The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  “Until what?” Sabrina said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Until I don’t have to act all invalid. Until I can get my groove shakin’ again.” Craig scowled at me in disapproval far worse than the glare with which he’d greeted me. Oops, don’t bait the gay collector. Especially after she threatened to make me help her catch an attending’s eye by making him jealous.

  “You should take it easy for at least the next forty-eight hours,” she answered, not rising to the bait. God, was she actually behaving? Maybe I could talk her out of Operation Jealous Dearborn. Or was I remembering that right? She couldn’t have asked me that, could she? My thoughts were so jumbled. “You can move around as your body allows, but when you get fatigued, rest. Listen to the signs you’re given. The headache alone will likely curb any… enthusiasm you might feel for strenuous activity. Take cabs instead of walking. Get delivery instead of going out for food. If you push yourself too much, that forty-eight hours will double. Anything more?”

  Craig shook his head, and I just stared at her, slack-jawed. They’d administered a dose of hydrocodone once the brain scans were complete, and the searing pain in my head had demanded I ask for something to help, avoiding a drug high be damned. It was a small dose, just enough to take the edge off, but given how little I let myself take meds or drink, it hit me harder than it would most people. It seemed to be kicking in.

  “Just an escort to the doors and maybe a sticker for surviving.”

  “I just need you to sign,” she said, flattening the papers on the wheeled table, rolling it close enough I could scrawl the sloppiest approximation of my signature ever. Taking what she needed and leaving the instructions, she left to find me a wheelchair.

  “That was….” Craig started but trailed off.

  “Remarkably normal?” I asked, just as surprised as he was. “Because she’s doing her job.”

  “Well, yeah. You’re her patient. There are laws against that.”

  “I’d have to be willing to sue. I’m not.” Or I’d lose my license to practice.

  He scowled. “It’s still inappropriate.”

  “She said nothing inappropriate.” This time.

  “I’m sure she was thinking it,” he grumbled.

  “Jesus, Craig.” A sliver of lucid anger pierced the drug fog. “Let. It. Go. I just got robbed and had a gun try to shake hands with my brain. I have credit cards to cancel and a driver’s license to replace. Can we worry about the shit that is a problem, like possible identity theft, and not the shit that isn’t?”

  “You’re right,” he said, chagrined. “I’m sorry.” Leaning down, he pushed his face in the crook of my neck and breathed. “I’m just glad you’re all right. You are all right, aren’t you?”

  “Peachy,” I mumbled, bringing my hands up to his shoulder to keep him close. “I just wanna go home, crawl in bed, and be the little spoon.”

  “You got it.”

  “And maybe blow you.”

  “Jesus, Dane,” he bitched, mimicking my irritation from moments ago and pulling away. “Do what they tell you and rest.”

  “Okay, you can blow me.” Part of me hoped Sabrina would come back and hear this and conclude that yeah, I was really gay.

  He threw up his hands. “Are you going to take none of this seriously?”

  I watched him, knowing medical problems scared him. His mother’s illness had really taxed him when it came to doctors and hospitals and life-threatening health problems. Some people got more proficient at handling emergencies and sickness. Craig didn’t. He’d gotten more scared. Maybe it was because he heard from me quite often when cases turned inexplicably bad for no reason we could predict, but I’d always made a conscious effort not to bring the negative stuff home.

  “I’m taking all of it seriously,” I said, voice low in the dim hospital room. “My life flashed before my eyes tonight, babe. So far, it hasn’t been that great. Not until I met you. So yeah, I’m taking it seriously by wanting to make things better. I miss how we were, and I don’t want to fight anymore. I want to touch you more and have more sex. I want to laugh more and make you smile and feel happy and loved.”

  “What about it sucked so bad?” He glommed on to the tiny, hinted-at shred of my past.

  I clenched my jaw, but that hurt, so I relaxed. “How about you ask what we can do to outshine the bad?”

  He studied me, and I could see his impatience with my lack of transparency, but this time he dropped it.

