Under the Knife(13)

Hell, she even started to believe the story herself, a little.

What do the psychiatrists call that? Believing in imagined memories? Confabulation.

“How did you strap yourself down?” said Wendy.

Rita blinked. “What?”

“You were strapped to the table, with your arms underneath the straps. How did you tighten the straps? After you were lying down? With your arms, like—trapped?”

“Well.” She nibbled on her lower lip. No weakness. “The buckle for the strap was near my right hand. I’m right-handed. You only need one hand to tighten these buckles. Right?”

“But why would you strap yourself down in the first place?”

Rita shrugged, hoping it looked nonchalant. “Who knows? People do strange things while they’re sleepwalking, then, uh, have absolutely no memory of it. Strapping patients to these tables is something we do just about every day. It makes sense that my brain is, um, hardwired for it, and that I might go through the motions even when I’m asleep.”

She laughed (brayed) again. “Haven’t either one of you guys ever done something weird in your sleep?”

At first, neither said anything. But after a few moments—long enough for Rita to wonder if the two of them were buying it, or at least feigning belief for politeness’ sake—Wendy decided to try her luck one more time.

“But, then, how did you—” she began.

When Rita was a girl, there’d been this boy her age who’d lived down the street: a lumbering, sullen kid who’d tag along after the older boys as they’d skateboarded and smoked cigarettes in back of the local Circle K minimart. She and her friends had avoided him; he’d, in turn, ignored them.

Until one summer afternoon when they were nine, and she’d been playing with a few neighborhood girls on the small patch of browned grass that had served as her family’s front yard. She’d been standing next to her bike when the boy had appeared and, without explanation, knocked her down and tried to make off with her bike.

Her reaction had surprised herself as much as anyone else. To this day, she remembered her fury, her little-girl righteous indignation that someone, even this bigger boy, would try to take away her bike, with the flowered Barbie basket hanging on the front panel—still remembered the frightened screams of her friends as she’d launched herself at him, and pinned him in the spiky brown grass.

She’d flailed at him with her small fists until her father had come out and dragged her away. The boy, stunned but unhurt, had run home crying and never bothered her again. Her father had carried her inside, cleaned her up, and placed her on his lap.

You’re a little spitfire, lovely Rita. You don’t let people walk all over you. That’s good. Just like your mom. But you’ve got to learn to control that temper.

She’d burst into tears. The injustice of it! She’d wanted to tell him that she didn’t have a temper, whatever that was. It had been the boy’s fault, not hers: If he’d just left her alone, she wouldn’t have had to hit him. She buried her face in her father’s chest (his dog tag, his metal dog tag underneath his T-shirt, she felt it press against her cheek) and promised she wouldn’t do it again.

But she did do it again.

Many times, over many years. Trips to the principal’s office, notes sent home from school talking about her anger-management issues. Her parents would sigh and give her a good talking-to, and tell her not to do it again; and then she would do it again, and the cycle would repeat.

It wasn’t until high school, after both Mom and Dad were dead, that she realized that the word temper didn’t fit. She had a short fuse, no doubt. But temper implied blind rage without purpose. Her anger sprang from an emotional reaction to a perceived injustice: like that time in high school when, during a close race, one of her cross-country rivals had wielded some sharp elbows to beat back Rita’s final surge. Rita had fumed: not because the other girl had won but because she hadn’t won fairly. She hated cheaters. Their ensuing argument had escalated into a screaming match. Physical intervention from girls on both teams prevented the two of them from trying to rip each other’s lungs out.

Afterward, the anger-management classes her school had required Rita to take as a precondition for remaining on the cross-country team weren’t as bad as she thought they’d be. The counselor who ran the classes was an idealistic twentysomething with a psychology degree from Stanford. Nice enough. She liked to say super a lot, and make liberal use of exclamation points in everyday speech. Super great job, Rita! I’m super impressed! You’re making super progress!

Rita did as told; and, eventually, she’d super managed her anger.

Anger management.

It was a useful skill. But as she’d clawed her way up through the professional ranks, Rita had soon discovered that a measured display of righteous anger could be productive for a career woman—a sad commentary on modern society, maybe, but true: People always moved faster in her OR when they thought she was pissed off, much more so, she thought, than with her male counterparts.

So she’d cultivated her anger—or indignation, or whatever. She’d repurposed it. Domesticated it. Groomed it. Kept it on as a pet. When necessary, she’d let it run loose for a while, do its thing, then tuck it away again before it could do any real damage.

Now was one of those times she needed to let her anger out of her subconscious for a little romp. Wendy was her subordinate, and she was having just a little too much fun this morning at Rita’s expense. Who did she think she was?