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Chapter 2 - Head Shrinking.



“Hello, Mr. Kinney. I’m Dr. Kajiwara,” the latest visitor to Brian’s hospital cubicle announced as he pushed aside the curtain and came inside. 


I was sitting on the exam table, still holding Brian’s hand. He’d only recently stopped weeping. It had taken me the longest time to get him calmed down; all I could do was hold him as tight as possible and rock him like I would a baby while muttering nonsense platitudes. It eventually worked, but not before I was almost as keyed up as he’d been. This just was not at all like the Brian Kinney I knew. He didn’t cry - ever - let alone spend twenty minutes bawling incoherently in my arms. It didn’t make any sense. Not after what had been, in my opinion at least, a relatively minor accident. Something was seriously wrong. So it was no wonder that I was exceedingly grateful when the psychologist finally showed up to do the mental health evaluation Dr. Prakash had ordered.


Dr. Kajiwara approached Brian, holding his hand out in greeting. Brian didn’t react at all, just staring off into space over the top of the doctor’s head. When the man reached out to make contact, one hand resting briefly on Brian’s shoulder in a very non-threatening way, Brian shrank away from this stranger, moving closer to me. I squeezed his knuckles tighter to let him know I was still there. Brian resumed his blank staring at nothing, almost as if he’d forgotten we were all there. 


“Dr. Prakash tells me that you’re not feeling well,” the kindly doctor began, using that placating voice you’d use with potentially violent lunatics. “She said that you’re very upset and maybe even a little confused about how you got hurt. Can you tell me how you’re feeling, Brian?”


“I want to go home now, please,” Brian repeated with an emptiness that chilled me, never even looking at the doctor as he spoke. 


“He just keeps saying that over and over again,” I relayed, pleading with my eyes for the doctor to make it all make sense. 


“I take it you’re,” Kajiwara looked at the tablet computer he was holding, “the partner? Mr. Taylor?” I nodded. “You were there when Mr. Kinney had his accident?” I nodded again. “Can you tell me more about what happened? The report I have here says Mr. Kinney walked into traffic? I would imagine there’s something more to the story than just that.”


So I launched into the story about us walking down the sidewalk and talking and Brian texting with Lindsey. It all sounded so mundane. There was nothing in the story as I remembered it that would account for Brian walking into traffic like that, let alone his behavior since we’d arrived at the hospital. However, the proof that something was distressingly wrong was sitting there, beside me, doing his best imitation of a blank wall, while I explained what had happened to the doctor responsible for evaluating Brian’s mental state. Based on my partner’s performance so far, I suspected he was going to fail this particular exam spectacularly. 


“So you were just walking down the street when Brian began to act in a disoriented fashion?” Dr. Kajiwara commented. 


“Yeah. It was . . . It was so strange,” I confessed. “One minute we were talking about his son and the next minute he walked off and left me there, stepping off the curb into traffic. I don’t understand it at all.”


The psychiatrist made a note on his tablet with an electronic pen and then looked up, focusing again on the almost unresponsive patient. “Brian? Do you remember the events your partner just related?” 


Brian’s only response was a quiet sniffle.


“Mr. Kinney, can you look at me please?” 


Brian turned his head further away from the doctor, now looking intently at a poster advertising the hospital’s HIV/STD testing options, which was the only thing adorning the wall of the little cubicle.


“Mr. Kinney? Brian? Can you please talk to me for a moment? I’m just trying to help you, but I can’t do that if you won’t work with me. I need you to talk to me . . .” There was still no response from the blank wall of man sitting next to me. “Brian, if you want to go home, you’re going to have to cooperate here. Okay?”


That got his attention at least. Brian finally turned back to look at the doctor but remained mute. Through the hand I was still holding, however, I could feel the shaking that had only barely abated after his earlier crying jag, begin again in earnest. I was just completely stymied by this bizarre reaction. This was not at all like the supremely confident Brian I knew. What the fuck was going on here?


