Ch14

His nightmares had left him ragged the following day. His thoughts were loose and poorly saddled. His brain was afire with exhaustion. The Voices roared. Scolded. Begged.

From across the small Family Consult Room on the third floor just outside the surgical suites, Dr. Tanager’s dark eyes soaked Dex like a coat of paint, suffocating and heavy. He was searching for errors and finding too many to count.

Dex kept his fake smile bolted on tightly for the sake of their clients who shared the space. They were a Chilean family, kinder and more patient than he ever deserved.

Dr. Tanager’s lips moved, and Dex tilted his ear to listen, but The Voices were unyielding, demanding his attention. Piles upon piles of lingual tongues filled his skull until nothing and no one could be comprehended:

“-can’t handle this any longer, I need to go, I need to die.”

“There’s just not enough of me to handle this, there’s-”

“Of course, he’s gone. Everyone leaves. Everyone.”

A child screamed, voice trembling with a despondent vibrato.

Dex blinked and noticed Dr. Tanager’s expression. It was still now. Expectant. Angry.

“S-s-sorry doctor, could you please repeat that?” Dex admitted, a guilty break in his brows. This time, as the squat man spoke, Dex pressed his thumbprint into the gory crater he’d burnt into his hand, tucking his limbs against him to shield the torture from others. With each pang of pain, he was allowed a moment of clarity to make out Tanager’s nasally words. Once Dex memorized the sentence, he relinquished his grip, closed his eyes, and breathed.

“-and when will this stop? Why do I-”

“But she has no one now. How am I supposed to fucking-”

He relayed the dialogue to the waiting family. It was a list of detailed instructions for their daughter’s post-surgery care.

Dex squinted with focus as they voiced their questions, pressing into the wound to quiet his head. He spun to share these with the impatient doctor, but Tanager’s voice was already overtalking him, barking and irritated.

Ill-prepared for the interruption, Dex hadn’t readied his ears and was left blinking against the barrage of voices and overstimulation.

Tanager’s tongue pressed about the insides of his mouth as though itching to scream obscenities, not that Dexteras could’ve properly heard them.

Before Dex could open his mouth to apologize, to ask for yet another chance, Tanager was standing on his feet and opening the conference room door. He spat something along the lines of “get yourself together” and “telephone translator.”

Dex raised pitiful brows to the family before him and repeatedly apologized for his struggle.

They were loving and affirmative and watched him leave with worried faces.

He’d thought Tanager would slide into the hall to scold him, but the man only glared and slammed the door as soon as Dex’s coattails cleared the threshold.

Stitches pulled apart at his breastbone. His world wobbled with anxiety and blackened peripherals. Louder still, The Voices screamed at him. His fingers shook as they ran along the wall, assessing doors, handles, and curtains. Finally, his nails scraped with a steel shing along the metal of a supply closet.

“Dexteras…?” cooed a voice beside him.

He flinched and spun to find a tiny nurse with silver features and a kind face below.

He blinked the hot tears from his eyes and squinted down upon her. He knew that face. He knew her.

The tiny woman smiled up at him with pink lips, wearing pink scrubs patterned in purple cows. “Dexteras, I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Toni Plover, I-”

“You found me,” whispered his dry lips before his brain had fully comprehended it. His stomach flip-flopped. Panic swelled in his throat. Toni was the one who’d found him after he’d…

“I’ve thought of you every day since that day. Every day…” she said in her quiet singsong voice, eyes soft and assessing.

He remembered her fingers being the least cold on his skin. Her words the most loving and calm:

“Hey friend, I need you here. I need you to stay with me. I need you to look at me if you can, alright? Feel my hands. I’m not going to let you go.”

She smelled of an old perfume that he couldn’t place but felt he could name if given enough time.

“Th-thank you,” he said, investing his all just to smile. “I c-can’t thank you enough. You were the kindest person I’d ever met during that time.” Not that such an accolade was a difficult one to earn.

