The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  “Oh shit!” He jerked up, still buried in my ass, but rapidly going soft and slipping free. A dribble ran down the inside of my thigh, and I smiled, kissing him to stop the flail.

  “I said don’t freak out,” I admonished when we pulled apart. “It’s been weeks since our second first time, and you said your test before that was clear. Unless you’ve been with someone since I came back into the picture, we’re still clear.”

  He shook his head and confirmed, “No one else.”

  “No worries, then, right?” I smiled and snuggled into his chest, not letting him up to pace or dress or continue packing. I nibbled on the skin I could reach, licking away sweat and enjoying his body against mine. He gave in, wrapping me up tightly and sighing, sliding sideways down the couch cushions until we were lying down, knees to shoulders entwined, my head pillowed on his biceps. I loved that I could feel his slickness between my cheeks.

  “That was hot,” he said with a smile. “When did you get this debauched streak?”

  I returned the smile, though less carefree. “We don’t have a lot of time left. I want to make the most of it.”

  He sobered and nodded, thumbing my bottom lip before kissing me slow and sincere. “Okay.”

  We existed in a bubble like that for a long time, only moving when he wrapped the afghan around us as the sun set and burned the evening sky in shades of gold and crimson. We may or may not have napped, and once more, we ended up rubbing against each other, our sensitized skin riding the edge of pain as we climaxed in a slower, deeper, more devastating echo of the first time.

  “Hey,” I finally spoke, breaking the silence in which we drifted. He looked down at my face but didn’t talk. “Will you go somewhere with me?”

  “Now?” he asked.

  “No, but I’d like to do something and if you’d go with me, it would mean a lot.”

  “Yeah, sure.” There was a momentary hesitation, and I knew he was about to say he’d go as long as it happened before he was supposed to leave.

  “It’ll be in the next few days. I just have to get directions and make arrangements.”

  He seemed to relax, pulling my face into his chest and resting his chin on the top of my head. “Yeah, just tell me when and I’ll be ready.” Reaching between us, I gave his flaccid penis a gentle tug, eliciting a hiss. “Maybe not ready for that quite so soon.”

  “Craig?”

  “Mmm?”

  “It is too a dildo.”

  “It’s art,” he argued with a chuckle.

  “It’s both.”

  Later on in the evening, after we fed our bellies and were testing our libidos, he conceded the point.

  September-November 2012

  They never told me this place would be depressing enough to make me suicidal. I tried to listen to the doctors, tried to pay attention to the words they flung at me, tried to buy into their bullshit psychobabble about how to deal with my demons, but it all just sounded so hokey. Visualizing serenity to combat panic? Puh-lease. Nothing but drugs helped me with the panic, but the drugs also made me a space cadet. How could I promise Craig I was getting better when I could barely string two intelligent thoughts together? How could I get better if I couldn’t think?

  I’m a doctor, for fuck’s sake, I’d snarl in my head. I know all this shit, yet none of it means a goddamned thing to me.

  I sat, slumped in a plastic chair with no arms, staring at the same tile on the floor, trying to decide if the subtle blue of its faux-marble swirl more closely resembled a dog or a ninja. In front of me, Dr. Rosa Rodriguez perched like she found these hard-ass chairs comfortable, her ponytail so tight I wondered if her scalp hadn’t passed out from the pain and gone numb. She had wide, kind eyes, and I wanted to pay attention to her. I did.

  Klonopin wasn’t one of the drugs that helped with focus, that was for damn sure.

  I’d been in for two weeks, since the episode at the loft where I’d been convinced my father was going to climb the building, reach our balcony, and get to me through all that wide-open glass. Rodriguez assured me it was no surprise I’d become so paranoid after all I’d been through.

  Official diagnosis: PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder.