“Something is seriously wrong, Doctor,” I spoke up. “This,” and I tilted my head towards the mute, trembling man sitting next to me, “is not like my partner. Not at all. He’s not normally shy or quiet or introverted. He’s bold and totally in your face. Hell, Brian is a respected business owner who’s built his own advertising agency from the ground up; it’s become one of the most profitable agencies on the east coast in only five years and something like that doesn’t happen if you’re not good at talking to people. He’s also not someone who just walks into traffic or who . . . .” I didn’t want to reveal all Brian’s secrets to this unknown man, but I would have to say something if I expected any help. “Or who breaks down crying over a minor accident. I . . . I can’t explain this behavior.”


Brian continued to just sit there - I wasn’t sure if he was even listening to my complaints - saying nothing. It was like he wasn’t even really there. His body was present, but his mind was gone. Off in another place. A safer place? Maybe. Brian Kinney, though, had disappeared and been replaced with an empty replica of himself. 


“It does seem like Brian’s experiencing a serious dissociative event,” the doctor said, repeating the same word that Dr. Prakash had used - dissociative - a word that made my guts clench with worry. “If we could pinpoint the triggering event, whatever it was that caused Brian to react the way he has been, it might help us to treat him.” He paused a minute and scanned through the notes he’d made on the tablet while we’d been talking. “You mentioned that he’d been texting with someone while you were walking?’


“Yes. Our friend, Lindsey. She’s the mother of Brian’s son,” I replied, not seeing why that would be important. “There’s nothing unusual about that.”


Dr. Kajiwara nodded, his mouth pursed up as he thought through the situation. “What were they texting about? Was there anything in what they were discussing that could have triggered this?”


“No. I don’t think so . . . Um . . . Lindsey wanted Brian to help cover the costs of the summer camp his son, Gus, wants to go to this year. They were sort of text-arguing about it because Brian thought Gus was too young to go to a month-long sleep-away camp . . . There’s nothing about any of that out of the ordinary, though. Brian and Lindsey text all the time about Gus.”


“Did you see any of these texts? How do you know what they were discussing?” the doctor asked.


“Brian was relating everything to me as he was texting. We were discussing it while we walked. I told him I thought Gus would be fine and that he really wanted to go. It’s this soccer camp in Pittsburgh . . .” I was interrupted by a moan from Brian, the first recognizable sound he’d made since the doctor’s arrival, and felt his hand clutching at mine more tightly than before. 


“Could it be that there was something more in these texts than what he was telling you about?” the good doctor suggested logically. 


“I don’t know.” With my free hand I pulled Brian’s shattered phone out of my pocket. I’d forgotten I even had it in the confusion that had followed the moment he’d dropped it. “Now that you mention it . . . Brian had just received another text from Lindsey when he dropped his phone. I had bent over to pick it up for him when he walked off. That’s when he walked into the traffic.” 


I held up the broken phone as if it was evidence of some kind. It was totally trashed though; the screen was cracked and even the casing was beginning to come apart. I tried to push the ‘on’ button to see if there was any way to boot it up so we could look at that last text message, but no luck. That phone was dead. 


“We’re not getting anything on this.” I shook my head and tossed the broken device onto the rolling tray table waiting beside the bed. “But . . .” I pulled out my own phone which was, thankfully, still intact. “Luckily, we have a shared Cloud account.” I tapped away at my phone for half a minute or so while Dr. Kajiwara waited patiently for me. “Okay. Here’s Brian’s messaging account . . . It looks like the last message he received was from Lindsey, like I said. ‘THIS is the camp your son wants to go to. Please check it out for yourself and think about it before you tell him no’. There’s nothing there that would cause Brian to lose it like he did . . . Oh wait. There’s some pictures that came in right before that last message . . .” I held up the phone so the doctor could see the images on my screen. “It looks like Lindz sent pics of the flyer for the camp they were talking about. 


