I Only Want to Close My Eyes Half of the Time - Part 4

No caffeine in the world would help me to stay awake, since I knew that helping Meghan’s father was a full-time Herculean effort. The man refused to slow down, as if sixty-six was just a number and not his age. Once the deck was finished, I knew that Meghan’s parents would refuse to let us leave without feeding us. The addition of Niko to our lives meant that MiL and FiL would provide the food, and Meghan and I would end up cooking while they doted upon Niko, as any good grandparent would.

My hand held up - not that the burns had been anywhere close to serious by any stretch of the imagination - but the dull throb gave me all sorts of ideas. I had learned a few things in group therapy in the mental health hospital, particularly about self-harming and how to hide it from others. I had always considered myself to be resilient in a physical sense, and I had learned more about my mental tolerances than I had ever thought possible. Self-harm was not in my nature, but as I was chopping vegetables, an errant thought kept popping up. If my burnt fingers carried over from there to here, would something from here carry over to there?

Ever since this began, this changing of gears, I had been asking myself all sorts of existential questions, the type of which plagued philosophers for millennia. It took me a few weeks to realize that my time in what I considered to be my real life with Meghan was what helped me to get through the ordeal of being locked away. After the initial anger and denial wore off, I decided to do likewise with my time on the ward, utilizing therapies to help me cope with the stresses of my job, bills, and other issues from my real world. So while I was not enamored with the idea of hurting myself, I also knew that a physical experience from the ward carried over into my life with Meghan.

So what if, I asked myself, trying to parse out the logic and reason of doing something so contrary to human survival and existence, what if it’s a two-way street? What if I get hurt here, will it carry over to there? Aside from the implications, the likes of which I would ponder when I didn’t have to get a meal on the table, there was the matter of a visible wound. If Lumberjack and Blondie saw an injury, they would have to report it, and that would lead to questions, inquiries, and a massive uppage of the doses on my sedatives. I needed what little wits that they left me, and increase in the dosage would hinder me right back to the start of all of this.

There were calls from the newly-completed deck for the vegetable platter, so I had to act. The very tip of the paring knife met the palm of my hand, and I traced a small line from just below my middle finger to just below my ring finger. Not my finest hour, and nothing that I would have been proud of doing ordinarily. But this wasn’t ordinary. I was going to fall asleep in a comfortable bed, next to my gorgeous bride, and then wake up in a mental ward. In what universe is that ordinary or normal?

There was a bit of a commotion from outside as Meghan and her parents gathered Niko and the accoutrements for dinner and scrambled to get everything inside. The rain was coming. But tonight, I wouldn’t walk in it. I would eat dinner with my in-laws, we would drive home, and I would go to bed. This was not a night for ritual freedom walks. My freedom would come in the form of the answer that would literally be in the palm of my hand when I opened my eyes strapped to a cot.

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The sunlight poured in - I doubt it was ever overcast, since the few views I had of the world reminded me that this place was in a town probably named “Middle of Nowhere” in Arizona or Utah or Nevada or something. I let LJ and Blondie go through their usual pattern. “OK, Jason, you know the routine. I’m gonna remove the restraints, and you be a good boy, ya hear?” Lumberjack said.

I nodded, more habit than actual response, as my fingers surreptitiously scraped the palms of my hands. One of them was smooth. On the other, a small cut.

Yeah, it was real.

Part 3: https://steemit.com/short-story/@phoenix32/i-only-want-to-close-my-eyes-half-of-the-time-part-3
Part 5: https://steemit.com/short-story/@phoenix32/i-only-want-to-close-my-eyes-half-of-the-time-part-5