Page 53 of Brain Damage

“Is that okay with you, Charly?” he asks.

I reach down with my right hand and pull up the hem of my gray T-shirt, revealing the tube I’ve had for as long as I can remember since I got hurt. It pokes out around four inches above my belly button, and the skin surrounding it is an angry red. Just lifting my shirt irritates it, and makes me wince with pain.

“Take it out,” I tell him.

Dr. Williams laughs. “I guess that’s a yes. We don’t have to do it this minute though⁠—”

“I want it out now,” I say firmly.

“And that’s the old Charly,” my mother says.

Dr. Williams goes outside my room to put on a yellow gown, and a pair of blue gloves. I watch him open up packages of gauze on the table by my bed.

“How do you get it out?” I ask him.

“Pull really hard,” he says.

I’m not sure if I like the sound of that.

It doesn’t matter though. I want this tube out, even if he has to slice it out of me with a knife while I’m still awake. So I don’t resist as he lays one hand on my bare abdomen, and grips the tube with his other hand. “One, two, three!”

Oh my God. Oh my God, this hurts so much. I am going to die before this stops hurting.

I hold my breath and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to hang in there. Finally, I hear a pop, and the pain diminishes, although I still feel it.

“Holy shit, that hurt!” I yell.

Dr. Williams holds up the tube. He points out the end that was inside of me, which looks like a little mushroom. The mushroom is much bigger than the hole that it came out of. It’s sort of like I gave birth to it. Not that I would know, since I never gave birth.

“That’s the last tube,” Dr. Williams says. “Charlotte McKenna, you are officially tube-free.”

They’ll have to fight me if they want to put it back.

36

BEFORE

I try to run when Clark isn’t around. I know it sounds silly, but I don’t want my husband to see (and smell) me when I’m all hot and sweaty. Yes, I know I get hot and sweaty during other activities. But I can’t really do anything about that.

I get back to my apartment from a five-mile run, feeling high on adrenaline. My knee is completely better. I could have run ten miles, except I wanted time to doll myself up before Clark got back from the office.

Don’t tell my mother, but I went running at Central Park. She hates it when I run there—she’s convinced I’ll almost certainly be raped and murdered. But seriously, what’s the point of living near this amazing park if I can’t run there? I stick to more crowded paths, for the most part. Even though it’s much nicer to run in solitude.

Before heading upstairs, I stop to check the mail. It’s the usual mix of bills, medical mail, and junk mail. Honestly, I don’t mind spam in my email, but junk mail seems like just a horrible waste of trees. It makes me sad. Medical mail is the worst though. A large bulk of it is journals. I honestly don’t understand how I receive so many medical journals, since I have no recollection of requesting any of them. They end up in a huge pile on my coffee table, making me feel guilty about the fact that I never, ever read them until I crack and throw them all out. And then there are the invitations to conferences and other continuing medical education activities—I swear, I could be traveling 365 days of the year and not manage to go to half of those conferences.

And finally: insurance. The American Medical Association wants more than anything in the world for me to have good life and disability insurance.

In the stack of mail, there’s only one item I can’t identify, which is an envelope with no return address. My name and address have been typed in. Intriguing. Is it possible that I’ve gotten one piece of interesting mail?

I rip open the envelope right in the mail room. I pull out a torn sheet of typewritten paper. I scan the writing and realize it’s a divorce certificate.

And my stomach sinks.

I grab my mail and head upstairs, shaking in spite of the sweat I worked up during my run. I ride up in the elevator, willing it to make it upstairs before my legs give out from under me.

When I get to the apartment, I’m relieved to see that Clark is home early. He’s sitting on the couch, watching television, when he’s supposed to be working on an upcoming case, but I’m too upset right now to be annoyed at him.

“Clark,” I say.