The Deepest Cut (3 page)

He waited for a response. I turned round to get my tea, still trying not to look at him.

‘Adam,' he pulled his chair forwards a bit. The sound of it scraping on the floor made me jump.

I pulled away from him. I didn't want him near me.

‘It's OK. I just want to ask you if there's any reason why you aren't talking? You haven't said a single word since you've been here. Is it on purpose? Just nod or shake your head for yes or no.'

I'd been aware of the fact I hadn't spoken to anyone, not just since I got there, but since I came round from the overdose. It was like I was numb and I just didn't have anything to say.

I tried to answer David, but I couldn't. It was the strangest sensation I'd ever felt, like my brain went to speak, but my throat wouldn't cooperate. I knew I wasn't doing it on purpose, now I'd tried to speak and couldn't.

‘It's not on purpose?' David said.

I thought I'd try again but it didn't work. I suddenly felt trapped inside my own body. A feeling of dread was expanding like a huge ball in my gut. I tried to breathe deeply to calm myself down and I shook my head to tell David it wasn't on purpose.

‘OK, that's OK; we can work around that, no problem.' He wrote something down on his pad. ‘You OK? Just breathe through it slowly, in with three out with three … in with three …'

I followed his instructions until my breathing steadied.

‘Take a sip of tea?'

I did as I was told.

‘Right, next thing is that your dad has come in today to see you, and to have a bit of a chat with me, which I think is going to help me get a better idea of what's going on with you while you're unable to tell me yourself.' He smiled.

I knew they'd made him come. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn't have been there out of choice. Either way, I didn't want to see him.

‘Shall I go and get him? He's just outside.' I was hoping maybe he'd just
said
he was going to come but hadn't turned up at the last minute. That'd be more like him, to not turn up and leave us wondering where he was that time … the boozer, the bookies or up Jackie's arse.

David stood up. ‘I think it will be good for you to see him,' he said. ‘Plus, he's brought in some things for you, clothes and stuff.'

He opened the door and stuck his head out, then held open the door for my dad to come in.

Dad didn't look at me as he followed David into the room. David got Dad a chair from the stack and he sat down.

‘How you doing, son?' He asked, but he still wouldn't look at me.

I stared at the floor.

‘I'm missing you at home, you know. It's quiet without you around.'

What a pile of crap. David was watching him closely. I bit my nails and bobbed my leg up and down, trying to distract myself from him. I wanted to get up and walk out of the room, but I knew I had to behave the best I could and not cause a scene because then they'd let me out quicker.

Nobody was talking. The clock ticking on the wall was the only noise in the room.

David broke the silence. ‘Didn't you bring some things in for Adam?' He asked my dad.

‘Yeah, I've got you some bits,' Dad said to me. He shook a tatty supermarket carrier bag full of my stuff.

I didn't look up.

‘That's nice of your dad, Adam, don't you think?' David asked.

There was no point in David asking me anything because I couldn't answer. I wanted him to end this and let me go back to my room and away from dad. I didn't even know why he was here. I bet he wanted to lay into me and tell me what an embarrassment and a failure I was. I bet any money that if David wasn't there he'd be up in my face all angry and swearing.

‘You sleeping alright then, son?' Dad asked, calmly.

I wished he'd drop the dad-of-the-year act – it was all for show. The last time he asked me if I was OK, or sleeping, or whatever, was the day after Jake's funeral and even that was reluctant and only because Polly was there.

‘Excuse us please, Adam,' David said. ‘I'm just going to have a word with your dad outside in private.' He got up from his chair and walked over to the door, holding it open for Dad who was so hot on his heels I could tell it was the greatest relief for him to be walking away from me.

I went over to the door to see if I could hear what they were saying. I needed to know so I could try and work out how long they were going to keep me in there.

‘I'm afraid Adam seems to be having trouble communicating at the moment,' David said.

‘I noticed,' my dad said. ‘Do you know why?'

