The White Noise Machine

The roar of waves came mutilated, tortured, through the white noise machine placed at the foot of the door. When the therapist’s door was open, the machine doubled as a doorstop. An added punctuation to the significance of the threshold. Like being at the beach. You could be “at the beach” without being at the beach. Parallel, on the sidewalk with the ice cream stands and surf shops, hearing, perhaps even seeing the ocean, but not truly on the beach until you’ve taken your first step on the sand. True, too, you weren’t actually in therapy until you stepped through the door and it closed behind you. Just you, the therapist, and, of course, the ocean phoning in via the white noise machine. 

Except it isn’t you, is it? It’s Milton and Dr. Finney and the white noise machine. You’re just observing. This is all bad practice, of course, but you’re here and the door’s closed.

____________________________________________________________________________

Milton couldn’t take his eyes off the damned thing. Dr. Finney, in a strictly professional manner, couldn’t take his eyes off Milton, who hadn’t answered the last question levied against him. Dr. Finney wasn’t sure Milton had heard the question in the first place but was giving him a cordial pause to answer.

The white noise machine rasped on, the commanding force in the room. Antiseptic white casing. Obvious, fat buttons made so that even a child could operate it. A certain tech gadget aesthetic popular maybe ten, no, fifteen years ago. It had the shape of a discus which accented its dated look with some Hellenistic flare. How Milton would have loved to hurl it out the window. He thought about what a terrible color white is for something relegated to the floor. It was scuffed something fierce. He now pictured the faceless, damned souls tripping or stubbing their toes on the sputtering thing as they transitioned back and forth between their roles as members-of-society and hollowed out patients, guts dredged with an ice cream scoop and dumped on the floor for Dr. Finney to poke at with his ballpoint. Faceless wicker men scuttling dust as they tripped on the white noise machine for the umpteenth time. No wonder it’s so dirty. Fed up, a group of them descends on the machine, slamming, kicking, picking it up and throwing it back on the floor. Milton pictures himself, a champion among the wicker men, throwing it out the window again, this time a true hero. All the while, the ceaseless bottled ocean, reduced to zeros and ones, wheezes in protest. All the while, Dr. Finney leans back in his chair, face resting on his fist, with a practiced detachment.

“Milton…Milton?”

The fantasy is gone, snuffed like a candle. Milton arrives back in the room. 

“I asked you a question.”

He stammers an apology, gestures at the white noise machine. Dr. Finney can only make out the word “distracting” with any certainty.

“It has different sounds, if you prefer.” Dr. Finney offers. Without waiting for a response, the doctor is up and kneeling towards the poor creature. Being prodded and poked by professional hands suddenly turns the thing sympathetic in Milton’s mind. Less a warden for the room, more a fellow captive. 

With the press of a button, the ocean dries inside the machine. It is replaced with what could have been, perhaps was convincingly at some point, a thunderstorm. A malnourished Zeus, a skinny Thor, an enfeebled and forgotten Baal, did battle within the machine. Hitting each other with walkers and paper fans. They too vanished with a click, replaced with the light patter of rain against elephantine leaves and a suffocating canopy. Trapped within the machine, screaming against the tumult…a monkey? Hooting and hollering, poached, far from its family.

Another click. Then, static. The true noise.

“No.”, Milton blurted.

“Okay.”, Dr. Finney conceded.

One more click of the button and the ocean was back on the line. My God, Milton thought. He doesn’t get it. Turn it off! Then, a new thought as Dr. Finney nestled himself back in his chair with a slight sigh. The machine isn’t for the patient. It’s for him. He likes it. Milton couldn’t possibly ask for it to be shut off now, even if he’d had the gumption in the first place.

The doctor crossed his right leg over the left. His notepad, barely touched, rested on his knee. Back to business.

“Where were we?”

Milton could feel a glaze developing over his eyes. He thought he must have had the expression of a cow right as a bolt pistol is rested against its forehead. This was how he felt at most questions, of course.

“I asked you if you did the homework we talked about in our first session.”

Ah, of course, that was it!…but that was just it. Milton had left the first session two weeks prior with only enough space in his head to remember that he had to come back for a second. Thinking about what was discussed in the first session, well, it was just static. He stammers another apology to progress the conversation.

