“How come you never invited me to train with you?” (I’m curious more than anything.)
“I guess you never really struck me as the working-out type.”
“I go walking,” I protest.
“No offense, Joel, but so does my nan.”
“Well, isn’t motivation part of the gig?” I’ve seen Steve in the park before, yelling at groaning boot-camp participants that pain is just weakness leaving the body.
“You’ve still got to want it.”
I look down at my half-drunk tomato soup. If Steve already senses me to be a lost cause, then this sorry orange mess can stay firmly in the glass where it belongs.
“Look, mate. I only wanted to say, if you ever need anything—”
“Actually, there is something you could do for me.” I’ve got a favor to ask him, to do with Callie.
I leave a short while later, disoriented and a little exposed. As if I’ve lost layers of myself to the wintry wind. Like a scarf whipped away I won’t ever get back.
All the way home, I think about what Steve’s told me. About heading down a certain path, before taking a chance on the one thing that made him happy.
And for me, that thing is knowing Callie. She makes me happy when I see her at home or at the café. I don’t want to stop spending time with her. She touches parts of me I’d forgotten were there.
Better to know her as a friend than not to know her at all. Even though, in another life, it might have been something more.
•••
University. A time when intensive studying, a claustrophobic social scene, and periods of zero sleep were screwing with my already messy mind. I kept skipping lectures, or turning up to them exhausted. My degree seemed at risk when it had barely begun, and something had to change.
So, once I hit my second term, I decided to make a doctor’s appointment.
It took me a couple of months to work up to it. Luke’s accident and Mum’s death still loomed large, as if I feared I might be held retroactivelyresponsible. Or maybe I’d be declared mentally ill, sectioned against my will. (I could only imagine the reaction of my dad, king of the stiff upper lip, if that were ever to happen.)
I’d not met my university GP before. He was old, which might have been reassuring if he hadn’t looked so impatient before I’d even sat down.
The consulting room was gloomy, enclosed by vertical blinds. It smelled clinical. Of disinfectant and disinterest.
“Insomnia” was his barked summation of the story I spent a breathless two minutes imparting to him. At that point I was giddy with hope, purely because I’d made it through the door. Surely, now, I’d get the help I was so desperate for. Perhaps he’d even know of a cure.
“Yes,” I replied. “Because of the dreams. My premonitions.”
He stopped typing then, narrowed his eyes. I guess he didn’t fancy logging that bit. A smile feathered his lips, which were flaky in a way I was sure there was a cream for. “Friends, Mr. Morgan?”
“Sorry?”
“Have you lots of friends here, or have you struggled? To fit in.”
The truth was I had always struggled. I withdrew from my peers at school, after what happened to Luke. Became something of a loner. My dreams took up the headspace I needed for socializing, so I could count the friends I’d made here on one hand. But that was the damn symptom, not the cause. Surely a doctor of all people should have been able to figure that out.
“Drugs?” he continued, when I didn’t respond.
“If there’s something that could work, I’ll try anything.”
A condescending smile. “No. I’m referring to recreational drugs. Do you take them?”
“Oh. No. Never.”
He disbelieved me by way of full eye contact. “And you’re not on medication.”