As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything about these images that would have thrown Brian for a loop either. The flyer was a typical, glossy, tri-folded brochure; it was the kind of thing almost any business might put out as part of their standard advertising. Most of the pages were just text or graphics stating the details about the camp, like dates and times and location. The front flap - the first picture in the grouping - was the only one that was in any way interesting. It showed a team photo consisting of a group of about twenty boys around Gus’ age, all dressed in soccer uniforms, with an older man standing off to the side wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Coach’ on it. The coach had one arm around the shoulders of a brunet boy who kinda resembled Gus to some extent. The majority of the boys were grinning at the camera, all sun-kissed and happy, looking like they were enjoying their time at the camp. It looked like your typical soccer camp photo. Nothing of concern at all. In fact, it looked exactly like I imagined a U6 Soccer Camp photo would. As far as I was concerned, It looked like a fun thing to do with your summer if you were six, and that was saying a lot because I had never been a big sports enthusiast. 


Bottom line, there was nothing in that photo that would explain my boyfriend wigging out the way he had.   


Or was there? 


When I looked at the picture a little more closely I noticed that at least one of the soccer players wasn’t smiling. The kid standing next to the man wearing the ‘coach’ shirt didn’t look like he was having much fun at the moment the pic had been snapped. He was frowning. The coach - a distinguished man of about sixty or so with grey hair, a little thick through the waist, but still handsome and tanned - looked serious and intent. Was the boy trying to pull away from the man whose arm was draped over his shoulder or was that just a trick of the photography? Of course, there was always one kid who didn’t smile at the right time in these group shots, right? It was probably nothing. I was just trying to read something into the picture to make Brian’s reaction make sense. 


“Is there anything about this picture that would have caused Brian to react the way he did? You say he dropped his phone and walked into the oncoming traffic immediately after seeing this? Any idea why this would have triggered him?” Dr. Kajiwara asked, taking the phone out of my hand so he could look at it more closely. 


“None at all,” I answered. “I don’t see anything here . . . None of this makes any sense.”


The doctor looked at the picture a moment longer before turning the device so that the patient on the exam table could see the screen. “Is there anything in these texts that upset you, Brian?” he asked.


That finally got a reaction out of the silent man sitting beside me. 


Brian slowly turned his head to look at the phone the doctor was holding up and, as soon as his eyes locked on the screen, he whimpered, vaulted up off the bed, and scrambled across the floor, desperate to get away from the doctor. I was left, alone, sitting on the edge of the exam table, my mouth hanging open, in shock. Brian ended up in the corner of the small cubicle, unable to retreat further and unable to flee completely with Dr. Kajiwara blocking the exit. Instead, he crumpled to the floor in a little ball. I shook myself out of my momentary stupefaction and got up, approaching Brian’s corner at the same time as the doctor. Both of us seemed unsure what to do, though, so we simply stood there, staring.


Brian, meanwhile, sat there, huddled in his corner, wearing only the hospital issued backless gown, his knees pulled up into his chest and his broken wrist curled into his stomach protectively, rocking himself and hyperventilating and muttering about how he didn’t want to play anymore. 


“I want to go home now. I want to go home. Please, I don’t want to play. I want to go home,” he repeated over and over again as new tears began to seep from his eyes and drench his cheeks.


Dr. Kajiware looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both looked confused. 


We took turns trying to coax Brian out of his corner for about the next five minutes or so, to no avail. He flinched away from either of us trying to touch him. All he would say was that he wanted to go home. Eventually I couldn’t take it and I went back to sit on the exam table alone. Dr. Kajiwara called for a nurse to bring in a sedative, which he administered forthwith. Brian finally fell quiet about two minutes later and the doctor ordered him to be admitted for further observation. 



When I returned to Brian’s hospital room - after taking a half hour out to make the unpleasant but necessary phone calls, letting the family know the bare bones about what had happened and that Brian was in the hospital here in New York - I found that the patient was finally awake. 