“That’s alright, Milton. Your homework was to think about a happy place. So, just to be clear, you didn’t think about this since last we spoke? Not at all?”

He hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. He’d spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time lying on the floor of his apartment in the interim. When his thoughts became maelstroms, hitting the deck was his first go-to since childhood. His mother had deemed this method “histrionic”. Yet not a single thought in the wind of firing synapses was of a happy place. He managed a “no” in response. 

“That’s alright, Milton.”, Dr. Finney nodded. 

If it’s alright, why do you keep telling me it’s alright?

“Let’s work on that now, then. For the future, though, I need you to take the homework seriously. Don’t think about it as an assignment or busy work. It’s really for your own betterment. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget about ourselves when we’re under stress, isn’t it?”

He failed to answer again. A sickly heat crept up his neck. His scalp itched.

“Milton, it’s alright. Like I said, let’s just work on it now. I’ll ask you again, what is your happy place?”

Things were getting desperate. In retreat, Milton made himself microscopic and absconded into the folds of his brain. Somewhere in there, in the archives, he could confirm if he had been asked this question before and if, at the time he was asked, he gave a sufficient answer. Dr. Finney had asked him “to think of a happy place” last session, not “what is your happy place?” Those are two totally different things! 

The white noise machine filled the silence with its hiccuping, inconsistent drone. It seemed to do that, hiccup or sputter, when it was no longer the focus, to remind everyone that it was still there. Milton felt himself being vacuumed out of his own head by the machine, careening towards the spaces in the grate over the speaker. The ocean was louder in there, he was sure. Cold, black water.

He needed to resist. Forget the damn machine. Think of a happy place…such a simple task. Such a simple question. Even if it was a lie, he had to say something that could pass as a happy place. Simple! Then, why, oh why, could he only think of unhappy places? A snow crusted gulag flashed across his mind. Black and white stills of the trenches of the Somme. A crowded grocery store, people crashing into each other with full carts (what?). 

He had never been asked this question, he was sure of it now. In fact, he mused, if you had asked him what he thought his reaction would be to being asked what his happy place was, a much more convoluted question, he would have claimed he’d burst into flames. He managed to croak the start of a thought.

“I…”

“Now, before you say you don’t”, Dr. Finney chimed, “everyone has a happy place.”

“Can you…?”

“No, I can’t tell you what your happy place is. It’s personal to you. If I come up with one for you, it won’t be yours. And if it’s not yours, you won’t be able to enter the correct headspace for the next phase of the therapy. For your own sake, I really need you to think about it.”

The white noise machine seemed to agree. It sputtered at that moment.

Think about it. It. Milton was never one to think about it, rather, everything adjacent to it. It always seemed like some black hole in his perception. A frustrating censor-bar permanently affixed to the middle of his field of view. It was something that everyone else was able to bask in the glory of, drink from the teat of. Runt that he was, he’d never be able to shoulder his way into the warm embrace of it. 

Focus, Milton…

The white noise machine, that robotic asthmatic, was patient as ever. Dr. Finney uncrossed and recrossed his legs, favoring the left this time. His impatience was a palpable smog in the room.

Put the happy place aside for a second, Milton, and think. Why is this bored doctor asking me these questions anyway? Shouldn’t he be helping someone else? Just because you had a couple extra hundred dollars to throw around, you get to be here over someone else? Aren’t there schizophrenics and bridge-jumpers and would-be school shooters that would be better served by such poking and prodding? A happy place is wasted on me.

“I don’t think I have one, Dr. Finney.”

“I need you to do better than that, Milton. Cooperate with me. You need you to do better.”

Cooperate. Capitulate. Surrender. Torture. Torture. A car battery hooked up to his nipples. A gag in his mouth. This comforting plush couch smells like gasoline. 

Jesus-ever-lovin’-Christ! Is this my happy place?

Stop thinking about it. Eyes down. You’ll get through this. Just say something. Start small.

“Okay. It can be anything?”

“Of course.”

Dr. Finney uncrossed his legs again, this time sitting up completely straight and readying his pen. This was the first inch of the mile he wanted. 

“I’m thinking of a…dark room.” Don’t write that - why are you writing that down?

“What are you doing in the dark room, Milton?”, the doctor poked. 

“What do you mean?”

