Didi
It’s an impossible line to walk, and I feel myself teetering every time I see him. I know he’s aware of me whenever I’m in the same room as him because straightaway his head snaps up and he looks over in my direction, his gaze always landing either on me or not far away from me. It’s a little unnerving, and at the same time it stirs a flutter in the pit of my belly that’s getting harder and harder to ignore.
We’ve fallen into a routine where I drop by every afternoon for an hour. We chat, him sitting on the bed, me in the chair, and it feels like there’s an electric fence between us and that with every minute that passes the voltage steadily increases. I stare at his mouth when he talks, imagining what it would be like to kiss him, and have to force the thought away over and over again.
I’m desperate for him to open up and talk about that day—the day of the explosion—but I haven’t pushed him. He steers away from the past and never mentions the future; in fact, all we seem to talk about are books, movies, and current affairs. We don’t talk about our lives—that would be pushing it into friend territory.
He’s clearly trying to stick to the terms of our agreement to keep things aboveboard, and something has shifted in his attitude—even my dad has remarked on it. He’s more focused, happier even. His scowl has vanished, and I have to stop myself from smiling when I think that I might be part of the reason. He’s working out with Sanchez for several hours a day, either in the pool or in the gym, and sometimes I’ll take a deliberate detour so I can look in through the windows and watch them, or rather watch Walker, and then I have to give myself an angry talking-to because I feel like a voyeur.
As I head down to the art therapy room before my hour with Walker, I notice the bounce in my step. I can’t stop smiling, either. The only thing that slightly takes the edge off is a worry that maybe the chemistry we have might disappear if he gets his sight back. But that’s blotted out by the bigger worry of what will happen if he doesn’t get his sight back.
An enormous crashing sound from the room I’m passing brings me to a sudden halt. It’s followed by an angry bellow and the sound of glass splintering. I push open the door to one of the therapy rooms and have to duck my head as a mug filled with paintbrushes soars past me and smashes into the doorframe.
I glance up and see that Dodds is the one doing the yelling. He’s in his wheelchair, his face ablaze with fury, and he’s grabbing anything in sight and throwing it. Paint splatters the walls. A torn-up canvas hangs off an easel. Jars of dirty paint water have been upended over the floor and now he’s reaching for the pots of paint and is throwing them like grenades at the art-therapy teacher—a woman in her sixties—who’s holding up her arms to shield herself. One of the auxiliary staff—a guy in scrubs—is trying to get close to Dodds, but he’s so angry, so filled with rage and lashing out so hard that it’s like trying to get close to a spewing volcano. The guy is now having to dodge oil-paint tubes that Dodds is chucking at him.
I’m completely frozen, not sure what to do or how to help, but then two orderlies rush past me and into the room. They approach Dodds from two sides as if he’s a rabid dog and I hear myself yell at them to stop, but too late. They’ve grabbed his arms and are restraining him, which only enrages him even further, and he starts thrashing wildly with his arms. I can see they’re trying to be as gentle as they can be—one is talking calmly in Dodds’s ear, but Dodds is beyond listening. It’s as if he’s possessed. His neck muscles are as rigid as steel cables and his eyes are popping out of their sockets.
He jabs at one of the orderlies with his elbow and there’s a struggle which ends abruptly when his wheelchair overturns and he’s is thrown out of it, crashing facedown on the ground.
I run into the room, my legs finally ungluing themselves, and throw myself down on the floor beside him. One of the orderlies is still standing and the other is bending down, reaching for Dodds, trying to help turn him over, and I push him off.
“Leave him,” I hiss.
He’s lying facedown and I’m caught momentarily by the disorienting sight of his legless torso, his pant legs pinned up under him. He pushes himself up onto his hands and then collapses down onto one side as though the anger has drained from him and he’s entirely spent. He starts sobbing.
I put my hand on his arm. “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s okay.”
He curls toward me, his arms coming up over his face, his sobbing getting louder. I don’t know what to do. I look up and the orderlies are watching me as if they’re waiting for me to give them an order.
I stroke Dodds’s hair, feeling the wormlike scar beneath his scalp. My heart aches for him. How can a person be so broken and ever be put back together again?
“Shhh,” I say, and slowly, slowly, the sobs wracking Dodds’s body start to ease.
He says something, hiccups it through his tears.
“What?” I say, bending closer.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he whispers, his eyes screwed shut, his fists clenched.
My hand, stroking his hair, stills.
Behind me I can hear the orderlies talking in whispers and the door opening, and then my dad is suddenly beside me, crouched down by Dodds.
“Hi there, Corporal,” he says. “Let’s get you sitting up.”
The orderlies move to help my dad hoist Dodds to a sitting position and I back away, but not before my dad has caught my eye and nodded at me.
“We’ll take it from here,” he tells me.
I watch from the doorway as Dodds is lifted, listless and still curled in on himself, into his wheelchair, and I watch my dad kneel beside him and talk to him quietly for a moment before he stands up and nods at the orderly, who then wheels him out the room.
“What happened?” my dad asks once they’re gone.
I shake my head.
“He just lost it,” the art-therapy teacher interrupts. She’s pale and seems a little shaken still. She picks up one of the upended jars and sets it on a table. “He’s been in here a lot lately. I thought he was doing well. I was encouraging him to explore what was triggering his anger.”
“Well, that worked,” I mutter to myself.
“But what triggered this particular episode?” my dad asked. “Did he say anything? What was he painting at the time? Anything?”
The woman gestures at the ripped canvas on the easel and my dad crosses over to it and holds up the torn pieces. It’s another painting like the one Dodds’s did of a soldier with no legs lying in what looks like a flame-ringed minefield. Or possibly it’s hell. Body parts and broken bodies are scattered everywhere. I flinch backward. My dad frowns.
The other orderly speaks up. “He just came from an appointment with his prosthetist.”
My dad turns to him.
“I think he was told he can’t get any legs fitted yet. His stumps haven’t shrunk enough.”
My dad nods. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going to go and find his doctor. I’ll see you in a while,” he says to me.
I stay to help the art therapist clear up the room.
“Does it work?” I say to her after a few minutes.
“What?” she asks.
“Art therapy?” I say, nodding at the canvas. It doesn’t seem to have worked.
“Better out than in,” she says with a shrug.
I muse on that.
She sighs and starts unpinning the canvas. “In my view, anger manifests either by turning inward and becoming depression, or outwardly, like we just witnessed. The idea is that through art you can help transform that anger into something else . . .” She trails off.
I nod. There’s so much anger in this place. Even though the platitudes and the smiles of staff and patients are designed to hide it, it’s there constantly, pulsing like a death knell beneath the surface. I think of Walker and how angry he was when I first met him—and how depressed. Has that anger gone anywhere? He’s using exercise and sport to help transform it, I guess, but what happens when you finish the race? You can’t keep running, literally and metaphorically, for the rest of your life. One day it surely has to catch up with you.