Page 18 of Brain Damage

I know this one. I stare at him for a minute, then I finally come up with, “Itch?”

Dr. Williams shakes his head. “No. Your last name is McKenna.”

I knew that one. If my head wasn’t so itchy, I would’ve gotten it.

“And where are we, Charly?”

I hate these questions. It’s so hard to concentrate when I’m so itchy. “We’re here.”

“But where is here?”

“My room.”

“Right, but what kind of place is this?”

“It’s…” I try to focus. I know he expects me to give him an answer. But all I can think about is how itchy my scalp is. I try to scratch it again, but the damn glove stops me again. “An itch?”

Dr. Williams smiles at me. “It’s a rehab hospital, Charly.”

“Oh.”

“And how old are you?”

I think hard. I feel like I remember somebody saying I had a birthday coming up. So I’m going to be older than I was before. But how old am I now? “I’m going to be twenty.”

Dr. Williams laughs again. “Don’t we wish? Try again, Charly.”

“Twenty-two?”

“You’re thirty-seven,” he says.

Oh my God, could that be true? I try to look down at the wristband on my arm, which has all my information, but I can’t see it because of the mitten. How could I be thirty-seven though?

“That’s so old!”

Dr. Williams smiles down at me. “You’re younger than I am.”

If I’m thirty-seven, does that mean I have wrinkles on my face? Is my hair turning gray? Thirty-seven is pretty old, right? I don’t want to be thirty-seven! That’s so old! I would rather be twenty. But I guess if he says I am thirty-seven, I must be.

Dr. Williams takes out his stethoscope and starts listening to my chest. I take a deep breath so that he can hear me breathing. He always tells me when he’s done that my breathing sounds very good. Then he touches my belly, which I really don’t like because the feeding tube is still there and it hurts a lot. The good news is that if I eat enough, Amy said we could take it out.

“Sounds great, Charly,” he says.

I smile.

“Just one more question before I leave,” he says.

I nod, determined to answer this one correctly.

“How old are you?”

I stare him straight in the eyes. “Twenty-itch.”

By the look on his face, I don’t think I got it right.

As we talk, I notice there’s someone in the doorway to the room, listening in on our conversation. Most of the people working in the hospital are nurses, most of them women, usually with their hair tied back into buns, wearing flower-printed scrubs. At first I think it must be a nurse standing in the doorway, but as I stare over the doctor’s shoulder, I realize that it’s not a nurse at all. It’s a man wearing dark clothes, his hands shoved into his pockets, as he watches me from across the room. Not only that, but the man watching me has a strange, sour expression on his face.

Almost like he hates me.