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“How are you doing, Jeremy?”
He looked up from his clasped hands at the man sitting in the leather chair across from him. “Didn’t Dr. Meyer tell you?”
“I’d like to hear it in your own words.” Dr. Fuller always reminded him of a movie psychiatrist. Not the handsome, distinguished kind in serious dramas, but the short balding type in comedies. The man wore ill-fitting suits, had a terrible blond comb-over, and always had a pair of glasses sliding down his nose. Jeremy would’ve had a hard time taking the man seriously, but he was damn good at his job. Jeremy hated the psychiatrist he saw after he was discharged to rehab, but he’d been with Dr. Fuller for a while.
Initially, he’d seen Dr. Fuller weekly, then once a month, finally tapering down to twice a year to tweak his pain meds and check in. Under the best of circumstances, Jeremy didn’t like talking about his feelings, but he wasn’t going to be able to get out of it today.
Jeremy sighed. “I’ve been better.”
“I reviewed your bloodwork and MRI results and discussed them with Dr. Meyers. We both agree everything appears to be well within normal ranges. There are no signs of brain atrophy, and I was pleased to see your liver and kidney function tests are within healthy ranges. While you may be taking more pain medication than you’d like, you haven’t been over-using it.”
“I try not to overdo it,” Jeremy said. For the last fifteen years, he’d had a lingering fear he’d turn into an addict, but it seemed he didn’t have an addictive personality. He was grateful for small favors.
“I know. As far as your meds go, you’ve been an extremely compliant patient. However, Dr. Meyer and I both feel your social isolation is the root of your current problems.”
Jeremy grimaced, and Dr. Fuller tapped his pen on the pad of paper in front of him. “That right there concerns me. Jeremy, why are you so opposed to the idea of resuming a normal social life?”
He slouched, stretching his legs out in front of him as he sighed again. “I dunno. At first, when I got out of rehab and started living on my own again, all I could do was put one foot in front of the other. Trying to get used to living by myself was exhausting. The vocational therapist helped me find the position at the sporting goods store, and it was great to have a job again, but it was exhausting too. For so long, the toll of day-to-day life was about all I could handle.” He looked down at his hands, intertwined and resting on his green T-shirt. “It slowly got better, but by the time I could do my PT and work a full day and not pass out from exhaustion, it had been so long since I had any kind of social life, I guess I didn’t know where to start.”
He glanced up to see Dr. Fuller scribbled notes, nodding. “I don’t imagine the lack of family support helped.”
Jeremy’s laugh was hollow. “No.”
“What about people you knew from before the accident? We’ve talked about this before, but you’ve always been hesitant to discuss it.”
“Yeah, I know.” He shifted, the denim of his jeans catching on the fabric of the chair. “None of them were what I’d call good friends, I guess. We played basketball or went out to the bars and clubs, but we weren’t close. They weren’t the kind of guys who wanted to hang out with someone who couldn’t do anything.”
“You were quite active before the car accident, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. I loved sports, loved being outdoors.” Loved dancing and fucking, too, he thought wistfully. He missed all of it.
“And you were no longer able to participate in those activities?”
“Not most of them. And what was I going to do, call up the guys and say ‘hey, why don’t you come hang out at the pool with me while I do my PT’? It was humiliating. I felt like ... less of a man. It would be emasculating as hell for them to see me scarred and crippled.” His tone was bitter.
“Jeremy, we’ve talked about the negative connotations of you using the word crippled.”
“Don’t give me your PC bullshit, doc. I am crippled and nothing is going to change that.” Dr. Fuller frowned, and Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Look, I’d never call someone else crippled, but when it comes to me, let’s be honest and call a spade a spade.”
“That brings up an interesting point, Jeremy. Why are you so much harder on yourself than you are on others?”
He shrugged. “Always have been, I guess.”
Dr. Fuller frowned but changed the subject. “You were in a relationship at the time of the accident, correct?”
Jeremy drew in a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Can you tell me more about him? I know we discussed it years ago, but refresh my memory.”
“Stephen?” Jeremy smiled faintly. “Shit, I don’t even know how to describe him. Handsome, older ... on his way to becoming a silver fox. Smart, driven, incredibly successful, but not arrogant. A really great guy.”
“Sounds like a pretty good description to me.”
“I mean, I can describe him, but it doesn’t even begin to cover it. He’s one of those charismatic men who draws everyone to him without any effort. You have to be around him to get the full impact.”
“It sounds like you loved him.”
Shrugging, Jeremy considered it. “I suppose I did. I cared about him a lot, but I never told him I loved him. He told me, and I—I couldn’t say it back. I wasn’t ready for him, for a serious relationship. Shit, I was twenty, doc. What does a twenty-year-old know about anything?”
For him, being in a relationship had been about as comfortable as a pair of underwear that was two sizes too small, and likely to last about as long.
He’d been miserable and ready to get out of the damn relationship long before the car hit him and tore both their lives apart, but Stephen had been so compelling. His confidence, his intensity, they’d hooked Jeremy from the beginning, and long after Jeremy was feeling the itch to move on, he’d stayed with Stephen. Of course, there were a lot of reasons he hadn’t walked away, primarily because he had nowhere else to go, but Stephen himself had been a huge part of it.
“I think it depends on the twenty-year-old, but clearly, you weren’t ready then. Are you now?”
Who would want me? Jeremy thought, but what he said was, “I’m not a relationship guy, I guess.”
Dr. Fuller’s pursed lips told Jeremy he didn’t believe what he’d said, but he didn’t call Jeremy out on it. “I’d like to return to our earlier conversation about your relationship with Stephen. You’ve never fully explained why it ended after the accident.”