“It’s your happy place. What do you do in your happy place?” 

Rug pull!

“I didn’t know I was supposed to be in the happy place.”, Milton admitted. How can a place be happy with me in it? Milton crumpled up this thought and swallowed it. He didn’t want to know what unpaved dirt road the doctor would take them on with that question.

“Of course you’re supposed to be in it.”, Dr. Finney said, perhaps with a shade more aggression than he intended. “The happy place is supposed to be a refuge for you. A sanctuary. A place you can go to when you need to center your thoughts away from your stressors or triggers or traumas. If you’re not in the happy place, then you can’t possibly enter the state of mind we’re working to get you towards.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Milton. I’ll give you an example, if that helps. Say my happy place is…my back garden. My fences are fairly high, so no prying neighbors. I have a bird feeder set up and the absolute prettiest little things fly in to eat and visit. I’ve just put in a chrysanthemum bush. Can you picture me, rocking in my favorite chair, soaking up the sunlight with a freshly made ice tea? This is just an example, but it gives you an idea of the sort of thing I’m looking for here.”

At the suggestion, Milton abandoned the flashes of torture that harangued him and diverted all his neural pathways to the prodigal garden. He had seen a garden before, hadn’t he? He had the vague notion the color green was involved. He pictured the room he was in. Grass sprouted in patches from the beige carpet. The image fizzled just as it formed. He tried to break a garden down to its components. Flower. Sky. Grass. Iced Tea. All hovering in the void. Now put them together, Milton!, he strained at himself. Yet, nothing formed in his mind’s eye. These thoughts carbonated and popped just at the surface of reality. The shame-heat rouged his cheeks. Am I sweating?

“Milton, is it too hot in here? I have a fan if you’d like me to -?”

“I’m okay.”

“Were you thinking about what you’re doing in your happy place?”

“I’m in the dark room. I’m -”, he started. Just say what you do at home. “I’m lying on the floor in the dark room.”

If there’s a floor, there’s a ceiling.

“I’m looking at the ceiling. My eyes are open because if they’re closed, I lose my balance and feel like I’m spinning. But I can’t see the ceiling, it’s that dark.”

Every word felt like a degree added on the thermostat. Don’t ask for the fan. Don’t let him win.

“And…and it’s cold. I can’t move because it’s so cold. Like I’m frozen to the floor. Numb.”

Dr. Finney’s face was inscrutable, yet he leaned forward with interest, his notepad pockmarked with quickly scrawled words. “Go on, Milton.”

“I’m not sure what else…is that good? Is that good enough?”, Milton asked. He already felt as if someone tore him inside out, but the good doctor was ravenous now.

“If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough. But let’s build on it. Really get you there. What do you smell in the room?”

“It’s like a…burning ozone. Like a storm just passed.” Milton didn’t know from what cranial trench that smell had been dredged, but it was the first smell he could summon at a moment’s notice.

“Good, okay. And what do you hear?”

“It’s silent in there.”

“There’s always sound. People talking just outside the door, maybe?”

“No.”

“Perhaps a fan overhead running? Or maybe a sink left on? I always listen for Carolina Chickadees when I’m in my happy place. Have you ever heard one? They’re like -”

Dr. Finney continued. Milton’s thoughts wandered to sound. The doctor was right, of course. Even in his apartment, recreating what he now understood as his happy place, he could always hear something. The shouts of the downstairs neighbors seeping up through the floorboards. The ambient honking of cars on the street. The endless comings and goings of the wicker men on the staircase and up and down the hallway just outside the door. How did he even sleep at night? He became overwhelmed as he flipped through these sounds, letting each one hit him like a wave, trying to find one that he could reasonably pass off as pleasing to Dr. Finney. One suitable for this godforsaken happy place.

The shouting, the honking, the footsteps, the descending airplanes, the ascending airplanes, the jackhammers, the tires skidding, the plumbing, the smoke alarms, the horror!

“- again, that’s just an example. We’ll move on after we decide what it sounds like in that room of yours, okay?” The doctor paused to chuckle. “And don’t tell me that your happy place is sound-proofed now.”

Checkmate. Goddammit, I should have thought of that!

