Chapter 60

The second day of my consciousness I learned what not to say to doctors.

That was the day that they took some of the bandages off, the day that Mark brought me some of my own clothes so that I didn't have to wear the shit that the hospital gave me, the day that I first had to talk to someone.

It was a woman, she came to my room and asked if it was a good time. Even if I'd told her no she would've stayed, and so I just shrugged. She had a clipboard and a pen, dark hair that was collected in a bun on the top of her head. She introduced herself. Dr. Smith. She was short. I was sitting on the bed and she looked up at me as she walked over, tucking the clipboard under her arm and extending her left hand to shake, knowing that I couldn't move my right arm that much still. She shook, then pulled one of the chairs to the side of my bed, sitting down, crossing her legs and laying the clipboard on her lap. She leaned forward, made me feel like I was talking to a guidance counselor in a high school or something.

She had been one of the doctors who'd first come in and told me about how I needed to stay there. I held my left arm, afraid to look at the parts that were exposed, staring at her, nodding as she spoke, not saying anything.

"I'm a psychologist," she was telling me. "I just want to talk to you for a while and see what's going on, how you're feeling, stuff like that. Really simple, really."

She was younger than me and was talking to me like we were friends. I was getting angry on the inside, felt the heat rush through my body as I just listened to everything she was saying, talking about their stupid procedures and social workers and psychiatrists and doctors and therapy and all kinds of shit. After all that she asked if I had any questions, when I said no she smiled and nodded her head.

"Is it okay that I call you Kane?" I nodded. "Good. Well Kane, you know that I'm Dr. Smith, but you can call me Amber."

Amber.

Amber.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. Now was not the time to mourn. "No I can't." I said to her. She tapped her pen against the clipboard, not writing anything, staring into me. She wanted me to tell her why, was waiting for me to…open up to her or something. The only reason I answered was because I wanted her to stop staring. To be perfectly honest it made me really sensitive about my face. "Amber is…was uhh…my wife's name…"

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, then she scribbled something on her clipboard. I couldn't think of anything but wrestling, what it felt like to hit people with a chair. I wanted to whack her over the head with the damn thing as she tapped her pen against it. She didn't sense my animosity, or didn't address it as I glared at her, then turned away, leaning back in the bed. I stared out the window as she talked.

"Kane-"

"Mr. Callaway," I interrupted, not looking at her. I heard her pen.          

Scribble scribble scribble.

"Mr. Callaway," she said, and paused. I think she wanted me to look at her, but I didn't, stared at the filthy window glass. The outside of it was all grimy and disgusting. Purposely I kept staring. "We need to discuss some things that might be kind of sensitive…"

I didn't look at her. "Yeah?"

"Yes…and the sooner we can set some grounds with each other, the sooner I can leave you alone."

Damn professionals, knowing that I wanted her to go away. I wondered vaguely if it hurt her feelings at all, then realized that I really didn't care.

"First of all…" waiting for me to look at her. I didn't. She sighed. Scribbled. "Why did you do this to yourself?" she asked me. My eyes shifted and looked down at the stitches. Mostly everything was healing nicely, they said that they'd take out some of the stitches in a couple days. Other sections would have to wait. My right arm…I didn't look at it. "Mr. Callaway," she said again, and I hadn't even realized that I didn't answer her right away. "Why did you try to kill yourself?"

Finally I turned to her, and glared. "I didn't."

Scribble. Sigh. Leaning in like a guidance counselor.

"Mr. Callaway, the wounds were self-inflicted and possibly fatal. What were you trying to do?"

Okay bitch. I was angry, she was arguing with me and not doing her job. I felt a strong urge to punch her in the face. "I wasn't trying to kill myself," I said, practically growling, glaring. She tapped her fingernails on the arm of the chair, like she was nervous.

She stared. I stared right the hell back. She wanted me to keep talking without her asking me to. Neither of us would let down. Finally she turned down. Scribbled. Looked back up.

