Page 25 of Brain Damage

Then underneath his name, I read off his title: “rapist.”

Oh my God.

This man is a rapist. A rapist is in my room. This is worse than my dream.

I look up at Chris’s face, at the stubble of a beard on his chin, and his dark, foreboding eyes. To say that I am terrified would be an understatement.

I suck in a breath, hoping that the rapist will lose interest in me. Maybe Amy will come here, and save me. Where is Amy? She’s supposed to be here by now.

“Hello, Charly,” Chris (the rapist) says to me. “You feel like getting dressed?”

That’s when I realize, to my horror, that the rapist has actually been sent to see me. They have sent him here to rape me.

I guess this is part of my therapy. It has been a long time since I’ve had sex. Months. So I guess maybe they feel like part of getting better is getting back in the swing of things. Sexually.

The rapist approaches my bed and I feel my heart starting to race in my chest. I don’t care if this is part of my therapy—I don’t want to be raped. First someone tries to murder me and now this? But I don’t think I can fight this man off. So what can I do? I can’t just lie here and let him rape me, can I?

There’s only one thing I can do:

Scream.

Chris looks incredibly startled. I guess other patients are more accepting of their therapies. He takes a few steps back, and looks around nervously. I think I have deterred the rapist for now. Hopefully, somebody will come rescue me soon.

A minute later, a nurse that I know named Nicole comes running into the room. Nicole looks as panicked as I feel. I didn’t even realize I was still screaming, until Nicole puts her hand on my shoulder, and says, “Charly, what’s wrong? Why are you screaming?”

I snap my mouth shut, and take a deep breath to calm myself. I am shaking.

“He was going to rape me,” I tell Nicole. It’s all I can do to keep from bursting into tears.

Hopefully the rapist won’t want to rape Nicole. I don’t think I can protect her.

Nicole whips her head around and stares at Chris accusingly. His evil black eyes widen, and he holds up his hands.

“I didn’t do anything,” he says. “I’m supposed to be doing her occupational therapy, and I asked her if she wanted to get dressed. Then she just started screaming her head off for no reason.”

Occupational therapy. Yeah, right.

“Is that so?” Nicole asks, folding her arms across her chest. She looks back at me, and says in a gentle voice, “What did he do, sweetie? Why did you think he was going to rape you? Did he touch you in a way you didn’t like?”

“I didn’t touch her at all!” Chris interrupts, looking really freaked out. “I didn’t even lay one finger on her!”

Nicole shoots Chris a dirty look, and she takes my right hand in hers. She gives me a comforting squeeze. “Tell me what he did, Charly. Tell me why you thought he wanted to rape you.”

“It says on his chest that he’s a rapist,” I explain.

Nicole just looks confused for a minute. Finally she squints at Chris’s badge. “Charly,” she says, “the badge says ‘occupational therapist.’”

“No it doesn’t,” I cry. “It says rapist!”

Nicole furrows her brow then, all of a sudden, she starts to giggle. “Oh my gosh, the right side of ‘occupational therapist’ is ‘rapist’! She can’t see stuff on the left. That’s why she thought you were a rapist!”

Nicole is still laughing, but I don’t really see what’s so funny and Chris doesn’t look too thrilled either. They explain it to me about how I didn’t see the left side of the word, so I misunderstood what it meant. But honestly, I don’t see why it’s funny that I thought that he was going to rape me. I was really scared.

Anyway, I still don’t like him. I definitely don’t want him to get me dressed anymore.

17

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