In the silence of the pause, Milton scavenged for an answer that would save him. The ceaseless clamour of his apartment building evaporated. He let a hand fall to his side to touch the unfamiliar fabric of the couch on which he sat. He was here. What sounds are here that he could use?

The devil, the patient devil, slipped into the white noise machine and gave its wiring a kick. The poor thing choked on its salt water, gurgled like a drowning sailor, and went silent. Milton and Dr. Finney bore witness, both forgetting the agonies of the happy place.

“Oh, damn.”, Dr. Finney grunted. “Sorry.”, he added, distracted. He removed himself from his chair and knelt to the machine with a haste Milton couldn’t understand. He really does want that thing on at all times, doesn’t he?

“Sorry about this, Milton. It does this from time to time, but that last rattle sounded bad, didn’t it?”

Milton didn’t care...did he? That white noise machine was a constant here, wasn’t it? No matter what curveball or sneak attack Dr. Finney had prepared, at least the white noise machine offered no surprises. It was a dutiful soldier. One purpose and it knew what it was. Emit. Fill space. What a simple function. What a simple life. What simple expectations. The white noise machine would never be asked what its happy place was. He watched Dr. Finney shake and rap on the thing’s plastic hull, beckoning it back to life. The defibrillation was unsuccessful until...suddenly the geriatric thunderstorm was upon them again. And just as suddenly it crackled away. Dr. Milton phoned the rainforest and the monkey. They fizzled and disappeared. “I’m really sorry about this, Milton.”, the doctor fretted. He stood and placed one hand on his hip, the other rubbed the back of his neck. Is he feeling it, too?

“Why don’t you try the, uh…other sound?”

“You had a negative response to the white noise when I played it earlier.”  Did I?

Did he? Whether he did or not, he needed some noise for his happy place and he needed to be hearing it to proclaim it convincingly. Besides, he’d feel uncomfortable now if the doctor didn’t at least attempt the one other option before giving up. Doubtless, he’d be thinking about it in bed tonight. What if that last sound worked? What would have happened?

“Give it a shot.” A command! I’m paying you, aren’t I? You’ll try the last sound if I damn well ask you to…right?

“Alright, why not?”, Dr. Finney nodded, a weak smile stretched across his face, his cheeks lifting  his thick rimmed glasses. He knelt down once more and pressed the button to change the noise. 

Static, once again. Milton listened. Like the Big Bang, all at once the room was imbued with texture and dark matter. You could not see it, but by God, if you knew to listen, it was there. An outbreak of gooseflesh spread across Milton’s arms and legs. Why had he rejected this sound before? Had I? This was the perfect sound! The white noise machine performed its namesake function. White noise. Innocuous. Droning. Background. Unseen and omniscient. As permeable as a cloud and just as out of reach. Milton invited the noise to replace the blood in his veins. 

He experienced his first deep breath.

To Dr. Finney, it looked as if Milton were holding on for dear life. His eyes were closed. His mouth flattened to a perfect line. His fists balled up at his sides. “Milton, are you okay?”, the doctor asked.

Without a word or a shred of self consciousness, and with his eyes still closed, Milton slipped to the floor. He lied on his back. There really wasn’t enough room to do this here, it wasn’t arranged to accommodate this strange act, but Milton wasn’t a large guy and Dr. Milton was fascinated. “Milton -”, he started, a face blossoming through the static mist, “- are we in your happy place now?”

Milton mustered a thumbs up. What words he may have had he left on the shore. He’d done it! 

I beat therapy!

“Good!” Dr. Finney had the good sense to whisper now, respecting the significance of the moment. “I’ll get the headphones.”

The what?

Weren’t they done? Couldn’t Milton now, with his happy place neatly assigned a slot in his utility belt, live happily ever after? It was all so simple now that he was there. Why complicate it? A deep, recessed, scurrying-rat part of his soul assumed that Dr. Finney would have simply turned off the lights, exited the room, and let him be forever. He could already feel his shoulder blades and the back of his head and the small of his back and his heels fusing with the floor. And the room fusing with the white noise. And the whole ordeal coalescing to perfect grey light.

