by Mila Gray
Jessa smiles to herself, playing with the heart locket she’s wearing, and something twists a little in my gut. I recognize it as jealousy and force it angrily aside. After everything she’s been through, it’s impossible to be jealous of Jessa, but the fact is I want to experience what she’s talking about. I want to be loved like that. I want what my parents have – someone who, after thirty years of marriage, will come home and ravish me in the kitchen while I’m trying to cook spaghetti. I want someone who’ll tell me that I’m their north star. Someone who’ll look at me and really see me. Someone who isn’t cynical about love and, most importantly, someone who won’t break my heart.
My first semester of college I started dating a basketball player called Ben who I was convinced was the one. I got all the feels whenever I was around him – clammy hands, pounding heart, weak knees, all the text-book signs – and when he told me he loved me, I believed him and told him I loved him as well. I lost my virginity to him that same night – after he took me on a date to the Olive Garden. And then a week later I walked in on him in his dorm room in bed with another girl. I guess it wasn’t love after all.
It took me a year to get over that. I couldn’t eat, sleep or focus for months. After Ben, I dated another guy I met speed-dating, who it turned out just wanted to be friends with benefits, though he really just wanted the benefits.
Then came Zac.
Will things turn out differently with him this time? Can I trust him? He’s been linked to a lot of his co-stars in the past, but, as Jessa points out, so has she. You can’t believe anything you read in celeb magazines.
I swallow, nervous all of a sudden about tonight, but then, without any warning whatsoever, my thoughts divert to Walker. My hand slips and I manage to scrawl eyeliner across my face. Damn. I grab a tissue and wipe it off. Why did he pop into my head?
I scowl at myself and try again, pulling the edge of my eyelid down. It’s because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him all day, that’s why. Even when I was sitting in on my dad’s sessions and helping out in the art therapy room earlier, my mind kept returning to Walker and what happened last night. I kept wondering if he was aware of me being in his room, if he wondered what I was doing there, and tried to rehearse what I’d say to him if he asked me about it.
I walked by his room twice today, trying to catch a glimpse of him, but the first time his door was shut – I think the doctor was in with him – and the second time he wasn’t there.
I guess I’ll see him tomorrow. I’m going in to help plan the fourth of July party along with José and some of the other staff who’ve volunteered.
‘Didi?’
‘Huh?’ I turn.
‘I was just asking you how it was going at the centre?’
‘Oh, sorry.’
‘What were you thinking about? Tonight and Zac?’ She’s smiling as she says it, teasing me.
I shake my head. ‘No.’
Walker
‘Hysterical?’
‘Not as in funny,’ Doctor Monroe explains to me in the level, easy tone he never seems to deviate from. ‘It’s a medical term. An outdated one. Now we use the term “conversion disorder”.’
I burst out laughing. Right. OK. What he’s telling me is madness, plain and simple.
‘How do you feel about that?’ he asks.
I laugh again, a bitter snort. Is he kidding? ‘How do you think I feel about that?’ I answer.
‘Judging by your reaction, I’d say you’re struggling to come to terms with it.’
‘Yeah, you can say that again.’ What a load of crap. How is it possible that it’s just in my head?
‘Have you thought any more about recording a journal?’ he asks.
That was a therapy idea – that I write down my memories of that day – but I can’t see to write, so he suggested recording it instead.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘And?’
‘And no thanks.’
There’s a pause. I picture him with steepled fingers beneath his chin, watching me carefully through round, frameless glasses. I have no idea what he looks like in reality; I’m just basing him on the images I have in my head of therapists from movies. Maybe with a little Freud thrown in for good measure.
‘I’d like you to talk to me about that day,’ he says now.
I make an effort to keep my face straight and not fidget. I sit in my squishy chair – designed, no doubt, to encourage patients to kick back and relax – with a ramrod straight back. And I say nothing.
