Page 57 of The Quiet Tenant

Did he just drop the gun?

His fingers run across the back of your scalp, where your skull has split open. A blast of pain bursts through your brain. It radiates across your body, brings chills and nausea and a moan, and you can’t feel your toes and you can’t feel your hands and you can’t feel your arms and then nothing.

You are lost in darkness.

CHAPTER 38

The woman, a long time ago

After your brother shuns you, you take a psychology class. Your professor used to treat veterans with PTSD. One day, he explains that trauma is what happens after you see yourself die. You witness the story of your own death, and it rings so true you’re never the same again.

You don’t get it, until you do.

One Saturday evening, Julie convinces you to go out. She has a new girlfriend. On the dance floor, she kisses her in front of you. For the first time, your friend—your best friend, the only person you could imagine living with—is in love. You welcome that knowledge like a precious gift.

Your fingers go numb. You don’t realize immediately what’s happening. This is how it works: you’re slipping but you don’t realize it, and by the time you catch up, it’s too late. An odd calm envelops you. You float above the dance floor, separated from the crowd by an invisible veil. Blue halos undulate around every light. For a few minutes, you feel at peace, and then you feel strange.

You slip away from the dance floor. Put your drink down on the nearest table. Your drink—you never left it unattended. But you didn’t keep your palm over it at all times. The glass didn’t have a lid. You were dancing. You left the door open a crack, the tiniest crack through which a stranger could slip in to hurt you.

You step outside. What you need is a cold gust of wind, a blast of Arctic air to snap you out of it. The nor’easter nibbling at your cheeks, reminding you that you’re alive. But the air that night is warm and sticky, and your head fills with syrup.

You hail a taxi. It both shocks and relieves you that you are able to do so.

Inside the cab, you drift in and out of consciousness. Nothing hurts, but everything is wrong. “Sir,” you tell the driver. “Please, sir.”He glances at you in the rearview mirror. You don’t remember his face. You will never remember his face.

You ask him, Please, sir, can you call my friend—I think someone put something in my drink. You can’t believe your own words. The cabdriver pulls over—you think he does. He hands you his phone.

You type Julie’s phone number as fast as you can, before it falls out of your brain forever.Quick,your body tells you,you have to get all the numbers out before I shut down.You think,Shut down,and your body says,Yes, shut d— and everything goes dark.

You wake up, medical-drama style, on a bed in the ER. Julie’s concerned face floats above yours. “Can you hear me?” she asks, and it turns out you’ve been awake in some capacity for some time, you just can’t remember it. There is a black hole where memories should be. It will never fill up. In the great movie of your life, the screen stays black for several minutes. You feel robbed, like something of great value has been taken from you.

Gloved hands tug at your shoulder. You have to sit up. You have to pull your shirt up so they can stick electrodes to your chest. You have to hold out your arm for blood tests. “I don’t want blood tests,” you tell them. “Even on a good day, I faint when people draw blood from me.” They insist, and the more you tell them no, the less they listen. You were brought unconscious on a stretcher with alcohol on your breath. Nothing you say matters. “I don’t consent,” you say. “I don’t consent to these tests.” A man in scrubs rolls his eyes at you.

You tell Julie you’re going to throw up. A plastic pouch materializes. It’s half full already; you must have been puking earlier. You hurl a string of bile. Your stomach is empty but the muscles in your abdomen keep clenching. Terrible sounds come out of you, all throat, no voice. You throw up so hard your abs will be sore the next day.

In between gags, you explain what happened. You phrase it in different ways.I was drugged. My drink was spiked. Someone put something in my drink.Several hours later, when you’re ready to get discharged, a diagnosis sheet is handed to you. It says, will always say, “alcohol poisoning.”

No one believes you.

Julie calls an Uber. Back in the apartment, she says you’ll feelbetter after a shower. “Get the ER off you,” she says. You wash your body, but you’re too tired to tackle your hair.

“Tomorrow,” you tell Julie. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Your head touches the pillow. Here, a dissonance—everything normal, everything exceptional. You are so lucky to be alive. So lucky to be sleeping in your own bed.

The next day is a blur. You wake up with a headache. Chew on a bagel. Go for a walk. There is a great divide between you and the world. It’s here but you can’t touch it. You are not sure how to exist in it anymore.

You don’t know it yet, but pieces of you are broken that will never feel whole again.

You don’t know it yet, but this isn’t the great tragedy of your life.

This is the part he didn’t anticipate. That day near the woods, he needed you to be surprised, shocked by the very possibility that someone might want to harm you.

What happened at the club, it changed you. By the time he found you, the only part left of you was the one that knew how to survive.

CHAPTER 39

The woman in the house

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