Miranda

LaVieEnRose

There was this moment, at some point in some place, where I looked around and felt like I'd just been spawned there. Like, I came with no history, no anything, like I was some character and this was the first page anyone had ever written about me.

It's not the only time that's happened to me, but it was the only time it's happened to me when I'm alone.

And anyway, the fact that it's happened before, that you can afterwards put together what happened and that it's happened before, isn't much comfort when you are standing somewhere you don't know and you have no memory of where you are or why you're there or how you got there and what you're doing and what it is you're supposed to do. Or who you are.

And also when it's very cold and you don't think you're wearing enough clothes.

I shivered and sneezed and looked around for a street sign, but there was nothing and I couldn't figure out why, and everything didn't...look right. Where were the people?

Everything was coming to me in snapshots. Blink, and a new piece of information.

It was really dark.

My feet hurt.

My knees hurt.

My head really, really, really hurt, and then all of a sudden I was on my hands and knees vomiting and I couldn't get back up. The ground felt like it was moving, and I scraped my palms against the ground trying to grab onto it, but it wasn't working. It kept...slipping. I don't know. Everything was slipping.

And then there were these lights on the ground around me, swinging around like searchlights, and I couldn't figure out what was going on, but they made my head hurt so goddamn bad, and I was sure I was about to throw up again, but then all of a sudden someone pulled me up to my feet, roughly, not at all like Brian would have done it, not Brian at all.

I hadn't been able to remember Brian's name until then.

The person shined a flashlight in my eyes and I put my hands up over my face as pain ripped across my eyes. Stop stop stop I took my hands away to sign, and then there were hands around my wrists, and I couldn't sign anymore.

No.

“Let go of me!” I couldn't see anything with the lights in my eyes, and I ripped away as hard as I could and tried to sign again, and then all of a sudden I was on the ground with a knee against my back and my cheek against the pavement.

Oh God. Oh fuck.

“No no no I can't hit my head, I can't.”

The knee pressed down on my back.

“Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

They were still shining those fucking flashlights at me, and then I felt my hands getting cuffed behind my back, what the fuck, what the fucking fuck was going on.

They were probably reading me my rights, I thought dully as they led me to the car.

**

I know I should have told them I was Deaf right away.

I know I should have told them I had epilepsy and asked them to breathalyze me instead of just assuming I was drunk.

I know I shouldn't have ripped my hands away and I should have been sweet and I shouldn't have tried to sign because it looks aggressive to people who don't know and I should have just fucking, fucking told them I was Deaf.

It's really great and helpful how I know all of that now, when I'm the kind of calm, functional, rational that doesn't scare cops into arresting me, right?

**

I was so freezing fucking cold at the police station that I couldn't even function, but at least there weren't lights in my eyes anymore.

I stood in some fucking hallway while a man patted up and down my body and I tried not to fucking lose my shit at the hands on me. Brian Brian Brian I'm supposed to tell you when I'm uncomfortable, I promised—

I needed to sit. Everything was spinning.

A policewoman said something to me.

I squinted at her lips. “Am I what?”

Are you.... Damn. Are you on...

“Am I on drugs? No, I'm cold, I...I'm...”

I hate speaking out loud with strangers. I hate it so goddamn much.

But my fucking hands were still behind my back.

They checked my pockets. My wallet and my phone weren't in there. Neither were my keys. Where the hell was my shit? Where was my fucking coat? I was just in a shitty t-shirt, this old one I wear where I'm painting. Was I painting?

What happened, what happened, what happened...

“I need my hands back, please,” I said.

The pulled me along to a desk, and a guy asked me something with his head down. I could barely even see his lips move.

I said, “I don't...”

He looked up at me. “What's your name?” he said.

God fucking help me, it took me a minute. “Justin Taylor. I'm Deaf,” I finally fucking said. I don't think I really realized I hadn't said it. “I need an interpreter, is an interpreter coming?”

The policemen all started talking to each other around me, and one disappeared down the hallway.

“I think I need to sit down,” I said. “I think I'm sick.”

The officer behind the desk turned the form he was filling out towards me and pointed at the next line. The word swam in front of me and I blinked at it until it came into focus.

“Um, March eleventh. 1983.”

The next line. Address.

Fuck fuck fuck.

“I, um...”

Goddamn it, Justin. Goddamn it you, you worthless sucking piece of sucking shit. You know this. You know this.

I could have described my living room to you in perfect detail. I could have listed every single thing Brian had on his desk. I could have drawn it, exactly, if they would free my fucking hands.

But I couldn't find the address for the fucking life of me, and sometimes I just...I just hate myself so goddamn much.

“I don't know,” I said.

He wrote a note. Are you homeless?

“No, I'm not homeless, I just...I can't remember right now, I'm not good with numbers and...I just need a minute. It's West End Avenue, I just can't remember the number.”

