“Do you think Dr. Rhodes is married?”
I didn’t care if she was or not. At this particular moment in time my skin was crawling with death and I just wanted Mum to turn the car around and go home. My knees jiggled up and down uncontrollably.
“I think she’s got a daughter,” I said.
“Has she? I wonder how old she is.”
I didn’t expect Dr. Rhodes was someone who went to Mum’s salon, and she was therefore off her gossip radar. I stared out the window as we passed a woman holding a blond toddler’s hand.
“Did you hear Melissa and the kids leave for the airport this morning?”
I nodded. At 6:22 a.m. I’d woken up to tapping on my wall. Just three.
Tap, tap, tap.
Two minutes later a car engine started up and I listened as Melissa, Casey, and Teddy Dawson drove away. Melissa was taking them back to New York with her. She didn’t want to let them out of her sight, so she planned to hire a nanny back in America and keep them with her while she worked.
We pulled up into a space on the far end of High Street and I felt like I was going to be sick. I looked at Mum and she pressed her fingers to her lips and then held them out toward me. That was as close as she could get to giving me a kiss.
“Be strong, Matthew,” she said. “You can do this, okay?”
I sat there for a moment, trying to think of a reason why I couldn’t get out of the car, why I needed her to turn around and take me straight home. Beside the car was a bin, and a missing child poster was still stuck on one side. Teddy’s glassy eyes blinked out at me.
Go on, Fishy.
Dr. Rhodes welcomed me with a beaming smile, and I sat on the brown leather sofa and glanced at the clock on her wall.
“Thanks for coming, Matthew, and well done. I know it’s not easy for you.”
Smiling, she nodded her head at me, and I suddenly felt like I was a guest on a talk show.
“So, let’s get started, shall we?” Dr. Rhodes paused to put her glasses on and then we began.
First she said she wanted me to explain how I felt when I came into contact with something that I deemed dirty. I felt silly, but after a while it was obvious that she wasn’t going to laugh, so I told her that I basically felt like my heart was going to explode.
We then discussed my top five fears, and she drew a ladder and I had to score each one according to how it made me feel:
5) Touching public door knobs/hand rails without gloves—anxiety level 7
4) Touching a trash can without gloves—anxiety level 8
3) Touching Nigel without gloves—anxiety level 9
2) Touching another person without gloves—anxiety level 9
1) Kissing another person—anxiety level 10
I didn’t mention my issues with tenplusthree or the fact that I had a piece of wallpaper in the shape of a lion’s eye hidden in my pocket to bring me luck.
We talked for a long time about what triggered my anxieties, and then she put her pad to one side for a moment and removed her glasses.
“From what you’ve told me, I think your fear of germs stems from a worry that you might pass illness on to another person. What distresses you is not the thought of you being ill, but others. Is that right?”
She was talking about that “magical thinking” again. How did she know that stuff? Her head tipped to one side as she went in for the kill.
“Would you like to tell me about that?”
I cleared my throat. My eyes warmed as they moistened; I quickly blinked the tears away.
“If-if I don’t clean … If I don’t keep cleaning then I’ll get sick and then someone around me could die. Because of me.”
Dr. Rhodes nodded.
“Okay. So what is your evidence to back up this theory?”
I rubbed at my scar over my eyebrow and felt the deep indentation, which was all the evidence I needed. The spot I couldn’t stop picking when I was little. I shrugged. Dr. Rhodes blinked at me—once, twice, and then again. I wanted to choke on the silence. Unlike Mum or Dad, she wasn’t going to let me get away with not answering.
“Mum’s baby died,” I said, my voice trembling. “Because of me.”
Any minute now I knew I’d start crying and I tried to swallow it away.
“Okay,” said Dr. Rhodes, resting her chin on her fist as she leaned forward. “Go on.”
I took a deep breath.
“When I was seven I woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick. I lay there for a bit, too scared to move because I really didn’t want to throw up. You know that feeling?”
Dr. Rhodes nodded.
I’d laid in bed absolutely still for a few minutes, listening to my stomach gurgling and hoping the sick feeling would pass, but it didn’t, so I called out for Mum. She was heavily pregnant so it took her a while to get to me, but eventually she appeared, filling the space in my doorway.
“What’s up, Matthew?” she said lazily. Her long, white dressing gown was tied around her tummy as if it was anchoring a balloon, and her hands rested on top.
“I don’t feel very well,” I said, trying not to move.
She clicked my lamp on and sat on my bed, and my stomach churned as the mattress moved. Her wide hand swaddled my forehead, making me shiver.
“You’re burning up, darling. I’ll go down and get you something. Just let me wake up a minute.”
Her eyes were half-shut, and rather than waking up, she looked like she was about to fall asleep right there, sitting up on my bed. I waited a couple of seconds, watching her head nod gently forward, her eyes getting heavier and heavier. I swallowed once, twice, but I just couldn’t hold it in any longer and I turned on my side and threw up over the edge of the bed like I was being seasick on a boat. My carpet, duvet, bedside table, and Mum’s right arm and leg were all splattered with vomit.
“Oh Matthew! Brian! BRIAN!”
I knew she wasn’t really angry, just exhausted from the pregnancy and being woken up in the middle of the night. Dad appeared in his pants, his hair all sticking up.
“Oh Matthew! Urgh, look at it all … Come on then, let’s clean you up.”
Dad stripped my bed while I managed to get myself to the bathroom and vomited in the toilet as I shivered with fever.
