Chapter 17
I Felt Trapped
At first, time slows down and the world seems to glow with serenity. I turn and lean my back on the wall, glancing all around the room until my eyes find Annie. She’s looking at me with her mouth open, her eyes wide. Bedhead and my shirt, wrinkled and baggy on her, and the freckles across her nose and that expression on her face like I’ve just teleported in from another planet.
I look at her and I think, Yes, it’s because I love you so much.
And time stops.
It’s so clear. Though my lungs contract like I’ve been punched in the chest, my mind is quiet and calm. I love her. I’m in love with her. That’s what this strangeness in my heart and mind is. That’s why I’m so terrified of hurting her, of losing her, of somehow pushing her away.
And then time starts up again and the pain makes its way to my consciousness, burning and insistent. I cradle my hand against my chest, holding my wrist with my good hand, never looking away from Annie’s face.
She figures out what to say first. She hitches up one side of her mouth and says, “Welcome to rage mountain!”
I start to laugh, softly. I close my eyes and raise my eyebrows and inform her gently, “I’ve broken my hand.”
“Oh, shit.” I hear her get out of bed and approach me. She touches my forearm and says, “Dude, that looks bad.”
“Hurts a bit, too—which is a shame because otherwise I feel remarkably well,” I say, and I can feel the blood draining from my face.
She sighs dramatically and says, “Well, there go my hopes for more sex this morning. Can I take a shower before we go to the emergency room, or does it hurt so much I should just leave the house covered in semen?”
I laugh again, silently now. I haven’t opened my eyes. “I’ll put ice on it. No rush.”
The corners of my mouth go down. I can’t stop them. The pain is getting worse. My hand feels enormous, like it’s about to burst through my skin. I slide carefully down the wall, all the way to the floor.
“I’ll bring you ice,” she says.
“I can get it.”
“Oh, for the love of god,” she groans, already on her way out the door. “Doctors are the worst patients.”
* * *
It’s a transverse fracture of the extra-articular neck of the fifth metacarpal—bog standard boxer’s break, in other words, though impressively angulated. I’ve also sprained my wrist and various finger ligaments.
And I am not the worst patient. I am polite and apologetic, self-effacing when the A&E nurse, seeing my hand, laughs sympathetically, and says, “Hit a wall, mate?” and stoic when he maneuvers my fingers into a boxer splint, as a temporary solution to the newly-broken-bone about-to-go-on-a-plane problem. They give me a prescription for narcotics and tell me to see a doctor when I get back to the States.
And that’s that. I’m fine.
At different times during the afternoon our respective airlines have called Annie and me, and we’ve both got flights home tomorrow.
Simon gets home around six, taking off his jacket as he walks into the library, where he finds Annie and me in our pajamas, on his couch, her with her next public health theory book, me just staring at the ceiling, stoned on painkillers, my splinted hand resting over my sternum.
“Wh-wh—?” Simon says.
“’Lo, Simon,” I slur. “I got to Rage Mountain.”
Simon questions me with a look.
“He punched a hole in your wall because: feelings,” Annie explains. “Fortunately for your wall, the hole is really just a dent. Unfortunately for Charles, it’s a dent because he hit the stud.”
We worked this out on the way to A&E.
“I’m a fucking idiot,” I moan at the ceiling.
“A mmmoron,” Simon says.
“Thick as two short planks,” I add.
“Thick as that bloody tree of yours,” Simon says in an impression of our father so true to life that I feel a little nauseated at first, but then I laugh hilariously, and Simon joins me.
“Bluch, what tree?” Annie asks.
“Oh god,” I sigh. I hate this story. “They planted a tree at the house in Cornwall when I was born. Mum thought it would be sweet and he was pleased to have an heir, so they had one planted. And of course Mum wanted a tree for each of us, but he couldn’t be arsed, so there’s just the one tree, the Charles tree.”
“Wh-er . . .” Simon sits on the table by the couch. “Wwwhat was it like? Her-hitting it?”