  “Yeah, we can be optimistic if you want.”

  “Your chariot,” Sabrina said, wheeling in a chair and locking it next to the bed, standing back so Craig could help me to my feet. My legs were still shaky, and I was grateful for his arm around my waist. He eased me down and put his hands on the chair’s arms, his forehead gingerly coming to rest on mine. I was surprised by the affection in front of anyone, let alone Sabrina, not that I was going to complain.

  “You going to listen to me when we get home?”

  “Depends,” I said, grinning a little crookedly. “How strict are you going to be?”

  “Depends on how well you listen to me.”

  Sabrina cleared her throat. “Do we need to call a taxi for you?”

  Craig whipped out his phone. “I can do it, and we’ll be fine waiting outside. It’s not too bad a night out there.”

  She looked at him, surprised at the civility in his tone. “I have to wait with you until you get in the car.”

  “Well, giddyup,” I said, pretending to hit the wheels of the chair like they were flanks of a horse. Oh yes, drugs.

  Ya little faggot, my father’s slurred voice echoed in my head, stealing my loopy smile. The one dose of painkillers was all I could stand if it was going to open me up to those painful little snags of memory.

  “Do you say that when you ride each other in bed?” she asked. There it was. She couldn’t resist, and I watched Craig’s back stiffen as she steered me out of the room and toward the ambulance bay, where a taxi could easily pull up and whisk me away. In that moment, I wasn’t so sure I was grateful to be going home instead of to the morgue.

  I gasped and bolted upright, sweating, shards of pain stabbing through my head and making me nearly scream in agony. At least I could use the pain as an excuse, instead of admitting the screams stuck in my throat were from terror.

  “What?” Craig panted, his hands on my back, trying to pull me to him. I was shaking too badly, too stiff with uncontrolled panic, to comply.

  “They’re everywhere,” I whispered, looking around like the walls obscured dangers untold. “It’s not just him. It can come from anywhere, at any time. No one is safe.”

  “Babe,” he soothed as best he could. “Who’s coming from anywhere?”

  “My dad. George. Whoever!” I hissed, then winced and grabbed my head, tears stinging in my sinuses and behind my lids. When I looked back at him in the dark of our bedroom, they slid down my face and plinked to the sheets. “Not safe,” I said again.

  “Yes you are, baby,” he pleaded for me to believe him. “The door is locked. No one’s getting you. They’ll have to go through the doorman, all those locks, the security system, and me. It was just a nightmare.”

  “You’re not safe either,” I whispered, putting a palm to his cheek, finally realizing how much danger he was already in. How much I’d put him in. “No one’s safe,” I repeated, disoriented from trying to look everywhere at once.

  “Lie down.” He pulled at me, and I was too weak to fight him. He wrapped around me like a barnacle, his head on my chest and his legs strongly tangled in my own. His hand soothed up and down my side, and his breath puffed across my nipple, making it peak. I couldn’t focus on that. Long after he began to snore, soft little snuffles, I stared into the darkness, alert for noises at the door and fighting off the certainty that there was danger, not from just one source like I’d always thought, but from everywhere.

  Present Day

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Perry,” Gerald, the doorman to C
raig’s building, greeted. “Do you need any help with those?”

  I smiled distractedly, too busy juggling my grocery bags to correct him that I was no longer an MD. “Afternoon. Nah, I think I got it. Can you hit the elevator button, though?” I probably could have stuck a finger out to punch the arrow up, but I didn’t want to risk dropping anything. How people who lived on upper floors in buildings with no elevators got food to their fridges, I’d never understand. More frequent trips? Help? Of course, if I hadn’t been shopping while I was hungry, I probably could have saved myself the contents of the third bag. When the doors opened, Gerald stuck his head into the carriage and pressed the button for Craig’s floor.

  “I’ll buzz Mr. Dahl so he knows you’re coming.”

  “Thanks, Gerald. ‘Preciate it.”

  “Glad you’re back, Dr. Perry.”