  They really didn’t have a good box to check as far as my paranoia was concerned, because how could you call a man paranoid if he was right? The day after I admitted myself into the inpatient psych ward, Chief Noble called my doctors to let them know my father had been caught—three blocks from the loft. He’d tried to get in, but had been stopped in the lobby by Gerald, thanks to the description I’d given him when I’d rushed home and barricaded myself away from the world. Gerald hadn’t liked my father’s demeanor as he hovered by the mailboxes and then stopped a tenant to ask if they knew me. When Gerald confronted him, my dad outright asked if he could call me so I’d let him up. Gerald, feigning cooperation, called Officer Jarvis instead, and when my father realized he’d been had, he fled on foot. Officers Russell and Jarvis hadn’t been kidding when they said they’d watch out for me, because they called for backup immediately, and three police cars converged from different directions, one of them, thankfully, catching my father as he ran away.

  Dr. Rodriguez hadn’t told me all of this, only that the source of all my fear was no longer able to reach me. It was, as she’d put it, the best possible outcome to my coming to terms with my safety as I’d possibly get. No, Sabrina had been the one to tell me all the juicy details. How she knew was anyone’s guess, but I suspected the worst: hospital gossip. There’d been nurses who’d seen me talking to no one, and I imagined Dr. Noble was keeping Dr. Kingsley in the loop, including a call from the police alerting him his security team didn’t have to remain on the lookout for a suspected murderer.

  Nobody overseeing my case had thought Craig or I—the two people most directly affected—needed to know. Sabrina wasn’t being altruistic, either, by telling me. She’d wanted details on why my father was arrested.

  “What if someone decides to hold a gun to my head again in the name of desperately needing money?” I’d asked Dr. Rodriguez at her bland reassurance. She hadn’t let on that answer had meant anything to her, but it wasn’t long after that conversation the hospital had been able to call Craig for a conference and go over everything needed for my treatment, now that they knew my problem.

  The clinical names had nothing on the actual feel of the disorders themselves. I think that’s what struck me first. Not that I had PTSD and anxiety issues, but that the terms were so mild compared to what they felt like.

  I was crawling out of my skin.

  If I didn’t get some fucking space, I was going to scream until my vocal chords bled.

  If they didn’t let me out of this claustrophobic room, I was going to tear someone’s eyeballs from their face.

  If I had to face one more question about how I was feeling, I’d swallow my own tongue just to get peace, even though that was supposed to be medically impossible.

  Everything was so big, so deep, so much. It was too much. I wanted to lie in bed with the covers over my head and count the seconds that took me further and further away from everything I’d ever given a damn about: my career, my boyfriend, my life. I’d blown it, so what was the point of trying to get better? I didn’t deserve to get better.

  The old man had won. I was as broken as he’d warned me I’d be.

  “Dane,” Dr. Rodriguez interrupted my thoughts. “Why don’t you tell us one of your goals? Something you’re looking forward to?”

  Group therapy. It was such a cliché, but it was real. I rolled my eyes. “Not being fucking crazy anymore,” I said resentfully.

  “Okay.” Rodriguez smiled. “What’s one way you can stop being fucking crazy?”

  I stared at her, but no one else blinked. Apparently doctors on the psych side got to curse in front of their patients. Huh. Maybe I should have gone that route. Then I realized I’d have had to lead group therapy sessions and probably would have offed myself.

  Wh
ich brought me back to my original statement. I’d never entertained so many different ways to kill myself as I had in the weeks I’d been here.

  “I take it you want me to be serious,” I said testily.

  “Of course,” Rodriguez replied, her face nothing but serene. She oozed zen, and I kind of wanted to punch her for it. Or hug her. God.

  “Um, I guess answer your questions honestly when you ask. You guys are supposed to know what you’re doing, so I should trust you, right?”

  That was a winner right there. I got a nod of approval and the gapes of several other patients at my brilliance. I actually considered following through on what I’d just said until Joey, the cutter beside me, leaned over.

  “Suck-up.”

  “Joey, how about you? What’s your goal?”

  He rubbed his forearm, which was a geometric grid of his troubles if the scars were anything to go by. “Win at checkers,” he snarked. The checkerboard was missing pieces. There would be no winning.

