The River Leith
Page 3
It wasn’t as though Leith had been confined to his room since he’d been moved to the rehabilitation facility. He was allowed free reign of the premises for the most part, so long as he alerted the nurses to his destination, but usually he didn’t go as far as the gardens. There were plenty of pretty nurses to talk to until he grew tired, and Leith would generally leave his flirtations to go back to his room well before he made it all the way to the door to the outside world.
But now he wondered why he hadn’t had more fortitude. Damn, it was good to see the blue sky and white clouds above. Leith always breathed deeper and easier out in the fresh air.
“How long until I’m released?” He wanted to go camping. Getting out into the woods had healed him as a kid, especially after his mother’s death. He wanted to lie back under the stars, and count them into the wee hours of the morning.
Dr. Thakur indicated a bench behind a large shrub and sheltered by an oak tree, and they sat. “Well, that depends. I hear you had a pretty big outburst over a hunk of clay in art therapy this morning.”
Leith crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. He still felt weak from the walk, and he was definitely not interested in talking about his feelings again. “Yeah, so what? I was frustrated.”
“Obviously.”
“I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted.”
“So you threw it against the wall?”
Leith exhaled sharply and looked away. It was difficult to explain. He’d been staring at the clay and thinking about Zach for some reason. Thinking about the sweet Easter bread, and how, had the clay been a slightly different color, it would have looked a lot like the yeasty, thick dough that his mother had made. Then he’d thought about Zach’s eyes, and the memory of that small bird had come to him again.
Using the tongue depressors they’d handed out as molding tools, he’d tried to make the bird he saw in his mind’s eye. When the delicate wing he’d carefully scraped out of the hunk of clay suddenly buckled and broke, an avalanche released inside of him, and moments later he’d been brought down to the floor by several male nurses. He remembered throwing the clay, and he remembered turning over the table, but he didn’t know exactly why he’d reacted that way.
“I was angry,” Leith said, feeling sheepish. He didn’t meet his doctor’s eyes.
“Leith, we know that you want to leave rehabilitation. You’ve already made remarkable physical progress. Truly, we’d like you to be ready as well, but so long as you’re still having a difficult time managing your anger, it would be irresponsible for me to release you. Believe me, the outside world is going to be a lot harder for you to negotiate than an art therapy class.”
Leith exhaled, and just shook his head.
“The expectations and hopes of your friends and family are difficult enough for you to manage now, and you’re not with them every day. Before we give you the go-ahead, I want you to be more f comfortable with the people you’ll be living with. We don’t want another episode like today, or worse, like the first one.”
Leith closed his eyes, shuddering as he remembered. He’d just woken up, and though he later learned it wasn’t for the first time, it was the first time he could recall, and the first time he was coherent and able to speak. Arthur had been sitting by his hospital bed, looking thinner than ever and worn completely through.
“What happened?” Leith had asked, a sensation like bees buzzing rose up through his body as he looked around the room. “Where am I?” It didn’t look like the prison infirmary.
“You’re in the hospital,” Arthur answered. His voice was full of quiet affection, and he’d sat even closer, taking Leith’s hand in his own. “You should stay calm. I’ll get a nurse.”
“What happened?” Leith asked again.
Arthur had shook his head, and closed his eyes a moment, as though wishing it away. “There was a…mishap. In the ring.”
Leith didn’t understand. What ring? A mishap? He had a million questions, but the words were jammed up. He didn’t feel right. Something was off, and he wasn’t sure what it was, but he was wound tight, like a spring about to let loose. What was Arthur doing in Florida? It had to be bad for him to come all the way from New York. “Am I going to die?”
“No, of course not. You’re on the mend now.” Arthur had patted Leith’s chest, smiled through teary eyes, and then cleared his throat. “Where’s my phone? I told him to get some sleep. He’ll be upset he’s not here. I should call right away—”
Leith had blinked and looked around. If he was in the hospital, and that crazy pounding feeling in his chest was right, and things were definitely not good, their father should definitely be there. “Are you calling Dad?”
