Page 50 of Brutal for It
He lifts my chin with a knuckle, eyes steady. “You don’t get to make that choice for me.”
I close my eyes. “Okay,” I say, because I don’t have the strength to fight the one good thing in the room.
The fourth day is the worst and then the best. The feverish swings calm, then spike, then calm again. The restlessness is a swarm under my skin; Head Case teaches me to stomp my feet lightly against the mattress, to give the bees somewhere to go. We do it together and it feels ridiculous but it works.
Doc brings broth. I drink it like it’s soup made of prayers. I keep it down. We all celebrate that like champions of a small league and it makes me smile for the first time without it hurting.
We make a list for real, not a joke. It’s on a legal pad Doc leaves by the bed.
JAMI’S LIST
breathe
water
tell Doc if the craving comes
ask for Jenni
shower when steady
call a place (Head Case to bring options)
if I go, I choose it
if I don’t go, I build structure with the Doc/HC/meetings
eat a piece of toast without negotiating with it
let Tommy keep holding my hand without apologizing
I add an 11th in shaky letters: forgive myself in pencil, daily.
Head Case reads it and nods, like a teacher who recognizes a kid’s handwriting from miles away. “That’s a good list,” he says. “Pencil is smart. It means you can erase a line and write it again tomorrow without calling it a failure.”
“What if I can’t do 10?” I ask, eyeing the last line. It feels like the heaviest lift.
Tommy squeezes once. “Then we bump it to number 12 and do it later or erase it all together. We’re not grading you.”
I cry again, but this time it’s less like falling apart and more like water finding a new path through rock.
By late afternoon, the room smells like clean hair and lemon again because Doc let me shower with her sitting on a stool outside the door and Tommy posted like a guard on the other side of the hall. I cried when the water hit my shoulders. Not because of shame. Because my body remembered the safety of this life.
When I come out in the soft cotton shorts someone found and a t-shirt that smells like the dryer at home, Jenni is in the hall with her hands in a fist against her mouth. Her eyes are enormous. She doesn’t move until Doc nods once, and then she does — like a wave breaking — and the next thing I know her arms are around me and we are both sobbing like the world is ending and beginning.
“I’m sorry,” I say against her shoulder.
“Shut up,” she stammers, crying. “You’re here. That’s all I care about.”
Crunch is behind her, eyes glassy, jaw tight like he can hold the whole building up with it. He doesn’t touch me — not because he doesn’t want to, because he waits for me to lift my hand. I do and he steps in and puts his palm against the back of my head the way a brother does when words are stupid.
We don’t talk about details. We say I love you and I’m here and they remind me “we got you, Jami.” That’s the entire language for now.
They sit a while, then Doc kicks them out with a kindness that doesn’t negotiate. “She needs sleep,” she says, and they obey like people who trust someone with a scalpel.
Back in bed, I look at Tommy. “When I sleep,” I ask him, “stay?”
He doesn’t nod like a hero. He nods like a man who has packed a go-bag for love. “Yeah,” he says. “As long as you want.”
