Page 88 of Brain Damage

She frowns. “Why not?”

“It’s not even a real word,” I say. Technically, “and” is a real word. But most of the clues are nouns. This isn’t fair.

Amy looks over at my card. “‘Husband’ isn’t a real word?”

Oh. I guess I missed the left side of the word.

“She’s too slow,” Dr. Vincent complains. “Maybe I’ll go first.”

Dr. Vincent pulls off his Yankees cap. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him without the baseball hat on his head, and my eyes are immediately drawn to a lesion on his scalp. He has a firm, red-colored, crusty nodule protruding from his skin that is at least a centimeter in diameter.

“You have skin cancer,” I hear myself say.

All four sets of eyes in the room turn to stare at me. “What did you say?” Amy asks.

“Dr. Vincent,” I say, my eyes still pinned on his scalp. “You have skin cancer on your scalp. You need to have somebody do a biopsy, but my guess is a squamous cell carcinoma from the appearance. It’s a slow-growing cancer, but it does have potential to spread to lymph nodes and other organs. So the sooner you can get it removed, the safer you’ll be.”

Dr. Vincent reaches up with a shaky hand and gingerly touches the nodule. “Really?”

“You should listen to her,” Angela speaks up. “She’s a skin doctor.”

“Thanks, Dr. McKenna,” Dr. Vincent says with real gratitude.

And I remember how satisfying it used to be, making those diagnoses. I miss it sometimes. So much.

Amy squints at the lesion herself. “Dr. Vincent, we can make you an appointment with a local dermatologist if you’d like.”

He nods. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

There’s a long, tense silence in the room. Finally, Amy shakes her head at me. “I don’t get it, Charly. You can diagnose skin cancer, but you can’t get through one stinking round of Taboo?” She cocks her head to the side. “I think you’re holding back on me.”

If only that were true.

I have that dream again.

I don’t know why. Kyle Barry is in jail. He can’t hurt me anymore.

The dream starts with my looking into Barry’s dark eyes. Hello, Dr. McKenna. Remember me? He raises the gun and points it at my face.

And that’s when the left side of my world disappears. I lie on my back, listening to the footsteps on my left side. I keep straining to see if Barry is still there, if he’s left me to die.

And then I hear his words whispered in my ear:

“You deserve this.”

I wake up shaking for the first time since Kyle Barry went to jail.

62

Ever since Clark entered the picture, Jamie has stopped having meals with me in the hallway. The truth is, he’s nearly stopped talking to me entirely. When we sit together in Walking Group, he barely looks at me. I don’t know what I did or said to upset him so much, but sadly, it feels like our friendship is over.

The next morning, in Walking Group, I end up sitting next to Jamie. It wasn’t my choice. The nurse who brought me to the group put me there. And I felt like it would’ve been rude to ask her to put me somewhere else.

So now I have to endure the fact that Jamie basically isn’t speaking to me.

Unlike me, Jamie is now sitting in a regular chair, because his balance has improved to the point where he walked to the group instead of being pushed here in a wheelchair. So he could theoretically relocate to another chair. But he doesn’t. Maybe he’s also afraid of being rude.

“I saw Sam yesterday,” I say to him, recalling how I watched Karen bringing Sam into the hospital yesterday evening.