The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  She narrowed her eyes at us. “Dane, I was your friend, and you completely shut me out when you got sick. Who does that? Who takes the person who bent over backwards for you, who had your back in every situation, and just throws them away, especially when you’re at your weakest and need the most help?”

  Craig stiffened, and even in the dim lighting, I could see him turning red and winding himself up to shout. But I intended to stop this before it could get any worse. I took her hands from my shoulders and palmed them, keeping her close so she’d still hear me as I pitched my voice low so no one else would.

  “I had a psychotic break, Sabrina. When you came to see me in the psychiatric wing, you were concerned more that I help you make Dearborn jealous by sleeping with you than you ever were for your friend Dane. When I told you I loved Craig, and that right then, I could barely help myself, you threatened to go to the chief about my mistake during Glenn Morgan’s first surgery. You made it clear my well-being was never your concern, and when I still didn’t give you what you wanted, you saw an opportunity to ruin my personal life. Out of what? Spite? Petty irritation because you didn’t get your way?” Her face flooded with rage, but I talked over the top of her next words. “So right now you’re going to smile, Dr. Ballard. You’re going to kiss my cheek and wish me well and walk away. You will consider us even, or so help me god, Chief Noble, Dearborn, and maybe even the state licensing board will be interested to know how you attempted to rape a mental patient. You can tell them about Mr. Morgan, but I’ve already lost my license to practice as an MD. What have you got to lose, Chief Resident Ballard?”

  Her eyes were enormous, and her hands inside mine began to shake. I held her gaze with steely determination, and when she blinked and leaned forward with slightly pursed lips, I gave her my cheek and dropped her hands.

  “You have a good night now, Doctor,” I said, then turned and offered my arm to Craig so we could get the hell out of that room.

  It wasn’t until we were outside and flagging down a taxi that Craig let out a whoop and gave a little skip beside me. I couldn’t keep the smile from my face at the sheer relief of having finally dealt with Ballard. No more avoiding her at the hospital if we happened to cross paths. No more wondering when she’d find a way to get around Chief Noble’s rules and try to make what happened all about her and all my fault. And from the look on Craig’s face as we climbed into the cab, no more question about where my loyalties lay.

  “Holy fucking shit, Dane, remind me never to piss you off!” he crowed, pushing into my side until I draped an arm over his shoulders. “What did you mean about her going to the chief about one of your patients?”

  “She performed a corrective surgery on a patient where I’d made a mistake the first time around. She didn’t put it in the post-op notes, and she never said a word to anyone, but she had some major ammunition on me. The night you saw her kiss me in the hospital lobby, she’d just told me she had my back and wouldn’t tell anyone so I didn’t get slapped with a lawsuit or come under the board’s review and face disciplinary action. I meant to kiss her cheek in thanks, and she moved so I’d hit her lips because she was already working the Dearborn angle.”

  “Could you have lost your license?”

  I shrugged. “Probably not for the mistake, but for not disclosing it the minute we found out, both of us could have. That’s why I fought so hard when you told me not to be her friend. Yeah, I liked her, but I knew if I pulled away from her then, she could have ruined me for fun or out of spite. Later, she tried to use that leverage when I got sick to force me into helping her sleep with an attending. I guess she figured if I wasn’t right in the head, I’d be too afraid to challenge her. She didn’t count on me being nearly suicidal and beyond caring about my career anymore.”

  He was silent as we rode home, until we got near the loft. “I wish you could have told me all this back then.”

  “Patient confidentiality, Craig. I already told you more now than I should have. This is why a lot of doctors will only date hospital workers. It gets complicated otherwise.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “Well, now you’re telling me all the truths, and I can see it, Dane. You’re a good man. Not just funny and hot and kind, but genuinely good.”

  I nuzzled his neck, unable to look at him as he came to some sort of revelation in the back of a smelly taxi a block from his loft. I’d tried to convince him, but there had been too much hidden.

  “You couldn’t see it before because I didn’t let you, Craig. Don’t be mad at missing things about me when I made sure you never had the full story.”

