“I said no,” I snap. “I’ve already told you fifty times, I’m not having dreams about the crash.”
Her smile dips, a rare crack in the facade. “Okay. What are you dreaming about, then?”
I roll my eyes. “What is it with you therapists and dreams? They don’t all have to mean something, for fuck’s sake.”
She taps her pen again, slower this time. Her smile is completely gone, now.
“You know, Jacob, we’ve been at this for three months now,” she says.
“I’m well aware.”
“I don’t think we’re making any real progress. Therapy doesn’t work if you aren’t willing to engage.”
“Okay,” I say coolly. “What’s your point.”
“My point is, I think we should take a few weeks off. I want you to take some time and think about what you want. About what you’re hoping to get from your recovery.”
“Fine.” I stand. “Are we done?”
Her expression is impassive. “We’re done,” she says. “You can book another appointment whenever you think you’re ready.”
I walk out without looking back.
When I get home, my mother is in the kitchen making dinner. I head upstairs, holding tight to the stair rail. Going up stairs still feels weird. My physio says my hip flexor is weak. He says that I need to work harder.
But the last few weeks, I just can’t see the point.
“Jakey, is that you?” my mother calls. “How was therapy?”
I have to count to five before I can answer her. “Fine,” I lie. “I’m getting a shower.”
“Do you want to use the shower in our room?”
I grit my teeth so hard, my jaw hurts. “No.”
A beat of silence. “Well, be careful of the tub rail—”
I slam my bedroom door behind me and collapse onto my bed, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. My heart is pounding with frustration.
Eventually, I drag myself to the shower down the hall and stare at myself in the mirror. It’s hard to do. I hate myself so much these days.
It’s like—I canhearmyself being a dick, but I can’t stop it. I feel so awful and hateful inside, it spills out into everything I say, everything I do.
I look away from the mirror and strip off my clothes. The doctors all say my scars have healed well, and maybe they’re right. But they’re still there. A long scar up the outside of my thigh, where they put a rod in my leg and screws in my hip. A dark pink splotch on my side where the chest tube was. Two marks on my right side where they did surgery to repair the cut in my liver. Three short lines where they took out my spleen. A very tiny pale dot in my neck where the central line was.
I step over the tub rail with a grunt of discomfort and stand under the shower’s spray, turning it hotter and hotter, until it’s almost painful. I wish I could burn the scars from my skin. I looked online and there’s some sort of fancy laser therapy that could fade them, but when I mentioned it to my parents, they told me I shouldn’t be worried about that right now, and that I should just be grateful to be alive. My father said the scars are a small price to pay for survival. My mother reminded me I’m better off than Antony Costa and Ellis Parrot.
And I know it’s terrible—like, bottom-of-the-barrel terrible—but most days, I don’t feel that way.
Almost every day, I don’t feel that way.
I lie on my bed for a few hours after my shower, staring up at the ceiling, and eventually my mother comes up to check on me. Itell her I have a headache, so she doesn’t make me come down to dinner. I hear my dad arrive home, hear snatches of their hushed conversation at the front door. Later, my mom brings me a tray of food, and I feel like such an asshole, I can hardly stand it.
I fall asleep around two a.m.—because although I’m exhausted all the time, I can never get to sleep—and I don’t dream of the crash. I wasn’t lying when I told Amanda I hadn’t dreamt of it.
I only ever have one dream, over and over.
I’m standing on a stage in total darkness, and all I can hear around me is people laughing, laughing, laughing.
