The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (24 page)

“No, sorry, little guy. I can’t. I’m just so …” He got into his bed and lay on his side.

“Did she make you sad? You’re sad. Did she make you sad?”

“No, no, she didn’t. It’s not like that, it’s … Look, I’m too tired, Sweetie, okay?” He girded himself for the onslaught of pleas and pushes. It didn’t come.

“Okay,” Sweetie whispered. He turned off the table lamp and even unplugged two of the four night-lights. He padded back to Adam and tucked him in properly, smooshing the covers just so and knocking him about with his cast in the process. Finally satisfied with the tucking, Sweetie climbed up and sat beside Adam, propping himself against the headboard.

“I’ll stand on guard, okay?” He yawned. “I will keep you safe.”

Adam nodded. He couldn’t trust his voice.

“Would you like to borrow my one hundred and eleven number? I’ll give it to you. That’s a one and a one and a one.”

Adam nodded again, too tired to speak, using all that was left of his strength to stop the tears before they started.

Wonder Woman’s chair sat aggressively empty. Nobody said anything. It gnawed at him. She was AWOL again. Wonder Woman was the only one of them who had missed any sessions. The rest of the superheroes scored a perfect attendance record. They were crazy, but keenly so.

Adam surveyed the room, stopped at Wolverine.

Damn. Wolverine looked good. He always looked good, but lately he was looking alarmingly good. Was Wolverine getting better? That would be seriously
unendurable
. Adam listened carefully as Wolverine droned on about his deadly disease du jour; he had moved on from heart ailments to critical blood cancers. “Do you even know the symptoms of multiple myeloma? I have been lethargic for five days now. I’m going for tests.…”

Naw, he was still nuts. Green Lantern, however, seemed to be making progress, and Adam, no matter how bent out of shape he was, could not begrudge the green guy his victories.

“So I’m trying to follow that OCD manual by the letter, but I’m probably still calling Chuck way too much.”

Chuck smiled and shook his head.

It struck Adam at that moment that Chuck had a lot of them as private patients as well, and that they must all call him. And then he realized that he had tons of other private patients who must also call and cry and whinge. So when did the therapist chill or BBQ with his family? Did he have a family? Chuck sat quietly while still managing to nudge and cheer them on like there was nowhere else he’d rather be. The guy should get a medal or a car or something. Adam wasn’t sure why he was getting these blinding little insights, but lately he’d started to notice the world around him a bit more. Just how much Chuck, Brenda and his father had to put up with. Adam noticed it and it sucked that he noticed.

It was hard enough when he didn’t notice.

“So you’re not rewinding at all?” asked Snooki. Everyone in Group knew that one of Green Lantern’s “things” was revisiting the scene of his latest imagined catastrophe, whether physically or in his head.

“Well, yeah, a bit,” admitted Green Lantern. “But I’ve mapped it all out as per page 147, and I’m rating each compulsion like it says. And, I don’t know, just doing that actually cuts it down a pile.”

“Wow,” said Adam. “That’s impressive, man. I’ve got
to get my butt in on the exposure stuff, but it’s scaring the crap out of me and I haven’t even opened the stupid manual.”

Green Lantern tried hard not to look pleased with himself.

Adam could tell that his breakthrough impressed the hell out of everyone except for maybe Thor. He couldn’t see Thor making maps of his rituals and compulsions and whatever else he had going on—which, let’s face it, had to be higher on the
I am crazy
scale than on the regular OCD one. Adam turned to Thor. The big guy had been unusually quiet. Okay, he was always quiet, except for the growling, but today and last time he seemed too—what? Placid? When Adam finally caught his eye, there was barely a response.

It made Adam unbearably sad.

He held Thor’s eyes as he jumped back into the fray.

“Yeah, well, at the other end of the scale—I’ve hit a new high or low or whatever. I can’t go home,” he said. “I can’t get through the door at all.”

That got everyone’s attention. Thor stayed on him, cloudy-eyed but on him.

“I couldn’t get in one night—just couldn’t break through—and I haven’t been back since. I have enough stuff at my stepmother’s to get me by, you know?”

“What the hell?” snapped Wolverine. “What kind of pussy are you? Your old lady is being stalked by a psycho-turd and you take off on her?”