He gave me this once-over, and no, you fucking asshole, I don't look like I belong on West End Avenue when I'm standing here half-frozen and shaking and my dirty old t-shirt's ripped because someone fucking pushed me on the ground and I think my cheek is bleeding and if I hit my head Brian is going to be so mad at me—

Brian.

“Can somebody call my boyfriend? I don't...I don't know where he is. I'm supposed to know where he is, he's going to be mad.” That didn't make any fucking sense. He was going to be mad at me for hitting my head, not for not knowing where he was. Nothing was coming out right. “I need to sit down.”

He said something to me but I didn't get it because something deep inside my brain said Justin you put me down right the fuck now, and my hands were still cuffed behind me, so I sat down on the floor and put my head between my knees. Everything grayed out in front of me, speckling on the sides like static on a bad TV reception, and my arm and both legs started shaking. Fuck, fuck fuck.

This was too many seizures in a short amount of time, I thought, because on some level I must have known that that's what happened, that I'd had a seizure at my studio and I'd been confused and upset and fucking fucking stupid and I'd wandered out without my coat and my phone and my wallet and tried to walk home and I'd gotten lost in the park.

Too many. Brian was going to be mad.

There were hands on me, yanking me to my feet, and I said, “No no no stop please stop,” but they didn't. The guy pushed me at the desk, and between his body and the desk shoved against my stomach I managed to stay up, but my brain was still going no sit down sit down sit down and Brian would be so fucking mad at me for not sitting.

“Can somebody...” I took a deep breath as my arm jerked behind me, pulling the fuck out of my shoulder blade, mother fuck that hurt. “Can somebody please call my boyfriend?”

The policeman behind the desk pointed out the next line on the form, under my empty address. Goddamn, it was hard to read this shit right now, with my vision this shitty. They were going to expect me to read stuff, I realized. They were going to write notes to me and think I was getting it.

This was really bad.

“His name is Brian,” I said. “His number is...”

Fuck.

Fuck.

You stupid goddamn useless fucking shit.

“It has a three in it,” I whispered.

What the fuck good was an interpreter going to do me if I couldn't fucking tell them anything?

The problem wasn't the language barrier. The problem was me.

You stupid goddamn useless pathetic helpless worthless fucking shit.

I swallowed. “His name's Brian.”

I didn't even tell them his last name.

I don't even know if I knew it.

**

They dragged me along through getting fingerprinted and getting my picture taken. They kept writing down questions and shoving them at me, scary fucking questions: have you ever been arrested before, what kinds of drugs are in your system, do you have somewhere to go once you're released.

At some point I thought to ask what I was being arrested for.

Drunk and disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, he said, and I didn't really get how I could be arrested for resisting arrest because don't you have to be getting arrested in the first place for that to happen, and that got all stuck and tangled up in my brain so it was fucking ages before I even thought to say, “But I don't drink.”

They thought I was crazy, I realized vaguely. They probably didn't believe that I couldn't really hear, not when my voice is pretty okay. It was one of those times I wished I still wore a hearing aid, even though they don't do anything for me anymore, just as a fucking prop.

All they had to do was slow down and listen to me.

Sometimes I hate abled people so much that I feel like I'm going to goddamn breathe fire.

They eventually shoved me in this holding cell with a few other people, which at least meant that I wasn't handcuffed anymore. I sat on the floor and put my arms around myself and considered this grimy, dusty fucking floor and how I was goddamn definitely going to get sick from this. God, Brian was going to be pissed. I just shook the cough from that fucking flu.

I'm not sure I can really explain at that point how goddamn shitty I felt. I was just..done. I don't know when I last felt that bad. Maybe right when I woke up after I'd had that seizure and hit my head at my mom's house? But Brian was there then, and even if I wasn't quite sure who he was at first, I knew he was somebody safe. And there were meds, and a bed, and it wasn't this horrendously cold.

Everything hurt so goddamn bad. All my muscles were sore from spasming so much, and my head was throbbing, and my throat hurt. And everything was coming to my so slowly, like I was in quicksand, and there were hands signing in my brain somewhere, this is bad this is bad this is bad, and I knew I wasn't supposed to feel like this without telling Brian, and he was going to be so mad at me.

My arm was shaking again, and it was for some reason so important that none of the other people in the cell saw me. I don't know, I was already clearly a fucking wreck, in here with actual fucking criminals, and I didn't want them to think I was any more vulnerable than I already obviously was.

Brian would find me. If I didn't come home and it got too late, he'd start calling hospitals and police stations. He'd find me.

Unless I told him I was staying overnight at the studio.

Unless he'd already given up and decided I was dead.

Or I died.

I could die here tonight. I could keep having seizures until my breathing stopped, or I hit my head on the floor.