  Was I back? Most definitely not to the extent I was before, living there and sharing a home with Craig. But I’d become more than a mere guest, or so it seemed. I smiled in acknowledgement at Gerald as the doors slid closed and the elevator whisked me up. Two weeks had passed since the day Craig had introduced me to his students, and I’d spent maybe two of those days at my apartment with Neil, one for Craig’s next evening with his painting class and the other just yesterday when he had a late meeting at work. I’d worked late only once, but not so late we hadn’t been able to have takeout together in front of a movie while playing footsie on the coffee table until bedtime.

  Mmm, bedtime.

  And now, here I was bringing groceries. Granted, I planned to cook something sort of fancy for Craig, which meant I needed a lot of ingredients he hadn’t already had, but I was also replenishing staples he’d gone through faster because I was there to eat with him. It felt very domestic and normal. I craved normal.

  The door swung open as I neared, and Craig immediately stepped forward to take the precarious third bag from me. “What’d you do, buy out the Duane Reade?”

  “No,” I scoffed. “Just half of it.”

  “Well at least you’re bringing me food and not a dude from Grindr. Again.”

  I gaped at him, unsure from his expression if he was joking. When he looked back at me and smiled, I knew he was giving me shit for something that, in hindsight, had embarrassed me so much I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to talk about it aloud.

  Following him into the kitchen, I set the bags down on the counter and began removing items while Craig put them away, but only after he kissed me hello so thoroughly I was sure he didn’t hold Grindr against me. In fact, he seemed more offended by my gummy bears when I tossed them on the island. He picked them up and eyed me.

  “Really, Dane?”

  “I don’t like popcorn when we watch movies. You know that. The kernels get stuck in my teeth.”

  “It’s like you have no dental work to be pried out of your mouth at all,” he grumbled.

  I grinned. “I don’t. Never had a cavity.”

  Leaning in to kiss me again, he smacked me on the ass. “Not fair.”

  “Imminently fair,” I countered, turning his greeting into something more promising. “Mmm,” I hummed. “Save some of that for later.” He laughed when I suggestively waggled my eyebrows.

  “What’s for dinner?” he asked, eyeing the rest of the groceries yet to be put away.

  “Well, it depends. Are you in the mood for pasta, seafood, or steak?”

  “Ooh, choices. Um, steak. I haven’t had a good steak without paying restaurant prices in….” His voice trailed off and his expression sobered. “Since you moved out. I never did get a grill for the balcony, and I couldn’t do it in the oven without overcooking it.”

  Trying to keep the mood light, I didn’t acknowledge his mention of the split. “Well, watch and learn, then. I’ll show you.” I set a London broil on the counter alongside a bag of russet potatoes, fresh parsley, a bulb of garlic, some ingredients for a quick marinade, and a steamer bag of mixed vegetables. We set about cooking, moving around with the ease of a couple who’d worked side by side in a small kitchen for years. We hadn’t often done this before, due to the fact that when I’d been on shift, it was for thirty-six- to forty-eight-hour stretches, and when I hadn’t been on call or on a rotation, I’d tried to have food prepared when Craig came home from work.

  I was enjoying myself so much I almost didn’t notice how quiet he was. But after the third time I realized I was monopolizing the conversation, I bumped his shoulder.

  “You okay? You seem preoccupied.”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” he assured me, turning to put the potatoes in the microwave after stabbing each one with a fork. I’d have rather baked them in the oven, but we didn’t have time if we wanted to eat before midnight. “Just some stuff going on at work.”

  “Hey, you mentioned a guy who’s been getting the lead on projects over you a while back. Is that still happening or did they straighten their shit out?”

