The Blind

“I’m still getting fucking nowhere. It’s confusing. He’s so high functioning, seems to be completely normal, so what is he doing here? Why is he in treatment?”

“What’s his diagnosis?”

“Oh, right. Like there’s a diagnosis in his chart. That would be too easy.”

“Do you think he’s diagnosable?”

“If I were to slap something on him, like for insurance purposes, I’d say adjustment disorder. And that’s a stretch. There’s got to be something that I’m completely missing. It’s too weird for this guy to be admitted to a mental institution. Aside from being uncooperative and stubborn, he seems normal.”

“You want me to meet with him? See if I can figure something out?” David is always incredibly helpful, always willing to go the extra mile for me.

“No, thanks. But keep an eye out if you notice anything.” David smiles his sweet, protective smile at me and clumsily pats my knee with his free hand. I try to examine his thoughts as he turns toward the window; I’m looking for a place inside him where I could fit.

NOVEMBER 22ND, 11:06 A.M.

Although we haven’t made progress with his file, it seems that Richard is getting more comfortable with me. He may even be developing a foundation of trust. He’s speaking now, not about anything relevant to his mental health, but he’s saying words out loud. He tells me about books he’s read, or ones he’s heard of that he hasn’t had a chance to pick up yet. I tell him about what’s happened in the music industry, and he’s never happy to hear it. Today is another session with us just warming up to each other.

“You have a cell phone?” he asks me. He hasn’t shaved this morning, and I can see the prickles of a pale beard poking out of his fat pores.

“Yes, I have a personal phone. Why do you ask?” I’ve got my legs crossed and I’ve twisted my chair to face him. We usually sit this way, even if the sessions are uncommunicative. It’s a therapeutic technique. People are uncomfortable with silences, so often if a therapist faces a patient like they’re talking, the patient will feel obligated to fill the silence.

“That was a shock to me. I was away when those things came out. Now even the homeless people have them.”

“You were in prison when cell phones became popular?” This is the first time he has acknowledged his incarceration to me, and I want to draw more information out of him.

“We didn’t even have personal computers. Now everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket.”

“Did you have computers available to you in prison?”

“Well, the phones are even more advanced than the computers now.” He’s not going to engage on this with me.

“It’s true. They really do make communication much easier.” Hint.

“Not just communication—everything. It’s got a camera now, the internet, the emails. You can read books on those things! It used to be you had to have a whole suitcase worth of stuff to have everything that these phones have now. And they’re this big.” He holds out his wide palm to indicate the size of today’s cell phones.

“A miracle of technology.”

Richard shakes his head in wonder and returns his attention to his newspapers. Maybe I can draw him further out of his shell if I tell him that I addressed the issue with Devon and his shit jacket.

“Before you disengage completely, I wanted to let you know that I looked into the issues you were having with Devon.”

“Oh?” He raises his eyebrows in anticipation.

“I put in a request with his counselor to take up the issues that you conveyed to me, including the hygiene problem and the disruptive behavior in groups. It has since been addressed with Devon personally, and I hope you will show some patience and tolerance as he adjusts.”

“Well. Thank you.”

“Is that a commitment to give the guy a break?”

“Not exactly.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s a thank-you. I haven’t said thank-you to anyone in a long time. I appreciate that you followed through.” Richard bows his head to me.

“Maybe since I’ve shown you the respect of following through, you’ll show me the same, and we can work on completing your file.” Once last try for today.

His eyes return to his papers and he brushes his cheek with the back of his hand, as if he’s brushing away my request.

My chest tightens as I draw in another disappointed breath. It’s been almost a month now and all I have are his basics. I’m running out of ways to get through to him.

NOVEMBER 23RD, 2:14 P.M.

Julie is buzzing the intercom looking for me. Her shrill, piercing voice is making my eardrums explode, so I pick up the phone as quickly as I can and hold the receiver about a foot from my face.

“Yes, Julie?” I grumble from a safe distance. “What do you need?”

“Hi, Sam!” I can hear the syrupy ooze of her voice falling down the telephone line, threatening to come trickling onto my neck through the receiver. She pauses, waiting for me to return the cheerful greeting. I say nothing. “Um, I wonder if you have a moment to come to my office? I’m meeting with one of your patients right now; we had a little incident in group.” She says little incident like she’s talking about a kindergartner who wet her pants during nap time.

“Which patient?”

“I’m with Tashawndra.” She enunciates each syllable slowly, fearful that her inability to properly articulate Tashawndra’s name will indicate she’s racist, or out of touch, or not relatable.

“Give me a minute.” I hang up the phone before she inundates me with more pleasantries, and begin the slow walk to Julie’s office.

I knock loudly on her door and realize that though we’ve worked together for several years, I’ve never seen the inside of her office before. She pulls it open, and I see Tashawndra with a shamed expression on her face, sitting on a blue plastic group-room chair. Looks like there weren’t enough office chairs for Julie. She invites me in, and I take in my surroundings.

