Chapter Eleven
Emmet
They didn’t let Jeremey go home from the ICU. On the second day he was in the hospital, he had to go to the psychiatric ward, which Mom says is what happens when someone tries to commit suicide. I was glad he had people to take care of him, but I was sad he had to stay there. I couldn’t see him as often as the day he’d been in the ICU. In fact for the first few days, I couldn’t see him at all.
I visited him on the third day, when Dr. North said Jeremey could have visitors again. He said Jeremey had been good and worked hard on his therapy and deserved a reward, and I was the reward he wanted. That made me happy. I’ve never been a reward before.
We met in a small white room with a couch and a window. Dr. North said if we needed him, we could flip the red light switch on the wall, which would send in a nurse. Otherwise he would come get me when our time was up.
Jeremey waited at the window when I arrived. He was wearing regular clothes, but no shoes. He turned to smile at me when I came in, and I smiled back. I even looked him in the eye for a few seconds because I wanted to show him how much I cared.
We hugged, but we didn’t kiss. Dr. North was still in the room.
“You have an hour,” he told us with a smile, and then he was gone.
“It’s so good to see you, Jeremey.” I flapped my hands a little because I was too excited not to. “Dr. North is a good doctor. My mom says he’s the best in the whole Midwest. Is he a good doctor for you?”
Jeremey made the embarrassed face. “Yes. I—” He bit his lip, glanced at me, then looked away again. “I’m…sorry. For what I did.”
I was confused. I didn’t know what he’d done. I hadn’t seen him for three days. “What did you do?”
His whole face went red. This means someone is very embarrassed. “I tried to kill myself and got myself locked up in here. That’s not…being a good boyfriend.”
I liked it when Jeremey talked about being my boyfriend. “You’re sick. It’s okay. It has nothing to do with being boyfriends.” I wanted to hold his hand, but that made me nervous so I flapped once instead. “Let’s sit on the couch and talk. I have paper and pencil in my pocket if you need to use code. But I had to leave my phone with Dr. North.”
We sat next to each other. I could smell and feel him, but I had room to rock. Since we sat side by side, I couldn’t look at him, so I didn’t have to feel bad about not meeting his gaze.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked him.
He fidgeted his fingers in his lap. “I…don’t know.”
I laughed. “But you said you wanted to see me. That I was your reward for hard work. What work have you been doing?”
This was an okay thing to ask. Althea and I practice acceptable social questions all the time, so I was sure, but Jeremey’s shoulders hunched and he got embarrassed again. “It probably sounds silly. Basically my emotions make me feel like a big baby Dr. North has to retrain.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you said.”
He tugged at the hem of his shirt. “We talk about how I feel all the time. I have to practice feeling. Talking about what I feel and rehearse sitting with it. And explaining them out loud.”
I brightened. This I understood. “At home I have shirts for feelings. If I wear different clothes, it means I’m sitting with my specific feelings. It used to be only for anger and sadness, but now I have shirts for anything that feels too big for me to explain.”
He sighed. “You always make it sound so easy. I wish it could be that way for me so I didn’t have to end up in the hospital. I don’t want to be in the locked ward.”
“The locked ward is scary at first, but they take good care of you, and they’re good at patterns, which is comforting. I haven’t been to this locked ward, but Mom says they’re all pretty much the same.”
He stopped hunching and looked at me with a face I couldn’t understand. “You…you’ve been to the psych ward? As a patient?”
“Yes. When I was twelve.”
Now he had a surprised expression. Almost scared or upset. “When you were twelve? They locked you up?”
“No, they admitted me to the psychiatric ward. It was when I’d just started speaking again, and I got angry a lot. That was also when I had the bad therapy, and I had to go to the hospital until I could get control of myself.”
He kept looking at me with a complicated expression. “You say it like it’s no big deal. Wait—what do you mean you’d just started speaking?”
“I didn’t talk for a long time.” I could feel him staring at me, and I started to feel uncomfortable, so I rocked and flapped. “I could write, and I knew how to talk, but I wouldn’t. My brain octopus wouldn’t let me. I stopped talking when I was nine and didn’t start again until I was almost thirteen. But I enjoyed math. I did a lot of math.”
“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you talk?”