Arthur froze with his cell phone in his hand. His eyebrows drew together. “Leith, our father is dead.” He’d looked at Leith carefully. “You know that. He’s been gone for almost three years. Not long after you came back from prison.”
“What? Came back? I’m not out yet!” Leith had started to claw at his arms, trying to get rid of the feeling that he was stuck in his skin as panic rose in him. “Bullshit! Is this your idea of a joke?”
Arthur had backed away from the bed. “Let me get someone. Just a second, Leith. Everything’s okay—”
Leith’s heart pounded. “Don’t lie to me,” he’d yelled, ripping the cords and IVs from his arms and chest. Alarms rang, but no guards came. “Why am I here? Where am I? What are you doing to me? Let me out. I want out!”
As nurses burst in, Arthur rushed to hold him back, but Leith lashed out, and the sound of his fist hitting Arthur’s jaw had cracked through the room.
Blinking, Leith focused on the fresh-cut grass at his feet. He was wearing ridiculous slippers that should have embarrassed him, but after two years in an orange jumpsuit, pajamas and slippers were a step up. It was still hard to believe he’d been out for three years. Yet here he was, right back in a different kind of prison.
Dr. Thakur waited patiently beside him, and Leith wasn’t sure how long it had been since either of them had spoken. “But you said I had a bad reaction to the anti-seizure medication, and my brain was swollen. It’s better now, isn’t it?”
“Yes, we’ve adjusted your meds, and the swelling has subsided. But your frontal lobe sustained some damage, and the unconscious psychological trauma of knowing that something was wrong—and being unable to place yourself in the world or in time—is still affecting you. Your extreme fight or flight reaction occurs when you experience emotional stimulus that your over-taxed brain can’t handle.”
“It was just clay,” Leith muttered.
“Until we can at least hope that you’ll choose flight over fight if triggered, we must continue to be slow in your introduction to the parts of the past you don’t remember.”
“I’m just afraid—” Leith began, and then stopped.
“Of?”
“I’m afraid I won’t ever remember it.”
“And what’s so bad about that?” Dr. Thakur asked.
Thinking inexplicably of Zach’s face as he’d turned away the day before, fighting tears, Leith said, “I don’t want to let anyone down.”
“Who are you afraid of letting down?”
Leith shrugged. “People. My friends.”
“Like your friend you met yesterday? Zachariah Stephens?”
Leith turned his head and studied the red roses on the other side of the gravel path. “I don’t know. A little. It’s everyone really.”
“Do you think it’s possibly significant that you had that outburst this morning after meeting him?”
Leith looked back to study Dr. Thakur’s face, looking for a clue as to what he was missing. “Why? Is it significant? Should I think it is?”
“That’s your call. I was simply curious.”
Leith shrugged, and they sat in silence as he remembered the moments just before his rage that morning. Quietly, he said, “It isn’t just time or memories that I’m missing. I feel like I’ve lost who I am. Like, there’s this feeli
ng that I’m a big, human-shaped lump of clay, and I’m somewhere inside it if I could just dig myself out. But I can’t remember who that person is supposed to be anymore.”
Dr. Thakur didn’t say anything until Leith looked at him again. Then he spoke with a deep empathy that made Leith feel safe, like a small, well-liked child.
“Leith, a lump of clay could be formed into almost anything by a person with skillful hands. If you remember your past, that might be a blessing, and it might not be. I couldn’t possibly judge that. What I know is that you’re the artist of your life, and you can mold this hunk of clay into anything you want. You don’t have to take anyone else into consideration, unless you want to do so.”
Leith thought of the wing he’d been working on in art therapy—the way it had emerged so beautifully from the clay before the failure of his hands had been revealed, and it folded and broke under its own weight. “I’m not much of an artist,” he whispered.
Dr. Thakur put his hand on Leith’s shoulder and shook him a little. “I think you’ll make it just fine. Just watch that you don’t throw your life against the wall too.”
