After a couple of days, I got used to the routine at Bent Creek. Wake up, check vital signs, chat for a bit with your group and group leader while waiting for breakfast, take my insulin, breakfast, morning goals group with a mix of different counselors along the doctor leading the goals group, my doctor, Dr. Finch.
Dapper and chill as always, Dr. Finch sat with me in the room after morning goals group. It was easy to talk with him. I mostly stayed on the surface of things with him because when it was time to go deep, I felt like I couldn’t do it. I felt like if I did go down that dark path of what had actually happened and how I truly felt about it all, I would lose the comfort zone I was in and in turn I’d lose my ability to want to talk to Dr. Finch or even be in Bent Creek Hospital. What else was I going to do if I didn’t stay here? Go back to my home where Mom and Pop fight and make me feel crazy? Sit and watch reality fake tv with Mom-Mom and we take our insulin together and stay silent about the other medications that I need to function, too. There was no way in hell I was going back that church so that the scary priest man could squeeze my head and the bronze statue of the man with arms wide open would stare at me and watch and let them do those things to me.
“I want to talk about home, Daniel.” Dr. Finch said. “What is home life like for you?”
I put my feet up in the chair and rested my chin on top of my knees. It made it easier to untie and re-tie my shoe laces in that position. I don’t know where or how I picked up this nerve picking habit to mess around with my shoe laces. It seemed to have started at the beginning of that school year after I was shortly put on academic probation.
“Home,” I said. “Home. Home. Home.” I almost began to sing it as I belted the word out once more.
Dr. Finch blinked and waited.
“It’s okay. Mom-Mom is great. She is weird like me but different because she is into church stuff. I don’t judge her or anything. I just wish that she wouldn’t judge me. Pop, well, Pop is just Pop. I mean,” I chuckled. “He is in and out. He doesn’t have a job yet. Mom is working around the clock and she leaves it to me to take Mom-Mom to the doctors. Which, really, I don’t know what’s going on there because Mom-Mom has been going to the doctor’s office a lot lately and it worries me. It could be because of Diabetes. But she says that she is okay. You see, me, my Pop and Mom-Mom all have Diabetes. We got it when we were kids. I shouldn’t have kids because they’ll probably have it too. Plus, Theresa would hate that. She wouldn’t want to…”
Dr. Finch’s expression changed. He furrowed his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side. He looked thoroughly confused, yet concerned.
“Go on,” he encouraged me to speak more.
I shrugged my shoulders and leaned back in my chair. I said, “I worry about my mother.”
“Tell me more about that, Daniel. Tell me about what worries you.”
Dr. Finch was the first doctor that I ever had that wanted me to talk about it. Still, I felt uncomfortable as I sat in the chair across from him. I picked at my shoelaces and kept my head down. I desperately wanted to smoke. It was out of question to even ask for cigarettes.
Dr. Finch waited for me to answer him, but I had no idea where to start. It was frustrating, trying to find the right words to explain the hows and whys of everything when most of the shit didn’t make enough sense to try to explain.
“It’s okay,” Dr. Finch said. “I’ll ask you in another way. Why did you ask to come to Bent Creek? You could have went home after you were released from Egleston Hospital.”
“I guess…” I said with a heavy sigh, “I guess it was because I had no other place to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I couldn’t go back home after everything that had happened. It was hard for them.”
“It was hard for whom?”
“Mom-Mom, my Mom and my Pop and Theresa…”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Since you’ve been here, you have only talked about everyone else’s problems, but what about you?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Dr. Finch didn’t look like he was buying it. He shook his head and gestured his hands out to me as he spoke, as if he was pleading with me.
“Look, Daniel,” Dr. Finch said. “I know that it’s not easy. Especially when you have been through all that you’ve gone through in the last week or so. The emotional stress on top of your physical stress from the complications you suffered with Diabetes, it’s-“
I don’t know what came over me. I put up my hand to stop Dr. Finch from speaking and I cut him off.
I said, “Having diabetes isn’t the real challenge. Sure, I have to stick myself with a needle about two times a day. I have complications if I don’t watch what I eat and take care of myself physically. Like, I can’t eat what everyone else eats like candy bars and birthday cake. I can live with that. I always have lived with it. It’s the Bi-Polar Disorder that messes me up. One minute I’m fine and as soon as something happens that makes me angry, I loose it. It’s like when I last saw Theresa talking to Ryan, I just wanted to kill him.” I paused and looked out of the window. Still picking with my shoelaces, I tried to calm down. It felt like my emotions wanted to get the best of me. I didn’t want to cry. I couldn’t cry!
Dr. Finch remained calm and quiet. He watched me and listened to me intently. It was a strange feeling to have someone listen and care the way that Dr. Finch seemed to care about what I had been through.
I continued, “I don’t understand Bi-Polar like I understand Diabetes. Diabetes is simple. It’s genetic. My grandmother has it and my father has it. Maybe Bi-polar is genetic too?” I paused. When Dr. Finch didn’t respond I said with a shrug, “I don’t know.”
Dr. Finch nodded his head and remained silent. I kind of expected him to tell me if it was true or not. I wondered if it was genetic. I expected him to hit me with some popular statistic or something. I looked at him and something about his concerned expression made me chuckle. He made me a bit anxious. The next few words out of my mouth seemed to spill out without thought.
“When I was a kid, I watched my father beat a man into a coma. I didn’t do anything to help the man. I just stood there and watched as my father beat the man’s face into a bloody pile of meat with his bare hands. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t react at all. I even had a bad dog bite from the guy’s German Shepard. I still didn’t show any emotions. My dad just spent the last few years in prison for hurting that man. After serving seven years, he came home last week. We never talk about it. My mom tried to talk to me about it one time, but I didn’t know what to say. Mom concluded that I was in shock and she didn’t press me anymore about it.”
Dr. Finch’s eyebrows raised up. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but I didn’t let him speak. I started to laugh and he shut his mouth. He looked at me questionably and asked, “What’s funny about that, Daniel?”
I continued to laugh as I said, “It’s funny to me because now it makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” Dr. Finch asked.
I answered, “I guess that I’ve been in shock for the past seven years.”
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Felicia Johnson 