“It was like . . . god, it was like heroin,” I tell the ceiling. “Time dilated and everything was just a bit brighter and more beautiful, just enough to make you think that’s how life actually is, or how it’s supposed to be. Just enough to fool you into thinking this is how being alive is supposed to feel.”
After a short silence, Annie snorts. “Like you’ve done heroin.”
“I have, you know,” I say, turning my eyes to her briefly before looking back at the ceiling. “Pretty much everything at least once. When you’ve got a monster to subdue and a well-padded bank account, you can and will try anything. I was bad, before, you know? Sex, drugs, and . . . well. Coldplay, anyway.”
I’ve surprised her. Probably appalled her.
Simon, though, he giggles. And then he starts making a weird noise—it takes me a second to realize he’s singing—“Nungnungnungnungnugnungnungnung ningningningning nungnungnung-nungnugnungnungnung. . .”
You wanker, I think, how did you know? But I grin as I think it, and then I’m singing along to Simon’s guitar imitation. He moves to the piano and plays instead, singing the harmony. I’m not a musician. I don’t really know how to sing. I can match pitches, but Simon . . . I drop out at the end and let him sing the ending. I chuckle when he gets to “And ignite your bones.”
Eyes still on the ceiling, I say, “Yes, exactly. Fuck you, you wanker. How did you know?”
Simon doesn’t answer—or rather he does, but not with words. He starts playing “The Scientist.”
And I think, How can he know me, when I’ve done my best not to be known? I laugh silently at the ceiling and whisper, “Wanker.” The corners of my mouth won’t stop down again and my nose stings. I grit my teeth to stop it.
When I have it under control, I call, “How did you know?”
Without stopping, Simon sings, as if these are the lyrics of the song, in a dead-on Chris Martin imitation, “First was the title/and major seconds/and there’s some deee-scending major thirds.” He transitions to a light, easy falsetto, to add, “Charles is a sucker for pop tunes. Oh, it’s such a shame his taste in music is so . . . much worse than his taste in girls.”
“Fuck off,” I shoot back, and I listen to the rest with the remnant of a grin lingering on my face.
At the end of the song, Simon says, “How lllong did it lll . . . er . . . ?”
I chuckle again. “How long did it last? ’Bout fifteen seconds? Twenty? After that, it just hurt a lot. I feel okay now, though—I’m surprised they gave me a narcotic.” I stop and swallow, then give a little vocalized sigh. “I haven’t given so little of a shit in a very, very long time.” I scratch my itchy face.
Simon starts playing the Beatles song “Fixing a Hole,” and I laugh out loud. At the end, he transitions right into “With a Little Help from My Friends.”
I turn to look at Annie, who’s watching me with an expression of astonishment. Confusion. Like she has no idea who I am. Well. Neither do I. I feel like someone’s broken me open and dumped all the pieces of me out onto the floor, a puzzle with no edges and no pattern, just an undifferentiated mess.
* * *
The pain wakes me in the middle of the night. Annie is fast asleep.
I go down to the kitchen for water and meds, and hear music, a piano, coming from the bat cave, so I take my drugs and follow the sound down to find Simon playing in his office.
“What was that?” I ask, when he gets to the end.
“Bach’s ‘Little’ Fugue,” he says, not looking up. He closes the lid over the keys and rests his elbows on it, rubbing his forehead against his hands. “Even I get tired of chaos.”
I lay myself down, bleary and hurting, on the black chesterfield. My eyelids are heavy, but my body is restless.
“Will there be fallout from Heathrow?” I ask.
He turns to me and tips his head from side to side. “The of-official consequences will certainly inclllude an investigation by the defense committee.”
“And the unofficial consequences?”
“Oh, there’s no percentage in prevention. I’ll be sacked,” he says, unconcerned. “Not for months, mh-mmmaybe years, but I’m finished.”
We share a long silence.
“Worth it?” I ask.
