Nobody

Five Star Chef

Dedicated to: My Little Sister

I leaned against the headboard, gasping, sure I'd screamed out loud. The memory, the feeling of ice cold talons pushing between my ribs, or Pru's voice, all shuddered through my system. I looked around, slightly confused as to where I was, until it rushed back.

The room was my bedroom, in a refurbished mobile home in Kentucky.

Pru was dead.

The anger welled up so thick it almost made me gag.

You left me

how could you

you left me all alone in a world I don't understand

It was still daylight, the light streaming in through the windows, so it made it easy for me to spot the lighter and cigarettes on my nightstand. I pulled the ashtray over and lit a cigarette, putting the ashtray down next to me. My thoughts were slow, sluggish, full of cotton. My tongue felt thick and limbs felt heavy, like I was trying to smoke my cigarette while trapped in amber.

For some reason my ass cheek ached.

It took a few minutes to realize I could hear voices talking, floating down the hallway and somehow clearly audible.

"...seizures are normal?" Miss Lily-Rylee was saying.

"You can tell by his scars that Mister English has endured more than his share of traumatic experiences," Doc Rutherford answered. I could almost picture him, that iron gray goatee and matching hair, his eyes concerned behind his rimless glasses.

"Those pictures, Doc," Miss Lily-Rylee said softly. "I mean, most of them were too small for me to really see what was on them in the time I had, but there was three whole rows of people, all with birth and death days. They were all so young," Her soft voice was full of compassion.

"It's the nature of war, Rennie," Doc Rutherford said. "Old men plot, young men get shot."

"He saw them and puked," She said. "Then he went  into a grand-mal. I barely caught him. Scared me half to death."

"You said he went off his meds?" Doc Rutherford sighed. After a second he kept talking. "It's common early in treatment. Something throws off his routine and he thinks he took them, then the aberrant thinking takes over."

"Will he be OK?" Miss Lily-Rylee asked.

There was silence for a long time. I crushed out my cigarette and swung my legs off the bed.

"After Vietnam I saw a lot of young men in Mister English's condition," The older gentleman said quietly. "Usually they turned to drugs, to alcohol. Mister English was lucky that he had a wife and a stable job. He's been white knuckling it for years, suppressed all of it. Now that it's coming to the surface, the damage to his brain is coming to the surface."

"Brain damage?" Miss Lily-Rylee asked.

I stood up, moving over to the dresser. Twice I had to put my hand on the wall, getting dizzy. I felt drugged, and my stomach knotted, my liver aching slightly. I felt hot, overheated, as I put my hand on the dresser to steady myself.

"Severe PTSD causes malformations in white matter as his brain makes bad connections," Doc Rutherford said.

I pulled out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, slowly dressing as they kept talking.

"Each episode increases the chance of another episode, each episode slowly increases in severity," he said.

"Is there anything that can be done? One of my uncles killed himself after Vietnam," Miss Lily-Rylee said, her voice full of pain.