One Last Song

by S. K. Falls

  I settled for pinching the spot where I’d injected my saliva into my chest.

  Chapter Three

  About fifteen minutes later, we pulled into one of those pretty, manicured office complexes with tall, shiny glass buildings. Even with the shitty weather, the place managed to look clean and sparkling.

  We took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Through the glass double doors we went, right up to the pretty receptionist.

  “Hi.” She grinned at us like she was a kid and we were Santa and his treasured elf. There was a glob of red lip gloss on her tooth. “Can I help?”

  Didn’t all the people who slumped in here need help? I glared at her. Seamlessly, she moved her gaze from me to Mum, her smile intact, unwavering.

  “Saylor Grayson,” my mother said, her voice as low as it could go without being a whisper. “Here to see Dr. Stone.”

  “Of course. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  Why don’t we? I sauntered over to the window instead, peering down past the landing below us at the parking lot. Blackened tire tracks crisscrossed the sludge. If I jumped and aimed for the ledge three floors down, would I be hurt badly enough to warrant a trip to the hospital?

  Behind me, Mum cleared her throat.

  “Come sit down.”

  But I didn’t have to. A tall, bald African American man emerged from behind the closed door and smiled at me. “Saylor?”

  “That’s me.”

  “And Mrs. Grayson, I presume?” He held his hand out to my mother.

  She took it limply. “Yes. You must be Dr. Stone. Well, I’ll let you two get on with it, then.”

  Dr. Stone let go of her hand, his smile receding the slightest bit. He reminded me vaguely of a giraffe, all thin legs and awkwardly long neck. “I thought this was going to be a family session.”

  Mum pulled on her coat. “I’m afraid not. I have a pressing appointment. There’s no need for that, anyway. You came highly recommended.”

  “It’s for Saylor’s benefit.” Dr. Stone’s smile had slipped completely by now, and even the cheery receptionist was watching. “As I explained on the phone.”

  “My husband’s out of town at the moment, and I have an appointment.” Mum repeated herself when she was mad, a warning call to whoever was pissing her off.

  Dr. Stone hesitated a minute before nodding. He turned to me, his smile back in place. “Well, then. Saylor, I’m looking forward to chatting with you.”

  I sighed and walked past him into his office.

  * * *

  Dr. Stone’s office looked out over a back area of the parking lot that was more trees and landscaping than lot. I sat on the pinstriped couch and stared out the window. “Do you fuck your receptionist?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  I turned to look at him. His long legs, clad in black trousers, were crossed. He looked like a spider. “You heard me.”

  Perching his bony elbows on the arms of his chair, he gazed at me for a minute. “Are you trying to shock me, anger me, or both?”

  I laughed, fiddled with the injected spot on my chest. It felt more swollen. “Been doing this awhile, huh?”

  “Thirteen years.”

  I looked around at his decor. It was understated, sort of manly-but-classy. Lots of steel and glass. None of my dad’s home office’s giant leather chairs and brass globes. I swung my gaze back toward him. “So, are you gonna ask me questions or what?”

  “How do you like school?”

  I’d expected “Do you know why you’re here?” and even “What do you want me to ask?” but not that. “Why?”

  He shrugged his bony shoulders, itched at the patch of silky ebony skin peeking through his open shirt collar. “Just curious. Your mother mentioned you’re a freshman in college.”

  “Was a freshman in college. They yanked me out so they can babysit me or punish me or something. It’s probably just as well. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing there anyway. Haven’t picked a major yet.”

  His eyebrows pulled together. “I thought your mother said you were pre-law.”

  I laughed a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, that’s just wishful thinking on her part.” I pushed on the forming abscess and winced.

  Dr. Stone’s eyes followed the movement and my resulting expression, but he didn’t say anything about it. “If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?”

  “Like, for a job?”

  That shrug again. “For anything. What do you want to be doing right now, for instance?”

  I thought about the syringe in my pocket. “Um, nothing?”

  “Come on.” He spread his giant hands out. “No judgment here.”

  I tried to resist rolling my eyes, but failed. “Yeah, right.” But he kept looking at me with that expectant expression. So just to get him to stop, I said, “I’d volunteer at the hospital.”

  “Interesting choice. Care to share why?”

  So I could learn more about my favorite hobby. Why else? “Don’t know. I just think it’d be fun.”

  Dr. Stone sat up and grabbed a notepad, began to scribble. “I think we can make that happen.”

  “Seriously?” The scritch scratch of his pen on paper continued. “You’re going to let me go into a hospital?”

  Setting his pen down, he looked back up at me. “Why not?”

  “You know why not. Because of my ‘factitious disorder.’ ”

  He gazed at me a long moment, and I couldn’t help but notice that he still had that wide-eyed look of wonder you see on kindergartners. By the time you hit the fourth grade, though, it’s long gone. At least it was for me.

  “I don’t think your factitious disorder—your Munchausen syndrome—makes you less qualified to volunteer there than any other eighteen-year-old. In fact, you might even have a better understanding of what patients and their families go through.”