I tried to think of how to explain, and I had to hum a little first before I could. “It was a long time ago, and I don’t remember well, but I was angry and overwhelmed. I was still in regular school then, and the other students made me feel uncomfortable. It was a private school, but it wasn’t a good fit. The academics were good, but the students were not. When I started homeschooling, it was better, but I wanted to be quiet for a long time after I left. It made everyone upset. Then we had the bad therapy, and then I went to the hospital.”
“What do you mean, bad therapy?”
“I had a therapist who tried to fix me, like I was broken. It made me angry, and I hit her. It was a scary time. But then they put me in the hospital, and it was a good hospital. The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. We lived in Iowa City then, but Minnesota is the best psychiatric hospital in the region. Dr. North worked there. He helped me the same way he’s going to help you.”
I rocked and smiled, remembering how Dr. North made the bad therapy go away. “He’s an important doctor in psychiatry, so I bet things will be the same here as they were at Mayo because he’s in charge. The ward at Mayo was good. Everything was clean and organized and punctual. I felt safe. We talked about me maybe living there for a while, but everyone said I should try to go home. So I did, and I practiced coping strategies. It was good. This is why we have to listen to doctors. Sometimes our brains make bad decisions, and we need to borrow the doctors’ brains.”
Now I felt nervous too. It made me uneasy to see how surprised Jeremey was I hadn’t spoken for four years.
When he spoke, though, he seemed less nervous. “I…I had no idea how much you understood.”
“I do understand.” I considered a moment. “Not about killing myself, though.”
He hunched. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sick. It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize. You have to do your work so you can get better and we can be together again.”
Jeremey didn’t say anything to that. But he took my hand, and he squeezed it.
It was a hard touch, so it was okay. Also, I’ve decided I like holding Jeremey’s hand. Touching him is always okay.
Originally Jeremey was only supposed to stay in the hospital for a few days, but he and Dr. North decided thirty days would be better. It upset Jeremey’s mom a lot when she found out. My mom tried to talk to her, but she didn’t want to discuss it, so we left her alone. Also I think my mom was still angry with Gabrielle, so she didn’t try very hard.
The good news was though Jeremey didn’t get discharged, I got to see him several times a week. Sometimes it was to visit, but a few times Jeremey and I had group therapy together. I hadn’t done group therapy in a long time, and normally I don’t like it. But Dr. North thought I might enjoy having group with Jeremey. It turned out he was right. The first time was a little rough, but for Jeremey, not for me.
The other times I’d done group, I’d been in a big room with five other clients at Mayo, but group this time was only Jeremey, Dr. North and me, and we met in the same room where Jeremey and I got to visit. Jeremey sat on the couch, so I sat in a chair.
Dr. North sat in a chair too. “Jeremey, Emmet. Good to see you both.”
“It’s good to see you too, Dr. North,” I said. Jeremey didn’t say anything, only looked down at his hands.
Dr. North watched him. “Jeremey, is something wrong?” When Jeremey said nothing and hunched forward, Dr. North sat forward in his chair. “Talk to us, Jeremey. Tell us what you’re feeling.”
Jeremey wouldn’t look up, and he wouldn’t talk.
“Do you need a notebook?” I asked him. Sometimes he had to use a notebook at our visits, and I always brought one with me now. But I saw Dr. North had one too.
“I feel stupid,” Jeremey murmured.
He was in trouble now. Dr. North didn’t like that word.
Dr. North used his I’m serious voice. “Use a different word to describe your feelings. Why do you feel foolish? What are the feelings that word is hiding behind?”
It took several tries before he could get Jeremey to talk, eventually only on the notepad, and I counted the ceiling tiles while I waited. I’d counted them before, but there were a lot and I enjoyed counting them every time. Plus several were replacement panels and were a slightly different color. Three hundred and twenty-six total tiles, seventy-three yellowed. I got so absorbed in counting I didn’t realize they’d been trying to talk to me until they called my name twice.
“I’m sorry. I was counting.”
“I assumed so.” Dr. North nodded at Jeremey. “Could you tell us why you chose to sit in the chair you’re in?”
It was a good question, but it surprised me he asked. Usually people don’t care. “There were only four straight-backed chairs. You hadn’t sat down, and you didn’t care which one you had, and Jeremey took the couch, so I took the chair I wanted, which was the chair where I could see out the window. Also two of the other ones are uneven and that bothers me.”
“Why didn’t you choose to sit beside Jeremey, the way you do when you visit him outside of a therapy session?”
