Sniff

Ayla shouldn't have come. It had never been an option, really, and yet she knew she should have made that non-choice.

She stands in the courtyard and tries to count her breaths. She has heard about counting your breaths as a thing to do, but she realizes then, in the late afternoon sun, regretting a choice she could never have made, that she doesn't actually know what that means or how to do it. A lizard watches her, its neck fluttering with its own small, leathery pants.

"Do I count how many breaths total?" she asks the lizard, quietly. "Do I count how long they take? Do I set a goal for how long they should take?" The lizard bobs its head in what looks like a nod but that Ayla is fairly certain is a challenge to either fight or mate.

She closes her eyes and this, too, is a mistake. Because without the lizard to look at her mind fills with the rustle of the foil-lined pill packs that the nurses keep in the cabinets; the reddish purplish rustish color of their scrubs; the sucking sound of the device that wicks urine away while her mother pees in her own bed; her mother's screams. Beside those, around them, entirely packing her skull tight, are the non-screaming sounds her mother makes too — the panting, grunting, little ah's and oh's that escape without her permission. So much of this is happening without anybody's permission.

Ayla counts five total breaths and goes back into her mother's room. The whole place smells of urine but it seems like nobody notices anymore.

"Where did you go?" her mother asks, wide eyed and afraid.

"Just outside for a minute," Ayla says. "I met a lizard."

Her mother grunts and shifts. "Oh," she says, and then gasps when she moves slightly wrong. Her knuckles are white, clutching a towel. Her hospital gown is half off, hanging limply around one arm and down to the floor.

"Sorry to flash you beaver," her mother says, and it takes a moment for Ayla to understand the phrase but then she is indeed flashed a sweaty, dirty slit.

"That's okay," Ayla says, thinking about yeast infections. "It was the first thing I ever saw anyway."

"No it wasn't," her mother pants, tilting herself left, seeking relief, "you were a C-section."

Someone in another room screams, and her mother grimaces. "Is that what I sound like?"

Ayla shrugs. She doesn't want to lie. "You're in pain."

"Do you remember," her mother says, "when you ran for class president?"

There is shit — her own — in her thigh crease. She will not allow anyone to touch her to clean it off.

"Which time?"

"The first time," her mother says, "and you made those signs?"

Ayla does remember. AYLA! THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS YA in big, severe, black lettering. She had worn a lab coat and borrowed a stethoscope from her uncle. It had been heavier than she expected. She remembers her neck hurting by the end of the day. She had won. Her uncle let her keep the stethoscope.

Her mother does not continue the train of thought.

A nurse comes in to deliver lunch.

"Hello Mrs. Zelonic, how are you doing today?"

Her mother scowls and does not answer. The nurse flashes Ayla a sympathetic smile. Ayla attempts to return it. She is unsure of her allegiance here.

"Are we going to eat today?" the nurse asks.

"Would you eat that?" her mother says, pointing at the plate.

"Sure!" The nurse grabs a piece of what looks like chicken off her mother's plate and pops it in her mouth dramatically. She does not flinch as she swallows, which is impressive because her mother is not wrong. The food does look disgusting.

The nurse gives a thumbs up. "You've got to eat Mrs. Zelonic, it's really important. Eating and sleeping, and I know you're not doing either right now. You can't expect your body to recover if you don't eat and sleep."

Her mother huffs. "My daughter is going to be a doctor, you know," she says. The nurse turns to Ayla and smiles. She is young, and pretty, and has been nothing but kind. Ayla flinches away from her.

"That's wonderful!" She seems to mean it.

Ayla gives her a tight nod. She does not correct her mother. She does not tell either of them that she should not have come to this place, that the smells and the scrubs and the sounds of the wheelchairs on linoleum make her want to open up every single foil packet she can find and swallow them all and lay down on the floor to let the pharmacological interactions she still has memorized take her.

The nurse leaves.

"Ayla," her mother says, pushing the plate away from her.

"Yes?"

"I think that woman is cursed."

This is not a surprise. Her mother thinks everyone is cursed. That her neighbor — an ancient German woman calls everyone darling — is a demon and that the doctor who won't give her any more morphine is a ghost. Ayla has heard about all of this on the phone already. Her mother believes that she is maybe dead. That everyone around her is surely possessed by some kind of evil spirit.

Ayla says nothing because now that she is here, she secretly understands. To be here is a bit like hell. Stuck, unable to leave, slowly ground down by pain and buzzing lights and flat tile. To get what you need — water, drugs, a clean sheet, a change — is like negotiating with spirits. You can ask, but you never know if they will take your request seriously or not. If they will return. If they will give you what you want. All the nurses wear the same scrubs and have the same haircut and the same sneakers and could believably all be one person putting on slightly different faces.

The lizard pauses in the windowsill looking in. "Look," Ayla says, pointing, "my lizard."

Her mother looks towards the lizard but Ayla does not know if she sees it. If she sees anything at all. The lizard tilts its head up, as if smelling the air. Ayla wonders if the lizard knows that everybody calls this kind of place a "sniff." She wonders if the lizard lives here. If the lizard is a demon too. Perhaps he is the boss demon, taking an unassuming form to keep watch over his minions.

Another nurse arrives, or maybe the same one, holding a small plastic cup full of pills. Her mother gulps them down, greedy, water dribbling out of the sides of her mouth. The lizard watches.

"I want to go home," her mother says, small and scared.

"I know," Ayla says.

"Why won't you take me home?"

"I'm not allowed to."

"Please," her mother says. She is thin with exhaustion and fear, ghostly herself. "I want to die," her mother says, crying now. "Please. Take me home or kill me."