Yet, he heard Dr. Finney reaching into a drawer in his desk and retrieving the headphones and saying “Don’t worry, you don’t have to get up. The cord’s long. If you want to take these and put them on, we can start.” The faster I do whatever this is, the faster he’ll leave and let me stay in the happy place. Milton, under the gravity of a dying star, reached up with one hand and took the headphones. He placed them over his ears. Even muffled, the white noise still stroked his eardrums, still played harp on the vellus hair.

“Now, you’re going to hear a series of beeps, okay, Milton?” The doctor was speaking up to beat the muffle of the headphones. “They’ll be soft, so let me know if you can’t hear them. Every time you hear a beep, I’d like you to press a finger to your thumb, starting with your index finger and ending in your pinky. Do this on both hands.” For God’s sake, why? The first beep came suddenly. An intruder. Milton was slow on the draw, hesitating half a second as he tried to remember where his fingers and what the instructions were. He pressed his index fingers to his thumbs as if to crush a bug. “Good, good. No need to press them that tightly, Milton.” Well, you didn’t say not to do it tight!

Another beep. He pressed his middle fingers to his thumbs, gentle this time. He repeated till he hit his pinkies.

“Good. Let’s do that one more time.” They did so. Four more beeps, four more finger presses. Milton’s body tensed, anticipating an electric shock next. His happy place was receding. He was falling through the floor, whirling through space. “Focus on that happy place, Milton.”, the good doctor warned. Milton scrambled back in. The two practiced with the beeps and fingers twice more. A practiced medium conjuring Milton’s apparition from the asphodel fields of The Happy Place.

“Do you have the rhythm down?”, Dr. Finney asked. Milton nodded his head. Thanks, doc. Be seeing you!

“Okay, now, this part’s going to be a little harder, but just stick with me here. On this next round of beeps, I want you to think of a trauma -” What? “ - you’ve experienced. It can be anything, recent or a long time past. Usually, people will focus on an event that made them seek therapy in the first place. I want you to think about that trauma, remember how it felt and how you processed it at the time. At the same time, I want you to remain in your happy place and do the finger-thumb touching. Are you ready?” 

No.

Dr. Finney needn’t have asked Milton if he was ready, as the beeps came almost immediately. The doctor was keeping an eye on the clock and knew they were running short on time but, goddammit, they’d spent so long on the happy place and they needed to get to the real work. Again, Milton almost missed the first finger press. He hadn’t even begun to think of a trauma. 

A trauma? Beep. Middle finger. What does he mean exactly? Beep. Ring finger. Quickly, now, Milton. Beep. Pinky finger. Can’t I just stay in the happy place? Beep. Index finger. Why are you here? What is the cause? Beep. Middle finger. Trauma, trauma, trauma. Beep. Ring finger. There’s blood on the bathroom floor. Beep. Pinky finger. Fuck it all, I’ve done it again. Beep. Index finger. His enormous hand is on my face. You’re supposed to love me, aren’t you? I can’t breathe. Beep. Middle finger. I’m getting my high school diploma. Why does it feel like a death sentence? Beep. Ring finger. There’s a lizard in the mirror when I wipe away the steam from the shower. Who is this? Beep. Pinky finger. Don’t go there. Stay in the happy place. Stay. Stay. Stay. Beep. 

Milton was struck with the sensation of being lowered into a pool of ice water. It started on his heels and ankles. When his brain sent the command to flinch or jerk away from whatever this was, his body refused, as if some molecular welding of himself to the floor had occurred. The freezing - or was it burning? - sensation crept up his legs, over his buttocks, between his shoulder blades and up round the back of his head. Is this normal? Ask if this is normal…but the words were denied exit from his vocal chords. Open your eyes at least. Let the doctor know something is wrong. Communications were lost with his eyelids as well, it seemed. The ice floe was rising. Both hands were now submerged and it was approaching his ears. He hadn’t noticed the beeps had stopped. He realized, scared though he was, that this feeling, this freezing, was preferable by far to the smoldering heat of embarrassment that flushed his cheeks and dizzied him so many times already in this session and in life. In fact I could get used to this feeling. This therapy stuff might be working. He felt a vague voice in another room. It sounded like the doctor asking him to wake up, by God, wake up but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t sure if anything outside this room existed anymore. This, this room, this headspace, seemed to be where he was always supposed to be. Everything else was likely some nightmare, some fever dream he had. What else could explain the confusing, the absurd, the hostile, the great and terrible? What else could conjure the impossible to interpret facial expressions, the duplicitous double-meanings of conversations, the snap judgements and snap cruelties, the chaos and the heat, my God the heat, of a thrush of gasping, warring, blood-thirsty ape-men, searching through each other’s viscera for a mote of kindness, if not a nightmare?

