by Fred Crawley
The memory of where he was returned slowly but it didn’t replace that of the hand job from the nurse with the rotting tits. In his mind, there was no conflict between the memory of waking up in a hospital all those weeks ago and the nurse with the needle in the basement.
His breathing returned to normal and the pounding in his chest began to settle. If he focused very hard, he found that he could move his fingers but not much more. He tried to remember whether this was how it had always been or if he was still under the influence of the nurse’s drug.
Nathan couldn’t remember and, before he could try, sleep began to pull at him again. He fought it for a moment because he didn’t know where it would take him, but he was weak and his damaged body needed rest. Before the dark curtain closed, he recalled the pins in his legs and an Asian doctor telling him that he wouldn’t be able to move them for some time. They were lucky they had been able to save them at all.
Then he was gone.
CHAPTER 3
DR. (“CALL ME LELAND”) ROMERO HAD LIGHT BLOND hair that was turning grey. It covered his head and his face at a similar length. His dark ginger eyebrows were the only thing to betray his original colouring. He wore thin framed glasses, which he peered over the top of when he spoke to Nathan, and a navy blue shirt that was open at the collar.
Nathan sat on the chair opposite the doctor. He still found it uncomfortable to sit for long periods of time, but he suspected that, even without the shadow of his injuries, he would be uncomfortable in the presence of Dr. Romero. If it had been up to him he wouldn’t have been there at all but it was a condition of his release and he had no intention of going back to that place.
There was a clock on the wall behind Dr. Romero. It showed that the session had been going for more than ten minutes. Other than the usual greetings neither of them had spoken since they’d sat down. Dr. Romero didn’t seem to be in any rush.
The doctor smiled and crossed his legs at the knee. He took off his glasses and leaned slightly towards Nathan. Nathan would have backed away if he hadn’t finally managed to find a position on the chair that was verging on comfortable.
“How have you been Nathan?” Dr. Romero said. His voice was soft and calm. He looked at Nathan as if he might be able to divine the answer without him saying anything at all.
Nathan shrugged. “Fine,” he said.
Dr. Romero continued to look at him. He didn’t say anything for several moments, long enough for Nathan to begin feeling uncomfortable. “How long has it been since we last saw each other? A week?”
“Three days,” Nathan said. The longest break he got from the sessions was four days when a weekend fell between them. He realised that Dr. Romero knew that and occupied himself with trying to work out why he might have said something else.
“Three days then,” Dr. Romero agreed. He smiled and Nathan felt patronised. “What have you been doing since we last saw one another?”
Nathan shrugged. Although the last of the operations was months behind him, he still felt the stiffness and pain of sudden movement. “Not a lot.”
Dr. Romero didn’t tell him off for evading the question. He smiled again and leaned back in his chair, perhaps realising that his previous position had the quality of an interrogation. He put his glasses back on and leaned around to pick up a black notebook from his desk. He didn’t open it. “Have you been to see Gwen?” he asked, attempting to affect casual interest.
In these sessions, of which there had been thirty-six, Nathan found himself spending as much time analysing Dr. Romero as he thought Dr. Romero spent analysing him. He didn’t like being in therapy and felt it an insult. Despite what had happened, he didn’t like people questioning his sanity.
“Nathan?” Dr. Romero said. “Are you still with me?”
Nathan looked up. He wondered how long he had been silent for. He shook his head. “No, I haven’t been to see her.”
Dr. Romero continued to look at him as if he was unsure whether Nathan was lying or simply couldn’t remember. After a moment, he opened his notebook and flicked through the pages. He took a black pen out of his breast pocket and began to write something that Nathan couldn’t see. “And she hasn’t been to see you?”
Nathan shook his head. “She doesn’t like coming to the house.”
Dr. Romero continued to write and didn’t look up while he spoke. “How do you feel about that?”
Nathan shrugged and felt the twinge of tight muscle. “It’s up to her isn’t it?”
“Yes, but how does that make you feel?” Dr. Romero said.
“Well I’d like to see her more,” Nathan said. Despite himself he liked talking about Gwen. It was his weakness and this wouldn’t be the first time that Dr. Romero had used it as a segue into another conversation.
“Of course,” Dr. Romero said. “But you aren’t together anymore are you?”
Nathan looked at the clock on the wall. He still had to be there for another forty minutes. Through the window, he could only see the top of the building opposite. They were too high up even for him to hear the sounds of the traffic clearly. He listened to the clock ticking and tried to forget the question.
“Nathan!” Dr. Romero snapped.
Nathan looked at him. Dr. Romero had stopped writing and was looking at him with a frown. “Please try and stay with me. This is important.”
“Sorry Dr. Romero,” Nathan said. He turned away from the clock but not before he’d seen that another ten minutes had passed and he had absolutely no memory of what had happened in them. He decided that he wouldn’t mention that to Dr. Romero. “Could you repeat the question?”
“Are you still taking your medication?” Dr. Romero said.