“Hey. Brian. How are you feeling?” I asked trepidatiously. 


“I don’t know. You tell me. What the fuck happened?” he asked, holding up his casted wrist. “Why am I in a damned hospital room with a broken fucking arm?”


“You don’t remember what happened?” I wasn’t a doctor but this didn’t seem like a good development.


“I wouldn’t be asking if I did, would I?”


“Uh . . . You had an accident,” I stuttered, feeling like I was totally out of my depth. “You tried to cross the street against the light and just walked into traffic. You were run over by a motorcycle . . . You really don’t remember any of that?”


Brian got a confused look on his face for a minute or two before shaking his head. He pulled back the covers and did a visual scan of his body, frowning at the array of bruises on his legs, most of which were already turning a deep purple-black. But, not seeing anything more serious, he shifted his legs to the side and began to get out of bed. I rushed over - to help him or stop him, I wasn’t sure - but he waved me off as he cautiously got to his feet and tested out a few steps. 


Pulling open the door to the bathroom, he flipped on the light and examined himself in the mirror over the sink for a few moments. His face was also showing some bruising on the right side of his jaw, and there was one cut on his chin that had required stitches and then been covered with a liquid bandage treatment, but other than that, his face was unscathed. He hadn’t discovered the much more extensive bruising that covered most of his right side and hip, but I’m sure he felt the stiffness. Other than that, though, he was remarkably unscathed considering that he’d walked straight out into the busy afternoon NYC traffic.


“Well, I look like shit, but it doesn’t seem too bad. When can we get the hell out of here?”


“You really don’t remember anything?” I pressed. “Not the accident or the doctors or . . . Or anything?”


“No,” he answered succinctly. “Should I? I mean, I’m assuming I was unconscious or something, right?”


“Uh, no. You were awake, just . . . Not acting like you.”


“Did I hit my head or something?” he asked, reaching up with the uncasted hand to prod at his head as if his fingertips might find a hidden injury that his eyes had missed. “No bumps. I feel fine.”


“I don’t think you hit your head,” I reassured him. “The doctor did a CT scan to be sure and said there wasn’t any sign of a TBI . . .”


“Good. So, then, when can we get the hell out of here?”


“Well, it’s not that simple.” I tried to think of a tactful way to explain that, for the hour or so he’d been in the ER, he’d seemed kinda insane, but couldn’t come up with anything, so I just blurted it out. “You were acting really strange before, so they did a psych eval on you, and you sorta lost it, and the doctor had to sedate you, and you’ve been admitted for further observation . . .”


“What the fuck are you babbling about, Justin? I’m fine. I don’t need to be ‘observed’,” he insisted, leaving the bathroom and starting to pull open the doors of the cabinets on the wall behind the bed. “Where the fuck are my clothes?”


“They got pretty torn up in the accident. I think the ER doctors probably just threw them away,” I explained. 


This, of course, caused Brian to scowl, because nobody should be allowed to treat his precious designer clothing like that; the scowling must have pulled at the stitched cut on his chin though since he almost immediately reached up to rub at the spot and the frown disappeared. “Whatever. Just . . . Go get me something to wear and tell the doctors to get my discharge paperwork ready. I don’t want to spend the whole day hanging around in a fucking hospital room, for fuck’s sake. I promised you I’d go to that thing at The Met with you, right?”


“Um, Brian, the museum closed about,” I pulled out my phone to check the time, “three hours ago.” Brian looked at me, his forehead furrowed with confusion. I turned the phone around so he could see the time display on the home screen. “It’s after eight pm.”


“Shit. How long was I out?” 


