Hello Beautiful

Go away? William thought. He’d been dreaming about his conversation with Dr. Dembia regarding his parents. In the dream, William was swimming away from his mother and father, while they swam away from him. And he had told his wife and daughter to go away. So many people leaving each other. There had been a claustrophobic atmosphere in the dream, a foreboding, as if they were all about to find out they were swimming in a fishbowl. They were trying to get away from one another, and they were doomed to fail.

William looked at the young woman in the chair. He knew she was real and not a hallucination. He knew he wanted her here. He didn’t know why, but that didn’t matter right now. William was trying to relearn what it felt like to want anything at all.

“Don’t go away.” His voice was tired, fuzzy with drugs and sleep. “I’m sorry I hurt your sister.”

Sylvie said, “You hurt yourself too.”

He shook his head, rejecting this. “Is Julia okay?”

Sylvie sat even taller; she looked stretched, as if she were trying to be in more than one place at once. “Julia is upset,” she said. “Obviously. But she’ll be all right. She doesn’t know I’m here. It’s just that I think”—she hesitated—“that you deserve to have visitors. I know Kent visits, but he’s too busy to come often. You don’t deserve to be alone.”

This sentence struck William like he’d been shoved in the chest. He didn’t deserve to be alone? He didn’t think this was true, but he believed Sylvie meant what she said.

“Thank you,” he said.

Sylvie nodded, and then they were both quiet for a few minutes. The quiet was loud, like the ambient rush of a white-noise machine. William wondered if there was something else he should say. Sylvie looked uneasy too. It felt like they’d reached the end of a script, and now one of them needed to either make something up or leave the stage. William thought longingly of sleep. Maybe he could disappear from this moment, into unconsciousness.

Sylvie leaned forward and said, “I was wondering if you could tell me about Bill Walton.”

“Bill Walton. The basketball player?”

She nodded.

William was surprised, but he knew the answer, so he gave it. “He’s a playmaking big. Played for Portland and was a season and finals MVP. He was plagued with injuries, though. Broke his wrist twice. Sprained his ankle. Dislocated fingers and toes.”

“Goodness.” Sylvie looked lighter, relieved that they had found something to talk about.

“Walton broke a bone in his foot, and they had to make a kind of sling-slash-cast for the foot to try to reduce the pain. They gave him painkilling shots, which he played on, and that messed the foot up even more.” William couldn’t believe he was speaking this much, but now that he’d started, he needed to give Sylvie enough information so she truly understood. “Walton’s a great player, maybe the best passer in the game, definitely for a center. He loves basketball, but his body is terrible. His knees are…impossible, and he has endless foot injuries. He’s on the bench for the Clippers this year.”

Sylvie said, “It seems impressive that he was able to play at all, much less win MVP, with that body.”

“It is,” William said. “It is impressive.” But talking so much had exhausted him, and he fell asleep. The next time he opened his eyes, Sylvie was gone.

—

Dr. Dembia told him that she was giving him homework. “I want you to write down every secret, every part of your life that you kept from the people close to you.”

He looked down at the plain notebook he’d been handed. William nodded and then put the notebook to the side. For as long as he could remember, he’d tried to push away from anything uncomfortable, to not allow it close. But he had pushed away so much that there was nothing left. He knew that to get well, he needed to consider his wife, his childhood, and his failure to manage what had looked from the outside like a great life. He wasn’t ready yet, though. It was enough to simply know that the time was coming and that he could no longer hide. When William slept, he dreamed about water, and while he was awake, he walked the psych unit’s halls.

Kent sat in the chair in the corner when he visited, his long legs reaching into the middle of the room. He looked sleepy and sometimes closed his eyes. “Stop feeling guilty,” he said. “You would have done the same thing for me.”

“I’m not in medical school with two part-time jobs. You shouldn’t be here now. How many hours of sleep did you get last night? And now you have to drive back to Milwaukee.”

“I’m only coming here once a week. My buddy is covering my shift today. You can’t make me stay away.”

Kent’s affection for William was too clear and too uncomplicated. It shone on William like the sun. No one had ever loved him unconditionally like this, and that love, when he was the most undeserving he’d ever been in his life, made William feel like he was burning up. He paced the room, trying to cool himself down with motion.