  “Do I now?” he murmured.

  “Other than details, yeah. I mean, I told you I didn’t sleep with her.”

  “Yeah, now I know.”

  “And now she’ll go away completely.”

  “God, if she doesn’t, she’s got a death wish for her career.”

  “That was the idea.” I’d felt icky threatening her like that, but I truly had to get out from under her thumb if I was going to be free to live and work how I wanted. “She’d have never given me peace.”

  We arrived at the loft, then, and while I paid the driver, Craig looked up at the night sky, breathing in the crispy frost. When he looked back at me, his face was unspeakably sad.

  “You’re finally finding peace, and just when you do, I’m leaving you.”

  A lump formed in my throat, and while he wasn’t wrong, I didn’t want to be reminded our time together came with an expiration date. I held out my hand and gave a too-cheerful smile.

  “Not yet, you’re not. Let’s go break my peace with earth-shattering sex.”

  His sad face dissolved and reformed into wicked, and with a lifted brow, he led the way inside.

  September 2012

  The knock at the front door of the loft was frantic, and it made me jump before I heard Craig’s voice.

  “Dane?” he demanded. “Why can’t I get inside? I just unlocked everything, but it’s jammed or something.” He pushed the steel door again, bumping the back of the low, heavy bookshelf I’d moved in front of it. His fingers fit through the crack he made and his slender painter’s fingers wiggled, trying to get more purchase.

  “Hold on.” I hurried over and peered through the crack at him. “You by yourself?”

  “Yeah, what’s going on, Dane?”

  I hefted one side of the bookshelf, the kind that was low and long and could hold many, many books. It had taken me the better part of half an hour to scoot it in front of the door. Swinging it several inches, I gave Craig just enough room to squeeze through and shut the door. He had to scramble out of the way not to get pinned as I moved the shelf back.

  “Hey!” he protested, vaulting the furniture.

  I thumbed the locks, then turned to face him. “I’m sorry,” I said hurriedly. “It’s just, my father found me and showed up at work, and it’s not a good thing. This time the cops are involved, and I would just rather trust them to take care of the old bastard, so I’m going to lay real low until I get that call, okay?”

  His eyes bugged out of his head. “Your… father? You’ve never talked about your father before. Or any of your family for that matter.”

  “I know, and I don’t think I can now, but just trust me when I say him finding me is not a good thing. I’m just lucky this time I was at the hospital and he didn’t have a baseball bat on him. They checked my head anyway, and I know I’m fine; I’m just tired. So if I sleep, maybe the cops will call with good news about having gotten my dad from security, and they’ll send him away to rot.” The words rushed from me, and I was fidgety, unable to keep still like I needed to. I needed to be still, and thank god Craig was home, because he was my stillness, and it would be all better now, wouldn’t it? It had to be.

  “Yes, it’ll be all better now,” he soothed, taking me into his arms. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. I clung to his solid frame, stealing his warmth because he seemed to have so much of it to spare.

&nb
sp; “You’re my sunshine,” I muffled into his shoulder, meaning it. His warmth chased away my cold. I was so cold in my core, and god, it felt like I’d never be warm again, if not for Craig.

  “Come into the living room with me. If you’re so tired they checked if your concussion was worse, then you need to sit down.”

  Obediently, I followed him down to the living room and let him pull me onto the couch and wrap the afghan around my shoulders. I huddled in the scratchy wool for warmth, but he was the only thing that seemed to work, so I pushed into his lap and suctioned on to him like a leech, burying my face in his neck and wrapping us both in the blanket.

  “Don’t let me go,” I whispered.

  “I won’t,” he promised, rubbing his soothing hands up and down my back. “Chief Noble called me. He said you weren’t feeling so hot, but I thought you might have a fever or something. I didn’t think it would have something to do with your family. What’s going on?”

