I watch her face as her eyes connect with my crotch and see the stain there. It takes her about two seconds to put the whole thing together.
“Happy?” I snap at her.
Anna drops her eyes. “Oh,” is all she has to say. Then she returns to her cubicle.
I sigh and turn back around. I can’t even imagine what Anna, who is freaked out by germs in open cups, thinks about my peeing all over my station. I bet she’ll be back tonight with her Lysol.
In the meantime, I still need to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do. All I can hope for is that maybe my pants will dry soon. Before Peter tells me I need to show up at some mandatory meeting.
“Hey,” I hear Anna say.
I rotate my head slightly to look at her so I don’t have to expose my pants again. “What is it?”
She holds out a black sweater to me. “Here. You can wrap this around your waist.”
I stare at her.
“Take it,” she says. “How else are you going to get out of here?”
I take the sweater from her. It smells like Anna—that clean, detergent smell. Too bad it’s going to smell like urine soon.
“Thanks,” I say.
Anna nods and returns to her cubicle. I know she won’t mention this ever again and she won’t tell a soul.
Chapter 49: Anna
The psychiatrist’s name is Dr. Schultz. The office where he practices is different from most doctors’ offices that I’ve been to. When I open the front door, I enter a dusky waiting area where a sign in black sharpie instructs me to press a button to alert the doctor that I’ve arrived. I select Dr. Schultz’s name from among four other doctors and press the button, which lights up orange.
I suppose at this point I’m supposed to sit down, but the only available pieces of furniture are a flower-printed sofa and a wooden chair, both of which are dusty beyond belief. They are absolutely disgusting, if I’m being honest. Next time I come (if there’s a next time), I will have to bring my Lysol. The chair will be okay if I clean it.
Two other patients arrive in the waiting area before Dr. Schultz comes to collect me. I’d imagine they find it odd that I’m standing in the middle of the room, my hands folded across my chest. Then again, this is a mental health practice. So perhaps this is perfectly normal behavior here.
Dr. Schultz appears at the open doorway like an apparition, and I know instantly that this is my doctor and not yet another patient. He’s tall with white hair and a white beard that makes him appear very wise. He doesn’t wear a white coat or anything frightening like that, and instead wears a checkered shirt and pea-green tie with corduroy pants that ride too high on his abdomen. When he sees me standing in the center of the room, a tiny smile touches his lips. “Miss Flint?”
I nod wordlessly.
“Come with me.”
I follow him down a dim hallway, and enter his office. It’s small and cramped, and the couch inside is even older and dustier than the one in the waiting area. I look at him in absolute horror. “I can’t sit there.”
He seems at a loss for words. Am I actually crazier than most of the people that come in here? That’s an unsettling thought.
“What’s wrong?” he asks me.
“The couch is dirty!” I feel tears springing to my eyes. They’re supposed to understand me in this place. What am I here for if he doesn’t understand my problem?
We end up covering the seat of the couch in paper towels, which eats up the first ten minutes of my session. Although I suspect it’s been a revealing ten minutes.
“I’m sorry about that,” Dr. Schultz tells me once I’ve settled myself gingerly on his filthy sofa. “I’ll have it cleaned for next time.”
If there’s a next time.
“Now, Miss Flint…” He pauses. “May I call you Anna?” I nod, glad that he asked rather than simply taking the liberty. “Anna, tell me what’s going on.”
So I tell him. I tell him about the hours I spend each day scrubbing my house, my cubicle, the breakroom. I tell him about the terror I feel whenever anyone tries to touch me. I tell him about my collection of cans, which I cannot abandon, despite the fact that it’s nearly gotten me fired on multiple occasions.
“Have you ever seen a mental health counselor before?” Dr. Schultz asks me.
I nod. “Once, when I was a teenager, because my parents forced me. He gave me a medication, but I refused to take it.”
It was a terrible experience, one that I vowed I would never repeat. Yet here I am.
“Did they give you a diagnosis, Anna?” he asks.
“Yes,” I murmur.
“And what was it?”
My chest tightens at the memory. The child psychologist was named Dr. Patterson and he spoke in a condescending monotone. When he asked me questions, he nodded at my responses like nothing I said surprised him in the slightest. Then at the end of the first session, he called my parents into the room.
“I believe Anna has a form of autism,” Dr. Patterson said to my parents, without even looking at me. “She’s high functioning, obviously, but she has all the characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome. It explains her poor social skills, her obsession with routine, and her flat affect.”
I remember the room spinning around me. I was sixteen years old and it was horrifying to hear. I was not autistic. I couldn’t be. He was wrong.
But there were parts of it that seemed right.
“Anna?” Dr. Schultz says gently.
I squeeze my fists together and shift on the paper towels covering the couch. “He said that I… I have a high level form of autism.”
“Asperger’s,” he says.
I nod, pushing down a lump in my throat.
Dr. Schultz’s eyes meet mine. “Do you think that was a correct diagnosis?”
I shrug, not trusting myself to speak. “I have… many of the characteristics.”