She doesn’t have books or files or anything visible that would indicate this is a clinician’s office; instead she has a large stuffed bear wearing a green Ralph Lauren sweater sitting on her bookshelf. She has pictures of her family with quotes about sisters etched into the white wooden frames. As she closes her door, I hear the plink of bells, and I turn to see she has two coat hooks, one with her pale camel-colored coat with a pink plaid scarf over it, and the other with a stuffed fabric wreath with lacy edges and bells hanging off it. The final straw is a framed plaque of faux reclaimed wood with intentionally worn writing and painted flowers that reads Live, Laugh, Love. I can feel the bile and undigested lunch rising in my throat, and I hesitate to stop myself from projectile vomiting directly into her perfectly combed hair. The look of disgust on my face must be apparent because Julie reaches out to touch my arm and ask me if I’m okay.

“Sam? You alright?” I yank my arm away from her and nudge her out of the way as I take a seat in Julie’s desk chair. There’s a scent diffuser somewhere in here, and it smells like baby powder.

“Tashawndra?” She hangs her head, and I lower mine to catch her eyes. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

“Can’t Miss Julie tell you?” She hides her face in her hands. Her hair is twisted in ropes and dreads of various lengths and rigidity, some poking straight up out of her scalp and others falling forward into her eyes. She twists them when she gets nervous, and when she’s feeling happy, she ties ribbons and strings to the ends. She’s pulling at one of the strings now, a yellow piece of yarn tied to a dread on the left side of her face.

“I’d like to hear it from you, if you’re willing to tell me. I want to know what you think happened.” The yarn pops off between her fingers.

Tashawndra releases a snort like a bull about to charge. “I was in Miss Julie’s group, minding my own business, and out of nowhere, I look over and I see that Barry is staring at Miss Julie, and his mind ain’t right, and I know what he’s thinking.”

“What was he thinking?” I ask. Julie is hovering over us, blushing as her name is mentioned.

“He was thinking he like to sink his teeth into those legs!” She gestures toward Julie’s panty-hosed legs, exposed beneath her admittedly work-appropriate skirt. Julie involuntarily bends and covers her knees with her hands.

I can’t help smiling as I listen to this. “And then what did you do?”

“I threw my coffee cup at him.” Tashawndra leans back and crosses her arms over her chest. She is braless as usual and her pendulous breasts fall into her armpits.

“Was there coffee in your coffee cup?” I’m nearly laughing as I ask.

“No! It was empty. I should have slapped his face.”

“What’s going on between you and Barry?”

“Well, nothing now! But before he decided to get all inappropriate with the counselor, we was seeing each other. Been a couple of weeks. He brung me flowers from the table in the lunchroom last week. And before that, he gave me the rest of his pack of cigarettes. He told me I was the most beautiful girl he ever saw, and we had lunch together and we smoked on the smoking balcony together, too. But all that over now!”

“Anything else going on between the two of you?” Sexual contact between patients is strictly forbidden at Typhlos, although it’s nearly impossible to enforce. With the growing number of patients, it’s hard enough to keep track of where everyone is all the time, let alone try to figure out what everyone is doing. Patients have sex with their roommates at night, whether they’re gay or not, in the bathroom stalls, out on the smoking balcony in broad daylight. Sometimes right in the open in the hallways and group rooms. Tashawndra has lost privileges and been isolated because of sexual misconduct many times before, but Barry has never been her partner.

“Nah. I know I’m not allowed to bang nobody while we doing treatment here.” She fiddles with the yellow string, and I believe her that they weren’t having sex. She seems to care about him, and she rarely has sex with people she cares about.

“Good. I’m glad we’re making progress on that front. And you know you can’t throw anything at anyone, whether they’re looking at another girl or not, correct?”

“Yeah, I know.” She shoots her arm out in an aw-shucks gesture and throws the yellow string onto the floor. “He gave me these yarns for my hair, too.”

I pick up the string and hold it in my fist. “Tashawndra, I know it hurts when someone you like looks at someone else, but it’s important to react appropriately. Do you want to say anything to Julie?” Julie’s been leaning over us like an eager water boy during the halftime huddle. Her mouth hung open as she observed our interaction, and now that she’s being addressed, she pops up straight and composes herself.

“I’m sorry I got jealous in your group, Miss Julie. I know people gonna look at you because you beautiful, and I know it don’t mean that I can throw things at anybody.” She tugs at her dreads.

“Thank you, Tashawndra. And I think you’re beautiful, too.” Tashawndra blushes as a shy smile spreads across her face, and she pulls her shoulder up to her chin.

“You gonna talk to Barry about this?” I ask her.

“Yeah, I guess I could forgive him.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” I hand her back the yellow string, and she ties it into one of the dreads flopping down over her eyes. We walk out of Julie’s office together, and I take a deep breath of institutional air to clear my nose of the insufferable scent from her diffuser. It’s days like this that make me feel like a zookeeper, and I’m in awe of the level of shit I can continue to tolerate.

