Page 159 of The Fall
“I took a stupid hit,” I say, the lie forming even as I piece it together. My eyes drop to the flecked pattern of the linoleum floor. “Then in the garage… it caught up. The headache. The game.” I drag a hand over my face, the rasp of my stubble loud in the quiet office. “I needed to blow off some steam. I went down to the lower level to be alone. I didn’t mean to— I was frustrated. I thought I was alone.”
“Look at me, Torey.”
I raise my eyes.
“I need you to be honest with me: have you experienced any memory lapses before tonight?”
Memory lapses. A lapse implies a void, a blank space where something should be. What I have is the opposite, a head crammed full of things that never happened. What would it mean if I told her I made up an entire year with Blair?
“No,” I whisper.
“Have you collapsed before?”
“No. This is the first time.”
“Are you sleeping?”
I stare at the medical posters on her wall: muscle groups, skeletal systems, all the ways a body can break down. The illustrated figure has no face, only clean lines marking insertion points and ligament attachments, nothing like the mess inside me.
“Some nights better than others.”
“When did you last get eight hours?”
“I don’t know. Weeks. Maybe longer.”
“The headaches. Are they always this severe?”
“No. Usually they’re manageable. Tonight was different.”
“Different how?”
His eyes, how he couldn’t look at me. Blair’s taillights disappearing. The way my skull felt like it was splitting along invisible fault lines.
“Sudden onset.” I focus on breathing, on the rhythm of air in and out. “Zero to nuclear in seconds.”
“Any triggers you can identify?”
Blair’s face when he saw my drawings. The way he couldn’t even?—
“Stress.” The half-truth tastes like copper. “The game. The travel. Everything.” I try to pull on my big boy pants. I have to get out of here. “Can I say something that won’t leave this room?”
“Of course.”
“I’m not saying the hit today didn’t mess me up some, but… there’s other stuff, too.” I dig my thumb into my palm. “I’ve been trying so hard.” My voice breaks and I hate it. “I can’t mess this up.”
“You’re not messing up, Torey.”
“I thought I could outwork… everything. The stress. The noise. The pressure. I thought I could prove…” My voice drops. “That I’m not broken.”
Her silence is full of listening. She understands this dance better than anyone in the league.
“But everything hit all at once and I didn’t know what to do with it. That’s what this was.”
“Tell me about this ‘other stuff,’” she says.
“It’s... complicated.”
Dr. Lin waits, giving me space to continue or stop.