“But you must realize,” he says, “that your symptoms are far more consistent with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You have the classic obsessions with cleanliness and germs, followed by the compulsion to do a ritual to relieve your anxiety, such as spraying down the room with Lysol or repeating an act eleven times. You of course realize that the compulsion is meaningless, but that doesn’t change the anxiety you feel if you don’t do it.”
Yes. It’s true. Everything he’s saying is completely true.
“As for the Asperger’s diagnosis,” he says. My stomach twists into knots. “Although we’ve only just met, I think it’s unlikely. Clearly, you’re highly intelligent in your focused field, which is a characteristic of the disease. On the other hand, you make excellent eye contact and seem to be reacting appropriately to your situation—you’re clearly very distressed. I realize you’ve had social problems, but much of that could be due to your OCD.” He pauses. “Plus, it should be said that highly intelligent people do tend to be more socially isolated. It doesn’t necessarily make you autistic. In young people, it’s not uncommon for the two diagnoses to be confused, especially by a therapist who’s overly eager to make a diagnosis.”
The knot in my stomach untwists slightly.
“Tell me something, Anna,” Dr. Schultz says, looking me straight in my eyes. “You’re thirty-one years old and clearly have a lot of insight into your condition. You’ve suffered a lot with your compulsions and have almost lost your job over them. Why are you only first seeking treatment now?”
I feel my cheeks growing hot. I don’t want to tell him, but there’s no point in lying. I’m here to get better, after all. “There’s a man,” I explain. “I’d like to have a relationship with him, and… I can’t…”
Dr. Schultz doesn’t probe for more details. He simply nods. “I understand.”
I walk out of the office with a prescription for a medication called Zoloft, which he repeatedly reassures me has minimal side effects. I am haunted by the thought of that dazed, glassy-eyed girl I saw at the psychiatrist’s office when I was a kid, but I still fill the prescription
and swallow the first pill when I brush my teeth that night.
Chapter 50: Matt
The parking garage in Dr. Dunne’s office is very full. I drive straight to the handicapped spots and all of them are taken, which isn’t entirely unusual at Dr. Dunne’s. This would be a big problem if I had a wheelchair and needed the extra space, but luckily, I don’t. Even though it’s incredibly slow, I can park further away in the lot and hoof it to the office. He does, at least, have a ramp, which is much easier than stairs.
I can’t help but think of the first time I came here though. All I had was that weak ankle and the stairs were no problem. Now, only three years later, every step is a struggle.
Walking down the hallway of the building to Dr. Dunne’s practice, I see another guy from afar who seems to be going to the same place. He’s got braces and forearm crutches the same way I do, but he looks like he’s walking much worse than I do. He looks very severely disabled, like he probably ought to be using a wheelchair instead of walking and—
Aw fuck, that’s a fucking mirror.
Shit.
Christ, I can’t believe I look like that while walking. No wonder Jessie took off the other night. No wonder Rosie wouldn’t fuck me. I thought that Anna at least said no because of her own issues, but now that I see myself as I must look to her, it would have been amazing if she’d said yes.
I stand there for a minute, feeling sorry for myself. I’d been avoiding mirrors like the plague recently (for just this reason), and I honestly had no idea how I looked. I feel like shutting myself in my house and never letting anyone from the outside world see me ever again. My romantic life is definitely over.
Okay, I need to get over this. At least I’m still on my feet. At least there’s that.
The waiting room for the neurology group makes me feel a lot better. This is the only place where I don’t feel like a spectacle with my braces and crutches. There are at least two people in the waiting room who are more impaired than me. There’s one guy who’s maybe in his forties, who is in this huge wheelchair with his arms strapped to the armrests. He seems to have some sort of mouth control for the chair. Despite the issues I’ve been having, I can’t imagine how much that must suck, to have to be dependent on others for practically everything.
A nurse takes me to an examining room, and smiles kindly at me as I attempt to keep up with her. She’s got a blond ponytail that swings sexily as she walks, and I can’t help but think she’s much too cute to be a nurse here, especially given the reason I’m here. My stomach sinks when she gets on her computer and says to me, “So what’s the reason for your visit today?”
“Uh…” I say. Christ, this is humiliating. “It’s just… it’s getting harder and harder to…”
She raises her eyebrows at me.
“You know,” I mumble. “Make it to bathroom on time.”
“Oh!” she says. She recovers quickly from her initial surprise and then is very professional. “Okay then. Have you had any accidents?”
“Accidents?”
“Episodes of incontinence,” she clarifies.
I want to crawl behind the examining table—I truly do. “One. One time. That’s it.”
“Okay.” Her fingers dance on the keyboard, typing in my response. “Was it during the day or at night…?”
“The day.” At work. At fucking work.
She clicks on the keys again. “Are you wearing any protection?”
I frown at her. “Protection?”
“An incontinence brief?” she asks.
“You mean like a diaper?” I can’t hide my horror at her question. “No. No. Why? Do you think that I’ll need…?”
“Just asking,” she says quickly.
I answer the rest of her questions, but I can’t get that particular question out of my head. Every time I’ve been to Dr. Dunne’s office, he never has any solutions for me. When he diagnosed me with MS, there were no treatments for me. When I complained of painful and bothersome muscle spasms, he gave me a medication that does a better job making me tired (the last thing I need) than treating my muscle spasms. And now this. After he’s failed me so many times, I’m losing hope.