Nathan nodded. “Yes.” He took so many pills that he rattled when he walked, of course, that might have been the pins that were still holding his legs together. He didn’t complain about it, though, if he did he would only be told that he was lucky he could walk at all, the sound effects should just remind him of the fine job the surgeons had done.
“And have you had anymore ‘episodes’?” Dr. Romero said.
Nathan shook his head.
“How are you getting on at the house?”
“It’s okay,” Nathan said.
“You know Nathan, the more evasive you continue to be the longer these sessions will continue for.”
Nathan said nothing.
“I’m not trying to pry into your personal life but I have a duty of care to you and I need to be sure that you aren’t slipping down a dangerous path. I’m not here to spy on you, I’m here to help.”
“I know,” Nathan said.
“You suffered acute post-traumatic stress disorder, but that’s not your fault. This has been a difficult year for you. We all just want what’s best for you.”
Nathan nodded. He felt tears come into his eyes and he looked at the floor. He knew that what Dr. Romero was saying was true but that didn’t make it any easier to hear. They sat together in silence for several minutes.
Nathan thought about the nurse with the rotting breasts that had come to get him with the needle except that had turned out not to be real. It still felt real though and that was scary. When he looked back at it he still felt the cold chill of deathly fear. In his mind, it was a real memory, no matter how many drugs they gave him and therapy sessions he attended. Intellectually, he accepted that it hadn’t been real, but that didn’t change the way it felt.
“Now,” Dr. Romero said, apparently satisfied that Nathan had had long enough to pull himself together. “How are things at the house?”
“There’s not much to tell you,” Nathan said. “I try to go out most days if I can.”
“Why do you do that?” Dr. Romero said. There was no judgement in his voice.
Nathan found it easier to spill his guts when he wasn’t looking at Dr. Romero. He found a dark spot on the white wall and stared at it while he spoke. “I almost died,” he said. “I spent months in hospital without seeing the sky and then.
..”
Nathan glanced at Dr. Romero, unsure whether he was going to let him get away without naming the other place. He didn’t seem to have noticed Nathan trailing off.
“...I just want to enjoy it while I can,” he said.
“Very good,” Dr. Romero said. “And what about the people you live with? Do you get on with them?”
Nathan shrugged. The pain made his vision blur for a moment. Even after nearly a year of recovery he hadn’t been able to overcome his own instincts and habits. “I don’t really see them very much.”
“They keep themselves to themselves?” Dr. Romero said.
“I do,” Nathan said.
“And why is that?”
“We don’t have that much in common.”
Dr. Romero scribbled in his little black book and Nathan wondered what he was writing. He didn’t really understand the process of how these things worked but he guessed that periodically Dr. Romero had to make a report on him and that someone, somewhere, got to decide whether or not he was recovering in the way he should be. Perhaps Dr. Romero sat around a table with a lot of other therapists where they reviewed each other’s notes. Perhaps they laughed about the crazy things their patients told them.
“Have you seen your mother recently?” Dr. Romero said.
Nathan shook his head. More notes were written. He waited for the inevitable ‘why’ but it didn’t come. Perhaps he had already explained his relationship with his mother in sufficient detail for Dr. Romero to make up his own mind as to why they had only seen one another a handful of times since he’d woken up in the hospital.
The clock ticked away minutes of his life on the wall behind Dr. Romero. At times it moved slowly and at others it seemed to jump and miss out whole blocks of time that Nathan would never remember. He wondered if it was a trick clock that Dr. Romero used to unsettle his patients, most of whom, Nathan suspected, were private paying and the longer they thought of themselves as crazy, the longer they would continue to visit.
“I would like to go back to Gwen for a moment,” Dr. Romero said.
Nathan glanced at the clock, still ten minutes to go and if he tried to leave early, it would go on his report. He gritted his teeth and tried to convince himself that ten minutes of discomfort was better than weeks back at Happy Trails. Dr. Romero had the power to make that happen if he thought Nathan was slipping again.
“You still see her a lot, don’t you?” Dr. Romero said.
“We’re friends,” Nathan said.
“But you’re no longer a couple?” Dr. Romero said.
Nathan sighed. He knew it was true and that it wasn’t doing him any good to pretend otherwise, but did he really have to acknowledge it at every single session? He couldn’t see how it was particularly harmful to imagine that one day he and Gwen might get back together once he’d shown her that he was better and that they could be happy again? How was he supposed to prove anything if they didn’t still see one another?
“No,” Nathan said. “We’re not together anymore.”
“You understand why I’m asking you this, don’t you?” Dr. Romero said.
Nathan nodded. He didn’t really, but there were now fewer than five minutes to go before the session came to an end and he hoped that he might be able to escape without going into too much detail.
“It’s important that you remember where you are Nathan,” Dr. Romero said.
The words jabbed at him like a needle.
“We need you in the here and now, in the real world. I know it must be tempting to pretend that everything is how it was before your accident...”
Everyone called it his accident but he never thought of it that way. It had been Simon Staunch’s accident, slumped behind the wheel having a heart attack. Nathan had been the victim.
“...but things have changed. Just because you don’t want to believe something doesn’t mean that it isn’t true.”
