He’s sitting down too, but his hands are tapping against the chair so fast it’s like he’s—I don’t know. Trying to push his fingers into the chair, or something. And the look on his face … it’s like he’s going to run away screaming, or throw up. Or maybe both.
“Are you al right?” I say, and then remember his question to the nurse. “Hey, you know—you know you didn’t mess up that machine, right?”
He nods, but it’s stiff, jerky-looking, and then he bolts for the door. I hear what I think might be “Be back,” or “Bye,” but whatever it is comes out in a rush and is barely audible over the old guy’s snoring.
Weird. Maybe he’s sick. Or sad. He was just talking about his dog dying, and it hurt me to hear that. Should I try to find him, make sure he’s okay?
No. If I do anything, I should find Clement and tel him what’s going on. I don’t want to get al worked up over what could be wrong with Eli because he’s just a guy. He isn’t special to me in any way.
Except he is, because I’m an idiot. A ful -blown idiot who should know better—and does—but yet stil goes looking for Eli anyway.
It doesn’t take me long to find him. I head into the stairwel and he’s right there, sitting on the step in front of me.
“Hey,” I say. “Do you—do you want me to get Clement?”
“No,” he says, so strongly it’s almost like a shout. “I mean, no. I’m okay.”
I know I should say, “Al right, see you later,” and leave, but I don’t.
I stay.
I say, “Are you sure?” and sit down next to him.
“Yeah,” he says. “I just—we didn’t get buzzed out like we’re supposed to, and I started thinking about how I might have taken my first step out of the unit on my right foot and not my left, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about how something terrible was going to happen even though I’ve been trying real y hard to not think like that, and—”
“Wait, what?” I say, total y confused.
“I—I have this thing,” Eli says. “I … sometimes I think things have to be done a certain way and if they aren’t I, um—” He breaks off, drumming his fingers against his legs and then curls them into fists, tight ones like he’s trying to hold his fingers in. “I get upset and think awful things are going to happen and—oh, hel .” He looks at me. “I’ve got OCD.”
outside. Eli first started showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder when he started school, and found out he could only do his work in a certain way.
“And if I didn’t,” he says, “I’d get—I don’t even know how to describe it. It was like I was going to die—I mean, I actual y felt like I was—and al because I didn’t do things like I was supposed to.”
It got worse as he got older, and his parents sent him to doctors, put him on medication, and told him he just had to tel himself to stop.
“They made it sound like it was so easy,” he says. “Like if I just thought about it enough, I’d realize ‘Hey, walking through a doorway forty times to stop myself from dying if I cross through it on my right foot is stupid!’ Like I didn’t already know that. I did. I do. I just—I can’t help it.”
I think about how he walks a little behind me, like he
Or counting out something.
I think about how he reacted when I punched in the unit door code with my left hand instead of my right. How weird I thought he was being afterward.
How upset he must have been.
“I—I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
He looks at me. “You didn’t?”
I shake my head.
“Wow. I figure it’s—I figure it’s al anyone can see,” he says. “After Harvey was put to sleep, I got even worse. It used to take me two hours to get ready to leave the house every morning. My parents were—they weren’t happy. I went to see more doctors, had my medicine adjusted, everything.
But nothing—I couldn’t get better. Even now, I stil have to—” He points at his hands.
“So you came here to see another doctor or something?” I say.
He laughs, but it’s a sad, bitter sound. “No. I mean, I do see a doctor. But my parents—I was embarrassing them. Al their friends have kids who can, as my father says, control themselves. But the madder they got, the worse I got, and … wel , like I said, I was embarrassing them. So they sent me to live with Clement. I spent years listening to my dad complain about this place—we never came to visit, you know, not ever—and they stil sent me here.”
“That’s—your parents suck,” I say.
He stares at me.
“I’m sorry, but they do. You’re amazing and—” I break off, aware of what I’ve just said. Out loud. “Anyway, they do suck.”
“They’re not that—okay, yeah, they do,” he says. “I hate it here. Wel , not everything. Clement’s okay. And you …”
I hold my breath, waiting in spite of myself, hoping in spite of myself, but he doesn’t finish his sentence, just trails off and taps his fingers against his legs.