That was a strange question, but I answered it anyway. “This is group therapy. I should have my own chair. Plus I don’t like to sit on a couch when I’m supposed to pay attention. It makes me sleepy, and I can’t focus.”
“Oh.” Jeremey’s face went complicated, and he stared at the floor. “Now I feel stupid.”
“You need to stop using that word,” I told Jeremey. “Dr. North hates it, and you’ll get in trouble. I don’t like it when you use it about yourself, either. I think it’s your R word. Why do you feel that way?”
Jeremey glanced at Dr. North, but he stayed quiet. Jeremey couldn’t look at me. “I thought you didn’t sit with me because you were upset with me.”
“But why would I be upset with you? You haven’t done anything.”
Jeremey got quiet, and after a long pause, Dr. North spoke for him. “Jeremey worries a great deal about people being angry with him. He often assumes he’s done something wrong.”
I frowned at Jeremey. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not angry with you. I’m excited to be here. If I were angry with you, I’d tell you.”
Dr. North raised an eyebrow at me. “This is true. Emmet is a good test for your tendency toward negative thoughts, Jeremey. He doesn’t come with the same kind of artifice you’re accustomed to from people. And, Emmet, Jeremey is a good challenge for you. To understand him and what he’s feeling, you must pay extra attention to his emotions and his cues. He told you he was upset by your choice of seating, but you missed his silent message because reading those kinds of cues are more difficult for you.”
Now I was confused, and worried. “Was it wrong of me to sit in this chair?”
“Not at all. No one has done anything wrong, but this moment is a good opportunity for you both. Jeremey, you’ve learned when you worry you’ve upset Emmet, you can ask him if it’s true, and he will tell you. Emmet, you’ve learned you must watch Jeremey extra closely to read his emotions and his body language. I want you to practice right now in fact. Study Jeremey, Emmet, and tell me what emotions you think he’s feeling. Guesses are okay, but tell me if you’re guessing. If you’re deducting, tell me how you’re doing that. Jeremey, when he’s done, you tell him if he was accurate.”
I studied Jeremey carefully. Reading someone’s emotions is something I will never be good at, but I know my adaptations. I studied Jeremey, noticing how he sat and how he held his body and his face. He was very close together, all his arms and legs and body parts tucked in close, as if he were a bug someone had flipped over. His shoulders were round, and he didn’t look at me. His face didn’t match any of my expressions pictures, so I looked at each part of his face like Dr. North told me. His mouth was flat, but his lips weren’t pressed together. His eyes were flat. Sometimes he’d glance up, and sometimes his lips would press for a moment, but that was it. He also moved his fingers in a way that reminded me of when I wanted to flap.
I wasn’t sure how he felt. I had ideas, but that was all. I started to flap my hands.
“Try to guess,” Dr. North told me. “Let’s start with big emotions. You tell me yes or no. Does he seem happy?”
No, he didn’t. “Not happy.” I rocked in my chair. “But not sad or angry.”
“What are your other options?”
I tried to think. How did Jeremey usually feel? “Nervous, maybe.” I brightened. “Yes—nervous. Not a guess.”
“Jeremey, is that correct?”
“Yes, mostly.”
“Excellent. Good job, Emmet. Can you tell us how you knew?”
I smiled a big smile, proud I’d gotten it right. “Because of his hands. His face is too complicated for me to tell what he’s feeling, but he keeps fidgeting his hands. That’s like when I want to flap. It’s kind of the same thing, except hand-flaps are bigger and make people stare at me.”
“Can you talk to us, Emmet, about why you flap your hands?”
Normally I was fine talking about hand-flapping with Dr. North, but I worried about Jeremey. I rocked a little.
“Honest feelings, Emmet. Tell us about flapping your hands. Jeremey confessed about his hurt feelings, made himself vulnerable for you. Now it’s your turn. Do you feel Jeremey is a safe space to talk about flapping?”
“I want him to be.” I rocked a little more. “But most people don’t like it. They think I’m the R word.”
“I don’t think you’re the R word,” Jeremey said.
Dr. North winked at me. “Talk about both things. Explain why you flap your hands and how it makes you feel when people misunderstand.”
This is what I like about Dr. North. He’s good at asking questions.