  “Funny. People who know the truth about me always try to keep me away from medical establishments.”

  He ignored that. “What do you think you’d like to do at the hospital?”

  Learn how to make myself sick so other people couldn’t catch me out. “I’m not sure… Maybe work in the cancer ward?”

  I’d always had a fascination with people who got sick the natural way—because of a chance mutation in their genes, or because their cells were created with a ticking time bomb nestled between them. What would that be like? To wander around with a justified reason to be angry at the world? It was a luxury I couldn’t begin to imagine.

  Dr. Stone quirked his mouth in an expression I knew well: disapproval. But when he spoke, his tone was kind. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that would be such a good idea. But let’s brainstorm other options. I’m assuming you’d like to stay connected to people? That is, you’re more interested in working with live patients and their families than, say, filing?”

  “Um, yeah. You’re assuming correctly.” I’d rather help Mum with her dollhouses than file.

  He chuckled. “Okay. I’ve got an idea. I think I can have someone set you up in the support group section.”

  “Doing what, exactly?” I was instantly suspicious. I’d been tricked into attending group therapy meetings before, and I wasn’t about to fall for that one again.

  “Well, you’d have to talk to the administration about that one. But I’m hoping they can hook you up with something you’d like. They’re fairly good about that. I’ve sent clients their way before.”

  Clients. I liked thinking of myself as his “client,” like he was my personal shopper instead of someone who was trying to help me unfuck my fucked-up life. “Okay.”

  He grinned, a splash of joy across an otherwise imperturbable, serene face. “Excellent. Now, there is one caveat.”

  There it was. Always the caveats. I couldn’t function without caveats. Yes, you can go to college—as long as you stay home for the first semester. Yes, you can get your driver’s license—as long as you agree you’ll only drive with my permission.

  “Wh
at?”

  “I need your permission to inform the hospital administration that you have Munchausen syndrome. It’s for your protection.”

  We locked gazes for a full minute, during which time I considered getting up and leaving. Saying, to hell with this, I don’t need it.

  But the truth was I didn’t know what else I had. There was the hospital or there was home. Home where I could follow Mum around all day, taunting and pushing her into talking with me, if only to tell me to get out of her space. I could sit by the window and wait for my dad to come home, and fume when he called to say he’d be working overnight at his office. I could inject myself with saliva when Mum wasn’t looking. I could think of a way to go to the store so I could buy more medical supplies. The thought of doing all of that, of going back to how I’d been living only six months ago, made me weary. It was a weary beyond any weariness I’d ever experienced before. It went all the way to my bone marrow; it went to the core of my soul.

  And so I looked at Dr. Stone. He wouldn’t be there, in the hospital, to oversee me. I’d probably be able to find a way around that “no cancer ward” rule eventually.

  I crossed my arms, pretended to think. “Will they keep that information confidential?”

  “Absolutely. They’ll need your signed consent, just like I do now, to release it to anyone.”

  “Fine.” I signed the paperwork.

  At the end of the session, on my way out, Dr. Stone asked, “Will you come back and see me again soon?”

  I glanced at a photograph on the side table, of a young Puerto Rican man in a horrendous Christmas sweater. His face was gaunt, drawn, but his smile was infectious.

  “Yeah. Maybe after my first shift at the hospital. At least we’ll have something to talk about then.”

  He chuckled. “That sounds like a plan. We’ve got you scheduled for next Monday, at ten a.m. Let me know if anything changes.”

  My phone beeped in the pocket of my hoodie. It was a text from Mum.

  Waiting downstairs in the car. Hurry.

  Chapter Four

  Back in the bathroom, I inspected the injection site on my chest. It wasn’t quite in abscess form yet, but I’d make sure it’d get there. It might take a few weeks, but it’d be worth it. For someone like me, who wore disease like a well-loved sweater, it was important to analyze the cost-benefit ratio of effort required to get disease versus how long the disease lasted. And, of course, how severe it could potentially get. There was a science to it all.

  Abscesses were largely underappreciated. I’d recently discovered that they could cause fevers and pain. They’re not easily pinpointed as caused by self-injury, either, because some people get them for no reason at all, what they called “a genetic predisposition.”

  They required careful tending to, not just to manage the fever and pain, but also because they had to be watched to determine when they were ready for lancing and draining. And once they were drained, you had to take care of the site and guard against infection while it healed. All that added up to low cost (just a few injections of spit, a free substance) for a large return.

  When I was little, my mom used to take me to Mass. One of the nuns there, the overweight one I loved best because she sometimes sneaked me cookies after the service, used to say that we’d been “visited by Jesus and his angels” when something good happened, like me getting over a fever or my dad landing a client he wanted. Likewise, whenever a door to a new method of injury opened, I felt as if Jesus and his angels had put on a whole fucking performance for me. The experience was nothing short of glorious. I imagined myself standing in front of my syringe, hands raised up, eyes closed, and expression orgasmic with rapture.