“My career in exchange for, ooh, anything between five hundred and fifty thousand lives?” he asks, pretending to calculate in his head, like he’s setting up a joke. But then he says, “It’s worth it for even one life.”
I look at him steadily. “Was one of them Annie’s?”
He nods without speaking.
My heart clenches in my chest and I close my eyes.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
When I open my eyes again, he says, “She’s . . .” He trails off, searching for an adjective he can’t find.
“I know,” I sigh, and sink a little further in my exhaustion.
Into the silence, Simon asks, “Whhhy did you hit the wall?”
I clear my throat against the instantaneous physical memory. “Because I felt trapped.”
He nods and waits. I see him imagining me as a wild animal, bleeding in a snare.
“Not by her,” I say through the tightness in my throat. “By my whole life, my whole identity. I’ve worked so hard. I’ve never stopped working. I’m exhausted from it. But still I’m throwing myself against these walls, as if I’ll ever get free. Hopeless.”
He opens the piano and plays three slow notes, each higher than the last, and then another series of three . . . and then a third series . . . and then the unmistakable riff of “Take On Me.”
I grin and imagine myself as the crosshatched cartoon of a man from the video, slamming himself against the cartoon walls to get to the real-life girl, while she watches in sympathetic agony, until at last he breaks free of the cartoon box and into the real world.
I’m stunned speechless by the simplicity of it. The obviousness. And it clutches me by the throat. I take off my glasses and put my intact hand over my eyes.
I’m not trapped. There is a way out. But oh god it will hurt.
As I lie there, swallowing and silent, he begins playing “Brothers in Arms” again.
I press the heel of my hand and the wrist of the brace against my eyes when he finishes.
“I’m going in early, ssso I won’t see you in the morning,” he says lightly. “Safe flight, et cetera.”
I feel his hand on my shoulder. And then he’s gone.
I don’t know how long I lie there. I don’t know what emotion makes my diaphragm convulse and shake, makes my jaw lock, teeth gritted. I don’t know how to take the next step forward. All I know is that my body is wracked and wild. The only thing to do is to allow this thing to roll over and through me, like a riptide.
When my body quiets to stillness, wrung out and limp under the influence of the trembling and the drugs, when I can breathe again, I haul myself upright and climb the stairs out of the cellar.
And find Annie sitting on the main stairs.
“Hey,” she says. “I woke up and you weren’t there. I was waiting for you. Where’d you go?”
I’m muzzy-headed from the drugs and the persistent, low-level throb of pain, but I feel like I’m seeing her clearly at last, without the haze of fear and denial and posturing.
I could tell her, I think. But I’m too drugged, too exhausted, too wrung out.
I sit beside her on the stairs. “Cellar with Simon.” I take her hand in my intact one. “Come to bed.”
We go up the stairs together, hand in hand, and get into bed. I pull her against me, her back to my front, and hold her.
“Charles,” she murmurs.
“Mh,” I say into her hair.
“We have to talk about The Thing.”
“Yeah.”
“And Boston.”
“Yeah.”
“You broke a bone, dude.”
I don’t answer.
She turns in my arms and gently pushes me to my back. She looks into my eyes as I touch her hair with my intact hand.
She says, “I think the whole Rage Mountain thing is, like, so amazing and important, and I want to help if I can. But I think The Thing is like . . .” She rests her cheek on my chest. “I don’t know. You tell me. Where does The Thing fit in the metaphor?”
I take the question seriously, thinking carefully for a long time. The Thing seems almost beside the point now—and that’s the problem, really. The Thing is a way I can feel closer to her, without actually being any closer. I feel the lower half of my body try to convince me that The Thing could dynamite my way through the mountain, but the upper half of me knows I’d only be crushed in a rockslide—and it might be a pretty good way to go, all things considered, if only there weren’t the risk of crushing Annie as well.
No. If I want to make my way to her, The Thing will not get me there; only reckoning with my own internal shit will do that. I’ve got to climb this bloody mountain.