  I shuddered a breath. “My dad’s a drunk, and he never liked me, so I got out as soon as I could. He didn’t like that, kept following me all around college. I had to get a restraining order, but it lapsed. And now he needs something from me, and he showed up at the hospital today demanding I hide him from the cops, but I want nothing to do with him. The police know what’s going on, so I just want them to handle it. Tell me I don’t have to do anything for him.”

  “Okay, shhh,” he said, slightly rocking side to side. I was so exhausted I almost felt like going to sleep, but I knew I couldn’t right yet. I had to make sure the loft was secure.

  “I told the doorman about Dad, to keep an eye out and not let him up. We never got around to putting my name on the mailbox, so he can’t just find our apartment number.”

  “You probably freaked poor Gerald out.”

  “Probably, but I gave him the card the cops gave me and he made a copy, so he has all the numbers I do. And if he sees Dad, he can get the police. But that’s… what if Dad comes when Gerald’s not working?” New panic rose in my chest and I clutched at Craig, trying to get farther into his lap.

  “Then he’ll tell the other security people on duty to keep an eye out. They’re a team, right?”

  Craig said all the right things. He was so good to me, but I began to shrivel up a little because I realized I was no good to him. Look at me; I’m a fucking mess! How is this good for Craig? I whimpered and Craig held me tighter, rocking me more firmly, making soothing noises, and scratching his fingers through my hair and gingerly rubbing my scalp. He stayed away from the part where I’d been pistol-whipped, soothing the rest.

  “Dane, you should lie down.”

  “Can’t. Cold. Have to keep an eye on the door.”

  “Dane,” he admonished gently, pulling back enough to look me in the face. I whimpered in protest and tried to glom on to him again. He didn’t let me. “If I couldn’t get in and I’ve got a key, there is no way your father is getting in here. None whatsoever. I promise. I swear to you. Please, you need to sleep. Maybe when you wake up, things won’t seem like they’re closing in on you. They won’t seem so big and scary.”

  “Will you stay with me?”

  “Absolutely,” he assured, nudging me to stand so he could lead me upstairs.

  We crawled beneath the covers in bed after he shucked my pants and dress shirt, leaving me in my t-shirt and boxer briefs. When I moved to him again, he opened himself up to be engulfed, and lifted his chin so I could tuck my head into his shoulder and neck junction.

  “Dane, I’m worried about you. I’ve never seen you this upset before.”

  “It’s him. He fucks with my head and makes me insane.”

  “I think that, with whatever is going on involving your dad and the cops on top of your concussion, it’s a damn good thing you came home and that the chief called me. Maybe after you sleep, you can fill me in a little more?”

  “Maybe.” I yawned, trying to keep my eyes open, trying to listen for someone at the door who shouldn’t be there. There was no one. “I don’t know,” I murmured. “It’s a long story, and I don’t like talking about it.”

  “Does Holly know?”

  “Does she know what?” I asked, puzzled.

  “What happened to you? About your dad? Can I get the story from her?”

  Holly! “Yeah, maybe she could come help keep an eye out for him. She knows what he looks like and no one else does.” That was a great idea.

  My eyes drooped, but every time there was a slip of consciousness into a full, restful sleep, I jerked awake, convinced I heard someone breaking in.

  “It’s just the wind,” Craig said. Or it was a neighbor walking by, or someone ordering pizza delivery. After a while, he drifted off and didn’t answer my worry at all. And it gnawed at me, a worry in my head like a ball of worms, writhing and burrowing and squirming, and the more I tried to not think about it, the squirmier they got. They spread themselves out inside my head, consuming the rational parts of my brain and turning gray-pink folds of healthy tissue into more worms, more wiggling, more insane undulations that simply consumed and consumed and consumed, until all I could do was lie there, terrified my father had finally come for me and there was nothing more I could do.

  He thought I’d slept. I hadn’t. I hadn’t so much as held my eyes closed for ten seconds. But when I felt Craig stirring, I’d closed them long enough for him to see when he slipped from beneath me, taking his warmth with him. I scooted into his warm divot in the mattress, but it was a poor substitute. When he returned from the bathroom, he brushed my hair back from my forehead, and I squinted up at him and smacked my lips, like I would have if I were truly waking up. My eyes burned with fatigue, but I hadn’t been a surgeon for three years without learning a trick or two about dealing with fatigue.