Zach didn’t come again after all. Instead Marian and Ava showed up with a basket of food and an excuse from Zach—something about a late night. But Marian didn’t met Leith’s eyes for the first few minutes after they arrived, which made his stomach hurt for some reason.
“So, what did I used to do in my spare time?” Leith asked them, munching on the fresh grapes from the basket Zach had sent. His eyes occasionally strayed to the tops of Ava’s breasts on display in her v-neck sweater. They looked soft and reminded him of his mother’s chest, which he’d used as a pillow when he was still a tiny, sleepy child.
Marian shrugged. “Mainly you and Zach would hang out. Sometimes we’d all play foosball or have a movie night, but you kept yourself busy with training.”
“What did Zach and I do together?” Leith asked, wondering if they went camping or hiking. For some reason, Zach didn’t seem the type.
Ava blinked rapidly for a moment, and caught Marian’s gaze. Then she smiled brightly. “You know, stuff. You talked. Joked a lot. That sort of thing. Can I have a grape?”
“Sure,” Leith said, passing the fruit to her. He wanted to ask them more about Zach but he didn’t know what to say. “Zach seems like a really nice person.”
“Yeah,” Marian said, stuffing a few grapes in her mouth too. “Super nice.”
Leith thought about Zach’s smile and his eyes, and the sweet-spicy scent of his cologne. “He’s probably got a lot of friends.”
“Zach sure never met a stranger,” Marian agreed.
“That’s what I thought.” Leith sighed.
Marian and Ava looked at each other, both of them stuffing more grapes into their mouths. Leith thought Ava in particular looked good with her mouth full, but he was distracted enough by their strange eyebrow-arching exchange that he didn’t let his thoughts go too far down that path.
“What?”
Ava chewed quickly, swallowed her mouthful of grapes, and said, “Oh! I just remembered…” She fished around in her purse and pulled out a flat, smooth cell phone. “Yours. Arthur said to give it to you.” She stood up and leaned against the bed, pressing the phone on. “See? It’s programmed already. From before.”
She showed him the various functions, and Leith noted that Zach was the first listed under Favorites, followed by Arthur, and then Marian and Ava. He leaned a little toward her; he could smell her perfume, something light and airy, and it made him feel calm and a little happy. The emotional response to her scent was interesting, mainly because it seemed so mild in comparison to the jolt he’d felt from Zach’s cologne.
He considered asking Marian or Ava to bring a sample of Zach’s cologne to him, so he could smell it whenever he wanted. It made his mind itchy to even think of the scent, and yet he knew what a strange request that would be. He stayed silent.
Ava said she had to get to work, and kissed him on the cheek. Marian stuck around for a while longer, though Leith didn’t really know what to talk to her about. She told him that Ava worked as the manager of an attorney’s office, and mentioned someone named LaMarcus.
He wasn’t sure who that was, but he tried to feign some interest in the conversation once he discovered it was Marian’s little brother. He found that it was easier to pretend to care sometimes than to admit that he simply had no clue about a subject and didn’t really want to gain one.
In the afternoon, Leith sat through a group therapy session with David Mueller, who was crying, again, about the fact that he just found out—again—that he couldn’t make any more memories. Also Jan Troxell repeating the weather report for the morning, and then bursting into tears because she couldn’t remember her daughter’s name…again.
Leith always left these sessions feeling depressed and frustrated. He usually offered up a few meager sentences of his own, mostly about his concern that his brother had to spend so much money and time on him, and sometimes he’d mention that he was angry his father had died during the time that he couldn’t remember.
But he said as little as possible for so many reasons. For one thing, David Mueller and Jan Troxell wouldn’t remember what he said next session anyway. As for the counselor, she was boring and never offered up anything that he didn’t already know for himself. “It’ll take some time,” Leith muttered under his breath along with her.
The rehab facility’s food was dry and tasteless, and Leith pitied Arthur almost as much as he pitied himself as he watched his brother choke down a tray of it late that afternoon by Leith’s bed.
