text: If she were to describe to an outsider how she viewed her life, Keva would say that it had been surgically split in two. There was the before time and the after time. The demarcation line between the two was THE FIRE—she always thought of it in capital letters—which had altered the course of her life.
  Her memories concerning the fire itself were vague. She had a hazy recollection of lying on a stretcher while an alarm blared in the background. There had been a paramedic hovering over her and exclaiming with relief when she opened her eyes.
  She remembered nothing else until she woke up in the hospital, her lungs painfully seared from smoke inhalation. She had shown steady progress in her physical healing. Her mental state was another matter. For the past ten years, she had tried to take back her life. She was still in therapy after all this time.
  The hallucinations had begun after the fire. She would awaken during the night to see someone sitting on her bed or she would peer into the mirror and see someone else’s image superimposed on hers. The images were blurred so that she never knew whose face she was looking at.
  Then the voice in her head began—a constant murmur. Most of the words she didn’t understand, because they seemed to be in a foreign language. The sounds were guttural, and she thought it might be Latin.
  She felt detached from herself, as if she were a different person. The initial diagnosis was schizophrenia, and at first Keva had been hospitalized in a psychiatric facility and placed on heavy medication.
  The risperidone she’d been prescribed had seemingly improved her mental health and after a year, her doctors thought Keva was showing signs of being able to function on her own. She progressed from in-patient to out-patient status. To control her anxiety and depression, her current therapist had recommended daily exercise and had also suggested some relaxation and coping techniques.
  In reality, the voice in Keva’s head still existed, but she had learned to tune it out. Her hallucinations still occurred, although less frequently, and she never spoke of them again to anyone, least of all to her therapist.
  She had built a life of sorts for herself, studying photography at Algonquin College in Ottawa and working at a photography studio as an assistant and general gofer. The pay wasn’t great, but it covered her rent and groceries. When she dared to think of the future, she dreamed of having her own studio.