You could smell the indignation. Everyone sat up straighter. Robyn and Snooki glared at Wolverine, and
Thor even roused himself out of his fog enough to emit a decent approximation of a growl.

Wolverine was right, though. “I agree.” Adam nodded. “It’s total candy ass.” Snooki’s hand shot to his knee. She was patting energetically. “But I’m a mess and the house situation and the situation with”—
careful, careful
—“my mom and the letters, and not being able to breach the threshold … Aargh! I
do
worry for her. I make myself puke. That I can’t just snap out of this and take care of—”

“Nobody here is judging you, Batman,” interrupted Iron Man. “Nobody. That’s too much. You do what you got to do.” Thor
grrrr
-ed in agreement. “But no one’s judging you, man.” He eyeballed Wolverine.

“Yeah,” said Snooki. “Like, you are so here for everyone in here, all the time. I don’t think it even registers with you how much you carry. You worry about too many people,
like
your mom,
and
your fat friend,
and
your little brother,
and
”—she shot Robyn a look—“and God only knows who else. Cut yourself some slack, Batman.”

He’d talked about Stones to them?

“She’s right,” whispered Robyn. “She’s right.”

“Yeah, man,” said Captain America and Green Lantern in unison.

“No crap, man. Too much is too much.” Iron Man was shaking his head.

“No, see, Wolverine actually nailed it when—”

“Excuse me, Batman.” Chuck rarely inserted himself into the conversation, so it was always an event when he piped up. “But how about you let those comments wash over you for a bit. Let them sit for a while. Let them challenge
what you perceive to be the truth. Maybe they’re valid observations.
Maybe
you can trust them.”

Adam exhaled before speaking. “Thanks, guys,” he said to his feet. “I mean it.” His feet were still. His breath was even. No single part of Adam was counting, until the end.

At 4:51 p.m., Chuck cleared his throat. “Uh, you’ve all no doubt noticed Wonder Woman’s, uh, Connie’s absence.”
Connie? Why had Wonder Woman become Connie again?
“We—that is, Connie and her family—have decided that it would be best for her to continue her treatment by entering the residential program in Houston.”

Residential
. The word swirled around the circle menacingly and landed with a thud.

Residential
.

Shit
.

No one breathed, let alone said anything. Chuck looked taken aback by the silence.

“Whoa, guys!” said Robyn. “It’s not a death sentence. It’s the best thing for Con— er, Wonder Woman. We all know she’s been sliding. Look, residential was a massive piece in my being able to function and put one foot in front of the other.”

Residential
.

“I honest to God don’t know where I’d be without it,
or
without you guys.” She looked directly at Adam.

“Robyn is right.” Chuck nodded. “This is an extremely positive step for Connie and she will join us all again in a few weeks. I’ll update you as best I can, and we’ll talk about getting in touch next session, okay? So until then,
try to remember that this is the very best thing for her.” He glanced at his watch. “Okay, superheroes, good work today. Class dismissed.”

Snooki got up and left without saying a word.

While they were stacking chairs, Adam whispered to Robyn that he’d meet her at the gates.

“You got it.” And she kissed him, long and hard.

Everyone had left except for Chuck and Thor, but they saw.

And they looked sad.

When Thor clomped out, Adam ran to keep up with him. Thor always took the stairs, not because he was claustrophobic but— Wait a minute. Thor might be claustrophobic. Thor might be a thousand things. Adam didn’t know. What Adam did know was that the guy was in a lot of pain. It wafted off him in waves. The waves had struck Adam from the very first session. It was familiar.

“Thor, wait!”

The big guy turned unsteadily in the stairwell.

Adam’s nerve was quickly evaporating. Again, even though he was two steps lower than him, the mighty Thor was taller, larger, more substantial in every way.

“Look, Thor, something’s up. It’s none of my business, but are you okay? I mean, meds and meds adjustments can mess you up almost as much as the OCD can. Believe me, I know.” It was like trying to converse with a mountain. “So I just want to know if you’re okay, okay? The thing with Wonder Woman, you know, it can spook a person.”

Thor tried unsuccessfully to focus on Adam. Zombie eyes. Adam recognized the effort, remembered the trial and
error, the weeks and weeks of side effects, thick tongue, exhaustion and body tremors until they arrived at a manageable meds combo and dosage.