My stomach turned over suddenly, and before there was any time to think about the other people in this holding cell I was crawling to the toilet in the back of the cell and puking so violently I thought maybe it was this, this was what was going to kill me. It was like fire, from my stomach up through my throat, and my nose was running and my eyes were tearing everywhere and it felt like it was goddamn never going to stop, and I could barely breathe around it, and fuck, I wanted Brian so badly. I can't even explain what it's like to want someone that much. It was like a part of my body was missing.

Finally, God, I ran out of anything in my stomach, and I leaned against the wall by the toilet, panting. The migraine was so goddamn bad at that point. I tried to remember the last time I'd had one that awful. They were terrible after my last head injury, but I think the last ones that hit this level were the ones I was having in the few months after the bashing. I remember the first one scared Brian so bad. He sat next to me on the bed barely moving, afraid to touch me, afraid to look away.

Someone crouched down in front of me, some woman in the holding cell in a skimpy outfit, and she dabbed at my forehead a little. Young women like her are always trying to mother me. Kind of hard to blame her right then.

I'm okay, I said, and obviously she didn't know what I was saying, but when I was signing I looked at my hands and I saw my bracelet.

My fucking bracelet.

I brought it close to my face until the words stopped fading in and out of focus.

JUSTIN TAYLOR

DEAF, USES ASL

EPILEPSY

NO OXAZOLIDINEDIONE

And there, on the last line.

Brian's phone number.

I crawled to the front of the cell and I stuck my wrist to the bars and I just goddamn yelled until somebody listened to me.

**

They brought me into a small room a little while after that, I guess one of the interrogation rooms. Still no interpreter. Just two detectives and me.

They slid a piece of paper across the table to me. Double sided, tiny print that my headache did not want to let me make out. Then a pen.

“You want me to sign this?” I said.

They nodded.

I looked it over. It was thick legal language and it was all getting stuck and tangled up in my head, but honestly I'm not sure if even at my best I would have been entirely sure of what signing this would have me agree to. That I was drunk? That I wasn't mistreated by the police? That I wasn't angry? That I was waiving my rights to do goddamn anything about any of this?

“I'm not signing anything without a lawyer here,” I said. “And definitely not without an interpreter.”

The detectives looked at each other, and then one leaned to me and started speaking.

“No, I don't understand you,” I said. “And I'm not signing anything.”

He started to speak or anything, but they both startled and looked towards the door. I looked too, but there was nothing to see. Just noise outside, I guessed. The older of the two nodded to the other, and the young guy slipped out of the interrogation room.

The detective leaned back in his chair and asked me “Do you” something. He looked kind of like my dad, I realized.

“Do I what?”

He said it again.

“Do I...was that need? Do I need anything?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, I need a hospital.”

He tapped the paper.

“What, you'll let me go if I sign it?”

Another nod.

“I'm sick, I'm not stupid. You don't want me to die here any more than I do.” Pain ripped through my forehead and my hand skipped and jumped on the table. “Jesus, again?” I leaned forwards on the table and held my head with my left hand.

The young detective came back, looking kind of freaked out, and he said, What do you believe? to me.

Because this whole thing was making soooo much fucking sense already. Since when this fucker know sign language, and why was he doing some St. Peter at the gates bullshit?

“What?” I said.

He signed it again.

“What do I believe?”

He shook his head, but he kept fucking saying it. What do you believe?

“Okay, so you don't know what you're signing,” I said. Justin, think, fucking think. You is pretty close to your, could be that. Maybe he just has his eyebrows down because he fucking does, maybe he's not asking a question, so then what could be here. And believe is very close to the sign for—

I sat up.

“My husband's here?”

**

I held it together until Brian walked through the door, disheveled and fired-up and fucking furious, and he blew right past the detectives and pulled me up and into his arms, and I started crying like someone had opened some kind of valve inside me. I don't think I could have let him go for goddamn anything in that second. You could have told me the world was literally going to end unless I let go of Brian and I would have hung on.

He was so warm.

But he pushed me off of him after a few seconds and held me at arm's length. Jesus Christ.

Everything swam. I need to sit.

Yeah, here. He guided me to the chair and took his jacket off and put it around me. I need to speak out loud for a minute, okay?

Okay, but— I said, but he'd already turned to the detectives and started fucking shouting at them, so hard the muscles in his neck were straining. And look, the whole thing was very gratifying and everything, but if Brian got arrested for beating up a cop we were never fucking getting out of here.

So I tugged on his arm. Brian.

Hang on, he signed without stopping, or looking at me.

“Brian!”

He took a deep breath through his nose and looked down at me, and his frown deepened. What's wrong with your eyes?

I've had three seizures since I got here and I can't get warm. Sometimes you just have to be direct.

His lower lip twitched. Justin.

