She’s trained herself to do this because she wants to be a doctor someday. Not a doctor who sees patients. A researcher. She doesn’t like people, and she definitely doesn’t like dealing with their problems on a human level. And yes, before you ask, that is something that I’ve known for a while. Maya likes “person.” Singular. People in a group basically suck.
With the help of my medication, I can hide my problems from her. Well, the big one. If she thinks it’s weird that I have chronic headaches and insomnia, she doesn’t say anything. Those things on their own don’t point to what I have.
She’s empathetic when she wants to be, but she does it in her own Maya-ish way: by pointing out a problem and then agreeing with you that, yes, it does in fact suck balls. Like when we were talking about the baby after Academic Team practice.
“There’s always going to be this huge difference between the way the first kid was raised and the way the next one is raised,” she said. “Since you have different dads and a gigantic age gap between you, it’ll be huge. I mean, you could potentially be another father figure for this kid. You should also be prepared for the fact that they will get away with pretty much everything. If you weren’t allowed to do something as a child, chances are Baby 2.0 will get away with it, no problem.” She took her glasses off and looked at me very seriously. “When I was little, I had a chore wheel. My mom would put things on the chore wheel that I had to do or I wouldn’t be able to watch TV or have dessert. When my brothers were born, the chore wheel was abolished. There were two of them, so my parents abandoned all previously established codes of conduct because the main things became keeping them clean and fed.
“It took a long time to potty train them. They are almost six now, and they still have accidents. The bathroom I share with them never smells right. The trash can in there is regularly filled with dirty underwear. My mom literally rewards them for not shitting their pants. Practically throws them a parade for not shitting their pants.
“That is what you have to look forward to, Adam. They get rewarded for not shitting their pants. It’s best that you just accept this now. It’ll make things easier.”
So, yeah, that was really helpful nonadvice.
We had our final Academic Team match on Tuesday after school. Dwight was in rare form, Maya solved a pretty complicated equation, and I was happily benched. No hallucinations.
At the end of the match, we all sat around while some seniors packed up the game equipment and folded the chairs. Clare and Rosa were talking about prom coming up in May, while Maya and Dwight argued about some homework problem I’d stopped paying attention to about five minutes earlier. My friends talk about boring shit sometimes.
In the middle of their argument, Maya absentmindedly put her hand on my thigh. No one else noticed. It was natural and completely innocent, but something about the way she did it…felt good. Like I was being claimed. And I guess you’re not supposed to want to be claimed by someone, but I really don’t care. I’m her person.
Yep, I feel fine.
DOSAGE: 5 mg. Increased dosage.
MARCH 13, 2013
Doc, I should start this by saying you’ve looked really tired these past couple of weeks. I don’t know what’s going on at home or if my therapy sessions have become more exhausting for you than normal, but you should really get some sleep. Your eyes are all bloodshot and you look like hell. I assume that you already know what the other doctors said. The tests were inconclusive, so they’re running them again, but they’ve basically told us that the drug might be doing more damage than good:
“Adam, we’ve been monitoring your vitals and making note of any radical changes, and unfortunately, though there were positive signs to begin with, it does not appear that you will be a good candidate for this treatment long term. It would be detrimental to the study to continue using your data, because even though you have not reverted to your previous state, you have already exhibited signs of resistance to the drug. We will begin tapering you off to lower doses.”
It was sort of harsh the way they told me about it. “Detrimental to the study”—like I was a lab rat. They didn’t tell me this the way they’d tell a patient with cancer that chemo isn’t going to work, because cancer is sexy. I don’t mean that it’s better than schizophrenia or that people who have it are sexier than people who have anything else. Or that cancer is actually sexy. Obviously. I mean that cancer patients don’t frighten anyone. When you have cancer, people are sympathetic. They feel something for you, and people even hold races to raise money for your cure.
It’s different when people are afraid of what you’ve got, because then you get some of the sympathy but none of the support. They don’t wish you ill—they just want you as far away from them as possible.
Cancer Kid has the Make-A-Wish Foundation because Cancer Kid will eventually die, and that’s sad. Schizophrenia Kid will also eventually die, but before he does, he will be overmedicated with a plethora of drugs, he will alienate everyone he’s ever really cared about, and he will most likely wind up on the street, living with a cat that will eat him when he dies. That is also sad, but nobody gives him a wish, because he isn’t actively dying. It is abundantly clear that we only care about sick people who are dying tragic, time-sensitive deaths.
I got nervous when the doctors told me they might take me off the drug. Mom says they aren’t going to do anything hasty and we’re still going to find a medication that does everything I need it to do, but I think she was just trying to keep me calm. She was trying to say the things she knew would make me feel better, because that’s what moms do, but I was still nervous, and sometimes when I get nervous, I try to do things that aren’t always a good idea.
It started with the weird skin around my cuticle, the stuff that looks like frayed pieces of string cheese. I pulled at it. When I saw red flesh and the blood underneath, I kept going because it was the kind of pain that felt satisfying. Like the time I pulled out three baby teeth when they weren’t even loose because it felt good to pull them. I mean, it hurt, but in a good way, like the way sucking a canker sore feels good.
So I pulled the cuticle skin up to my first knuckle. That was when I stopped because I was bleeding a lot, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide anything worse than that. My mom would know I’d done something if I had anything more than one Band-Aid on my finger. She always knew when there was something off, even if she can’t always remember where she left her cell phone. A Band-Aid wouldn’t draw attention. It wouldn’t make me lose my kitchen knife privileges.
I’m not sure it was just the possibility of being taken off the drug that made me nervous. I’d also seen someone at the grocery store a few days ago. Someone I hadn’t seen in more than a year.