I hear him take a long breath in, the reverse of a sigh. ‘It’s been eight weeks now. I think it’s time. Especially given the diagnosis.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ I ask. ‘A bomb went off. People died. The end.’
When he answers, it’s with the same infinitely patient tone of voice. Does he ever lose it? Has he ever once exploded? Thrown an iPod across a room? How does he stay so calm all the time when he has to deal with patients like me? ‘It wasn’t just people, though,’ he says. ‘It was your friends, your colleagues, brothers, the men you were responsible for.’
My hands grip the arms of the chair as though I’m waiting for the executioner to throw the switch.
‘I think that’s the crux of this disorder,’ he continues. ‘You blame yourself.’
A laugh explodes out of me. This is just psychobabble.
He ignores my laughter and keeps going. ‘And that’s why I think revisiting the event in your mind, walking through it slowly and with my guidance, will help you see more clearly that you were not responsible, that you did all you could and more. It was a horrific event, a tragedy – but not one you are to blame for. I don’t think you’re going to see any progress until you confront what happened and find a new way of processing it.’
If I could see I would stand up right now and walk out the room, but because I’m blind and don’t know what obstacles are between me and the door, or how to get from here back to my room, which is on an entirely different floor, I can’t do anything. I just have to sit here and listen as he hands out this crap.
All this stuff he’s told me about the conversion disorder or whatever he called it sounds ridiculous. And now he’s trying to get me to revisit that day? How the hell is that going to help? If this is how modern therapy works, Jesus, take me back a hundred years and give me electroshock treatment. Lobotomize me.
‘We need to help you create a new thought process around the event,’ he carries on, seemingly oblivious to the grimace on my face and the tightrope tendons in my neck. ‘We work on it until the memory no longer triggers emotions of anger and guilt.’
I take a few deep breaths and let go of the chair arms. I will myself to relax and even try out a smile. There is no way I’m reliving that day or walking through it with him. It’s bad enough that I have to do it every night in my sleep. The only way around this, to get him to drop the idea, is to convince him that I’m fine. I need to start playing ball, sounding more positive. I need to channel some Sanchez.
‘I’m fine, doc,’ I say. I try another smile but it feels like an alien action, using muscles that have atrophied from lack of use.
‘José says you’re still taking sleeping tablets.’
‘I find it hard to sleep, that’s all,’ I mutter.
‘OK.’ I hear the dubious note in his voice. ‘And how’s the physio going?’ he asks, clearly deciding it’s time to move on. At last.
I shrug.
‘I hear you’re taking part in the triathlon.’
I roll my eyes. How the hell has that rumour suddenly become fact around here? ‘Sanchez is doing it,’ I tell him.
‘Aren’t you doing it with him? He said you were doing it together.’
‘Nope,’ I say. Damn Sanchez and his big mouth.
‘Well, I think you should,’ he says. I can hear him gathering up his papers. Does this mean this session is over? Halle-fucking-lujah.
‘Aha,’ I say, already wondering if an orderly is wai
ting for me outside Doctor Monroe’s office to take me back to my room or to whichever appointment they’ve lined up for me next.
‘Walker – do you want to get out of here?’ Doctor Monroe asks. Finally a trace of impatience has wormed its way into his voice.
I don’t say anything. Yes, of course I want to get out of here, though where the hell I’m supposed to go is another question altogether – home to my parents? Yeah, I can just imagine my mom fluttering around me, not knowing what to say or how to treat me, can already hear my dad’s stony silence – the waves of disappointment bouncing off of him as he’s confronted every day with the fact that his son isn’t ever going to become a general or head of the army or whatever other shining-bright career goal he had in mind for me.
No. Home is not an option. So what else is left for me? Where do I go? If I take an honourable discharge, then I get a pension, but it’s not enough to live on. The thought of what I do next is impossible to wrap my head around. What do I do? What can I do? I can’t see.
Ten seconds go by and the doc still hasn’t said anything. Is he waiting? Oh, for God’s sake. I nod. ‘Yes, I want to get out of here.’
