The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  “I suspect the knitting keeps you mildly focused on something normal, something you associate with a time in your life when you had greater distractions and a more idealistic outlook on your future. Nostalgia is a great combatant for HVSs. The other thing I’ve found that helps my patients who suffer them is to have someone they trust literally stand at their back, like another watcher keeping the perimeter clear. It sends the signal to your hypothalamus to stop transmitting danger signals so your body’s homeostasis can be restored.”

  “Like when Holly’s around, I just feel better.”

  “Right. Because she was the one who had your back as a kid, you know she’s up for the job with you, so you can stay more relaxed than when you’re on your own.”

  “Then why didn’t I feel better at the loft when she got there?”

  “Because by then, the visit from the police about your brother had tipped you so far into the red zone, even Holly couldn’t stop it. You had a full on flashback at the hospital, and when you got home and fortified your apartment, you still didn’t feel safe. That’s when you began to dissociate.”

  I knew that was the story, but those three days in the loft were nebulous at best, a kaleidoscope of images and fears that shimmered and shifted but never fully formed coherent memories.

  “Okay, so what does that do to help me in the future, Doc? I’m not so sure I can go back to work and knit away when I have patients who need surgery.”

  “Well, understanding is the first step. Then we can talk about your triggers and why they’re your triggers, and come up with ways specific to you that will combat your flashbacks and HVSs. You’re more at risk of experiencing these things when you’re unsettled or stressed, so we need to go over your life with a fine-tooth comb and determine what needs to be eliminated in order to keep you relaxed.”

  “Great,” I snarled. “Let’s just toss out everything then. I’m a surgeon, Dr. Rodriguez. Stress comes with the job.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “I know.”

  I traced my finger along the whorls of the laminate table where we received visitors and also ate meals. The bench seat across from me was empty, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long. My gang, as I’d come to think of them, had learned when to show up. Sabrina first, because she could usually stay the least amount of time before returning to the job, and was less likely to run into Holly, who came in next and lightened my mood. Sabrina always brought hospital gossip with her, and our visits left me surly and depressed. I guess she hadn’t really understood me when I’d said it was possible I wasn’t coming back to the residency program. That morning had been particularly trying, since she wouldn’t take no for an answer about this idiotic idea she had for getting Dr. Dearborn to see her feminine charms. What part of ‘gay mental patient’ wasn’t clicking for her, I didn’t know.

  Holly brought me the outside world, the clean one with fresh air, where the leaves were turning into their yearly fireworks, and the sun cast everything in gold. She told me about her job, about the shows she found interesting, and about general mundane things so when I got out and didn’t have the obsessive, time-consuming career, I’d know what to do with myself. I couldn’t knit all day. Or I could, but I wasn’t so sure I could pay bills by doing it.

  Then came Craig, with assurances we were fine, we were good and in love and I would get better and come home, and things would be great. If only he hadn’t sounded like he was convincing himself, too.

  “Hey, beautiful,” his voice came from behind me as he bent to kiss my bearded cheek. How I longed for a close shave, but the effort required to keep that part of grooming up in such a place where razors were strictly regulated wasn’t worth it. So bearded it was.

  “Hey,” I answered, closing my eyes as I breathed in his scent. He would always carry the underlying hint of paint beneath his cologne, and it was something I would never forget about him. I tucked it away in my memories so I could hold it during the long, dark, lonely stretches when my isolation was both a comfort and a curse.

  “How are you today?”

  I shrugged. “Better. Still kicking.”

  “What’s the doctor say?”

  It always started this way. How was I feeling? How did the doctor think I was doing? Followed by the cheerleading rah-rah spiel that made my teeth itch with irritation.

  “She’s got my triggers all figured out, so now I just need to reconcile them and face them all down. The ones I can’t resolve will have to be managed with techniques that I get the joy of learning.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I have to cut out stress. Entirely.”