“That’s the thing,” I attempted to explain again. “You weren’t ‘out’. I don’t think you lost consciousness at all. You were awake all through the ambulance ride and the ER stuff. It wasn’t until the psychiatrist, Dr. Kajiwara, tried to talk to you, and you completely freaked out on us, that he had to sedate you. That was about five hours ago.” He was staring at me with an accusing look, as if he thought I was making up the whole story. “You REALLY don’t remember any of that?”


“No. I don’t,” he replied, momentarily looking worried. But then the confident and decisive Brian was back and making executive decisions. “But it doesn’t matter. The doctors must have been wrong about me hitting my head. I feel fine now, though. I just want to go home.”


“That’s what you kept saying before,” I mentioned, “only you didn’t sound like you . . .” 


“Well, I’m ME now. And this ME wants to get the fuck out of here,” Brian stated. “So let’s get this show on the road already. Where’s the damn call button for the nurse?” He started to pull apart the bed covers until he found the little remote device that attached to the hospital bed that allowed a patient to ring for assistance. Hitting the button two or three times for good measure, he looked up at me with determination and ordered, “while I’m waiting around for Nurse Ratched, you can go buy me some new clothes. I’m sure there’s a gift shop or something, right? They’ve got to sell scrubs or something.”


“But, Brian, we can't just leave. We don’t know why you were acting so off or why you don’t remember any of that stuff. Don’t we need to stick around at least long enough for the doctors to clear you?”


“Fuck that. I’m not in the mood to become some head shrinker’s guinea pig. The only head I want played with is the one in the pants you’re going to go out and buy me right now, Sunshine,” he directed, back to his usual levels of innuendo and snark, while physically turning my shoulders so I was facing the door. “Or do you want me walking out of here in my birthday suit? I mean, I don’t mind either way, but I’m pretty sure the NYPD frowns on that kind of display.”


I hesitated in the doorway, looking back over my shoulder at the tall, assertive man making shooing motions at me to get me going. He certainly seemed like he was back to normal. He was ordering me around and making sexually-tinged jokes and just, generally, being his usual snarky, domineering self. So why did I still feel so uneasy? Why didn’t he want to talk about what happened? Or seem even the tiniest bit curious about the seven hour gap in his memory? He might be willing to just move on and forget about everything that had happened that afternoon, but I’m not sure I could. I’d probably never be able to get the image of a sobbing brunet crying his heart out in my arms out of my head. Not to mention the sight of my partner cowering on the floor in a corner mumbling in a little voice about how he didn’t want to play anymore. That was gonna haunt me pretty much forever. Or at least until I’d figured out why he’d reacted that way. And I didn’t think running away from the problem - or the hospital - was going to help.


I paused in the open doorway to his room. “I really think you should wait, Brian,” I suggested. “At least until we get the results of the blood work back and you have a chance to talk with Dr. Kajiwara again. He’s worried about you. I am too, to be honest. You were acting so weird before and . . .”


“Fuck that! And fuck you too, Sunshine,” Brian snarled, his anger levels ratcheting up so fast it had taken me by surprise. “I feel fucking fine! I just need to get the hell out of here! Your fucking Dr. Crackerjacks can psychoanalyze somebody else’s head. Leave me out of it!” Shouldering past me, and knocking me against the door jamb in the process, he started screaming down the hallway, “isn’t anybody actually working around here? I pushed that fucking call button five minutes ago. If somebody doesn’t get my damned discharge papers in the next ten minutes I’m calling my lawyer and suing your incompetent asses!”


I could tell by how unreasonably angry Brian was that there’d be no further discussion about sticking around long enough to let the doctors diagnose his little moment of forgetfulness. Brian was nothing if not determined once he was set on a course of action. The best I could do was hang on for the ride and hope that he’d listen to my concerns after he’d cooled off a little. In the meantime, though, I’d better go find him some clothes or he’d probably follow through on his threat to leave the hospital naked just to be perverse. 


“I’ll go find you something to wear,” I promised. “Just don’t leave without me, please.”