"So tell me then, Mr. Callaway," she said, and tapped the pen against her chin. "Why did you do this to yourself? What was happening?"

"Do you have any children?" I asked her. She leaned back a little, looking at my suspiciously. I knew her rules, she was going to tell me that she wasn't supposed to discuss her personal life with inmates…I mean, patients. I waited for her to answer, knew that if she just said "no" that she was telling the truth. But she didn't answer. I turned away from her again. "What would you do if you went home from work today and found your husband and your kids murdered?"

No answer. When I turned back to her she seemed very timid and frail. The violent thoughts in my head were enough to make me look down, my knee crooked in front of me on the bed, hair falling into my face. I didn't want to look at her, didn't want to think these things. "You'd want to die, too, don't you think?"

She cleared her throat but I didn't let her talk. "I didn't try to kill myself," I told her. I knew I was lying but I wanted her to know my intentions. "I can't die yet. She won't let me."

Okay, said too much. I couldn't help it, I'd had barely any real human contact except for Raven and Saph, and of course my brother. I just forgot my filter, said things to her that I didn't want her to hear, knowing she'd want to keep me here forever.

"You create a life," I said to her. "You create a little fucking person and you love them so much and then…then she's taken away from you. Not even like having a miscarriage or something. I had a daughter, I was able to hold her and change her and hug her and play with her…she was there, she was real and now she's gone because someone had to come take her away from me."

"Oh…" she stopped tapping, the room was filled with silence except for a couple things floating in from the hallway. And now I wanted to talk, wanted to get a couple things out.

"It's just like…" I glanced at her, eyes softened, looking away before she noticed that I wasn't pissed off anymore. "So yeah, I did want to die. But I really don't want to now, I was just all…shocked and did it on impulse."

"What shocked you?"

I bit my lip, wondering if I should tell her. Then I realized, and almost started to cry. Mark was right, I needed help. I needed to do this for Amber, do it because I needed to find who killed her and I needed to stop breaking down and crying and setting myself on fire all the time. For her, I felt the blush in my face and sighed. "I kept umm…seeing things," I said. Scribble. The sound of the pen against the paper was irritating me.

"Hallucinating?"

"…Yeah. Like…I would think that Amber was around, or my daughter, or even my…son," I turned my head back to her quickly, I knew I must've looked desperate. "She was umm…she was pregnant with our son when she was killed. I never even saw him, he was only a few weeks old in there, and she was going to tell me the night she…died. But umm…I kept visualizing him and seeing him…and then I thought that she was in our house in Vermont so I went there, and then remembered what happened and I freaked out. I did it on impulse."

She narrowed her eyes, inquisitive. "How do you know that it would've been a boy?"

My chest ached. I felt this overwhelming feeling of numbness come over me, unable to cry, unable to really feel. I told her without breaking down, the words just barely passing through my lips. "Amber knew. She knew when we had Claudette that it would be a girl. She just…I don't know. She knew. Like the way my brother knows things."

Shit. Shouldn't have said that, either.

"…Knows things, Mr. Callaway?"

I sighed. "You know, psychic? My brother is psychic. Amber really wasn't, but…I don't know. What the hell, I said I don't know, I just know that she felt it was a girl when Claudette was born and knew that Armand was a boy."

"You said she died before she told you…how do you know?" Scribble. God I was getting fed up with this whore.

"Our friends told me…after. I was a wrestler, you know?" she nodded. "Well Amber and our friend Saphrin were planning out a feud and whenever I would ask about it they sounded like they had a great grip on it. And it was just a cover up so that I wouldn't know she was pregnant. But then…after…they told me the truth."

"And what about Armand?"

I winced. "What about him?"

"Why do you call the child that?"

"Because of the Vampire Chronicles," I said. Blank stare. I explained. "There are these books, by Anne Rice-"

"I know what they are," she said. "But…why Armand?"