He has to be able to help me this time. My life is difficult enough without having to worry about pissing myself when I’m in public. Please let there be some magic pill that will help me.
Dr. Dunne comes into the room with a smile on his face this time. At least he doesn’t have any horrible news to deliver to me this time. At least, not yet.
“So I hear that you’ve been having some incontinence,” is his opener.
“Just once,” I say quickly. Well, at least he’s not a hot girl.
“Bowel and bladder?” he asks.
“Just… bladder,” I mumble. “And like I said, just the one time. But… it’s always… you know, urgent.”
I endure a few more questions and Dr. Dunne decides to send me for some testing. I take that as a good sign. He’s not just throwing his hands up and saying that this is something I’ll have to deal with forever.
“Before we do any urodynamic testing, I’d say my best guess is that you’re having bladder spasms,” Dr. Dunne says. “There are medications that can help with that.”
My shoulders sag in relief. “Really?”
He nods. “I’ll give you a prescription for Ditropan and let me know how it works for you. You might need to go off the medication prior to testing though.”
“That’s fine.”
Dr. Dunne rests a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Matt. I’m sure we can at least improve the issues you’re having.”
I want to hug him. I nearly do. It’s the first good news I’ve gotten in a long time.
Chapter 51: Anna
Matt hates me.
No, maybe he doesn’t hate me, but something has changed. There was a horrible chain of events—me telling Matt I would not have dinner with him followed by his… unfortunate accident—and I wonder if that broke him. He doesn’t show up for work for two days after that and I am terrified that he has terminated his employment. After what happened, I wouldn’t entirely blame him if he didn’t want to work next to me anymore. It would be perfectly understandable.
Even though it would be devastating for me.
On the second day of Matt’s absence, I start to panic, certain he will never return. I consider sending him a text message, but the fear that he’ll fail to respond overwhelms my desire to hear from him. Part of me wants to tell him about the Zoloft. I’ve been religiously swallowing those tiny white pills every evening, in hopes that if I take enough of them, I’ll be able to go on a date with Matt without my body filling with terror.
Maybe soon I’ll be cured.
It’s rather hard to believe though.
That night, I brainstorm what I can do for Matt. I want him to know that I’m thinking about him, that I desperately want to be with him but right now I just can’t. It has to be something out of the box, so to speak.
And that’s when I hit upon a brilliant idea.
When Matt shows up at work three days after the failed dinner invitation, I could not be more relieved. I smile brightly at him as he approaches my cubicle, but I notice right away that he isn’t smiling himself. When he gets close enough to me, he thrusts a plastic bag in my direction.
“Here,” he mutters.
I eye the bag suspiciously. “What is it?”
“It’s your sweater,” he says.
The sweater I lent him to cover the stain on his pants. Did he wash it? Surely he washed it. But even so, it was covered in urine. What if he didn’t wash it on a cycle that completely cleaned it? Not everyone uses the heaviest cycle.
“Did you… wash it?” I ask tentatively.
He stares at me. “For fuck’s sake, Anna. Yes, I washed it.”
I’d like to ask him about the specific cycle he used, but I suspect that he would not enjoy answering such a question. So I very tentatively take the bag from him, being careful not to touch the
contents. I’ll just throw it out when I get home.
I notice Matt rolls his eyes at me when I do that, which is something he doesn’t usually do. A lot of people roll their eyes at me, but Matt never does. As I said, something has changed.
I hope what I’ve planned changes that.
I wait for a moment for Matt to go to his cubicle and get settled there before I hurry over to catch the look on his face when he sees the very small gift-wrapped box lying in the center of his desk. I even tied a red ribbon around it.
Matt is sitting in his chair, gazing down at the box, looking rather perplexed but not displeased. “That’s a gift,” I explain to him. “It’s for you. From me. I’m giving it to you!”
I probably didn’t need to explain to him how gifts work. Oh well.
“Um.” Matt scratches at his head like he’s not certain what to make of the whole thing. “Should I open it?”
“Yes!” I say. Maybe I do need to explain to him how gifts work. “Of course. That’s what you’re supposed to do with gifts.”
I catch a ghost of a smile on Matt’s face and my heart leaps. He’s excited. Maybe I’ve managed to make all of this right again.
I watch him working on the wrapping paper. I may have wrapped it too elaborately. It was so small that I felt it needed to be wrapped twice. And then before I knew what I was doing, I had wrapped it eleven times.
Still, he’s taking an awfully long time.
“Jesus, Anna,” he says. “This is a lot of wrapping paper.” He lifts his brown eyes to look at me. “There is a box inside here right? It’s not just layer after layer of nothing but wrapping paper?”
“No,” I say.
Such a thing would be unheard of in human culture! Although I’ve read that there are male spiders who attract a female mate by presenting her with a fly wrapped in silk, but eventually evolved to use larger and larger silk packaging to deceive the female into thinking she was getting a bigger fly. And eventually, the male spiders evolved to be deceptive enough to simply give the female a large ball of silk with absolutely nothing inside—the ultimate deception to trick her into participation in the mating ritual.
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