  He was already nodding, and I had to look away. Determination helped some, and willpower, but anxiety wasn’t logical. My triggers couldn’t be reasoned away or I’d have been able to move on from them in the years since leaving home and my biggest trigger behind. Dr. Rodriguez had shown me how, slowly, over the last few years, I had been getting worse. How crowds could send me into a tailspin, so I’d begun avoiding them. How I’d become a slave to routine because changes meant I had to be more watchful of my surroundings, which made me more stressed and brought about more anxiety. How I was increasingly resistant to venturing into new places if I couldn’t picture the layout of the location. Layout mapping was one of the hypervigilant behaviors I’d picked up so I could catalogue hiding spots should I need one, both for my safety and so I could spot anyone who may be lurking in one, waiting to pounce. I could be told over and over such fears weren’t rational, but it didn’t matter. I feared them anyway, so I had to find ways to manage those fears.

  “I need to establish a routine I can count on, which means less frenetic working hours.”

  “Okay. I’m sure Noble will help you with that.”

  I’m sure he will too, but not the way you’re thinking.

  “And I need—” I swallowed “—to not worry how my progress is going to be viewed by others. She told me to be selfish.”

  “You should.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, reaching across the table and grabbing both of my hands. “I’ll be here however you need me.”

  A flood of guilt dumped into my chest. I pulled my hands away and rubbed them up and down my thighs, drying my palms. Craig deserved better than me. He should have someone who wasn’t a paranoid mess. He needed someone to inspire him, not drag him down and make him duct-tape sheets over the windows.

  I didn’t deserve his beauty and light and inner fire. He hadn’t smiled in weeks. Not a genuine smile that wasn’t cardboard and flat, or faked beyond belief. I desperately wanted to set him free. It was the ultimate act of selfishness, wasn’t it? Cut him loose so I could get better or worse without worrying what it would do to him?

  “You deserve someone whole,” I murmured, not for the first time.

  “Dammit, Dane!” He smacked the table, drawing looks from fellow patients and visitors, as well as the orderlies dotted around the room, who frowned at him. That would be the only burst of emotion he’d get before being asked to leave. They couldn’t risk his presence upsetting anyone to the point of requiring intervention.

  “Don’t you get it, Craig? I don’t want you to see me like this!”

  “I don’t care how you look right now,” he countered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I care how you are. Inside. In that stubborn head of yours. In that compassionate heart. That’s what matters to me. So forget worrying about what people will think or how it looks that I’m in love with a mental patient. I don’t give a flying fuck how it looks. I’m not leaving you.”

  I thunked my head on the edge of the table, and when he began to pet my hair, I berated myself for craving his touch. I was so starved for touch in this place, but I trusted no one here enough to let them breach my personal bubble of space. I only trusted Holly and Craig, and they came as often as they were allowed, but it wasn’t enough. My skin wept for human contact like an infant cried for the protective arms of its par
ents. I hated myself for using him to feel better, knowing that if I were strong enough, I would cut him loose.

  “You don’t get it,” I said to my lap. “I’m not worth all this, Craig. I take effort, and every ounce you give me makes me feel horrible for needing it so much. I’m not healthy enough to give you anything in return. I don’t want to drain you. You make me feel like a parasite.”

  He was silent, but he didn’t stop running his fingers through my hair. When he sniffed, I looked up. His tears punched me in the gut. This was why I couldn’t do this, why I needed him to go away. Why I needed them all to go away.

  So I could focus on fixing, and not leeching.

  “I love you, and anything you need from me, you can have. I give it freely, willingly, and with enthusiasm,” he said, trying to sound reassuring, but I heard only desperation. “If what I can give you helps you get better, it’s yours, Dane. It’s not an IOU. It’s not a loan, to be collected when you get home. I’m not going to take a pound of flesh.”

  “It’s too much,” I whispered. “Please leave.”