“I know that we’re not a couple,” Nathan said. There was less than a minute to go; he watched the thin red hand chasing the number twelve.
“Do you?” Dr. Romero said.
“Of course.”
Dr. Romero continued to watch him over the tops of his thin-rimmed glasses but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t glance at the clock. To the second he straightened up in his chair and closed his notebook. “Well I think that’s as much as we’ve got time for today,” he said.
Nathan nodded relief flooding through his system like a powerful drug.
“Do you have another session booked?” Dr. Romero said.
“Tuesday,” Nathan said. He took his coat from the stand by the door.
“Well I hope you enjoy your weekend,” Dr. Romero said. He was already back around the other side of his desk, paying Nathan no attention now that he was on his own time. He opened a drawer and put the notebook that he had been scribbling in for the last hour away.
Nathan opened the door and stepped out of Dr. Romero’s office into the brightly coloured waiting room. He felt a lightness in his chest that he seldom got to enjoy anymore. He nodded at Dr. Romero’s secretary as he walked past her into the lift lobby.
CHAPTER 4
HE TAPPED THE FOLDED UP TWENTY ON THE bar. The light was low and there was a lot of noise: the rhythmic pounding of dance music underlying a hundred different attempts at conversation. There was a mirror behind the bar with fairy lights strung around it and dozens of bottles of exotic alcohol in front of it.
Nathan caught his own eyes in the mirror and looked away.
Gwen was behind him towards the empty dance floor. They would be gone before it got busy. She was leaning down over her phone so that he could only see the top of her head. Blond hair but she wore it shorter now. She was typing something on her phone and she didn’t look up at him.
“Can I help buddy?”
Nathan turned around. A young man with a shaved head, a beard and a dozen piercings in his face looked down at him from behind the bar. A pair of tattoos (or maybe it was one big one) crept out from beneath his black t-shirt.
“Two pints of Frosty Jack,” Nathan said. “Please.”
The man nodded and turned around. Judging by the expression on his face he was whistling but Nathan couldn’t hear it above the music.
When he glanced back towards Gwen, he saw that she had finished on her phone. She saw him looking and smiled. Was it a forced smile though, he wondered. Was she actually enjoying herself or was she only there because she felt sorry for him? He would never tell Dr. Romero about this but sometimes he couldn’t enjoy her company because he spent the whole time wondering whether she was enjoying his.
Nathan realised that he had been staring for too long when she waved at him. He was about to wave back until he realised that she was actually pointing. He turned around and saw two tall glasses of cider and the man with the piercings looking at him.
He handed the man the twenty and waited while he got his change out of the till. He glanced back at Gwen in the mirror and tried not to feel the anger and frustration he had felt when she had first broken up with him, but it wasn’t easy.
Nathan understood what had happened because Gwen had been very clear about it at the time. To her credit, she had at least waited until he was out of hospital, even though, in her mind, it had been over before that. She hadn’t known whether he was ever going to wake up after the crash. His coma had lasted for two weeks but she had already moved on with her life.
The man with the piercings dropped a handful of coins into his hand. Nathan looked up to say thank you, but he had already moved on to serve a girl with long brown hair and a voice that somehow managed to pierce through the music.
He carried the glasses over to the table. Gwen looked up at him and smiled as he approached. He put the drinks down and struggled out of his coat before joining her. He felt clumsy around her like when they had first started dating but this wasn’t a date, it was important that he remembered that.
“How have you been?” Gwen said.
Gwen smiled; he’d known that she would. It wasn’t an accident that he mentioned the appointment; he wanted her to know that he was getting better and that there would be no more embarrassing ‘episodes’.
“How did it go?” she said.
“Fine,” Nathan said. “He seems happy.” Then, because he wanted her to think he was better than he was, he lied: “He said we can go down to two appointments a week soon.”
Her smile lit up her face, but it was tinged with something between pity and guilt, he could see it in the way her eyes almost closed. “That’s great Nathan,” she said. “I’m really pleased.”
They sat in silence for a moment. He noticed Gwen glancing at her phone on the table as if she was expecting a message. Nothing appeared. She picked up her drink and sipped delicately. A part of Nathan wanted to hate her for breaking up with him, but he couldn’t. He watched her and tried to make it look casual, but she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever met and even after everything she had done he couldn’t help loving her.
“How’s Dr. Springer?” Nathan said.
Gwen looked up suddenly as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. Then her expression relaxed into a smile that he didn’t think was completely genuine. “You don’t have to call him that,” she said.
“Marcus then,” Nathan said.
“He’s fine,” Gwen said. “He works long hours--,”
“I remember,” Nathan said.
She stopped and glared at him. “Don’t be like that Nathan.”
“Like what?” he said but he knew exactly what she meant. Of all the things she had ever done, he found it most difficult to forgive her for starting to date one of the doctors who had treated him. Clearly it had been Dr. Springer who was at fault, although Gwen had never said as much, he could imagine the man taking advantage of her while she sat at his bedside praying that he would wake up so that they could have their life together back.
