Page 103 of Brain Damage

“Mr. Knox!” she yells. “Get off him right now!”

Jamie glances over at Grace, then glares into my husband’s eyes. “You’ll have to make me.”

He just earned himself a lot more time here.

It takes two big orderlies and a vial of sedative injected into Jamie’s ass before he can be pried off Clark. I honestly had no idea he had it in him. The whole while, he keeps yelling, “He was trying to suffocate her with a pillow! I saw it! I saw it!”

And by the end I’m crying too. I can’t stop sobbing until I get my own vial of sedative, mine injected into my arm. And when Grace asks me why I’m crying, I tell her, “He tried to kill me. My husband tried to kill me.”

73

Clark is in jail.

As it turned out, while Clark was trying to suffocate me with a pillow, Ernest Gamble was singing like a bird in prison. I guess he finally got pissed off about the fact that he was the only one getting punished for planning to shoot me. When Clark finished getting his nose set in the ER, the police were waiting to arrest him.

Jamie is the local hero. Officially, nobody will say it’s a good thing that he broke Clark’s nose, but everyone is shaking his hand and clapping him on the back. As for me… well, he saved my life. What else can I say?

“I was worried,” I confided in Jamie as we sat together eating dinner the next night. “I didn’t think you’d be able to take on Clark.”

Jamie made a face at me. “Gee, thanks a lot, Charly.”

“Well, your balance isn’t perfect,” I pointed out.

“True,” he admitted. “But I took him by surprise. Also, remember: I did bartending. Taking down drunk idiots is part of the job description. As soon as I smelled the gin on his breath, I knew I could take him.”

We haven’t discussed the fact that my husband tried to kill me or why. I’m not sure it says anything good about me that the person I married wanted me dead. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that Clark didn’t love me—he never loved me. He only married me for money and because he felt I owed him after breaking up his first marriage.

As for my rehab, I’ve gotten markedly better since I got those glasses. But the weird part is that even when I’m not wearing the glasses, I’m better at using my left side. I can get my left hand on the wheel of my chair without prompting, and I can dress my upper body almost entirely by myself. I do sometimes bump into things on the left side when I’m wheeling my chair, but much less than I used to.

“You’re doing amazing, Charly,” Dr. Williams said to me a few days ago, after watching me do a transfer with Valerie. “I always knew you had it in you.”

I bit my lip. “Can I ask you a question, Dr. Williams?”

“Of course.”

I asked the question that had been swirling around my head ever since I remembered what Clark did to me: “Is it possible that the reason I was having so much trouble seeing things on my left side was because I saw something so terrible on my left side that I needed to block it out?”

To his credit, Dr. Williams considered my question thoughtfully. “You’re talking about conversion disorder,” he said. “That’s a psychiatric condition where you have a neurologic response like numbness or paralysis in response to a stressful situation.”

“I know what conversion disorder is,” I said. “I am a doctor, after all.”

“Well, sorry, Dr. McKenna,” Dr. Williams said, grinning at me. “Anyway, it’s possible, I suppose. But in your case, I’d say it was unlikely. Your brain injury was on the right side, so the weakness and numbness and neglect of the left side is perfectly explained by your injury.”

“But how come it just got better all of a sudden?” I asked.

“Well, the prism lenses helped,” Dr. Williams said. “But that can happen with a brain injury. As the blood gets reabsorbed, there can be a sudden, marked recovery. I would guess that’s what happened to you.”

I guessed that made sense.

“Although the question remains,” Dr. Williams added with raised eyebrows, “what is it exactly that you think you saw on your left side that was so horrible?”

I’m not sure exactly how I stammered my way out of that one.

The one piece of bad news is that I still can’t go home from here, most likely. I can’t make it to the bathroom on my own, and that’s a prerequisite before my mother can take me home. But I’ve been trying not to think about that.

So yeah. That’s that. On to more good news:

At long last, I am allowed to be alone in my room. That means no more meals in the hallway. I worried it would mean no more meals with Jamie, but instead, he’s taken to bringing his food tray into my room to eat with me. At least for dinner. Every night.