Her lips parted to ask him more questions, maybe how he was, how life was treating him. But he felt her gaze fall to the sweat on his chest, the burning in his eyes. Then, she simply closed her mouth and smiled. She followed his anxious features, which darted from her wrinkles to the supply closet beside them.

His heart was thudding in his throat. Could she hear it?

Toni removed a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the supply closet with an encouraging nod. “It’s good to see you, Dexteras,” she said. “Be kind to yourself, okay?” She winked and opened the door.

He took it from her and flung himself inside, tucking his body between its metal shelves. The door shut behind him with an affirming click. Yet another gift he could never repay Toni Plover for.

He dropped his head back against the cold brick, pressing the heels of his hands against his burning eyelids. Heat swelled within him, tightening his chest stiff with tension. He wasn’t certain if he’d sob or pass out.

Fearful he’d fall unconscious, he spun and impulsively struck the painted brick.

Then again.

And again.

His vision doubled with the pain.

Worried tones mumbled from surrounding rooms as the walls thudded.

His world trembled, but his burning knucklebones kept him tethered to the present. Hot tears blinked from his eyes with shame.

What would Tanager say to Norah?

What would Toni think?

“This isn’t going to work.”

“Your man is falling apart.”

“You’re a fool for believing he could do this.”

The Voices agreed with their unending screams.

Through the blur of his vision, he eyed the dented, bleeding skin of his fists. Their edges were bone white, divots filled with pools of crimson. The sight of them offered no peace, but The Voices had suddenly grown still.

Silent.

A grateful sigh trembled from his chest.

The quiet was loud and foreign, allowing him to hear his racing heart and the tiny metallic taps fiddling against the closet’s door.

A breeze like a seashore rushed over his hot limbs. He drank in the chill, his shoulders fell. The door opened.

And there she was, head sideways and observant.

He was certain Norah Kestrel was eyeing both his inward and outward hurts with disgust, but as his eyes focused, he saw no fury, no disappointment. She was simply there, taking in his corpse.

She stepped in and shut the door with gentle fingers as though she could feel his pounding headache.

He cursed his impulses. His optimism. His belief that he could do this. That he could actually fix people in the way they fixed him. You foolish, stupid old dog.

Norah leaned against the brick beside him and gave a small smile, resting her temple against the cold wall. Her gaze was neither pitying nor mocking. It was an I’ve-been-there-too sort of expression.

He pressed his forehead against the wall, eyes pacing the floor below. “It’s just been s-such a long time. And s-s-so many people. So much I can ruin.” He muttered, knowing he was making no rational sense.

But her eyes brightened like gemstones, and she nodded. Then her gaze fell to his shaking fists. She held up a finger and stepped into the hall, where the rummaging of a nursing cart could be heard. She returned to him in the dark with supplies.

“Nor, please, you don’t have to. This is my problem, my fault, I’ll-”

“Dex,” she interrupted, voice stern and honest, “as long as you’re safe and the clients are safe, I’m never going to take this opportunity from you,” she promised. She took his lead fist in her hands and dabbed ointment on its seeping wounds. Her fingers were cold and healing.

“You’re giving people a voice in a way no one else can here. You don’t owe anyone anything. You have nothing to prove. No one has grounds to judge you,” she added, conviction firm in her gaze. “You’re important. Your work matters.”

She spun a thin web of gauze around his knuckles and examined her work before returning the hand to him.

He held it in his own, hoping to savor the kindness.

“But more importantly, so do you. You matter. So, if you need to breathe, to walk away, you leave at any moment. I’ll always back you up.” She raised a brow, daring him to speak harshly of himself.

He nodded, thoughts oscillating betwixt unworthiness and accountability. She reminded him that his self-care was his charge. His advocacy was his own to care for. But regardless of what others thought they knew of him, he didn’t have to be ashamed of it.

“You are the professional of your needs, Dex. Fuck them and what they think, you take care of yourself.”