  Craig grimaced and shook his head. “He’s still getting treated like a ten-year veteran.” He set a cutting board on the counter and proceeded to chop parsley into fine bits for sprinkling on the potatoes. “I get that he’s really talented. He is. His timing, staging, sense of acting, it’s all really good. He’s got fantastic instincts. My whole issue is that he’s leading a team of people I’ve worked with for years. I know Lucy can’t have late meetings on Thursdays, because she has to meet her ex-husband for custody swap. I know Scott can work late hours, but he needs someone to stay with him so he can bounce ideas. I know Karen can work wonders with texture to the point where if there’s a water scene, she’s the go-to person. I know that if these people are given considerations, they’ll help each other and collaborate well. Jackass—I mean Jack—has everyone all messed up, and if anyone offers suggestions on how to approach a project, it’s not a team effort. We feel like we have to go to Jack for permission, and my muse gets bitchy when I need approval for every step. Plus, pen and ink are my thing, right? I can do the computer graphics well, but if you can’t animate without relying heavily on a computer, what do you do if the power goes out? Or the software crashes? Or you lose the technical director, who knows the glitches in the program? Jack thinks the sun rises and sets on this software, and yeah, it’s awesome and we wouldn’t have it if it weren’t top-of-the-line, but it doesn’t replace the actual ability to act, to convey emotion through character expression and movement. If a viewer can’t connect with the character, all the shimmery texture and pretty shading in the world won’t matter. But the execs see young guy, superior artist, and good instincts, and think leader. Either that, or he’s blowing one of them on the side.”

  “Sounds frustrating,” I said, letting him talk but making it clear I was listening.

  He continued on, regaling me with individual instances where Jack had said or done something wrong, and the team had pulled together despite him, but the higher ups had seen that as good leadership, not a testament to the camaraderie of the players on the team. Jack was the bad coach sent in mid-season because he had good statistics, but he had no skill in earning the respect necessary to get a group to the championship game.

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked, bent over the rack in the oven with the steak on it, juice bubbling beside it and filling the kitchen with heavenly smells. I pushed my thumb into it to feel how springy it was. Satisfied it was still medium rare, I pulled it out of the oven and set the hot dish on the cool surface of the stove.

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I started looking for a different job, but part of me doesn’t want to start over somewhere else if my paintings could take off, you know? I mean, I love animation, but my own original creations are what I’ve always wanted to do, and if I can sell enough of them to make that my full-time job, that’s what I want. Seems stupid to learn the ropes at a new place if I’m on the edge of making my dreams a reality. But there’s also the dream job out there, ya know? Should I go for it? Movie animation?”

  “How’s the job market right no
w? If it’s easy, get something new, and if you’re able to quit fairly soon, they won’t have a hard time replacing you.”

  “It’s so-so. There are jobs available, just not many. Though with the suck-ass economy, most people aren’t going into creative work, so there also isn’t as much competition, unless I go for Disney or something.”

  “Have you had any luck?”

  He shrugged. “I have a nibble or two.”

  The microwave dinged. Satisfied the baked potatoes were thoroughly nuked, Craig tossed in the bag of mixed veggies to steam for a couple minutes. While he did that, I set plates and silverware out on the island ledge. To be cheeky, I set a candle in a tall, elegant holder on the lower counter in front of our plates and lit it with a match.

  Craig chuckled. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Random Wednesday evening? Support for your job decisions?” He kissed me on the corner of the mouth, then went to set out the food so we could plate up.

  We ate in silence at first, enjoying the food, but as immediate hunger was taken care of, we resumed conversation. The ease with which we slipped into each other’s normal chatter made me remember how we used to get lost in making plans, going a day or a week at a time without seeing each other because of my hectic school and work schedules. There were smiles, chuckles, and a couple outright barks of laughter. We touched a lot, too. A hand on the knee, fingers brushing bangs off a forehead, a lean of one shoulder against its neighbor. We were comfortable, and a buzz of happiness resounded beneath my skin. I thought we were getting somewhere. Looking back on the last couple months, I realized how far we’d come from Craig reluctantly giving me just a few minutes in his apartment to where we were now. Craig brushed a bit of butter from my lip and sucked his thumb into his mouth. It was deliberate, and I didn’t bother trying to resist, pulling his hand down and capturing his mouth in a kiss redolent with the flavors of our dinner.