Part of me wants to tell her that. Another part of me knows that if I tell her, she’ll take me seriously and not sleep with me again until I’ve dealt with the dragon—and even though I know that would be the wisest choice, I can’t bring myself to say it.
And then it turns out I don’t have to. She sits up, pushing away from me. She crosses her legs under her and says very seriously, “You know that Disaster thing I talked about?”
I nod.
“I think the Disaster isn’t mine; it’s yours. We do things about The Thing, and you’re the one who’s torn to pieces.”
I don’t answer.
“You broke. A bone.”
Again, I don’t answer. I watch her face. I feel the space between us widen, feel her creating distance. I’m panicked by it. I’m ashamed of making her responsible for saving me from The Thing. I feel rescued and abandoned at the same time.
She sits in silence, brow furrowed with that look of intense processing. And then her face changes, brightens, softens with insight—a shift in expression familiar to me, familiar and beloved. It makes me smile, even in the midst of the maelstrom inside me.
What I want to say is I love you, Annie. I love you. But instead—
“Can I—” I begin. “I’m not changing the subject. I just want to say . . . do you remember lab meetings at IU?”
“Of course.”
“You’d sit there silently for the first half hour, with your eyebrows crinkled together, a thoughtful moue on your face. And then, about halfway through the meeting, you’d say something like, ‘Sorry, I know I might be wrong about this, but the problem might be x’ and then you’d articulate precisely what everyone else has been trying to get at all along. As the semesters passed, that introductory apology disappeared and you’d just say, ‘Are you saying x?’ and then, in that last semester, you started to say, ‘I think you’re saying x.’ The shedding of the apology told me you were gaining confidence, but it was those silences that first made me think, This girl has a brain. And eventually I realized it was one of the most astonishing, curious, insightful brains I will ever encounter.”
Her face changes again, crumples into a tearful smile. She folds herself back into my arms.
“You have no idea how much I needed to hear that,” she says, her face against my neck.
I put my arms around her, careful with my broken hand. I kiss the top of her head and ask, “May I offer a bit of unsolicited advice?”
“Of course.”
“You never need to worry about what you hear; no one listens as intently and integrates as quickly and connects ideas as broadly as you. And you need never apologize for it. You’ll grow fastest if you focus instead on what you give back—make it about what the patient most needs to hear, rather than what’s most salient to you.”
I feel her nod. She sniffs and says, “That makes sense.”
As her body relaxes against mine, I consider the possibility that I’ve just told her how to help me with the mountain. I consider the possibility that, with her help, I might have nothing to fear from the dragon. For a long time, I consider the possibility that I can accept her help with the same easy confidence with which I have always offered help to her.
I say, “Annie, I’ve missed you so much.”
She’s asleep.
I don’t sleep at all. I touch my lips to her head and smell her hair.
Three days. Three days, a short-circuited terrorist attack, my appalling father, and a broken bone. That’s what it took to make a large enough break in the wall for me to glimpse what’s on the other side.
If I tried to beat my way through it, I’d kill myself. So I’ll have to climb it.
And then there’s the dragon at the top.
But there’s Annie on the other side. If she’ll have me. And even if she won’t—like medieval knights in courtly love, the dragon’s got to be slain either way, so it might as well be done in a lady’s name, even if the lady is married to the king.
My lady is not married. My lady has only ever been mine. Perhaps. . . perhaps, if I’m very lucky, she may only ever be mine.
Mine.
As I am hers.
I think about the six months it took to get out of the pit, the four months in the swamp. I’m more afraid of the mountain than I was of either of those . . . but if I can just get past the dragon—hopefully with nothing worse than a broken bone and maybe a few scorches—then I might spend all my nights with Annie’s hair tickling my nose and her breath on my chest. Then I’ll be free to love her and, if I’m very, very lucky, to receive her love.
And all I have to do is climb a mountain, battle a dragon, and break through a wall of my own construction.
So, okay.