‘Gin, why won’t you hear us out?’

Hm?

‘We are trying to help. Please listen.’

Listen to what?

‘We don’t mean harm.’

What harm?

‘Let me in.’

Let you in where?

‘This is for your own good.’

What’s for my own good?

‘Gin’

‘Gin’

‘Gin?’

‘Gin. Gin Gin Gin Gin.’

Gin?

‘Gin!’

Yes?

‘You’ve got to listen to us!’

I don’t understand. Why is my throat feeling tight? Why do I hear several voices calling my name? Why is it so damned dark here? Is that…my INS? Is that my blade? Am I going to die? What do you all want?

‘Let me in. No, let us in!’

N-

****

“Let me in. No, let us in!”

Gin woke up with his heart beating a thousand times a minute. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t move. What happened? Was I dreaming? he wondered. However, for once, he did not remember what happened except for that last line. All he could hear was the drumming from his chest and the knocking of a door behind him.

‘Gin, let me in! We’ve been waiting for a while now,’ Joan’s voice broke his paralysis.

‘So, it was her calling me,’ Gin mumbled before getting the door. ‘Don’t you have access to my room anyw-’

‘I would,’ the medic interrupted, talking behind a pile of paper that covered her face, ‘But as you can see, I’m a little busy carrying these.’

‘Uh, ok,’ Gin rubbed his eyes awake as the medic made her way in. ‘I guess you can come right in. What’s all this about anyway?’

Joan plonked the paper on his desk, turned round with a huge grin on her face and announced, ‘You’ve got all this to mark.’

‘Eh?’ Gin’s shoulders dropped.

‘I’ve been on a roll with the work you gave me. But I still want you to go through it all just to make sure.’

Gin held out his hand. ‘Ok, hold on. I’ll mark it, but why so many now? Thought it’d be better if you do them over time.’

‘Well,’ Joan sat down in Gin’s chair. She began sifting through the papers, organising the papers into smaller, categorised piles. ‘Not sure if I should be telling you this, but things are going to get busier around here. I’m sure you’ll realise why soon enough. Though I suspect we won’t be seeing each other for a while again, so I wanted to see how you are doing before that happens. I am your medic, after all.’

‘Are we going to have an actual battle earlier than expected?’ Gin caught the gist of it. It made too much sense considering the earlier-than-expected battle stations training the other day.

Joan stayed silent, her back facing Gin the entire time. She continued sorting out her work until she reached a certain stack of paper. Her pause prompted Gin to take a few steps forwards to look over her shoulder only to notice his own handwriting.

‘I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve gotten pretty good at reading now. Even used it to practical use the other day,’ Joan proclaimed all of a sudden, startling Gin, his heart skipping a beat as he saw a soft quiver in her eyes. ‘Should I be worried?’

With an eyebrow raised, Gin contemplated whether his medic either tried to dodge his question or showed genuine concern for him. However, as he picked up the page, titled “Gin’s notes: Dreams,” he knew the answer. ‘Ah, well, my only problem these days was Gargarensis but that’s slowly cleared up recently. What I’ve written here is not something that problematic.’

‘Not problematic?!’ Joan stood up, the chair tumbling across the room. ‘I spoke to Brim about this. You’ve been acting down for a long time now, you do know that, right?’

‘I don’t know what Brim told you but probably,’ Gin muttered back. ‘Though, as I said, it’s getting better.’

‘Wow,’ she smacked her forehead with her palm. ‘Reading the first paragraph of your writing is depressing enough. Do you even understand what you wrote? Or were you hoping no one is able enough to be able to read it?’

Gin’s face crumpled up. He didn’t know what she meant. However, her gaze sat him down and look at the words he wrote. His eyes widened with every line and his mind twisted into an abyss of confusion. Did I write this?

‘“Is there meaning to my dreams…I’m afraid of finding it out…it’s as if I’m being choked by fear…I need to forget and move on and focus once again for the sake of my squadron,” Joan echoed the key lines from the extract she read. ‘Judging by how old the ink is, that’s only a few days old, no? Are you actually getting better? Do you want to talk about it?’