Jeremy gritted his teeth. His relationship with Stephen was the last subject he wanted to talk about now, but he thought about the headaches and the depression and realized he didn’t have much of a choice. He didn’t like having a psychiatrist poking around in his head, but he wasn’t an idiot. Dr. Fuller had helped him in the past and cooperating with him now was the only way he was going to fix anything. Jeremy sighed audibly. Shit, he was really going to have to do this.
“I’ve told you a little about my parents, right?”
“Yes. I know they didn’t support you while you were in rehab.”
“That’s really the tip of the iceberg. Before then, when I was with Stephen, they cut off my money for school when they found out I had moved in with him. Then the accident happened, and they treated him as if it was his fault. As if he was the reason I had no money to fix my brakes. He offered. Shit, he practically begged me to let him pay for the repairs, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the kept man. Of course, Stephen never treated me like I was a rent boy, but I felt like I was, you know?”
Dr. Fuller nodded.
“So after the accident, when I was so drugged up and mentally fucked up I couldn’t tell what day it was or, hell, where I was, they convinced me the accident was Stephen’s fault. I believed them, I mean, they were my parents. Yeah, we never got along well—they always hated that I was gay—but still, I trusted them not to betray me like that.” His voice cracked, and he had to take a minute to pull himself together. “Anyway, they convinced me Stephen was the one at fault, and when he came to visit me in the hospital, I threw him out, told him I didn’t want him in my life any more.”
“Did you?”
“Then? I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted.”
“And now?”
Jeremy smiled sadly. “And now, I think it was better for him that he didn’t have to take care of me.”
“Would he have?”
“Shit, yeah.” Jeremy didn’t hesitate. Stephen was the kind of guy who would have bent over backward to take care of him. “The best doctors, round-the-clock care, state of the art everything, he would have done it. Even if he hadn’t blamed himself for the accident, he would have done it because it was the right thing to do.”
Dr. Fuller frowned. “Why would he have blamed himself?”
“Because that’s who Stephen is. Look, I saw him again after I got out of the hospital. When I was in the residential facility in Decatur about five years after the accident. He tracked me down there, and we talked. I was still kinda fucked up, not quite on the right combo of meds and still using a cane. If I’d asked him for help, he would have taken me home and taken care of me. Without question. But I couldn’t ask him for that.” Jeremy’s voice was a little raw.
“Why not?”
“Because he deserved so much better than me. Even if I were the kind of guy who deserved him before the accident, I sure as hell wasn’t after.”
Leaning forward, Dr. Fuller’s frown deepened. “Jeremy, I’m concerned about your self-image. You did so well coping after the accident, but I feel like you stalled somewhere along the way. I don’t want to minimize your experiences or your feelings, but there are a number of people with similar or worse injuries than yours who go on to lead a full life. Veterans, people who became amputees after car crashes, people coping with paralysis ... They have relationships, families—”
“Well, clearly, they’re a hell of a lot tougher than I am,” he snapped.
Dr. Fuller’s tone was quiet and measured when he spoke. “Jeremy, you have every right to be angry and frustrated by the way your life has changed, but you’ve done a remarkable job with the progress you’ve made so far. Why stop now? You won’t ever have the same life you were working toward before the accident, but it doesn’t mean you should give up.”
“I’m tired,” Jeremy spat. “I’m tired of it all being so damn difficult. I want to go back to a time when it was easy. When I could walk into a club, smile at a guy, and know I’d have him screaming my name in no time. Now when people stare at my face, I get paranoid wondering if it’s the scar.” He gestured toward the scarred spot on his temple. He knew it stood out against his tan. “And when the clothes come off, guys are disgusted. Even if I keep the clothes on, I can’t find a way to fuck them without my leg causing me pain. I tried to jerk off the other day and I did something to hurt my damn leg. I’m fucking useless,” he said bitterly. “And useless at fucking.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Jeremy, and I have no doubt that’s incredibly frustrating. But you’re only looking at one portion of this. You may not be able to have the kind of sex life you had before the accident, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have one at all. A man who cared for you wouldn’t see the scars and your physical limitations as a barrier.”
Jeremy snorted, bristling at the suggestion. “So I’m supposed to fall in love and settle down? Do you tell all your patients that’s the magic solution to all their problems?”
“I encourage my patients to find a path in life they find meaningful and fulfilling. It’s up to them to decide how to structure it. If relationships don’t interest you, I won’t suggest forcing it, but I think you need to be open to exploring new ideas. If you aren’t happy with your life, perhaps you need to make changes.” Dr. Fuller leaned forward. “Jeremy, when you got hired as a sales associate at the sporting goods store, did you think you’d be an assistant store manager now?”
“No,” he admitted, some of the anger leaching out of him.
“Then why don’t you take a similar approach to your social life? Slow and steady progress is what you need. I could prescribe an anti-depressant for you, but it would only be a short-term solution, and finding the correct one and the proper dosage can be a struggle.”
Jeremy nodded, agreeing with Dr. Fuller about the meds. He’d tried a couple anti-depressants before and hated the way they made him feel. He wasn’t exactly clambering to be prescribed one again. Frankly, the fewer meds he was on the better.
“Jeremy, I truly, truly believe social isolation is the major factor in what you’re dealing with. Right now, the best medicine I could prescribe for you is a social life.”
He gave Dr. Fuller a faint smile, imagining the doctor writing out a script for that.
“You don’t have to jump into anything. Start slowly. Concentrate on making a friend before you worry about anything else. Someone you can go out to dinner or to the movies with. Simple human connection.”
“Do I have to, doc?”
Dr. Fuller shook his head and sat back in his chair. “You don’t have to do anything, Jeremy. It’s all up to you. But you called Dr. Meyer and made this appointment with me for a reason. Decide if you want to continue on your current path or if you want to make some changes. Your future is in your hands.”