  I spat into the syringe and injected the skin adjacent to the previous injection site. Closing my eyes, I rubbed it to make sure the saliva dissipated completely. I imagined the bacteria in the saliva as orange and flame-like, licking through my veins, hungry, ferocious. I willed my immune system to not fight them, to just be devoured, to accept its fate. In that flowery pink-and-gold bathroom from my childhood, I sought deliverance with a headstrong fervor. I needed this.

  I slipped the syringe back into my pocket and walked downstairs to wait for my father.

  * * *

  Our house had a huge bay window that took up the front wall and overlooked the driveway. I could see out of it even from just outside my bedroom, in the upstairs hall.

  A bay window was probably great for people who entertained guests a lot, since it gave you a grand perspective of the entrance. In our house, the fact that it existed at all was laughable. We buttoned ourselves up tighter than a maiden’s corset in the sixteenth century. The only person who came close to being a guest in our house was my dad.

  I sat on the bench by the window and watched the weeping willows sway in the breeze, counting each silent minute because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Our house was like that; it seemed to swallow time. When my dad’s gigantic Escalade pulled up the driveway, spraying the trees with sludge from under his tires, I could’ve been sitting there for an hour or for five minutes. I honestly didn’t know.

  I slipped silently into the kitchen so I could catch him when he came in. Leaning against the counter, my breathing got shallow as I waited for the faux-jovial greeting he always bellowed out when he returned from one of his trips. There was something about the way he said it that grated on my nerves every time.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Where’s my beautiful family?” He said it extra-loud so the baritone of his voice rang out in the mudroom.

  I heard Mum put her dollhouse supplies down and head over to greet him. After knuckling the abscess I was so carefully cultivating, I followed.

  My parents were deep in a whispered argument when I walked into the mudroom. My dad’s head was bent down toward hers, his comb-over trying hard to disguise the fact that he was getting older. When they saw me, they stopped talking. My mother’s face settled into its default nonchalant expression, and my dad beamed at me. His expression was so bright and joyful, so completely overcompensating and fake. It reminded me of those tacky plastic gems I used to collect when I was little.

  “Hey! There’s my girl!” He came forward and patted my shoulder. I could tell it took him aback, how tall I was now. The gesture wasn’t as easy to do anymore. Dad hadn’t really paid attention to me in a long, long time.

  “Hey, Dad. How was Phoenix?”

  He set his briefcase down and adjusted his tie. “Ah, it’s much too hot down there. Felt like August instead of January.” He brushed by me into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “What do we have to eat in here?”

  Ignoring him, Mum went back to her dollhouse and her tea. I sat down on a barstool and watched him rummage through the shelves. I caught Mum occasionally watching me from beside her dollhouse, but every time I actually looked at her, she looked hurriedly away.

  “So, Dad. Aren’t you going to ask how I’m doing with therapy? Or did Mum already fill you in?” My affection for my dad had always been secondary. I wasn’t sure how exactly that came about. Perhaps it had been a slow trickling away of emotion; the more time he spent away from us, the less I seemed to crave his approval.

  “I’m sure what needs to be done is being done,” he said, without turning around. “I trust your mother.”

  I couldn’t help it. I coughed out a laugh. “But don’t you want to know more? Don’t you want to be involved in my healing process? You know what the shrinks say: A sick child means a sick family.” I’d been through enough therapy sessions to have the lingo down pat.

  “Thankfully, you’re not a child anymore, Saylor.” He turned around, a piece of fruit and a bottle of water in his hands, and used his foot to close the fridge. “Well, I better get going,” he said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “My next flight’s due out soon.”

  I glanced at my mother, but she was busy sanding a part of her dollhouse. She didn’t even look up. I turned back to my dad. “You
’re leaving already?”

  “Criminal lawyers in great demand have to travel, Saylor, you know that!” he said, still so ridiculously jovial. And no, I didn’t know that. Weren’t laws different from state to state? Why would he be needed in other states anyway? “Flights in and flights out. I just wanted to come by to see my beautiful girls for a minute.”

  “Are you leaving because I brought up therapy?” The question came out sounding desperate and whiny. I wanted to pummel myself. What was wrong with me? I was usually adept at keeping a handle on these things. Dad was like a skittish deer in some respects—too much emotion and he ran.

  “Don’t be absurd,” he said, rushing to the stairs as quickly as he could without running. “I told you, I need to catch a flight. I just have to grab a new overnight bag really fast.”

  He came back down a few minutes later and rushed into the mudroom, where he slipped on his shoes, his shades, and his briefcase. Once again, he was in costume, ready to take on the legal world.

  “Right… See you later, Dad.”

  When the door closed softly behind him, I heard my mother sigh in the absolute stillness. I looked up. She was looking at me again, something inscrutable in her eyes. It occurred to me that I hated that look. I’d seen it countless times before. Her expression was equal parts pity and confusion, as if she couldn’t figure out where I’d come from or how to make me go away.

  “What?”

  She blinked and jumped a little, as if I’d startled her. “Nothing.”

  “What are you thinking?” I leaned forward. “Just say it.”