Page 32 of Brain Damage

I want to beg Natalie to give me another chance, but I don’t. I just sit there silently, biting my lip as Natalie and Steve talk about me, deciding if I should be allowed to stay. Finally, they agree to let me have a few days to see if I improve.

When Natalie wheels me back to my spot in the semicircle, Jamie’s brown eyes meet mine. I expect him to make a comment on how badly I did. I would deserve it. For a lot of reasons.

But he doesn’t say a word.

23

My favorite of all my therapies is speech therapy. It’s the only one I really look forward to.

My speech therapy sessions with Amy are usually held in my room. We sit by the window, me in my wheelchair, Amy in a regular chair, with a rolling table between us. Every day, we start our session with the same set of questions.

“Where are we, Charly?” Amy asks me.

“We’re in a rehab hospital,” I reply.

Amy smiles. “Very good. And what’s the date?”

“March sixth,” I say.

“Great!” Amy exclaims.

Except the only reason I know is that it’s written on the whiteboard hanging from the wall in my room. And pretty much everywhere I go, somebody has written down the date. And people are constantly asking me what the date is. So it would be almost impossible not to know at this point.

I pointed out to Amy once that I just look up at the wall to tell her the date, and she said it was okay, that I wasn’t cheating. She said just knowing where to look for the date was pretty good.

Amy makes a note on her clipboard. “And why are you here in the hospital?”

This is the part I always have trouble with. I’m not entirely sure why.

“I got hurt,” I say.

“What part of your body did you hurt?”

“My head.”

“And how did you hurt it?”

I lower my eyes because I know I’m about to give the wrong answer. “I fell.”

“No, Charly,” she says. “You got shot. In the head.”

I guess the reason I have trouble with this part is that I don’t believe it. How could I have been shot? I’m just a normal person. Normal people don’t get shot. Only police officers or criminals or people in the movies get shot.

“Who shot me?” I ask her.

Amy gets very busy all of a sudden making notes on her clipboard. “I’m not really sure.”

As I watch her scribble on the clipboard, I suddenly remember a conversation I had with my mother yesterday.

“Was it a burglar?” I ask.

Amy puts down her clipboard. Her blue eyes are wide. “Why do you say that? Do you remember something?”

I shake my head. “No, that’s just what my mom told me.”

Amy sighs and shakes her head sadly.

The next thing Amy does is whip out a piece of paper from her clipboard. She places the paper on the table between us so that I can see it’s a drawing. I know we’ve done this task before.