Though he wanted to look away, Gin couldn’t stop maintaining eye contact. In all honesty, he felt like he could lie and she would accept it but an invisible force compelled him to tell the truth to her. So, he got up to put the chair back in its place and signalled Joan to sit down. However, she refused with a shake of her head and took a place on the bed and patted the spot he got up from. Gin understood what she wanted and took off his shirt for an inspection.

The pair shared non-verbal communication for a few minutes. The medic pointed to the encroaching Xernims, which now reached the patient’s neck and covered a quarter of his torso, while vines crawled towards his legs. She didn’t mind though and carried on with the inspection as if accepting the parasite as an official part of his body.

‘I’ve been dreaming a lot. Or at least I think they’re dreams,’ Gin admitted, breaking the silence. Though Joan just carried on. ‘At first, I thought it was my Xernim that was the cause but lately I’ve begun to doubt that. I can tell the difference between when it is and when it isn’t after all.’

‘To be honest,’ Joan spoke in a soft voice, ‘I don’t dream myself. Are they causing you distress?’

‘I’ve been losing sleep over them, that’s for sure. My throat gets tight and I can’t concentrate at all.’

‘Mhm,’ she acknowledged, drawing blood and causing Gin to wince. ‘What do you dream about?’

‘I’m not sure. My old home? I feel like I’m supposed to know something but I haven’t figured it out yet. And because I haven’t, I keep dying in them. I really don’t understand it. It’s all so abstract.’

Joan took the extracted blood and placed her nail to the side. She paused for a moment, asking, ‘Do you want me to find a way to stop them?’

‘No,’ Gin’s head dropped. ‘I’ve tried. Someone else helped me too. But the more I try to push it to the back of my mind, the more I think I’m suffering. I’m not sure though. I guess what I wrote was the truth. I don’t know what I need to know and I’m probably scared of finding out. I just want to hope that there is no meaning in my dreams and it’s all a load of nonsense. Am I simply being deluded?’

The room turned quiet again. Gin didn’t dare turn back nor did he feel Joan’s touch. Why did he say all that? Why did he harbour such doubt? Why did he have to have all these stupid dreams? I’m such an idiot, he cursed himself.

Just then, Joan stood up and walked toward the desk. She picked up a piece of paper, grabbed a quill pen and began writing. She took several minutes, scribbling and crossing out bits, as Gin watched in awe of her concentration. At last, she finished, folding the paper several times and handing the piece over.

With a gentle smile, she instructed, ‘Read this only when you’re really despairing. It’ll help cheer you up, hopefully.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Gin hesitated to take the note.

‘Only when you’re in that bad of a state, ok?’ she reiterated the condition. ‘As for what you’re currently going through, thanks. Thanks for telling me. Thanks for always telling me stuff whenever you do. I mean it. I don’t have the solutions to your problems but at least I can share what you’re going through. Much better than when we first met hehe. I…I don’t know where I’m going with this so I’ll just say that you might just need to face your dreams head-on? I won’t claim I know what they mean but that’s the least you can do, I reckon.’

‘Face it head-on?’

‘Yeah. If it’s coming from your Xernim or even from your own subconscious, it can’t be a bad thing to do that, no?’ Joan sighed. She packed up the blood samples and made her way out. Just as she reached the door, she added a parting, ‘It’s easy for me to say this but cheer up. You got a graduation ceremony soon and you need to prepare for that. If your dreams resurface in the meantime, then I know you’ll get through it eventually. That’s just the type of person you are. Even if you can’t, just focusing on the graduation will help put your problems to the back of your mind anyway.’

At that, she left with another reassuring smile. Gin slumped to his bed, his head splitting in two. He felt sleepy yet wide awake at the same time. The conversation with Joan lifted him up but the overall situation weighed him down tenfold. He didn’t know what to do except follow his medic’s advice. He dragged himself out of bed and down to the desk. He Thought of starting the marking process but went against it, picking up the guidebook instead before turning to the page on graduation. There, he began memorising the whole sequence of events.