I’m sitting in the waiting room of the Kalakee Medical Offices. It looks like I’m the only person in here under eighty years old. There’s a man and a woman directly across from me and he is leaning slightly on her.
There’s a woman sitting by herself to my left with a cast on her right foot, below the knee. On my right there are two men, probably slightly younger than the couple, and they are both asleep. Or dead. I can’t tell.
I feel dead inside.
“Evan Panos?”
I raise my hand. Everyone, except the sleeping/dead men, looks in my direction.
“Use that door and come on back, honey.” The nurse smiles and points to a door next to the reception window. She leads me to a small room and has me take a seat on the examining table.
“So, I hear you were in a car accident?” She inspects my face.
“Yes.”
“Were you driving?” Her hands are on either side of my neck, feeling around.
“I wasn’t. Um, I was . . .”
“Have any trouble focusing?”
All the time.
“No. I feel fine.”
“Where does it hurt?” She places her hands softly yet firmly on either side of my chest.
“It hurts a little there and my hands.” She takes my hands in hers and examines them. “How did your hands get so beaten up?”
I just look at my hands. How did they get so beaten up in a “car accident”? I try to come up with an answer quickly but my mind is not cooperating.
“Were you wearing your seat belt? Were you flung into the windshield or door?”
“Yes. The windshield.”
“So no seat belt?”
“No, I was wearing a seat belt. Always. Just the force of the impact and my hands just . . .” My voice drifts off.
She picks up her chart, looks down at it, and starts to write. “Well, you may have just slammed them into the dashboard or something. No bones look broken, but we’ll X-ray everything.”
“Yes.” I am nodding. “The dashboard.”
“Take off your shirt, please.” I don’t move. “Evan?”
“It’s not—”
“It’s okay. I do this all the time. It’s my job. Shirt, please.” She points to my shirt. I start to take it off. “What’s all this?” She comes closer and starts looking at my chest, the sides of my body, and then she goes around and examines my back. She comes around and looks right at me. “The doctor will be with you in a minute or two.” She exits.
I sit on this thin piece of paper that’s covering the examining table and think of what the hell I’m going to say to Dr. Boutouris. My life in this town, when I step back and look at it as an observer, is not one worth fighting for. Is it? I don’t want this life, so why do I keep fighting for it?
I don’t know how long I sit here before the door opens and Dr. Boutouris enters.
He stands in front of me. He seems taller than the last time I saw him, at my uncle’s restaurant, but I wasn’t sitting at the time.
“Hey there, Evan. Sorry to hear about your car accident and I’m sorry you won’t be joining us for Thanksgiving.”
I am avoiding eye contact. My entire body has gone rigid. Please don’t ask about all the scars.
He starts to put his hands on either side of my chest to feel my ribs. “The nurse already checked there,” I say more loudly than I intended.
This catches him off guard and he steps back. He then moves closer in and starts examining all the bruises, cuts, and wounds. He is very careful, as if I might break. He doesn’t know I’m already broken.
“Have you gotten into any other kinds of accidents?”
I just blink at him.
“Evan?”
“I’m here for X-rays. That’s what my—”
“Son, your entire body is covered. This isn’t all from a car accident. It can’t be.”
“I fall off my bike sometimes . . . also, I’m not very coordinated in general.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if he believes me. I wonder if he sees other kids like me.
“I don’t even feel it anymore when I fall.” I try to laugh it off.
He frowns at me. “Do your parents know about all these—”
“Do they know how klutzy I am? Oh yeah. I’ve always been this way.” More nervous laughter. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to make Thanksgiving, though.”
He’s still frowning. “I’ll get the nurse back in and she’ll take you to the X-ray room.”
An hour later, I’m standing outside the medical office. I text Henry:
Done.
He texts back almost immediately.
B right there.
“Get in.” He swings the door open from inside the car.
I get in. I take a breath for the first time since I walked into the doctor’s office.
“Where to?”
“I need to get back home.”
He pulls out of the parking lot and then glances over at me. “So. What did—”
“They took X-rays. He asked about all the other bruises.”
“Did you say anything?” I just look at him. “Right.”
“I don’t know if he believed me.”
“Do you ever—do you ever think of talking to anyone? Like him or the principal? I don’t know, someone other than me?”
It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. “It’s hard enough at home.”
We drive for a few blocks in silence. I can feel him thinking, feel him wanting to fix this. But he can’t fix this or me.
I say, “Thanks for picking me up.”
“Ev, have you checked any emails or texts other than mine?”
“Why? Jeremy keeps texting me but I don’t want to read them. I don’t want to deal with him right now—or maybe ever.”
“You may want to look at them.”
Something in his voice makes me pull the phone out of my pocket and scroll through Jeremy’s texts.
Henry’s voice is a little shaky. “Is there a video text?”
“Uh. Yeah, actually. I see one.” I hit Play. Henry is silent.
The more I watch, the warmer my face gets. My face must be the color of a pomegranate.
Oh.
Shit.
Henry pulls the car over. “Are you okay?”
I set the phone down. I stare straight ahead. My lips and tongue feel numb. I’m so embarrassed. My hands are resting on my lap but I can’t feel them. I know they’re there, but they feel like nothing. “Ev?” I keep staring out the windshield. The sky is so clear. Unseasonably so. This time of year the sky is usually gray with lots of clouds, the big, puffy kind.
“I don’t remember any of this.” Which makes this whole experience even more mortifying. My gaze hasn’t changed and the feeling in my hands hasn’t returned.
“You don’t have to—”
“It’s probably online by now. My parents will eventually hear about this. Or see it.” I think I can start to feel my left hand. “You know, I’ve been so worried that all my worlds would collide. Everything that I’ve worked so hard to file in the appropriate place would somehow escape.” I stop staring out the window and turn to look at Henry.
“It’s funny, but I never thought that this was something I had to worry about. That I was the one to worry about. All this time, I thought it was my mom or Gaige or the pastor or everyone else. But it turns out, it’s me.”