Page 129 of Heartbeat

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know what we are. I can only speak about what he is…to me.”

“What is he to you?”

“Important,” I was quick to answer.

“Is that the right word?”

“It’s one of them, yes.”

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t want to answer that.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.” I shrugged.

“Does he love you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Does he take too much?”

“He doesn’t ask me anything I can’t give,” I said, then added, “Aren’t we out of time?”

“No. You’re my only patient today.”

“Why?”

“We have some decisions to make, you and I,” she said cryptically.

“We do? See, now I’m back to feeling like that orderly is about to join us.”

She smiled. “It’s not that kind of decision. Your commitment to our sessions and your disposition to getting better have more than surpassed any expectation on my part.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” she said, looking pleased. “It may not always feel like it, but the progress you’ve made is commendable.”

“Then when will it…you know…”

“Feel like there has been actual progress?”

I nodded.

“Do you remember the first time we saw each other?”

I kept looking at her, having understood the question as being rhetorical. When I first met Dr. Foster, my mother was standing over my hospital bed, screaming at me about how she refused to lose another son. She was completely out of herself, just like Noah and my dad. The difference was, Dad refused to utter a single word, keeping a safe distance as he stood by the door with his arms folded over his chest and watched as my mother charged on. Noah, too, remained silent, looking absolutely terrified in the corner of the room. I, however, remained calm. It wasn’t due to the sleeping pills I’d taken, nor was it an ease that came from shock or resignation. When I woke up that first time, I couldn’t feel anything. I was so exhausted I could barely respond as I saw the moving figures of people frantically trying to get me to respond. That feeling, that sense of absence, remained a part of me from the very second I woke up, and it never truly went away, not really. It was like a new identity, an addition to my personality. Whenever I got close to feeling as though I was about to overload, I’d shut down.

It hadn’t happened since my second visit to the emergency room, however. But I knew it was still there, dormant as I tried to bury it deeper inside me, hoping it would be so far down it would be unable to emerge again, regardless of what was to happen in my life. That was what Dr. Foster was referring to. That was what she wanted me to nod in agreement with. The time she came in my room and found a broken version of me that had never fully mended but that, over the course of a few short years, had somewhat successfully reattached itself back into one irregular piece. Not perfect, not smooth, but a single piece nonetheless.

“Don’t you think you’ve changed since that first night?” she asked.

“I couldn’t feel,” I reminded her.

“That was never your problem, Thomas.”

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