the cold white metal. There was the window. He held on, weakness in his legs, and then it al cleared up and he could see into the hall.

The gurney had disappeared into the room. One of the med-docs stood out in the hall, hand on the jamb and watching what was going on inside with a blank face. Wesleen was sitting next to the doc, her back to the wall as she hugged her knees. Juu’d never seen her eyes so big before, her entire body so tense. She was crying, long streaks running through her fur and smeared on her hands. Horrified; that was what you’d call it. And maybe a little guilt mixed in.

He wanted to look away, but really, it was a long way back to the bed. His fingers were the only things holding him up to the window, knees weak and shuttering. The gurney edged out of the door, the doc pulling his hand from Wesleen’s shoulder and moving it back down the hall.

White sheets, stained red in two distinct places and Juu knew the guy had killed himself. They’d spoken briefly the other day. Sam had been complaining that he was seeing things. Giant wasps that would appear in the shadows. Worms that liked to form at the edges of his blankets. Some really crazy stuff. Juu had told him to see the shrink about dropping the dosage. Guess he’d been refused, too.

His knees gave out then and he sank to the floor, curled up in front of the door and shaking. Trembling because it was freezing in the room and because that guy had been on the same stuff he was on right now. What had it been? Had the meds driven him so nuts that he’d thought cutting his wrists was a good thing? That is was helping? Or had it been the hallucinations? Or maybe it was something else all together that was just waiting around the corner?

He crawled back to bed. He tried, at least. Halfway there he threw up on the floor and collapsed next to it, staring up at the ceiling. His head stopped pounding a little. His thoughts cleared and right then and there he made up his mind.

He got back into bed, pillow pressed over his ears, and after a while he fell asleep. The dreams were there, same as always. A giant metal monster chasing him through the dark hallways. Walls boiled away and the floor fell out in places beneath his feel, and the whole time the contraption was somewhere behind him in the darkness, its metallic pieces glinting and razor sharp. It caught him in the end. It was morning by then, and the only people that heard him yell as he woke up were the cleaning staff in the room next door.

The clock was ticking ever so loud on the wall and he stared at it with watering eyes. He was off schedule. Something made that almost funny, and Juu had to choke back the sick laughter as he sat up. He was still alone. Everything was the same and there was nothing else in the room like there had been in the dreams. It took him a few minutes, but then he could shake off the nightmare and push out of damp blankets and get dressed.

Forget breakfast. He walked right past the door to the cafeteria and down the hall. Past the shrink’s office and past the med-doc’s office to the receptionist’s desk.

“I’m checking out of this place.”

She looked up at him, bored and a little annoyed. “Name?”

He told her.

“You’re not scheduled to leave for a few more weeks, Juu. It would be very helpful to us if you’d stay on.”

“It wouldn’t be very helpful for me to end up dead.”

She didn’t talk after that. Her eyes went a little hollow and he wondered if she’d been on the clock last night. If she’d seen the blood and heard the doctors talking.

She pulled a clipboard out from under the desk. “Sign this.”

The pen was warm in his fingers as he scrawled his name on the paper. “And tell my doctor it was his drugs that did it. Don’t let him think it was Sam. Because it wasn’t. And I’m not gonna let him kill me too.”

He left, not looking back to see the softness in her eyes.