  “Why is that your goal?”

  “Maybe so I can feel like a winner at something. Or maybe I just want today to be chocolate pudding day.”

  “Why don’t you feel like a winner?”

  And on and on and on. Through Stephanie and Lola and Keith and the rest of the group, we talked about addictive behaviors, breaking abusive cycles, overcoming self-hatred and blame, and a plethora of other things. All but a couple of us had one thing in common: our lives had been fucked up in one way or another by one or both of our parents.

  I trudged back to my room, my slippers shuffling along the same faux-marble flooring that was present throughout the wing. It made for hours of something to focus on, making patterns and seeing shapes. It reminded me of days past, in Central Park, lying in the grass with Holly and naming shapes of clouds after surgical maladies.

  I missed Holly. I missed that she was not just a text away whenever I needed her. Instead, I had to wait for my allotted phone time, and I felt guilty using it on anyone but Craig. Craig, who was so worried about me that in two weeks, he had dropped a lot of weight, his face had become haggard, and every time he saw me, the hope in his eyes burned bright with naïveté. Every visit, he’d come with a need to see me getting better, and every visit, he left disappointed. Sure, he masked it with determination. I think he masked it so well he didn’t realize he was disappointed. His conversations with Dr. Rodriguez were fierce and intense and he was doing and saying everything right.

  And I was breaking him.

  Not only had I splintered down the middle, he was bowing under the pressure of me, too. I couldn’t keep doing this to him.

  So when I got to call someone that evening, I called Holly so I wouldn’t have to hear how narrowly Craig clung to hope. “Hey stud,” she answered, sounding tired but happy to hear from me. “Have you been having a good day in paradise?” I heard the telltale rattle of the glass in her office door as she shut away the library for privacy. She was working late. Again.

  “Yeah, we got pedicures and a hot stone massage today while the doctors gently extracted the foul thoughts trying to stink up our brains. It was very soothing, actually.”

  She chuckled. “Well, my day sucked, if you want to hear all about it.”

  “God yes.” I starved for news of the outside world, how everyone else’s routines weren’t ruined by my psychosis.

  “I didn’t have someone to work out the kinks in my muscles, nope. Instead, I got to fire somebody.”

  “What happened?” I asked, concerned for once about someone other than me. It was salve on my aching psyche.

  She told me about an employee who’d been sneaking her boyfriend in to try to christen every room in the building. “I caught them once in one of the bathrooms, told her not to let it happen again, and thought that stuck. Apparently not. One of my little old ladies came in early for the weekly book club and found them back in the erotica corner reenacting some of the positions in the books.”

  I couldn’t help laugh. “What was one of your little old book club ladies doing in the erotica section?”

  I could hear the smile in Holly’s voice. “She says she got turned around, and then heard strange noises and thought someone was in trouble, but she was the one who told me that position was in one of the books and ‘they should be ashamed of themselves,’” she laughed. “I’m scarred for life. Maybe I can come be your roommate.”

  “Then Braden would get lonely, not that I wouldn’t love to have the company.”

  “Braden can just get over himself,” she snapped harshly. “Maybe he should be lonely so he doesn’t take shit for granted.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Sounds like firing someone wasn’t your only problem today.”

  She blew out a breath. “No, but you don’t need to listen to me bitch about Braden’s head being so far up his ass he can only hear the sound of his own ego crying for attention.”

  “Is everything okay?” I wasn’t convinced.

  “Yeah.” It came out shaky, but not watery. “It’s fine. Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “You can still talk to me, you know. I don’t need to shove my head so far up my own ass all I hear is myself. That gets old.”

  She laughed, and that did sound watery. “I know, ya big goof. And our date for tomorrow afternoon is still on. I took half of one of my many paid days off that are languishing unused on a vacation of any kind while I’m waiting for Braden to not have to work eleventy-two-hour weeks. I’ll be there with the things you asked for, even though I had to get special permission from Dr. Rodriguez. Do you realize what a pain in the ass you are?”