‘Then you need to start working with me, with the whole team. It’s normal to go through a period of adjustment, but now you need to draw on those qualities I know you have in abundance. I’ve read your military service record. You were top of your graduating class at the Naval Academy. You were the youngest lieutenant in the marines. You’ve received the Silver Star for gallantry in action. You were on a fast track to being a senior commanding officer.’
My stomach muscles contract. My breathing speeds up. Where’s he going with this? I don’t need a reminder of who I once was or the stellar career path that was ahead of me.
‘Your superiors say you never quit, never stood down in the face of danger, that you’re a role model to your men and that – here I’m quoting directly from Colonel Kingsley in his letter recommending you for the Silver Star – that you “personify the finest qualities of a marine”.’
I stare into the void, trying not to blink and to keep my face impassive. If I embodied the finest qualities of a marine, then five men wouldn’t be dead. Those words are bullshit – meaningless platitudes some PR assistant picks from a stock list whenever a soldier is wounded or killed in action.
‘What are the qualities of a marine?’ Doctor Monroe asks.
‘Excuse me?’ I say, shaking my head in confusion. Why’s he asking me that?
‘Tell me.’
I laugh. What?
He doesn’t say anything, though, so I sigh loudly and then start to rattle them off. ‘Courage. Resourcefulness. Leadership. Endurance. Loyalty . . .’
He still doesn’t say anything. OK, OK, I get it. He’s telling me to cheer the fuck up. Man up. Stop moping. Show some goddamn endurance and courage. I grit my teeth harder until my molars almost crack under the strain.
‘I’m going to set an appointment for you with the occupational therapy team. You need to start becoming more independent. And I think you should increase the time you’re spending on physio now your knee and shoulder are healing up.’
I don’t say a word about the pain in my knee or the fact that I’m not taking the painkillers or the antidepressants he prescribed me.
I hear him scratch a few things down on paper and then close a book and zip up a bag. ‘OK, Lieutenant, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I want you to think about what I’ve said about going back over the events of that day.’
I hear him stand up and take that as my cue to stand too.
‘Do you want some help getting to the door?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I say, banging straight into what feels like a coffee table with razor blades for edges. My shin explodes, the pain rocketing up into my kneecap, but I suppress the grunt and shuffle my way towards the door, which I can hear that he’s opened for me.
Outside, José is ready to lead me back to my room, and takes my arm like I’m an old man.
The occupational therapist keeps trying to give me a white stick. But from what the doc just told me, I don’t need a white stick. What I need is a straitjacket.
It’s been a long day; I’m glad it’s another one nearly over. I pick up the iPod and listen to the file that Didi put on it that day she sat in silence beside me on the bench. It’s a guided meditation, and in the background is the sound of the ocean, waves crashing against a shore. It’s the first time I’ve bothered listening to it, and I wonder whether she chose this particular one deliberately after she heard me talking about sailing. Halfway through it I’m starting to drift off when Sanchez comes charging into the room.
‘Yo,’ he says. ‘You gotta check out Dodds’ painting.’ There’s a pause. ‘Oh, shit. Sorry. Keep forgetting you’re blind. Now you got your bandages off you look normal.’ Another pause. ‘Kind of.’
What does he mean by that?
‘I mean you don’t look blind,’ he clarifies.
I can feel the stiff furrow forming between my eyes.
‘You got normal eyeballs and stuff. Like, right now, it’s like you’re looking at me. You sure you can’t see? How many fingers am I holding up?’
I think about holding up one finger – my middle one – in response.
‘Huh,’ I hear him say. ‘Mad. You really are blind. By the way, did you know you have a full-on beard? You’re starting to look like bin Laden.’
