Page 158 of The Fall
“Good.”
She tests my grip strength, has me touch my finger to my nose. The medical choreography would be reassuring if not for her intensity, and that closed door behind us.
“Any disorientation in the locker room after the game? Any speech issues?”
“No.”
She checks my pulse, my blood pressure. “Elevated,” she says, removing the cuff. Her hand slides to the back of my head, fingers threading through my sweat-matted strands. “Do you remember how you got from the bus to the lower level?”
“Parts are fuzzy. I remember the bus. Then it gets... patchy.”
“Patchy memory or no memory? These are different neurological presentations, and transient amnesia is a serious symptom. Especially with your history.”
“My history?”
“Your concussion in Vancouver.”
I swallow. “My head hurts. I’m exhausted. Things are fuzzy.”
“Fuzzy isn’t the same as absent.” Her words are careful, clinical. “With postconcussive syndrome, we see patterns. Headaches, yes. Fatigue, absolutely. But complete memory gaps followed by collapse? That’s concerning.”
The fluorescent light above us flickers. The sound it makes, that barely-there electrical hum, drills into my skull.
“It wasn’t complete.” The words scrape out. “I remember pieces.”
“Which pieces?”
Blair’s face when I showed him those drawings. The way his expression shuttered, how he couldn’t even look at me. The weight of that sketchbook in my hands, pages full of a year that never existed. My stomach turns.
“The garage.” I focus on the corner of her desk, on a coffee ring stained into the wood. “I was in the garage after everyone left.”
“And then?”
And then Blair drove away. And then my head split open. And then I ran like a coward into the dark because facing what I’d done—what I’d imagined, what I’d created out of nothing—was worse than any physical pain.
“I walked back into the arena.” Each word is a stone I have to push uphill. “My head got worse. The lights were...” I gesture vaguely. “Too bright.”
“So you went to the lower level? In the dark?”
When she puts it like that, it sounds insane. Maybe it is. Maybe I am.
“I needed quiet.” My voice cracks on the last word.
Dr. Lin’s expression softens, but her concern sharpens. She rolls her chair closer. “I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize when I’m not getting the whole story. Players hide injuries; it’s what you do. But I can’t help you if I don’t have the facts.”
I stare at my hands, counting the seconds between heartbeats. Four. Five. Six.
“You were screaming, Torey.”
My face burns. “I lost my temper.”
“At what?”
“At myself!” I shout. My words rip out of me, and my hands curl into fists on my thighs.
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Dr. Lin doesn’t flinch. She waits.