  His knuckles grazed my cheek, and his warmth remained. I yearned for his arms around me, but that broke protocol. I wanted to be held so badly, but he couldn’t stay long enough to make a dent in my human contact deficit. The deficit that had been accumulating since I was four, when my mother’s love and trust for my father had gotten her brains spilled across the bark of that tree.

  Was that it? Was love the ultimate culprit here?

  Perhaps. Holly and Braden were the only other couple I knew who were making a go of it, and she sounded fed up, too.

  “Leave!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, beginning to shriek. It was the only way to get through to him. The only way to make him listen and stop arguing with me that I’d ever be worth his effort. “Go! Get out!”

  Craig stumbled away from the table, his breath catching in his throat on a sob.

  The orderlies swarmed. They were just the muscle, though, and when their hands landed on me, I panicked, thrashing against them. I didn’t say they could touch me. It was the nurses who swooped in to save the day. I think I was still screaming for Craig to get the fuck out and leave me alone and let me rot in this hellhole when the sting of a needle in my biceps alerted me to the pending shutdown of my consciousness.

  He was still standing there when the sedative made me limp in the unwanted arms of strangers.

  “They say you’re getting out soon,” Sabrina said with a waggle of her eyebrows as we walked in the small courtyard that had once been the smokers’ domain. We were in a small oasis of green, barely the size of half a tennis court, protected on three sides by the hospital building, while the open side faced the alley where the loading docks were located. It was only because Sabrina was a trained physician that I was allowed outside the ward for these little excursions. I lived for them every week, my little twenty-minute recesses. It was too bad I couldn’t share them with someone else, but Sabrina was the only one qualified enough for Rodriguez to sign off on leaving the ward with me.

  “Yeah, I’ve been good, taking my meds, going to therapy. I’m even talking in group.”

  “Oh god,” she laughed, rolling her eyes. “So Suzy the Suicidal can compare your deep inner pain to her own and decide she’s failing even at being crazy?”

  “Stephanie,” I corrected, cringing at her flippancy. Stephanie had been sexually abused by her father since the age of six. I kind of felt like she got a pass for being a mess, and that she was thirty and married showed how strong she was. That she didn’t want to bring kids into this fucked up world was a testament to knowing enough to break the cycle so she didn’t create a future mental patient for Dr. Rodriguez to piece back together. I kind of admired Stephanie’s tenacity.

  “Whatever.” Sabrina waved me off with a casual hand. “So, Dr. Dearborn let me scrub in on a butterfly tumor yesterday.” Her eyes lit up and she bounced on her toes, clasping her hands between her breasts.

  “He operated on a butterfly?” The term was used to describe a tumor that invaded two lobes of the brain, and if it crossed hemispheres, it could look very much like a butterfly. They were generally considered inoperable, if that was the case, because the patient wasn’t usually able to reform the pathways necessary to make up for areas the tumor might have damaged. The damage often left them with severe motor shortages, and depending on the location, major personality and behavioral hurdles to overcome. Many patients just never woke up.

  “Yeah, it was a thing of beauty. This one had really good margins, or he wouldn’t have even tried.”

  “So are you thinking neuro as a specialty now?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s certainly an exciting field.”

  Or she’s excited by the players on the field.

  “That it is,” I agreed.

  “You should have seen him, Dane. Adam is a god in that operating room.”

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah, he took me for a drink afterward. Every word out of his mouth is gold.”

  “Wow. Sounds like quite the hero.”

  “He is. Which is why I need your help to get his attention, Dane. He’s juuuust about there. I know it.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t even have to do anything,” she protested. “Just let me drop a hint or two so he thinks you did.”

  “No.”

  “Dane,” she groused. “I’ve helped you.”

  “I am gay, Sabrina. No one will believe you.”

