Page 26 of Dead Serious with Benefits
“There’s nothing to be offended over,” I said without annoyance. He would not be the first nor the last person to wonder or assume that about me. It was, I suppose, a product of my stiffness, my slowness to respond, and my tendency to be ‘resistant’, as Mason put it once, to the emotional extremes of others. “It’s hard to be offended when I give enough indications that I might be...and there’s nothing wrong with people who have autism.”
“You have to admit that being tested three times is significant.”
“Well, at least three people thought the original diagnosis was wrong. Or I should say two, as the original doctor was just doing due diligence.”
“You went to three different head doctors?”
“For the potential diagnosis of autism, or in general?”
He whistled. “So there’s more? My, my, are you telling me you potentially have even more damage than I do?”
“There is more than you’ve dreamed of, Horatio,” I paraphrased in his ear, smiling when it brought on another laugh of delight.
“True enough, and don’t think I don’t realize that you are attempting to move the conversation away from the topic of the trauma you do, or do not, possess,” he said slyly.
I grunted. “It’s not a subject I like to get into with people.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not offended. People who spill their innermost secrets and give names to their demons at the outset are?—”
“Not very interesting?” I guessed.
I could sense his grin through the phone. “I was going to say something far less kind, but yes. That will do nicely.”
I didn’t intend to entice him by being vague or not offering information; I really wasn’t the sort to share that. There was more than enough darkness in my past that I didn’t want to discuss if it could be helped. It was hard enough to manage over the years, while I had attempted to work with different therapists, without opening up about it to someone I barely knew, even if he was holding my attention.
It wasn’t even the viciousness of my past or the meanness; the sheer depth and weight kept me from speaking about it too often. Even the therapists had struggled to help me. It wasn’t that they were bad at their jobs or lacked the desire to help; most of them had been very good at what they did and genuinely wanted to help.
The first problem had been that I just...hadn’t wanted to talk. My first therapist had worked with me carefully, but there was very little I wanted to say about the home I came from, the family I had lost, or how I had lost so much. Of course, various diagnoses slid into my file, but none had really stuck.
Some labels had stuck around for a while, only to be thrown out the window by the next professional. I could have told them that their thoughts were going down the right path, but for the longest time, it seemed easier to let them do what they thought best, especially when Matilda had sent me to those professionals.
The memory of her, so earnest as she insisted I was not broken, but that these people could help with the holes inside me I had once told her about, made me smile. Matilda, and Marcus,had never treated me as fragile, but they knew I needed help. I couldn’t blame them; they had, after all, been privy to my past through the adoption process, and while that hadn’t stopped them from taking me on to see if I could thrive with them, I had no doubt they were concerned...and with a past like mine, why wouldn’t they be?
So they had taken this scrawny ten-year-old, whose first nine years were marked with the kinds of horrors and death that many people never see in their lifetimes. They had taken him in and tried to get him help, and even when it looked like the therapy wasn’t helping, they continued to love that boy and support him in their own way. They, and especially my difficult, irritating, weird siblings, had all been the fix I had needed to remember how to smile, to remember how to be happy, and to remember that life was as, if not more, important than death.
In a fit of what I could only call irony, it had been the therapist I’d stumbled upon by accident in my early twenties who had figured out the most accurate diagnosis. She had been wonderful, not just accepting the way I was immediately, but understanding it. She had been through her own trials and had understood what it meant to come out of that darkness.
I might have still been seeing her to this day, but a bizarre accident involving a construction site and a loose bolt had taken her before I’d had a year of therapy with her. It was the final straw. I didn’t have the heart to find another therapist, knowing I would never find one like her. Ultimately, I had decided I needed to improve, but would have to do it alone. The past few years had been devoted to that effort, and sometimes, when I thought there might be existence after death, I wondered if Abigail occasionally peeked at me and was happy with my progress.
“Now,” he said, pulling me out of my thoughts, and I wondered how long I’d been lost in them. His tone gave no hintthat anything was wrong, so I figured it hadn’t been long. “Let’s go back to that slightly morbid, but no less interesting comment you made that specified ‘the living’.”
“I’m a funeral director,” I explained, knowing there was no way around the subject.
“Ah, now there’s a conversation for cocktail hour,” he said in amusement. “I figured it was something of that sort. No one would specifically mention the living unless they were used to dealing with the dead. Which, in all fairness, narrows down the list of possibilities. Half of which are not exceptionally flattering or encouraging.”
“I...treat dead bodies, I don’t create them,” I said, guessing where his mind had been heading.
“And here I thought funeral directors were responsible for running the show, not being down in the trenches.”
“The owner of the funeral home has a few locations. The one I work at is the smallest. He prefers to keep minimal staff, to create a more friendly and less clinical feeling for those who use our services,” I explained carefully. “We do have a dedicated embalmer, or mortician if you prefer. We also have dedicated staff for running the day-to-day business, essentially number crunching, but most of it is overseen by one of my coworkers. There are also staff who deal primarily with the family and friends of the deceased. I oversee all of it, but I began as a mortician there, so whenever our embalmer can’t make it, or if there’s no reason to call him in, I handle that as well.”
“A master of one turned into a master of none,” he mused. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Dealing only with the dead, as opposed to dealing with the living.”
“Ah,” I said in understanding. “I can’t say I have a preference. Each position offered different experiences, and being a direct help to the living and aggrieved has been...nice.”
