Page 62 of Brain Damage

I snatch the envelope off the table and rip it open. Half a dozen full color photos spill out onto my lap. I pick up the top photo and study it for a second.

It’s Clark with another woman. He’s standing very close to her and his hand is on her back. The photo is blurry, but I can tell that the woman is probably ten years younger than I am and nearly as tall as Clark, with long, glossy black hair, and the high cheekbones of a supermodel. She’s gorgeous—the sort of woman I always thought that Clark ought to be with.

I toss that photo onto Spinelli’s desk and I look at the next photo. In this one, they’re kissing. I’m not going to go into details, but let’s just say this girl isn’t his sister.

As I look at the photo, the whole world around me starts to go black. Spinelli, his cluttered desk, his entire office disappears and all I can see is my husband kissing this beautiful woman. I feel a pulsation in my skull, like there’s something in there that could burst any second. As I grip the photo, it starts to crinkle in my trembling hand.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Douglas?” Spinelli asks me, his thick eyebrows furrowed together.

And then I’m back. I’m in Spinelli’s office again, and I just found out my husband is a lying, cheating son of a bitch.

I just can’t wait to get out of here so I can go take everything Clark owns out of my apartment and burn it.

43

AFTER

I spend three days in bed.

That’s what they tell me anyway. I barely remember most of it. All I remember is lying in bed, feeling sleepy and confused, and wanting to be left alone. And the nightmares. Every night, the nightmares.

It turns out everything was because of an infection in my urine. Now I’m on antibiotics. One more pill to add to the mix. At least this one is temporary.

One nice thing about being sick was that I got to stay in my room and didn’t have to sit in the hall, being gawked at by visitors and nurses. Now I’m better, so I’m stuck out in the hallway again. It looks the same and different. Sort of like when you go back to your old high school for a visit after you graduate, and it’s all the same hallways and classrooms, but the faces are mostly different.

Of course, if I were at a high school, the faces wouldn’t be nearly this old.

The worst thing is that I don’t see Jamie anywhere. Maybe he’s gone home. That would make me incredibly sad.

I am chewing a mouthful of green beans when I hear a voice yell my name: “Charly!”

It’s Jamie! Jamie! I would know his voice anywhere. I see him being pushed in his wheelchair by a large, burly man in scrubs. His face is all lit up and he’s grinning at me. I feel suddenly overcome by the urge to reach out and hug him, but that wouldn’t work out for so many reasons.

Jamie cranes his neck back to look at the man who is wheeling him. “Hey, Lou,” he says to the guy. “Stop. Put me next to Charly.”

The guy frowns. “I thought you said you wanted to eat lunch in your room.”

“No.” Jamie shakes his head vigorously. “I want to eat out here. Next to Charly.”

The man starts to push Jamie’s wheelchair past me, but Jamie stops him. “No,” he says again. “On her right side. I’ve got to be on her right side.”

It’s nice when somebody knows you very well.

When Jamie is positioned on my right side, the man goes off to fetch his food for him. “You look a lot better,” Jamie says to me.

“You look better too,” I tell him.

Jamie laughs and raises an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your hair is growing back,” I point out. His hair is at least a centimeter long and dark brown in color. “You can barely see the scar anymore.”

Jamie touches the healing scar on his scalp self-consciously. “Yeah?”

“You look almost normal,” I say.

“Gee, thanks,” Jamie says, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling.

Something suddenly occurs to me. That man was ready to take Jamie back to his room for lunch. I always thought Jamie used to sit in the hallway for the same reason as me: because he couldn’t be trusted alone in his room.