Page 15 of Splintered
Ben stared at the bedroom ceiling, tracing the thoughts he’d painted overhead, the imaginary lines connecting points and arguments, rants and accusations and devastations. Words he wanted to shout at Evan, pleas, cries he’d let leak from his eyes as tears fell down his temples while the sun rose. He smelled coffee. His breath shook.
Tentative knocks rapped on the bedroom door. Was it their bedroom? Or was it his now? Two nights in a row Evan had chosen to sleep on his own. Was that because of the seizures? The hallucinations? Was he hiding from Ben? Or was it just another sign of the end?
He waited. Would Evan come in, like he belonged, like he wasn’t just a ghost haunting the house’s walls and rooms?
The door stayed shut.
“What?” Ben called. His voice was raspy, husky with sleep and swallowed bellows.
“I made you breakfast.” Evan carried a tray into the room, a plate of scrambled eggs and toast and bacon and coffee and orange juice piled high. Just like the day before. A yellow crocus lay beside the fork.
They had crocuses in the front yard next to the rosebushes. They had planted them together after Evan moved in. Crocuses in fall, tulips in spring, roses all year long. Growing up, his mother had kept daisies in the front.
“Thanks.” He sat up and pushed at the food with his fork. Evan sat on the foot of the bed, watching.
“I made an appointment with Dr. Kao. She’s a psychiatrist. She’s who I got the referral for.”
“When?” Andwherewas the better question? Was Dr. Kao in the Bay Area? Or was she in Manhattan?
“Today at two.”
Ben frowned. What psychiatrist worked on the weekends, and what psychiatrist, especially in the Bay Area, accepted same day appointments? “Is this some kind of walk-in clinic? Drive-through psychiatry?”
“No. She’s a friend of a friend. Her office is in Walnut Creek.”
Ben stabbed a triangle of toast. He pulled his fork out, stabbed again.
“Will you come with me?” Evan asked softly. “I’d like you there. We can take you to urgent care for your wrist as soon as you finish eating.”
Now he wants me.For a moment, Ben wanted to be irrational. He wanted to upend the tray, send eggs flying across the room, fling toast like throwing knives at Evan.What about what I want?He wanted to scream.What about everything that we’re not talking about?
But every time he closed his eyes, even to blink, he saw Evan, twisted and contorted and bent backwards, his spine arching in a perfect C, his eyes pitch black. He heard that scream, the multi-tonal, dissonant scream, the cacophony of horror that had split him in two. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even blink, not without flying back in time tothat moment. He was stuck in last night, reliving the breaths when he thought Evan was dying, was dead.
It didn’t make sense, not in sunlight and with eggs and bacon and coffee. It hadn’t made sense then, either. But this was even more of a splinter, Evan cooking and delivering him breakfast as if they hadn’t broken in some deeply critical way last night.
His anger still simmered. Still wanted to lash out.
But beneath that, something truer scratched for answers. The panic clenching his chest, the way his breaths seemed only half full. That wasn’t his anger.
What was happening to Evan?
He had to know. They had to know.
“Of course I’ll come with you.” He held out his unhurt hand.
Evan linked his hand with Ben’s, squeezing. It wasn’t much, just a hand hold, but it wassomething. Finally. It was more than they’d had in days. Ben almost sobbed, almost pitched forward.
But his gaze caught on something as Evan smiled softly, his head turned just so, catching the sunlight from the bedroom window: a single white wireless earbud pushed inside Evan’s ear.
He was hearing the voices.
* * *
Dr. Kao’soffice was nothing like the sterile, Zen-like room Ben had imagined all psychiatrists had. He’d pictured bamboo plants and beech wood, minimalism, a single chaise for someone to lay, spilling the contents of their mind. Modern art that made you crazy looking at it.
Instead, Dr. Kao’s office was warm and stuffed with cherry wood and old leather, club chairs that had been comfortably broken in and worn until they were as soft as butter. Plush rugs cushioned their feet, sprays of color in the umber room. Books piled on shelves running along one wall, a lived-in disorganization that seemed artfully calculated. He felt both out of place and out of body, as if watching himself enter the office behind Evan, shake Dr. Kao’s hand, take everything in. As if watching his life, not living it.
Abruptly he snapped back to himself, the room suddenly hyper vivid, his hearing so focused he could hear his own breathing, hear a door open and close down the hallway, hear traffic and tires and brakes from Ygnacio Valley Road. His gaze focused in on a foot-long crucifix made of wood and pewter on the wall. Suffering on display in a psychiatrist’s office. His thoughts twisted around the crucifix, barbs stabbing into his soul.