I thought about it for a moment, then explained as best I could. “Hand-flapping feels good. Sometimes I flap when I’m excited, but sometimes because I’m nervous. It’s different for each feeling. Excited flaps let off energy. I have so much inside me I have to let it out. But if I’m nervous, it draws in energy. In my head it feels as if I’m making a wall. The happy-flapping takes down the wall, giving my energy to other people.” The idea of sharing my happiness with people that way made me feel good, and in my head I could see it, bright blue-white light going from my hands to other people. But then I remembered how most people reacted to my flapping, and the happy feeling ended. “People make bad faces at me and stop talking to me. Or they talk to me like I’m a baby instead of a person.”
Dr. North was in his listening position, sitting straight but not too straight, with his hands resting on his legs. “How does it make you feel when people react badly to your hand-flapping?”
“Sad, and sometimes angry.”
“Can you elaborate? What does the sadness and anger feel like inside?”
I considered Dr. North’s question. “Gray-blue.”
“Thank you, Emmet.” Dr. North smiled at me before turning to Jeremey. “Jeremey, I have a few questions for you. One, do you mind when Emmet flaps his hands?”
I was so nervous waiting for the answer, I had to hum.
“No.” Jeremey didn’t hesitate at all. “I don’t mind when he hums or rocks or flaps his hands, though I’ve never seen him flap his hands much, really. I know that’s how Emmet is.”
“Maybe that can be something to work toward, Emmet, letting Jeremey in far enough for you to flap in his presence. Now I have a second question for you, Jeremey. How did it make you feel to hear Emmet speak so easily about his feelings?”
Jeremey sighed. “Jealous.”
I sat up, frowning. “But why would you be jealous of that?”
“It’s so difficult for me to say what I’m feeling. You said it as if it’s no big deal.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, but Dr. North asked me a question. “Jeremey says it’s challenging for him to express his feelings. He has a difficult time identifying what those feelings are. This is part of his depression. Acknowledging feelings seems dangerous to his mind, so he has to practice. What’s something challenging for you to do, Emmet? What do you have to practice because of your autism?”
This was an easy question. “Faces. Faces are impossible.”
“Talk more about that. Explain why they’re difficult, so Jeremey can understand.”
“I can’t read faces the way people without autism can. I can’t see a face and know if someone is happy or sad. Which is bad because people assume I can, and they get angry when I don’t notice how they feel.”
“Do you care how other people feel?”
“Yes. But I don’t always remember to check for it. Sometimes I’m busy worrying about my own feelings and I forget.”
“Talk about how you check for other people’s emotions. I think Jeremey might find it illuminating.”
He did? I glanced at Jeremey but couldn’t meet his gaze, so I stared at the arm of the couch. “I have charts. I look at the charts to learn what each emotion is like on a face. Sometimes Althea practices with me. I know a lot of emotions now because I’ve memorized them, but it’s always good to have a refresher.”
I glanced at their faces now—Dr. North wore his listening face, but Jeremey was too complex to read. I was starting to call the face he made the depression face, and I didn’t care for it.
“I don’t think they make practice charts for figuring out what emotions you have,” Jeremey said.
Dr. North didn’t say anything, so I did. “Why not? They would be the same. You could use my charts. You could have a mirror and look at your face.”
“It doesn’t always show on my face, how I feel.”
The idea was alarming. How could I read what Jeremey felt like if it didn’t show on his face? “Is this part of depression? Does it keep the emotion from showing?”
Jeremey’s face became annoyed. Almost angry. He turned to Dr. North. “I don’t want to practice identifying my emotions. I want to go home. I want to be normal. I want to go to college. I want to have a job and a house and a car.”
Dr. North calmed him down, telling Jeremey what he’d told me, about how there is no normal, about how modifications help us integrate with society. I listened, but I thought about what Jeremey had said too. About the things he wanted.
Independence, that’s what he was talking about. I had some—I was in college, and I could get a job when I was done, but no one talked about me moving into an apartment, and obviously I wasn’t getting a car. Mom had said she was looking for somewhere for Jeremey and me to live together, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about it for a while now.
Maybe there was no normal. But there were a lot of things most people could do which everyone assumed I couldn’t. Jeremey too.
At the end of every therapy session, Dr. North has us set goals. I gave one, but it wasn’t my real goal. Because as of that session, I had a new one. A secret one, one I wanted very much to make real.
I wanted to be independent. Maybe I couldn’t be normal, but I could be like everybody else. Maybe not all the way. But my goal, my wish for myself, was to see how far toward everybody else I could get.
What I didn’t know, though, was how close that kind of independence was for me—and for Jeremey too.