“Hey, remember how we all wrote down our phone numbers that first session?”

Thor was still struggling to aim his eyes.

“Well, you’re probably more of a text guy, but I’m not allowed anything like that, right?”

Thor nodded, or he wanted to, Adam was sure of it, and sure as well that a decent guy was trapped in there somewhere.

“Well, Brenda, my stepmom, her number is on that list too, okay? You can call me there anytime, man. And once they get your meds squared up, I bet you’d go for a wicked game of Warhammer, eh?”

No response.

“Hell, you look fiercer than the fiercest Orc. Ben—that’s my fat friend that Snooki was referring to—well, Stones would get a real kick out of you, and you’d like him, I guarantee it!”

Thor lifted his big beefy arm, placed it on Adam’s wiry shoulder and looked in his general direction. “I got you covered.”

Okay, so not exactly what Adam was going for.

“Well, thanks. But I mean it about calling, anytime.”

Thor sighed as he turned. And the two walked down the rest of the stairs in a companionable if confused silence.

“You were great in there, in Group.” She kissed his cheek.

“But look, I know you tried to talk to Thor.” Robyn slipped her arm through his, as she always did, and they walked like this to the cemetery. She kissed him again. “You know you can’t save everybody, right?”

“What?”

“It’s part of your problem, like Snooki was saying as she was gripping your knee. Once in a while, even that over-toasted airhead stumbles onto something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Thor,” she said. “You forget, I’ve been through a lot more programs, therapists and hospital groups than you. And … well, you learn to recognize the Thors. The Thors of this world tend not to make it through, Adam.”

Spoken like someone who has
.

“No, I, uh, just think that he’s on the wrong meds
combo. The poor guy could be too heavy into the old-school bennies. Clonazepam could do that, or even Anafranil. The guy could hardly move, you know. I actually think he’s lots better.”

Robyn cocked her head.

“Except for lately.”

“You just
have
to save the world, don’t you.” She squeezed him to her. He was heading straight for a Sister Mary-Margaret intervention. “It’s one of the seventy-three thousand reasons I love you.”

He wanted to grab her and pull her into him and never let go. They would freeze into a headstone, forever linked and together.

They were almost at the weeping willow.

“But really, my very own Batman, you’ve got to let go of all those distractions, all those extra worries, and concentrate on yourself.” Robyn looked uncomfortable. “I mean it. You’ve got to home in on just you. Please. Please just get yourself better first.” She kissed him again and gently extricated herself to go to her mother’s grave.

The black headstone devoured what was left of the weakening sun.

Adam reacquainted himself with the neighbors, the monuments and the stone angels. He remembered how all those months ago he had tried to puzzle out which one she was visiting. He greeted young Lieutenant Archibald-Lewis, all those who were engraved into the base of the two soaring obelisks, and their favorite, Marnie Wetherall, 1935–1939. Adam offered up a quick prayer for their souls and a longer one begging for strength.

Robyn executed a round of the rosary. After she’d made
her final sign of the cross she turned to him. “Did I tell you that I contacted Father Rick and he put me in touch with Father Steven at St. Bonaventure, which is apparently my parish church?”

Adam didn’t say anything. It was so clear.

“So I’m going to start their ‘I Wannabe a Catholic’ classes on April twenty-seventh!”

Even from this distance he could feel that she was centered, whole.

“Cool, eh?” Robyn frowned when he still didn’t respond. “Isn’t that great?”

She didn’t even need him for the God stuff. There was no value added with him whatsoever, just distraction and detraction. Adam held her back in a place where she no longer belonged. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore. He was a prisoner. She was free.

“Hey, earth to Adam!” Robyn waved both arms in the air. “What’s up, Batman?” She started toward him. “Something’s up. The past couple of weeks, at Group, on the phone … I know you’ve got a ton of stuff with your mom, but that’s not it, is it?”

“No,” he said.

She hugged herself.

He couldn’t do it. “I lied to you.”

She nodded, waiting.

“I don’t live in your neighborhood. I live at almost the opposite end of the city from you. I’ve been doubling back all these months. And my dad’s place is even farther north.”