“Arthur,” Leith said, pushing his food around on his plate. “Have you ever smelled something, and it reminded you of something else, but you couldn’t think of just what?”
Arthur looked up, his eyes narrowed with curiosity. “Sure, everyone experiences that. What makes you ask? Have you remembered something? Something you’d forgotten?”
Leith thought of the bird again, the small wounded thing that flew into the brush and hid itself from him. He thought of Zach’s eyes, and the way he’d looked at Leith, and he shook his head. “No, nothing in particular. There was a bird once, a long time ago. I keep thinking of him. A little golden-crowned kinglet.”
Arthur shrugged, and took another bite of his food before pushing the tray away and leaning back in the soft chair. “There were birds all over the old house when we were kids.”
“Yeah.” Leith shrugged too. “Arthur, what did I do besides boxing? I asked Marian and Ava earlier, but they weren’t much help. Didn’t I have any hobbies?”
“You went to school and had a job in my bar,” Arthur said, smiling and sniffing a little ostentatiously. “It’s a nice place. You worked the bar, waited tables, and did a little clean up. It gave you enough income so you could afford your books and school. And your training costs, since you insisted on boxing.”
Leith searched his mind. He didn’t remember ever being behind a bar, much less working one. Or going to college, for that matter. He’d talked about his plans to go while he was in prison, but last he knew, all he had was a high school diploma and a criminal record. He tried to imagine himself in a lecture hall and failed miserably.
Arthur smiled at him, gray eyes gleaming. “You could come back when you get out. Though you’ll have to ask Zach about it, I guess. I’m sure he won’t—well, I doubt he’d mind.” Arthur sounded suddenly hesitant. “Ah well, we’ll have to see how it all turns out. It’s hard to say just now. There’s so much we have to wait and see about.”
“Does the doctor actually think I’ll ever get my memory back?” Leith had never asked outright, and no one had ever given him any direct information about this aspect of his prognosis.
Arthur waved a hand as though it were an unimportant consideration. “Why bother worrying about that now? You have a lot on your mind—”
“Arthur,” Leith said. “It’s my life. I have a right to know these things.”
 
; Arthur nodded slowly, and then pushed the chair back a bit. That small motion alone told Leith all he needed to know.
“Well,” Arthur began, averting his eyes, and then templing his long fingers in his lap before looking at Leith again. “The doctor believes that, due to the location and extent of your injury, the chances of you regaining your memory are rather slim. We’ve been told that we can’t expect it to happen…ever. And…some of us have had a harder time with that than others.”
“Who’s us?”
“Your friends and me, of course.” Arthur pursed his lips in a cynical way. “The psychiatrist told us that it’s a process of grieving. Denial, anger, bargaining, blah blah blah,” Arthur waved his hand again. “The main thing is that you’re alive, you’re here, and you’ll be just fine.” He gripped Leith’s forearm and squeezed it. “Just fine, do you understand?”
Leith nodded, and took a slow breath. He wondered what stage of grief he was in, or if what he felt was grief at all. He pushed the plate of food away and nodded toward the corner of his room where there was a small table. “Hand me that basket. I think there’s some of that cheese left. Have you tasted it? Zach said it’s my favorite.”
Arthur reached the basket to Leith, saying softly, “Zach would know.”
That night, Leith flicked through the various screens on his cell phone. There were only a few photos on the phone, and no text messages. It was as though it had all been cleared off. Leith looked at the pictures: one of Arthur with his arm around a dark-haired woman wearing a Blue Flight T-shirt, and one of Zach behind a bar with a big, cheesy grin on his face. There was another of Marian with crossed-eyes and Zach behind her making bunny ears. And there was one of Ava playing tennis with Zach at an indoor court.
Leith swiped to the texting function and chose Zach’s name. He tapped the little keyboard with his thumbs.
I’d like it if you could visit tomorrow.
Ten minutes later his phone beeped, and Zach’s reply appeared on the screen.
I guess you’re out of food? Missing that cheese already?