I hear his uneven steps as he walks to the bed and sits down, and then I hear him unrolling something. ‘So check this out,’ he says. ‘It’s too funny. In art therapy, Dodds drew this poster. I got it here. He stuck it up on the wall in the canteen and they tore it down, but I managed to sneak it out the trash. I think I’m going to frame it.’
‘What is it?’ I ask, curious now as to what Dodds might have drawn. I wouldn’t have thought of him as an artist, not that I know all that much about him.
‘It’s a marine with his legs shot off and he’s gone and sprayed red oil paint all over it for blood. It’s spurting out of the two stumps and he’s lying on the ground bleeding out, and – ’ Sanchez heaves with laughter – ‘there’s a rainbow coming out of his ass. And a unicorn flying in the background. Wait. I think it’s flying. I’m not sure if those are wings or not. And maybe it’s not a unicorn. Could be a rhino.’
Sanchez is now sucking in air and laughing so hard I can barely understand him. ‘And then he’s written above it in the clouds, “Fuck God’s will”.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Sounds like Dodds’ version of Guernica.’
‘You-what-ica?’
‘It’s a painting,’ I explain. ‘By Picasso. About the horrors of war.’ I think back to my art history class in school. I always liked art. Another sharp stab, through the gut this time. Will I ever get to look at a painting again?
‘Well, I don’t know much about art,’ Sanchez says, ‘but this don’t look much like a Picasso. It is pretty damn horrific, though.’
I listen to Sanchez scroll the painting back up. ‘I got to hide it from Valentina,’ he says. ‘Can I keep it in your room?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I tell him. ‘But why?’
‘Because she’ll go ape-shit if she sees it. You can’t take the Lord’s name in vain around her. Her and the Pope, they’re, like, tight. She thinks it really is God’s will. Even what happened to me. Like God wanted me to lose my leg and an arm so I could get bionic ones instead.’
‘You believe that too?’ I ask him. For all his talk about his wife, I know Sanchez is religious as well. He wears a cross under his uniform, and he was the only one from the unit who ever went to the religious service when we were stationed at Camp Bastion.
‘I gotta believe something,’ Sanchez says, and I hear him crossing to my nightstand and pulling open the drawer.
I muse on that. I guess having faith in a higher power helps. Maybe that’s how come he can be so upbeat all the time. But to my mind, if this is God’s will, then fuck God. I don’t want to bel
ieve in him any more. I’m with Dodds on that one.
‘Holy Crackamoli,’ Sanchez exclaims. ‘What the hell is this doing in here?’
‘What?’ I ask.
‘What is this – eighty carats or something? It’s the size of a baseball. How much did you pay for this?’
He’s found Miranda’s engagement ring.
‘You shouldn’t leave this in here,’ he tells me. ‘Anyone could just walk in and take it. Hell, I’m tempted myself. Could get myself an island in the Caribbean with this. Maybe a seat on that Virgin Galactic space flight. I always wanted to try out zero gravity.’
‘It’s not worth that much,’ I tell him. But he’s right. I should at least have put it somewhere safe.
‘What you going to do with it?’ he asks me now.
I shrug. ‘Sell it, I guess.’ My first thought after I’d reconciled myself to the fact that Miranda wasn’t coming back was to cash it in and buy a boat, but a blind man can’t sail, and I guess I’m going to be needing the money seeing how I’m going to be unemployed soon.
‘You don’t think you guys might work things out?’ Sanchez asks.
‘I don’t know.’ I turn my head towards the window. When I think of Miranda, it’s like recalling someone from the distant past. From another life. The old me – the one in my memories – feels like a character from a movie I once watched, and Miranda’s just a supporting role, already fading from memory like a negative left out in the sun. ‘I doubt it,’ I clarify.
‘Yeah? Well, that’s good,’ Sanchez says, ‘because Valentina’s invited her cousin Angela to the party.’
‘What party?’
‘The fourth of July party – what do you mean what party? We’re all supposed to volunteer to help out. I’m gonna be the DJ.’
‘Have they got Dodds doing the decorations?’
