I Have Lost My Way(17)

“We were in the park,” Freya begins. “And I sort of fell off a bridge, onto Nathaniel.”

“You fell off a bridge? Did you faint?”

“No,” Freya says. She wonders if she should’ve said she did faint, because this would make her seem less culpable. Not her fault, they would tweet. She fell after fainting. Poor thing. Lost her voice, you know. “I just lost my balance.”

He wheels his stool in Freya’s direction, stopping just short of her bare feet.

“Whoa!” he says, as if he just noticed her feet had been amputated and she was walking on bloody nubs. “What happened?”

“To my feet? They just got dirty,” Freya says.

“How?” he asks.

“From dirt,” the Lurker mutters under his breath, and Freya almost smiles.

The doctor turns toward the Lurker. “Are you the one she fell on?”

“No,” he answers. “I’m Harun. I am a bystander.”

“A Samaritan, really. Harun helped me get Nathaniel here,” Freya says, relieved to have learned Harun’s name in such a non-awkward way. She was taught always to use people’s names. It makes them feel important. If she uses his name, maybe he won’t turn the internet against her.

“Who’s Nathaniel?” the doctor asks.

She points to the corner, where, for someone as tall as Nathaniel is, he’s doing a pretty good job of disappearing.

The doctor finally tears his gaze away from Freya and looks at the chart. “Nathaniel Haley,” he reads.

“Yeah,” Nathaniel says in a voice as wispy as fog.

“So you were fallen on by this one?” He gestures to Freya.

“Yeah, I guess,” he says.

“Not the worst way to get knocked out,” the doctor says, aiming a conspiratorial glance in Freya’s direction. She looks down, thinking: Stop. Just stop.

“It factor,” Hayden had called it. “Y’know, that invisible thing some people got that makes others wanna get closer. You can’t fake it. You either got it or you don’t.” Freya had it, Hayden said. Sabrina did not, Hayden said.

“And you blacked out?” the doctor asks.

Nathaniel shrugs.

“Yes, he did,” Freya replies.

“I need to hear it from the patient.”

Nathaniel doesn’t answer. Freya begins to wonder if he really is brain damaged.

“Yes,” Harun says. “He did. She fell onto him. He blacked out.”

“I’d appreciate it,” the doctor says in an unpleasant tone, “if you allowed me to interview the patient.”

“But how can he tell you what happened when it happened to him?” Harun says. “I was there. I saw.”



* * *



— — —

I saw.

Harun has no way of knowing at this moment that these words are more healing to Nathaniel than anything the doctor might do. Someone saw.

“So you lost consciousness?” the doctor asks Nathaniel again.

Nathaniel looks at Freya, at Harun, who both nod.

“Yes,” he says.

“And he vomited,” Harun adds. “On her shoes.”

“So that’s why you’re barefoot!” the doctor says to Freya. “You shouldn’t walk through the city like that. I’ll see if we can get you some shoes from the lost and found.”

“I’ll be fine,” she says.

“You might step on glass.”

“No, really. It’s all good,” she says, glancing at Nathaniel with a look, like it’s a private joke she’s tossing at him. But he doesn’t catch it. (He used to be a really good catcher, back when he played first base.) Not because he cannot but because he dares not.

This has already gone way too far. There’s really no need for this.

But the doctor has pulled out a penlight and is examining Nathaniel’s eyes.

“Heterochromia,” he declares.

“Is that like a hematoma?” Harun asks.

“No. It’s when you have different-colored eyes. Though the left pupil here is really fixed.”

“You mean the pupil in my prosthetic eye?” Nathaniel asks.

“Right. Of course. You threw me with the different colors. But I like it. Is it a kind of David Bowie homage?”

“Can we get on with the exam?” Freya asks impatiently. “We don’t have all day.”

The doctor rolls his stool over to the computer. “Okay, Nate. I’m going to ask about symptoms, and you answer on a scale of zero to six, zero being not a problem, three being moderate, six being severe. Got it?”

“I think so,” Nathaniel replies.

“Headache?”

“Yes.”

“Zero to six?”

It’s a four, but he doesn’t want anyone to worry. “Maybe a two.”

“Pressure in the head?”

“Yeah. Maybe three.”

“Blurred vision?”

“It’s all good now.”

“A number.”

“Zero, maybe one.”

The doctor goes through the list: neck pain, balance problems. Nathaniel answers in a monotone: two, three, two.

“How about sadness?” the doctor asks.