The thought of his own failings were being broken down. How silly the invisible walls he navigated seemed now; the ones placed there for him and the ones he put there himself. They were nothing in the happy place. The walls here stood strong and defined and protected him. They kept out the heat. He was born anew in the happy place, something fetal, something comfortable. Old Milton was somewhere on the other side clawing to get in, but he didn’t matter. New Milton was fresh and unburdened and had never known anything other than happiness and the white noise machine that sat in the corner and cocooned him with its whisper. 

New Milton smiled, though his lips and teeth could not display it. The freezing, though he no longer felt it as such, had shrouded his body up to his face. The white noise vibrated through him without friction. Entropy was shed.

The thing formerly known as Milton had not noticed when Dr. Finney clocked that a strange, ink-black fluid was trickling from the speaker of the white noise machine and had just reached the carpet. 

When he kneeled down to investigate, the machine sent forth a deluge of the ichor. Dr. Finney saw the stuff reach Milton and start to pool around his body. He had called out to Milton, loud, unplugged the headphones even, but it was no use. The doctor agreed to let the ethical ramifications of touching a patient be damned as he grabbed Milton by the color and tried to lift him up. It was no use. He may as well have weighed a ton. Dr. Finney noticed that he was up to his ankles - “Ah! That’s cold!” - in the fluid now. The legs of the chair, couch, and desk were now stuck fast. If anyone were in the waiting room, they’d have seen it pass under the threshold of the closed door like a shadow.

He gave Milton a brisk slap across the face. It produced nothing. With every ounce of his strength, his feet now cinder blocks, he trudged towards the outlet where the white noise machine was plugged in. The machine, although it too had disappeared within the muck, droned on with impossible consistency. Dr. Finney yanked the cord out of the wall and…nothing happened. The paralyzing cold was at his shins now. He abandoned any notion of saving Milton. He was completely covered and, though the doctor didn’t know what this stuff was, he imagined getting it in your orifices meant death. 

Then he remembered the window. Milton had asked during their first session that the window be shut and the curtains be drawn. Considering this was one of the only things said during that first session, it was easy for the doctor to remember for the second. Now it was his only way out. He was shivering, his teeth were clacking with enough force to cause pain. Taking steps, foot after foot, was a Herculean effort. It was all too slow as the room filled. He snatched his cellphone off his desk as he passed it and dialed 9-1-1. 

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“I n-n-n-...need an a-a-a-mbul-l-lance and a h-h-hazm-m-at t-team.”

“Okay, sir, what’s happening? Where are you?”

“S-six, s-six, eight, I-Inglewood A-a-v-v-enue, S-s-suite…t-t-trace the c-call and h-h-hurry!”

He lost his grip on the phone and it plunked into the fluid without a ripple. He trudged past where Milton laid in stasis. He may have stepped on Milton’s frozen hand but couldn’t be, nor cared to be, sure. Sweat oozed from the doctor’s forehead. The veins of his neck pulsed with violence. He made it to the window and unlatched it. Air! Freedom! But, alas, his office space was on the third floor of this building. He didn’t have the time to create some sort of rope. He didn’t have the strength for a laborious climb. He scanned the ground level and found what he was praying would be there. Bushes! Summoning the last drops of his adrenaline, he thrust his hands upon the windowsill and lifted. The void at his thighs, making great strides towards his groin, pulled. In the veritable tug of war, Dr. Finney freed himself and went toppling, head first into the bushes thirty feet below. 

Passersby saw the fall. Several ran to the bushes to rouse the unconscious doctor. Tears streamed down his face. From almost the waist down, his body and clothes were black as pitch. As two pulled the doctor from the bushes, one got their phone out to call 9-1-1 not knowing they were already on their way. A fourth pointed at the encroaching nether-liquid - “The hell is that? Do you see that?” - as it streamed out the window and crept down the wall. Towards the ground. Towards them.

Somewhere far away from all of it, Milton drew his knees to his chin and breathed deep.