In my head I visualized what would happen if I slapped her across the face. "That was Amber's favorite character. And she loved that name. Just like…we though Claudia was a pretty name, but didn't want to name our daughter after someone, so instead we changed it to Claudette. And Armand…it's a cool name. I'm nearly positive that if he'd survived that's what we would've called him."

Scribble. Tap tap tap.

"So…" she propped her elbow up against her knee, leaned her chin into the palm of her hand. "Tell me, Mr. Callaway, what happened with your wife?"

My heart was pounding, it was starting to get hard to breathe. I clenched my fist, fidgeted a little. "Is that uh…necessary to talk about?"

Her eyes narrowed a little. "I think it has a lot to do with your current condition. I want to know how you feel about it."

I just stared. "You're fucking joking…right?" she shook her head. I lifted up my arm, waved it around to show the stitches. "How the fuck you do think I feel, you stupid cunt?" I snapped. The harshness of the words shocked both of us.

Word of advice: Never call your psychologist a cunt.

She gripped the edges of the chair. I'd scared her, I knew it. I tucked my arm back where it had been, tried to calm my breathing.

"Calm down, Mr. Callaway," she said, a manta. It was how she was taught to handle people, I could tell. The way she treated everyone who didn't mean shit to her. It was all a routine for her by now.

"Sorry…" I said. "Just…I don't want to talk about it."

"But-"

"Can you leave?"

I couldn't detect her reaction. She just kind of stared, did that old gimmick of watching for me to add something. So I did:

"Please?"

She clipped the pen down to the board, clasped her hands, rested them on top of it. Her lips pursed, eyebrows coming together. I stared at her, felt the anger leaving me a little. She was a professional, she should've seen how miserable I was and how much I didn't want to be talking about all of it. Maybe she took the hint because she finally stood up after a depressing staring contest, in which I almost started to cry. She didn't try to shake my hand this time, just gave me a nod.

"Alright," she said. She tucked the clipboard under one of her arms, shoved her hands in her pockets. "Someone else will be in to talk to you in a few hours, okay?" I shrugged and she just smiled, then left. The room was filled with silence.

I gave her a head start, taking a few minutes before I got up and walked into the corridor, searching around for the nurses' station. The one thing I've always hated most about Mark is just the fact that he's my brother. If anyone else treated me the way that he could at times, I would never speak to them again and it would be easy to do that…but, he's my brother.

I admit, even times we weren't speaking to each other I always knew it wasn't the end. We hadn't even gotten in a fight just then, just…got heated at each other. I actually kind of missed talking to him, since I was so bored. To keep myself from going over the edge I wasn't really thinking of anything bad, just sifting through memories of our times as friends. I think of wrestling matches, pranks on each other, get warm remembering that time on Valentine's Day when he made up with me. That time I was hung over and he'd confessed all the feelings he'd hid from me all those years. It's funny to think that I could actually feel this way…but, I actually missed him.

At the nurses station I was towering over the tall desk and none of them would look at me. I asked for the phone, called Mark's cell. He picked up barely after the first ring, like he'd known. Pshh. Who needs Caller ID when they're psychic?

"Kane," he said. I lowered my voice, wanting them all to avert their eyes from what I was saying.

"Hi…can you come?"

"What's wrong?"

I groaned. "Nothing, really. I'm just bored. I need…I need someone to talk to…" I hoped he'd heard me, my voice was barely above a whisper.

"Talk?" he laughed a little. "Kane, weren't you supposed to have therapy today or something?"

"Ugh…I don't know what that was, but it wasn't therapy, I'll tell you that much." Mark sighed. I was probably pissing him off, he wanted me to get help. "Just…come because I need to talk to you," I said.

"I'll be there soon," he said, and then hung up. I handed the phone back to the nurse, trudged back to my room, plopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. What a coincidence that the bitch's name was Amber. Didn't that just make me want to shoot myself in the head…

It wasn't so bad, though. Even though it hadn't been that long, and I'd been relatively calm, since I'd been awake, thinking of her didn't make me miserable. It had transformed into some dull throb that matched what I felt from my wounds. They were all the same now, and they would heal.