Her mother whimpers and this is why Ayla could not be a doctor. When they were asleep, and open, and bloody, she was fine. But the desperate fear was too much for her. Bloodshot eyes, shaking hands, voices thin and watery. Her mother sobs in the bed.

"Why don't we get a little fresh air," Ayla says. She slides the window open, hoping that the low sound of the road and the sea breeze will drown out her mother's sounds. The lizard darts into the room and up the wall.

"I want to die," her mother says to her back.

"Me too," Ayla replies. "Let me braid your hair.” Her mother nods.

When the nurse returns, Ayla has half of a terrible French braid going.

"Do you need anything else?" the nurse asks. Ayla almost laughs. Her mother needs a new hip, and better drugs, and to not be here, none of which the nurse can provide.

"No, we're good," she says. The nurse smiles and leaves. The lizard watches from the side table now.

"I'm not going to be a doctor, mom" Ayla says finally. "Remember? I dropped out."

Her mother huffs a little. "Temporarily," her mother says. "You're taking a break."

Ayla doesn't argue with her. She finishes the braid. It looks awful. Her mother's hair is matted from being pressed against the pillow as her head tosses back and forth when she writhes and screams. The braid only pulls some of it together.

"Well, I should go," Ayla says. "Visiting hours end soon"

Her mother grabs her arm. For a woman who cannot move without shrieking she is strong. Her nails dig into Ayla's skin. "Stay," she gasps, and Ayla thinks that maybe no one has ever been more terrified than her mother in that moment. "You can't leave me here. Please."

Ayla's limbs feel funny — heavy and tingly. She drops into the uncomfortable chair by the bed. "I'll stay until they kick me out," she says. Her mother nods.

They never do. The lights in the hallway go out and no one returns to the room for what feels like hours. Ayla dozes, and when she wakes, the lizard is in her lap.

"There are lots of ways to count your breath when you're panicking" the lizard says. Ayla stares at him.

"You asked me earlier, and the answer is that you can do it all kinds of ways. Box breathing, resonant breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, it's all valid."

"Right," Ayla says, stupidly.

"You should try them all and see which one works best for you," the lizard says.

"Have you told her that?" Ayla motions to her mother, who is staring straight ahead, eyes still open.

The lizard scoffs. "Breathing exercises aren't going to help her."

Ayla nods, because the lizard is right. She watches her mother, who seems to not have blinked in several minutes. Her breaths are shallow pants, nostrils flaring every so often.

"You really don't sleep at all?" Ayla asks her.

"It's not safe to sleep here," her mother says. "Demons."

"She's right," the lizard says. "This place is hell."

"Then why do you stay here," Ayla asks. "Why don't you go live at the beach or something?" The moon's reflection shines back against the black water.

"I have an important job here," the lizard says.

"Demon king?"

He huffs. "Don't mock me."

"Sorry," Ayla says, and attempts to stroke his head. He darts away, and up to her shoulder.

"My job," he says into her ear, "is to help people escape."

"Escape," Ayla says back.

"Yes. Is that not what you want?"

"I think it's more what she wants," she says, pointing at her mother who is still staring straight ahead. Ayla wonders if she is sleeping with her eyes open, the way some animals do.

"This is more of a yes, and situation," the lizard says, scuttling off her shoulder and down to the floor. "So let me work."

Ayla rubs her face, which feel somehow both numb and overly sensitive. Some part of her brain twitches. A wheelchair rolls itself into the room without a driver. The lizard follows behind.

"It's time to go," he says.

Ayla turns and puts her hand on her mother's head, the half braid now sticking out to the side.

"Do you want to leave?" Ayla asks, quietly, as if there was anybody around to hear her.

Her mother nods, desperate, her eyes full of tears again. "Please," she says.

"Can you be quiet?" Ayla asks. "When I put you in the chair?"

Her mother nods again, and makes a zipping of her lips motion with her hand. She is not quiet at all when they do it. She screams, and Ayla is clumsy, and has to reposition her in the chair and she screams again. Nobody comes to check on them anyway.

Ayla wheels her out the front door and into the dark parking lot. Her mother bounces in the chair as they cross the uneven asphalt. In the silvery light of the moon, the lizard climbs down her arm and into her mother's lap and they begin down the hill. The chair is heavy and she can barely control it and so she stops trying. She begins to run, letting her mother's weight pull her, the cool night air on her face.

At the beach she takes the little plastic accessibility path they've installed right up to the water, and she keeps going. The wheelchair's wheels dig into the sand but Ayla pushes, harder, and they lurch into the waves.

Her mother screams, and laughs, and screams again. The water is cold and strong. Hitting them over and over. The lizard climbs up Ayla's shoulder. He laughs too.

On the shore, someone is flashing a light at them. A nurse in reddish scrubs screams something Ayla flips her off. Her mother's head lolls back, neck loose, eyes closed, limp.

"Do you remember when I ran for class president?" Ayla asks her mother, who does not respond.

"AYLA, THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS YA" she screams, and pushes them both further into the water. Let the ocean take them, she thinks. She sniffs at the air, salty and cool, eucalyptus from the cliffs still heady enough to smell here. She can no longer smell the urine. She can no longer hear her mother's shrieks. The wheelchair is empty now, and she can't see her mother anymore. The lizard climbs further up, up her neck, and burrows into her hair, and then further, into her skull. She bobs her head. She will have a job. She will help people escape.

She slithers out onto the beach, and back up the hill to the building, cold and slow. When the sun rises, she warms herself on the patio, and watches. A woman walks out the side door, looking haunted and pale. "Do I count how many breaths total?" she asks. Ayla bobs her head.