‘I don't think it's on purpose. I think it could be trauma related–'

‘Trauma?' Dad asked, genuinely confused.

‘Mr–'

‘Call me Chris,'

‘Chris, you are aware of what happened to Adam's best friend, three months ago? I suspect he's suffering from what we'd call psychological trauma. How was he after the incident, before he tried to take his own life?'

‘Angry, I suppose, I don't really know. I didn't really talk to him about it much …'

‘Do you know if there were any nightmares at all? Panic attacks? Physical symptoms such as sweating, abdominal pain, shortness of breath?'

‘Erm–'

‘Any idea at all?'

‘No, I don't really know, like I said we didn't really talk,' Dad said.

‘Who has been supporting him through his grief, Chris?'

Silence.

Then a heavy sigh from my dad. ‘Look, I just came to bring him some stuff, not to feel like I'm the one in therapy. He's the one with the issues, not me.'

‘I don't want you to feel like this is an inquisition, Chris, not at all. I'm just trying to gain a better understanding of what Adam's been through, so we can start to help him. You see, the problem we have is we can't do a full psychological assessment on him until he starts communicating. Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?'

Silence.

‘OK, fine, the best I can do for him at the moment is offer him a safe environment here, and encourage him to start talking and join in group therapies. When he does, I can start to properly assess the situation and attempt to put a treatment plan in place.'

‘Right,' Dad said.

‘Is there anyone else that can be here to offer Adam some support?' David asked. ‘It will be valuable having someone to visit him regularly, to give him stability and remind him that there is a world waiting for him outside when he's well enough to leave–'

‘Debbie,' Dad said cutting in. ‘Jake's mum, he spent all his life round there with them especially after my wife died,' he paused. ‘There's Polly, too,' he said.

‘Who is Polly?'

‘Just some girl he's been knocking about with. She was the one who found him after his overdose.'

‘OK, they're close?'

‘Adam and Polly? I don't know, but like I said, she's been knocking about a lot.'

‘Right, OK. Do you have contact details for Debbie and Polly, and are you happy for me to share the details of Adam's condition?'

I went and sat back on my chair. This was the worst kind of hell ever. They weren't going to let me out, I was trapped and there was nothing I could do.

David came back in.

‘Not a massive fan of your dad, then?' He asked, sitting back down.

I shook my head and he sort of smiled at me.

‘It sounds to me like you've been to hell and back over the last few months,' he said.

I looked at the floor.

‘Tell me, though, your dad has just mentioned Debbie, Jake's mum? I'd like to call her and tell her what's happened and see if she might want to come and see you. Is that OK?'

I straightened myself up and looked at him. I nodded but I wanted to tell David there wasn't a lot of point, that she made it perfectly clear to me at Jake's funeral that she didn't want to see me ever again. That she'd never forgive me for what I'd done. She used to be my second mum, but after that night she'd disowned me. I knew, no matter how much I wanted her to; she'd never come and see me.

‘And what about Polly? Your dad mentioned you two have been spending a lot of time together since Jake … since it happened. Is she your girlfriend?'

I shook my head even though that was sort of a lie. I'd only been seeing her for a couple of weeks before it had happened. Afterwards, I had nothing to give her even if she did refuse to go away and had convinced herself that she was going to be my guardian angel and make it all better again.

‘Is it OK if I tell her? Would you like to see her?' David asked and waited patiently.

I nodded because Dad was probably going to ring her anyway and tell her what had happened, if she didn't already know. For months, I had been caught in a cycle of wanting her to go away one minute but wanting her to stay the next and, at that moment, I wanted her there.

David clicked his pen and wrote something on his pad, then clicked it again and put it back into his pocket.

‘I've had an idea,' he said. ‘Do you want to hear it?'

I nodded.

He pulled out a brand new pad from under his pile of papers and held it out to me.

I took it off him.

