the tables shaded by candy-striped umbrellas. A red figure rose from one of the benches and waved. Jamey waved back.
'Hello, Susan,' he said, although she couldn't hear him.
'It's normal,' I said, 'for someone who's gone through what you have to be confused. Give yourself time to get reoriented.'
He smiled faintly.
'Sounds like you've been talking to Dr. Levi.'
'Dr. Levi's a very smart woman.'
'Yes.' Pause. 'She told me you were friends.'
'She was a psychiatric resident when I was a graduate
student. We were on a crisis team together. You're in good hands.'
He nodded.
'She's putting me back together again,' he said softly, then veered toward a stand of cypress.
We passed a middle-aged couple sitting on a blanket with a girl of around eighteen. The girl was chubby and wore a shapeless, colourless smock. She had a painfully beautiful face dominated by vacant eyes and long dark hair that she knitted, using her fingers as needles - wrapping, twisting, letting go, starting all over again. Her father wore a dark suit and tie and sat with his back to her, reading Michener behind dark glasses. Her mother looked up sheepishly as we walked by.
We passed through a clearing in the trees, into a cool shady bowl, cathedraled by branches, padded with dry leaves. Jamey found a stump and sat on it. I leaned against a trunk.
'Your finding Dr. Levi for me,' he said. 'It's strange.'
'How so?'
He cleared his throat, turned away, embarrassed.
'You're safe now,' I said. 'It's okay to talk. Or not to.'
He pondered that. Wet his lips with his tongue.
'I called you and you responded. You helped.'
His incredulity was sad. I said nothing.
'Before, if I needed a doctor, Uncle Dwight generally - ' he stopped himself. 'No, that wouldn't make sense, would it?'
'No.'
He looked around at the columns of tree trunks and said:
'Too cold in here. Can we walk some more?'
'Sure.'
We climbed the lawn toward the hospital in silence. He tried putting his hands in his pockets, but his legs buckled, and he started to fall. I took him by the arm and held him upright.
'Let's rest,' I said.
'Okay.'
He folded like a deck chair, allowed himself to be lowered to the lawn. Touched his nose again and said:
'I'm getting better at it.'
'You're healing.'
Several minutes later:
'They all hated me,' he said. Matter-of-factly, without self-pity. But his eyes were tortured, and I knew what they were asking: What did I do to make them feel that way?
'It had nothing to do with you,' I said. 'They dehumanised you in order to justify what they did to you.'
'Disappeared,' he said unbelievingly. 'Right off the screen. So hard to believe.' Picking a dandelion husk out of the clover, be brushed it against his lips, rubbed it awkwardly between his fingertips, and watched the silky threads float skyward.
'That's me. Sailing through space with no ... moorings.'
'Do you like that?'
'It's freedom. Sometimes.'
'And the other times?'
'It's terrifying,' he said with sudden passion. 'Makes me want to be ... subterranean. Packed tightly. Do you know what I mean?' 'I know exactly what you mean.'
He exhaled audibly, closed his eyes, leaned back, and warmed his face in the sun. His forehead grew wet with perspiration, though the bluff was cooled by an ocean breeze. Opening his mouth wide, he yawned.
'Tired?'
'They stuff me with food. Red meat for breakfast. It makes me... logey.'
Several moments later:
'They're very nice to me.'
'I'm glad. Dr. Levi tells me you're sleeping better.'
'Somewhat. When the pains don't come.'
'The memory pains?'
'Yes.'
'They sound rough. Like bad dreams.'
'Maybe they are. I don't know.'
'They must be pretty frightening.'
He looked down, and his pupils dilated, black intruding on blue.
'I can just be lying there. Not doing anything. And something - something dark . . . and ugly floats up in the front of my brain . . . forces itself into consciousness.'
'What kind of dark thing?'
'That's just it, I don't know. Sometimes it seems like . . . trash. Something rotten. Foetid. A clot of garbage. I can swear I smell something, but when I try to focus on it, there's no odour at all. Does that make sense?'
When I nodded, he continued.
'A few nights ago it seemed like the shadow of a monster - a friend . . . Jack the Ripper hiding behind a grimy stone wall. That sounds . .. deranged, doesn't it?'
'No,' I assured him. 'It doesn't. Any other images?'
'I don't know . . . maybe. It's definitely ugly. Insistent . . . scratching against the inner surface of my forehead but . . . hiding. Lurking. Maybe it's insectile, I don't know. I can't get hold of it. So frustrating.'
'Like a word on the tip of your tongue?'
He nodded.
'It's maddening. Makes my head throb.'
'Brain strain' Deborah Levi had called it. 'There's a ton of repressed material fighting to push through prematurely. When he tries to force it, he gets severe headaches that keep him awake at night. He calls them memory pains. I've told him they 're his body's way of saying slow down, that he needs to pace himself, not to push it. He's still highly compromised, Alex. His bloodwork's clear, but for all we know, he may still be toxic at some subclinical level. Not to mention all the shit he's been through.'
'What do you think?' he asked.
'It's normal for your situation,' I said. 'It will pass.'
'Good,' he said, visibly relieved. 'I value your opinion.'
A red blur moved peripherally: Susan rising from her bench again. Standing, in anticipation.
'Dr. D.,' he said, 'what's going to become of me? Afterward. After I'm all patched up?'
I thought awhile before replying - long enough to choose my words but not so long as to make him anxious.
'I know that question seems overwhelming now, but when the time comes for you to leave, it will be manageable. Maybe even answer itself.'
He looked at me doubtfully.
'Think of a calculus text,' I said. 'Open it in the middle, and it's incomprehensible. Start at the beginning and progress steadily, and when you reach that same spot in the middle, it just glides by.'