NOVEMBER 26TH, 12:45 A.M.

I find myself at Nick’s again, waiting for David to show up. Lucas and I came together, but he is too drunk to function, so he parked himself at one end of the bar, staring at his phone, while I schmooze with our buddies. Everyone at Nick’s thinks that Lucas and I are the perfect couple, and it’s a very delicate dance, because we know this perception, and without speaking, we do everything we can to uphold it. Even if I’m afraid he might end up killing me when we are alone, in front of others, we put on the show that we need to put on to pretend to ourselves that each of us is fine, and that together we are the ideal couple: the beacon of domestic bliss that shines amid the crumbling failures of their past. It gives hope, and I am in the business of giving hope.

If I told them that he beats me, or that he had sex with a faceless hooker in the back room of a porn store earlier today, or that he is currently wolfing oxycodone in the bathroom, it would ruin their night, and I certainly don’t want that. This perception that Lucas and I are perfect…it helps me believe it. And it’s one of the last strings I have holding my life together.

David just walked into the bar, and he’s scanning the room trying to find me. I’m waving with one hand while drinking a Jack and Coke with the other. He’s probably the only person who knows the truth about me, the truth about Lucas and some truth about me and Lucas. Our offices share a wall, which means he can hear everything that goes on in mine. When I’m throwing up in the garbage can, or crying into my coffee, he tends to ask questions. Over the years, instead of lying to him, I’ve let him in, and he hasn’t used it against me yet.

David is my best friend. Not just my work best friend, but the closest thing I have to a real-life best friend. I’ve never slept with him, although maybe I should. He has a crush on me, I can tell, and I flirt with him and humor him just enough to make the crush continue, but I’m careful to never allow it to turn into something that would require reciprocity. Just the way I like it. He walks over, we look at each other, and without saying anything, he drinks from the straw in my drink. I signal to Sid, the bartender, for another round.

David and I stand too close together and gossip. We find safety in our bubble and use that safety to dismantle the other people around us. David pretends not to notice Lucas. I can’t tell if he’s being polite or defensive.

Lucas is in a state now. His tie is partially loosened and partially tight, one of the middle buttons of his shirt is undone, his jacket is strewn in a booth somewhere, his glasses are all greased and cockeyed on top of his head, and he needs to lean on the bar for support. Despite this, he’s become even more disarming and lovable to everyone in the room. The cocktail waitresses are huddled in the corner talking about him, and he has his hand on the panty-hosed leg of someone else’s girlfriend. No one seems to mind.

When I approach, his hand slides back into his own lap.

“Act like you love me, you stupid asshole,” I say with a smile.

“I do love you, you dirty whore,” he replies, and he might not be joking. “But I’m tired, and I have a long week coming up, so I’m going home.” He pulls his coat into his hands and makes a show of looking around the bar for his suit jacket. “If you see my jacket, will you bring it home with you? I don’t have time to go searching for it now.”

“No problem,” I say, hiding the cigarette and lighter I have clutched in my fist, as if I wasn’t about to step outside. If I give him a seamless exit, I can save myself from another one of his drunken attacks.

“You don’t have to come with me. I’ll get home fine,” he slurs, and I give the panty-hosed girl a side-eye. We perform our saying-goodbye act, with big hugs and kisses, and after he doesn’t bother to pay his tab, he stumbles out the door. I pretend not to notice the panty hose follow him out.

“You gonna be okay if I go, too?” David asks, joining me in pretending he didn’t see anything.

“Yeah, I’m probably only going to have one or two more.”

After tugging his coat over his shoulders, he leaves a fifty on the bar and wraps me in a bear hug. “I’ll see you on Monday, but call me if anything stupid happens, okay?”

“Thanks, David. I’ll see you Monday. Home safe.”

Now that David and Lucas are both gone, I can turn my attention to AJ. He’s been sitting at a booth with some people I don’t know, but from the looks he’s been giving me, I know that we’re both waiting for the moment—the moment in time when it’s going to be okay and we can run into the other room, the other world, the other universe where we can wrap up in one another and not worry what anyone else thinks, what anyone else knows, what anyone else can see, but at the same time, we know that that’s never going to happen. So we have to live in between the lines. We have to be somewhere only he knows, and only I know, and no one says anything, because there’s nothing to say. Where we can walk in daylight and hear no voices.

Even though it’s the same bar we’re always at, somehow the walls seem new to me. All the things around us seem to be brighter. The cheeky quotes written in chalk on the blackboard behind the bar are funnier. The music sounds like something I haven’t been listening to for the last two months. There’s something about the way he looks at me that takes down every single wall I have ever erected in order to keep people out.

He’s standing at the DJ booth now, putting on a song and pointing at me across the bar. I’m doing everything I can to stay as far away from him as possible. He sees this and he sees me, and he puts on my favorite song and mouths to me, This is for you.

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