  “I’m going to call Holly,” he said softly. “I think you’ll feel safer if she’s here, too.”

  I nodded. He was right. I would feel better. Holly knew. Holly understood.

  “Okay.”

  “My phone is downstairs,” he said, almost as though he were asking my permission to go. I could only nod.

  There were a few moments of quiet, and I rolled over to look across the loft, over the living room and through the windows that made the loft such an inviting, happy, bright place. Darkness had fallen, so it wasn’t so bright anymore. It was cold. Exposed. Like being in a cage while other people’s enormous eyes looked in and judged how well the subjects played. I felt like the mouse in an experiment, vulnerable and not in charge of my own destiny. Should I just burrow into my bed and hide? Would that save me from prying eyes? Or should I attack the glass, give a show of strength that might, just might, get the watchers to move on?

  I burrowed, but that didn’t stop me from hearing Craig’s side of his conversation with Holly.

  “…really wrong, Holls. His voice is all flat and weird, and he talks about his father like he expects the man to burst through walls and blow the place up no matter who’s in it. I really think he needs you. You get this stuff. I didn’t even know his dad was abusive before today.” Holly said something, to which Craig said, “The surgery chief called me from the hospital, said Dane had some kind of episode at work. He said they were going to run tests to see if Dane’s concussion was messed up, and that I should go there. I got halfway there when I got a text from Dane saying he was out and headed home, and to meet him here.” Another pause. “I guess it could be the concussion, but I’m really worried. If you can please get out of it, we need you here.” Holly had plans and Craig was trying to talk her out of them. A shard of guilt poked into my heart, like a menacing icicle, bringing with it more cold even if only the tip brought the pain. But Holly was my best friend. If ever there was a time to need her, it was now. “He barricaded the door. When I got home, he’d shoved the bookshelf in front of it so no one could get in. He’s terrified, and I don’t know what to do. He’s worried his father will get past the doorman and four deadbolt locks, and come barging in over a two-ton
bookcase.”

  You haven’t seen him in action, I thought apathetically. It was too much effort to even stop the memories from flooding, so they washed over me, each one a hammer strike on the icicle in my heart.

  “Thank you. Um, you might want to bring some groceries. We’re pretty sparse, and I guarantee he won’t let me leave for supplies. Unless you think you can live on Golden Grahams for however long.” She said something, and he thanked her again and disconnected.

  When I heard the rustle of him getting back in bed to gather me to his chest, making me the little spoon, I stuck my face out of the covers.

  “She on her way?”

  “Yeah. She’s bringing food, but she’ll be here as fast as she can.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes again, genuinely trying to go to sleep. Craig kissed the nape of my neck and rubbed soothing circles on my chest, but even in the cocoon of my burrow, a pending explosion felt imminent. The worms, they squirmed; the icicle, it froze and pierced; and the clock, it ticked in the dark. Outside the windows, nameless judges stared in at us, leaving me exposed and raw, even as I tried to burrow and burrow and burrow into Craig’s sunshine.

  The next thing I knew, a cold set of fingers checked the heat of my forehead, and I jumped, disoriented, before Holly pushed her face close to mine and smiled.

  “Hey, stud,” she said.

  “Was I asleep?” I asked, confused and internally berating myself for letting my guard down enough to drift off.

  “Lightly. Like you used to when you were a kid.” She peeled back the covers and climbed in, tucking herself into my front and throwing her leg over my hip. “Quite the fortress you’ve made for yourself,” she said lightly. “Like that tree house we had as kids, right? No one was coming up in that thing without us knowing about it, and we could see everything in the neighborhood. Anyone so much as looked our way, we knew it.”

  A smile flitted across my lips at the memory. “Yeah, that felt safe.” Until my dad burned it down.