Page 13 of Brain Damage

The older woman just shakes her head. “So what do we do now?”

“It’s up to you,” he says. “You know how much is involved in her care. She can’t dress herself, bathe herself, eat… do you feel like you can take that on?”

I understand what he is asking. He wants to know if the older woman will take care of me. I know she will. She loves me. I can’t remember much, but I know this much.

“You have to understand, Dr. Williams,” the older woman says. “I have arthritis and my husband died a few years ago. I’m in my seventies. I just can’t…”

The man holds up his hand. “I understand. I’ll talk to the case manager about arranging for a nursing home.”

The older woman’s wrinkled skin turns a shade paler. “A nursing home?”

“It’s the best thing for her.”

“She’s only thirty-seven…”

A crease appears between the man’s eyebrows. “I understand how you feel. But you can’t feel guilty about this. Charlotte needs twenty-four-hour-a-day care and you just can’t provide that.”

The older woman looks over at me, and seems surprised to see that my eyes are open. She gasps slightly and clasps her hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh, she heard all this. We shouldn’t have had this conversation in front of her.”

“Mrs. McKenna,” the man says patiently, “you have to realize that she can’t understand⁠—”

“You have no idea what she can understand,” the older woman snaps at him.

The man looks over at me and for a moment, our eyes meet. His are brown but the whites are lined with red. He looks tired. He squints at me a minute, then he shakes his head.

“We’ll get you that list of nursing homes tomorrow,” he promises.

10

The pain is like white hot coals sliding across my belly. It wakes me up from sleep, and when I realize that it has no intention of stopping, I crack open my eyes and whimper. Well, at first I whimper, but then it turns into a moan. Then a scream. Or my best attempt at a scream.

There’s a woman standing over me wearing flower-patterned scrubs with dark hair pulled back into a painful-looking bun, and she’s doing something to the tube that comes out of my belly. I hate that tube. I have tried to remove it on multiple occasions, but they won’t let me. Once they even covered my hand in a big white mitten covered in mesh to thwart my efforts.

That tube hurts so much. The skin around it on my belly is red and angry and goopy. They keep putting bandages and creams on it, telling me it will help with the pain, but it never does. Anytime anyone touches that tube, I want to scream.

I reach for the tube with my right hand, trying to push away the woman. She has bags under her brown eyes, which narrow at me angrily.

“Will you just let me do this, Charlotte?” she snaps at me. “I’m not in the mood for a fight.”

Well, I’m not in the mood to have excruciating pain in my belly. I swipe at her hand, in my best attempt to keep her away.

“If you keep this up,” the woman says to me, “I’m going to get out the restraints.”

Then she takes one hand and physically pins down my right arm hard enough that I can feel her fingernails biting into my skin. I’m sure I have another arm somewhere that I can use against her. For right now, I’m not sure where it is. And with my right arm restrained, I’m helpless. The pain commences. It’s just as white-hot as before. Burning. That’s the only word that runs through my head as tears well up in my eyes. Burning.

“Stop!” I croak. “No! Stop!”

It’s a miracle. The woman stops, her brown eyes now wide, staring at me. She doesn’t look angry anymore.

“Did you say something?” she asks me in a soft, bewildered voice.

I just stare at her. Now that the pain is fading, I feel like I could go back to sleep. I’m so tired.

The woman leaves the room. The pain in my belly has subsided to a dull ache. My eyes start to drift closed. So tired…

I am nearly asleep when the woman returns. By her side is the blond pretty woman with the ponytail and freckles. I know her name. What is her name?

Amy! That’s her name.