‘I have very limited information about what happened to Jake,' he paused and leant forward a bit, but not too much that it made me uncomfortable. ‘I do know that there was another friend, too. Nathan, yes?'

I moved my chair back and away from him and crossed my hands over my chest.

‘What I want you to try and do, Adam, is to write down some stuff for me. Nothing about what happened that night just yet. I want you to tell me how you met Jake and Nathan, first.'

I put the pad on my lap.

‘And maybe, if you feel you can, I'd like to know about what happened when your mum passed away. And if there was ever a time you fell out with Jake or Nathan that had nothing to do with Jake's death?' He paused. ‘You think you can?' He asked.

If I did what he asked, and was on my best behaviour, maybe he'd realise I wasn't crazy and would let me out. As long as I didn't have to talk about what happened that night, I didn't mind.

‘See how you feel, no pressure,' his eyebrows were raised waiting for a response.

I leant forward and took his pen out of his pocket and he smiled.

‘I'll see you tomorrow,' he said. Then he left and the nurse came back in to take me back to my room.

It's funny, when you're made to sit down and think about your memories, suddenly there's not a lot you can remember. I mean, if I work it out, I've been on this earth for 365 days x 17 years, which is … I don't know, I can't work it out in my head, but that's a lot of days and a lot of stuff that's happened to me, but I can't remember it all.

I wonder where all the memories go? Maybe there's a part of your brain, a bit like a filing cabinet, that they stay in. Some of them you can just open the drawer and pull out, but some of the drawers are locked and will stay locked forever.

Jake and I were friends since nursery school – I know that, but I can't remember much about back then, the memories are stored in a hard-to-reach place. I do know we were friends from the first day. Then our mums became friends and, because my mum worked, Jake's mum Debbie picked us up from school every day and gave us our tea, before my mum got there to take me home.

Jake and I never argued and we never fell out. We were closer than close. In year six when we were waiting to find out which secondary schools we'd got into; we were both so nervous and terrified we wouldn't get into the same one. The morning the email came to tell us I made my mum ring Jake's mum straight away to make sure Jake had got in, too. When I found out he had, we screamed down the phone to each other for ages.

We met Nathan on our first day at secondary school. We were walking up the path towards the main block when he accidentally stood on someone's foot.

‘You just stood on my fucking foot,' an angry voice came from behind us, then Nathan went flying forwards into the people in front. The person whose voice it was had shoved him hard in the back.

‘Sorry,' Nathan said quickly, not really sure who he was apologising to by the look of it. He was on his own, and he looked really scared. I felt sorry for him and I knew from the look on Jake's face that he did, too.

‘You dickhead,' the voice came again. It was a proper deep voice. Nathan was spun around fast, so we all stopped.

‘Sorry,' Nathan said again, face to face with the boy whose voice it was.

‘You stood on my fucking foot,' the boy said.

‘He's said he's sorry, leave it, man,' Jake said.

The boy looked Jake up and down, then he turned back to Nathan. ‘Apologise to my foot,' he said, deadly serious.

Nathan went bright red. I wasn't surprised: people were watching as they walked past.

‘I said apologise to my foot,' the boy said again. This time he was right up in Nathan's face. I was so embarrassed for him, but too scared to do anything about it.

‘I said leave it, man,' Jake said again.

‘Was I talking to you?' The boy said to Jake. ‘Or was I talking to your little spastic of a friend?'

‘Come on,' I said, trying to pull Jake away.

‘Apologise. To. My. Foot.' The boy said louder, pulling Nathan back.

‘Sorry,' Nathan mumbled and I cringed.

A teacher appeared. ‘Keep it moving guys, come on, get a move on,' he said.

The boy walked off with his mates like nothing happened.

‘That's William,' a girl said to us. She'd started walking next to Nathan. ‘He was in our primary school and he's a right idiot. Just ignore him and stay away from him.' She smiled at Nathan, then ran off to catch up with her mates.