Please can you take me to the hospital?

Yeah, Sunshine. We're going now, come on.

**

I couldn't stop crying in the cab on the way to the hospital. I knew I was scaring the shit out of Brian, but I couldn't stop. He kept trying to ask me questions, why were you in the park, why didn't you have your coat, why did they arrest you if you didn't do anything, and I was so confused and overwhelmed and so scared that he was going to yell at me and I had never felt this sick in my entire life.

I don't understand, Brian was saying. I don't understand how this happened.

I squeezed the ever loving fuck out of my head as my arm started shaking. “Brian, it's doing it again.”

I see. I see it, baby.

**

I couldn't stop shivering in the ER, and Brian took his shirt off and pulled it over my head. He hauled my legs up into his lap and held me.

I got an MRI, a shitton of anticonvulsants, warmed IV fluids.

Outside of my hospital room, Brian screamed at Daphne in sign language, the fastest signing I've ever seen from him. Slow down, slow down, she kept saying, and Brian was crying and wild-eyed and shaking down to his feet in fury, why the fuck did they do this to him?

I fell in and out, missed a lot, slept a lot. Every time I was awake, Brian was in the room, stripped down and raw like I've never seen him, barking questions at me like I was back in the interrogation room.

Why were you in the park?

“I don't know. I must have had a seizure at my studio and wandered after.” I wondered what I was working on when it happened. I hoped it wasn't that cliff painting. That one was going to be so fucking good. If I'd ruined it...

Why did the police approach you?

I threw up and I was just in a t-shirt, they thought I was drunk.

He paced around my room. Why did they push you to the ground?

“I don't know! Because I was signing and that freaked them out, I guess.”

Why were you signing at hearing people?

“Because I was confused!”

When did you tell them you were Deaf?

“I don't know. At the station.”

Why didn't you tell them right away?

“I don't know.”

Why didn't you tell them? he screamed at me.

“I don't know!”

Why didn't you tell them?

“I didn't remember! Stop yelling at me, stop yelling at me!”

He left my room and didn't come back for a long time.

**

Derek came in when some amount of time had passed, God knows. Minutes, hours, days. My MRI was clear and I wasn't having seizures anymore with the strong as fuck stuff they were giving me through the IV, but the heavy duty anticonvulsants make me so, so out of it, and it's not as if I'd had a great grasp on reality going into it. Derek came right to the bed and hugged me, and it occurred to me that if I were black those cops would have fucking killed me.

Don't ever get arrested, I told him, cupping his face in my hand.

He nodded a little, and finally someone else just looked as fucking sad as I was.

**

You need to eat, Brian said.

“I can't, I still feel really nauseous.”

He prowled my room like a tiger and stopped by the window, looking out over the cars in the parking lot with a look on his face like they'd personally offended him.

Why didn't you show them the bracelet, he said after a minute.

God, I could not keep doing this. I did, eventually.

Why eventually?

I forgot it was there. My arms were behind my back.

Why didn't they check for it?

I don't know. They probably don't do it as a matter of course. They're not paramedics.

Did you tell them you were having a seizure when you had your first one at the station?

I don't remember. I don't think so.

Why not?

I don't know. I guess I thought they...like they already knew or something. I know that doesn't make sense.

He paced, his hands in fists.

I cleared my throat. “Brian, I'm sorry.”

He laughed a little without looking at me.

“If...if it happens again I'll do better, okay? I promise.” I must have sounded desperate, but I couldn't help it, I was so fucking scared he was about to leave again. “I'm sorry. I'll be better.”

He stopped pacing and turned to look at me with this absolute blankness on his face, this total confusion, and I watched, so gradually, while understanding rose into his eyes.

Justin, he said, slowly.

Yeah.

Justin. He looked like he was afraid to talk to me, I don't know. That's what it felt like. Do you think that I'm angry at you?

“Yeah, I mean...” I tried to say, but God knows how it must have come out, because I could feel tears coming back up my throat. God, I hate these fucking meds.

But Brian said, Okay, okay, it's okay, and he pulled the chair up by the bed and he took one of my hands between both of his and kissed it, and he stayed like that for a long time. And he didn't ask me to explain what happened anymore.

**

Okay, Brian said, standing at the foot of the bed. Let me hear it.

I took a deep breath. “I'm Deaf. I have rights. My husband's number is on my bracelet.”

Good. Again.

“I'm Deaf. I have rights. My husband's number is on my bracelet.”

Again, work really hard at that R in rights, okay? It's a little unclear right now, they might not get what that word is.

I tried really, really hard to remember how an R was supposed to feel in my mouth. “I'm Deaf. I have rights. My husband's number is on my bracelet.”

Closer, again.

“I'm Deaf. I have rights.”

He watched me and nodded.

“I'm Deaf,” I said. “I have rights.”