The next morning I woke up feeling even worse. My skin prickled and every inch of my body ached—from my eyelids to my fingertips. I got myself to the bathroom, and when I saw myself in the mirror I let out a little yelp. My face was peppered with bright red spots—I was smothered with them. I lifted up my shirt and stared at my chest. It was as if they were erupting out of my skin before my eyes. I screamed out for Mum but this time Dad got to me first, his face full of panic, but when he saw my chest he laughed.
“You’ve got chicken pox! That’s all it is. It’s just chicken pox, Matty.”
Mum appeared behind him.
“At last! I thought you’d never get it,” she said as she stood there smiling. Dad frowned at her and nodded toward her pregnant stomach, but Mum waved an “it doesn’t matter” hand at him.
“It’s fine, Brian. I’ve had chicken pox before. I’ll get dressed.”
Considering the baby was due in a week’s time, Mum was amazing. She looked after me like a proper nurse: putting cool washcloths on my forehead when my temperature was high, giving me any food I wanted when my appetite came back, and rubbing pink, chalky lotion onto my spots, which were driving me insane from the itching. But after a few days, things weren’t going so well. I was lying on the sofa downstairs reading a comic when I overheard her talking on the phone in the kitchen. She was trying to keep her voice low, but she sounded panicked.
“There’s blood, Brian. I’m scared … Yes, yes, a cab’s on its way now … I know, I know, but I’m really worried … Penny and Gordon are coming to watch him …”
Her voice cracked and I could hear her crying quietly in the hallway. She must have composed herself, as there were no tears when she came into the living room to reassure me that everything was going to be okay.
Penny and Gordon arrived and Penny helped Mum into the back of the cab. She put two bags into the trunk, one for Mum and one for the baby, and then the car pulled away. As Penny shut the door, I bit my lip so I wouldn’t start crying. In her rush, Mum had forgotten to say goodbye to me.
I wiped the tears from my face and I looked up at Dr. Rhodes.
“He died because of me. I was sick on my mum and then the baby died. If I hadn’t been ill, if I had kept the germs away, Callum would be here now.”
I put a hand over my face and sobbed. Dr. Rhodes passed me tissue after tissue until I calmed down.
“It wasn’t your fault, Matthew. Bad things happen to people all the time, and sometimes there just isn’t a reason behind it. But I can tell you this for sure: Your brother dying didn’t have anything to do with you being sick or the chicken pox.”
I nodded at her. I understood what she was saying, but a huge part of my brain still didn’t believe it. It was as though that section had its own wiring and was just making up what it wanted to torment me.
“You’ve done so well telling me about this today. Have you ever told your parents about it?”
I shook my head.
“Why don’t you think about telling them, Matthew? It would help them to understand how you’re feeling.”
I didn’t say anything, but I nodded and wiped my eyes again. I was so tired I could have curled up and gone to sleep on her soft sofa right there and then.
She talked about how the only way I could overcome my fears was to confront them head-on and put myself into situations where I felt most uncomfortable. I had to do the opposite of what my mind was telling me. Then I would be retraining my brain to understand that the things I was so frightened of weren’t so scary after all. Over the next few weeks she said we would come up with some exercises for me to do, and if I worked really hard and was really committed, then I’d see results pretty quickly. I told her that this sounded utterly petrifying and she smiled. I glanced at the clock and saw it said 10:27. The unlucky minute had passed and I hadn’t even noticed.
“You’ve done so well, Matthew,” she said as she smiled and closed her notebook. “What are your hopes for the future?”
I think I was supposed to say something like how I hoped to travel the world, get married, have a couple of kids, a black Labrador, a nice Audi in the driveway. That kind of thing. But I just shrugged.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Putting her notebook on her desk, she said that before we finished, she wanted to tell me a quick story. Placing her glasses on the top of her red hair and leaning back, she looked like she was about to read me a bedtime book.
“Once upon a time there was a young boy named Timothy who was about your age and was like you in many ways. Each morning he would get ready for school just like all the other kids, but after he’d said goodbye to his mum he would grab a bright orange bobble hat that he left on a hook by the front door. He’d put it on, check himself in the mirror, and then head off to school.
“As you can imagine, wearing an orange bobble hat in class all day and every day meant that he got quite a lot of grief from the other kids. They never tired of pointing and laughing and hurling rude words at him in the hallways, but it didn’t put Timothy off. Every time he left the house, without fail, he wore the hat.
“One morning, before the teacher arrived to give an exceptionally dull geography lesson, a nasty girl named Tabitha stood up with her hands on her hips and shouted across to Timothy, who was sitting at the back of the class with his bobble hat on as usual.
“‘Oi! Timothy! Why d’ya wear that hat every day?’
“The whole class erupted with laughter and everyone stared at Timothy, sitting on his own in the corner, the bobble hat pulled down so low it rested on his eyebrows. He looked up, and he smiled at the faces around him and everyone fell silent.
“‘Why? Well, to protect myself from the poisonous snakes, of course.’
“The entire class fell into more hysterical laughter, and when they eventually quieted down, Tabitha piped up again:
“‘But you’re so stupid! There aren’t any poisonous snakes in the school, are there?!’
“Everyone hushed again, eagerly awaiting Timothy’s response. The boy grinned back at them all.
“‘Aha, that’s right!’ he said, a knowing smile on his face. ‘But that’s only because I wear my lucky orange hat, isn’t it?’”