  “They will if I spin it right.” She smiled wickedly and stopped our walk, turning me to face her. I shuddered at her bony fingers on my arms. It was getting chilly, the October air cooling way down as the sun began to flirt with the western horizon. She thought my shudder was due to being outside without a jacket in short sleeves rather than revulsion, so she rubbed her palms up and down my arms. I hated myself for not pulling away from her touch. She wasn’t exactly trusted, but she wasn’t a random orderly, either.

  “I love Craig,” I said simply. I did, too. Even if I was trying to drive him away, it was because I wanted better for him than me, not because I didn’t love him with every broken cell in my body. “And I won’t do that to him. What if someone were to say something to him?”

  “Who? The chief? He’s the only one who talks to Craig anyway.”

  “And Dr. Rodriguez and Dr. Dearborn, who, if you’re forgetting, is still monitoring my brain to make sure the hallucination from a few weeks ago was truly a flashback and not some kind of unresolved, previously undetectable brain bleed. I have another week before I’m cleared.”

  “Oh please. If he’s jealous, he won’t say anything about a patient to that patient’s partner.” To my shock, she swooped in to plant her lips on mine. They barely landed before I was able to jerk away, shocked she’d try anything of this sort at all, let alone while I was at my rock bottom.

  “No, Sabrina. No.” I said it with as much finality as I could without shouting.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, her expression darkening dangerously. “Chief might like to hear about Glenn Morgan’s first surgery, Dane.”

  I bristled, not because I still had a career to protect, but because she would apparently stop at nothing. Internally, I went through my checklist. Threat of danger, check. From a known source? Check. Possible to diffuse? Yeah, but not easily. Real chance of panic? Small. So I didn’t need to remove myself from her presence immediately. I searched my disjointed thoughts for the quickest way to shut her down, and decided on lack of self-preservation. If she knew I didn’t care, she’d have no leverage.

  “Go ahead, Sabrina. While you’re at it, you can explain to him why it’s been fourteen months since you discovered the issue and you’re only just now coming forward. I’ve already lost most everything.”

  She glared at me, and when I looked away, indifferent, she gripped my chin, her fingers digging into my cheeks so she could make me see how serious she was. I don’t know what she saw reflected back
at her, but it was enough to make her see the futility of her threat. She let go roughly, pushing me to the side, a little in disgust.

  “You need to shave. The beard doesn’t work for you.”

  “No, the beard doesn’t work for you,” I grumbled, deciding suddenly that I kind of liked it. Stalking toward the building and not giving a damn if she followed, I no longer cared if my time was up, and I was pissed at her for ruining the little outside exposure I got each week.

  Ah, well, she was right. I would be discharged in several days. I could tough it out. It didn’t stop me, however, from pulling Dr. Rodriguez aside at the next opportunity and asking for my approved visitor’s list to be reduced by one.

  “Is there anything I can get for you?” Craig asked as we settled my duffle bag on our bed. He was the definition of overeager puppy, thrilled to have me home, even if I wasn’t so thrilled to be there.

  In the end, my cowardice had won out, as well as Dr. Rodriguez’s insistence I have a support system before she’d release me. Given that I had nowhere to live aside from the loft, I hadn’t wanted the added stress of moving if I could have avoided it. I’d spoken to Holly, and while she was fine with me bunking at her place for however long I needed, she and Braden lived in a one-bedroom with shoddy pipes and barely enough room for their stuff. I hadn’t figured my intruding, especially to a new environment, crowded with unfamiliar things, was a wise decision at this juncture in my therapy. So I’d gone home with Craig, despite the guilt of stringing him along and keeping him from finding someone who would make him happier than I could.

  “Can I help you unpack?” he asked carefully.

  I stared listlessly at my bag, knowing there wasn’t much to put away. A few pairs of sweats and t-shirts, and my latest knitting project: a pair of socks for Holly.

  “I got it. If you don’t mind, I’m going to lie down a while. The drug cocktail isn’t the greatest when my routine gets out of whack. I’m a little tired.”

  “Sure,” he conceded easily, pulling the bag off the bed and turning down the covers.