I’m cruising through equations—parabolas and ellipses and hyperbolas.
Then, Boom! Thunder rattles the shack.
And before I know it, I’m in a ball under the table, trembling, crying again.
Wendy drops to her hands and knees. She gets her face real close to mine. And she tells me it was just thunder.
“I know that, Wendy.”
She gives me a hand up. Leads me to the entrance. She pulls the tarp back a crack and we watch the storm roll by.
When rays of sun finally break through, Wendy says, “Let’s take a drive.”
I get behind the wheel of the Dodge. “Huh-uh,” she says. “Scoot over.”
Wendy turns right on Valley Drive. She heads into Hatch, then hops onto I-25, the freeway to Las Cruces.
Soon, we’re parked in front of Dr. Fuentes’s office.
“What are we doing here, Wendy? What’s going on with my brother?”
“Ever since Manny … Teodoro, sometimes you seem good. And sometimes you seem preoccupied, or lost, or anxious. You’ve been through a lot. And I want you to feel better.”
We’re not here for my brother.
“I think going in there could be a good thing, but this is your call. No judgment either way.”
I can’t move. I can’t open the door. I can’t walk out of this truck.
Because if I do, I’m admitting something to Wendy.
I get how nuts that is. Because she knows what I’ve been through. She knows what I’ve seen. She’s seen me cry. A bunch of times. Wendy knows. She knows. She knows. Getting out of this truck and seeing that doctor is not admitting a thing.
But I cannot do it. “I get it,” I say. “Thank you. But I’m doing better. I’m fine. I’m good. And we’ve got a ton of work to do, so…”
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll go back. No worries. It’s not my place, Teodoro.”
Wendy turns the key and backs the truck out.
And it hits me in the gut, the idea that it’s not her place.
“Can you stop the truck?”
She stops.
“It’s not your place, Wendy?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. Laughs like she’s confused and exhausted. “Is it, Teodoro?”
“Yes. Yes, it’s totally your place.”
“Okay. Good to know. What do we do now?”
“I guess you park the truck and I go in there and get my head checked out.”
We take a seat inside.
And when I’m called to see Dr. Fuentes, Wendy holds out her arms. She gives me a squeeze and says, “Proud of you, dude.”
Doc Fuentes asks me a lot of questions.
I answer him straight up.
He says I’ve seen a lot of tough stuff, so my anxiety and jumpiness make sense.
He asks about my sleep.
I tell him some nights I sleep pretty well. Some nights, I get stuck on those pictures in my head. But I always get up in the morning ready to work. And even though I’m distracted, I can push through and get stuff done.
I tell him my appetite is fine. I don’t want to hurt myself or anyone else. Seeing Manny or being in the same space with him doesn’t set me off. It did when we were in the rental. But now I feel better when I can see him.
Dr. Fuentes says he’d like me to try counseling before we go with meds.
I tell him I don’t have a problem with meds.
He doesn’t, either. He just wants to try counseling first. And as long as things don’t get worse in the next couple weeks and I start feeling a little bit better after that, we’ll hold off on the drugs. He’ll be in contact with me and Dr. Chapman to monitor the situation.
In the truck Wendy asks me how it went.
“Well,” I start, “Dr. Fuentes says…” I take a deep breath.
“It’s all right,” she says, patting my back for support. “Whatever it is, you can say it.”
“Turns out I have this thing,” I say. “And the official diagnosis is … oh, what was the terminology he used?”
“Take your time, Teodoro.”
“He did all these tests—a whole battery—and he came to the conclusion that I am”—I suck in a deep breath—“batwack loony!”
“No, Teodoro!” She covers her mouth.
“Oh, yes. And compounding that situation is, I am bananas.”
“I knew it! I knew you were bananas. And…?”
“And several times, he used the term cray-cray.”
“You are the cray-crayest, Teodoro Avila.”
We laugh for a bit.
And then I take a deep breath. And let it go real slow. “Wendy?”
“Yeah?”
“I need to do this over.”
“Do what over?”
“This conversation.”
I get out of the truck and close the door. Then I open up and climb back in.
“Hi, Wendy.”
“Hey, Teodoro.”
“Now you ask me—”
“Got it.” She clears her throat. “Hey, buddy. How’d it go in there?”
“Thanks for asking. Um, Dr. Fuentes thinks I got some PTSD-style symptoms from being around my brother. No meds for now. But I’m seeing Dr. Chapman tomorrow. Once a week after that. We’re going to try and talk it out.”
She smiles at me. “That’s really good, Teodoro.”
“I think so, too.”
Wendy takes the slow, winding way back on Valley Drive.
I spend the whole ride telling her all the stuff that started the day Manny told us he was joining up and going to war. How that changed us. How losing the most important person in my life for all those years changed me. How being afraid I’d never see him again changed me.
I tell her everything that happened after he came home. I tell her why I moved out—why I had to move out—and why I’d do it again. I tell her about the road trip and about what it was like—what it was really like—the night Manny fired that gun, and what it was like seeing him in the hospital.
Wendy pulls into the farm and past the shack. Wendy parks the truck.
“So,” I say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t up front with you, it’s just—”
“You don’t have to explain, Teodoro. You’ve been through a lot.”
“You have, too, Wendy.” I smile at her and say, “Families, right?”
“Families,” she says. “Tell me about it.”
I grab the door handle.
Wendy pulls me back and into a hug. And she says she’s sorry.
I tell her she doesn’t have anything to be sorry about. And I thank her for taking me to see Fuentes today. It wouldn’t have happened without her.
“Time to get to it?” I say.
“I’m ready,” she says. “You ready?”
“I’m so ready. Let’s go!”