  Visiting hours weren’t exactly convenient in the psych ward. Not for people with normal day jobs, anyway. I was grateful for Holly, not only for keeping her exchanges with me as normal as possible, but for not handling me like glass, like everyone else seemed to do—even Sabrina, which was unexpected, given I was in a vulnerable position she could exploit. I was still waiting for that shoe to drop.

  “I do,” I answered my best friend. “And if our situation were reversed, I would do it for you.”

  “I know you would, sweetie,” she said.

  “Now don’t go getting all sentimental on me, Holls. No.”

  “I know.” There was a telltale sniff, but she shored herself up well. “And I have to go. I have some arrangements to make for the next couple days. And you have another twenty minutes’ phone time. Call your boyfriend.”

  “You know me too well.”

  “I only wish I’d known well enough to help you when it mattered most,” she said quietly.

  “Not your fault, Holls. Now stop that shit. My issues are not your responsibility.”

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I love you, doofus.”

  We rang off, and I took a big breath, squared my shoulders, and called Craig for the twenty minutes of wide-eyed hope I couldn’t live up to.

  “Why does that help you?” Dr. Rodriguez asked me, pointing to the pile of knitting on my lap, which Holly had brought on her visit the previous week. It was the pair of needles she had to get special permission to bring, and Dr. Rodriguez’s stipulation was that I could only knit during our one-on-one therapy sessions, and I had to leave all my supplies in her locked cabinet when we weren’t discussing my fucked-up brain. That gave me two hours every day of rhythmic hand movement to look forward to, when the rest of the time I felt twitchy and cracked all over, like pottery just waiting for the right touch to shatter me.

  “In med school, we were told knitting helped with surgical dexterity. It strengthens the muscles of the hands so when you’re wielding a scalpel, no matter what you’re facing on the table, your hands will be steady and sure. You can control the tension of sutures better, and you can move your fingers smoothly in small, tight spaces. I also think it settles my mind somehow. I don’t feel so fractured. Like if I’m mostly focused on our conversation, but partly focused on my hands, I don’t have any desire for my thoughts to veer off in other directions, wond
ering if anyone is watching me that I don’t know about or some danger is lurking I can’t see yet. The only other place I ever found that peace was the OR.”

  “Why is that so important?”

  I sort of sneered at her, but it lacked heat because I was turning my scarf for the next row and didn’t give the expression any oomph. “I’ve spent most of my life looking over my shoulder. It’s kind of ingrained, checking for danger. And even as vigilant as I was, I couldn’t stop the mugging, and I couldn’t stay hidden from my dad. So that makes me feel like I need to look harder, be more vigilant. It’s not something I can turn off.”

  “Except when you’re knitting or operating,” she supplied.

  “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the needles double as weapons? I’m not sure. It’s… safe. And the things I knit make great gifts.” I smiled with way too many teeth, full of sarcasm.

  “I can tell you why it helps, if you’ll let me, Dane, but if I do, I require you to take it seriously and not roll your eyes or see me as a quack.”

  I eyed her sideways. “Okay.” That kind of bargain usually came at great personal cost. I kept knitting, focusing more intently on making perfect, uniform stitches.

  “It’s called a hypervigilant state, and you can’t help it. Patients with PTSD often suffer them, though admittedly they’re more often soldiers, used to situations where they’re put on patrol and have to keep a constant eye out for danger. But that’s the pattern that starts it. You’ve been watching out for your father for years, so you’ve trained your brain to look for him, and when you’re unsettled, you slip into vigilance you can’t easily slip out of. It elevates your heart rate, increases adrenaline production, and your body becomes hyperaware. It’s the stage of readiness just short of fight or flight, and when it happens, your anxiety is compounded, and it feeds your PTSD, like a vicious cycle.”

  Something in me shifted. That felt right. Her words resonated inside me, like a violin string plucked and singing true and steady.