He grunted what I took for assent and strutted back into his room, his bare ass hanging out of the hospital gown, completely unfazed by his nudity or the many eyes staring at him. That was perfectly in-character for the Brian I knew. So, even though I was still disconcerted about what had happened earlier in the day, and by his lack of memory, I was at least somewhat reassured that he was back to his old self once more. Maybe I really was overreacting? Either way, I needed to get the marauding mental case some clothes before he took his act on the road - literally - so I trotted off on my assigned errand, and left ‘Rage’ to deal with the nursing staff on his own.


When I returned about fifteen minutes later, a pair of hospital scrubs in hand, I found Brian and Dr. Kajiwara arguing in his room. 


“Mr. Kinney, be reasonable,” the doctor was arguing. “I witnessed a major dissociative event. When I questioned you, you didn’t even know who you were and couldn’t relate how you’d been hurt. You were incoherent at times and it got so bad you required sedation. You can’t just walk out of here after something like that. We don’t know what caused the break or whether it could happen again. Just think, this time you were lucky - you survived with only a broken wrist and a few bruises - but what if this kind of event happens again? What if you’re not so lucky next time or if your partner isn’t around to get you to medical attention? You could be seriously hurt.”


“Fucking stop already, Doc!” Brian screamed, moving closer so that he towered over the much smaller man. “I told you, I’m fine! I just want to go home!”


Kajiwara looked over at me, our eyes locking for a long minute, both of us concerned by hearing those eerie words again. 


Then the doctor sighed. “Fine. I can’t hold you against your will, Mr. Kinney. But you’re going to have to sign our standard AMA form indicating you’re leaving against my strenuous recommendation that you stay, pending further tests and evaluation.”


“What-the-fuck-ever,” Brian responded, his arms crossed unrelentingly over his chest. “Just get me the fucking papers so I can get out of here already.” Turning to me he added, “those the clothes? You couldn’t find anything other than purple? What am I, Barney or something?”


“Sorry, it’s the only ones they had left in your size.”


“Give them to me,” he demanded, snatching the items out of my hands and tearing the plastic wrapping off before shucking the hospital gown and shamelessly pulling on the scrubs without regard to the doctor’s continued presence.


“Mr. Taylor? If you’ll come with me, I’ll get your partner’s paperwork started for him.” 


Dr. Kajiwara indicated I should precede him out the door, so I did. He led me down the hallway towards the nursing station. He sent the one nurse who’d been sitting there off, with directions to see to another patient, leaving us alone at the desk. Then he looked at me, letting his concern show plainly on his face.


“I don’t need to tell you that I’m troubled by your partner’s condition,” he began. “His over-the-top anger now isn’t any more reassuring than his emotional outburst earlier. He also indicated to me, before you returned, that he doesn’t remember the accident or the exam I did. That’s not a good sign.”


“I know. I agree it’s not good,” I admitted. “But what can I do about it? He’s not acting rationally, and it’s freaking me out, but when he gets like this there’s not much anyone can do. He just keeps saying he’s ‘fine’ and wants to go home. What am I supposed to do, doctor?”


“All you can do, for now at least, is keep an eye on him,” Kajiwara advised as he scribbled something on an Rx pad. “These events didn’t just happen; something triggered the dissociative state he was in when he arrived at the hospital. Based on his subsequent reaction to that photo you found in his messages, I suspect something about that picture brought up past abuse of some kind. But, until we identify the exact cause and, preferably, work out why he reacted so strongly, I think you should be prepared for it to happen again.”


“Shit.” I was NOT looking forward to that prospect. Not at all. “If it does happen again, though, how do I handle it? Better yet, how do I prevent it, because . . . I don’t want Brian to get hurt again, doctor.” 


I didn’t elaborate that the ‘hurt’ I was referencing included both the physical and the psychological pain I’d watched Brian go through that day, but I suspected Dr. Kajiwara understood. 


“I suggest you look into your partner’s past a little more closely, Mr. Taylor,” the psychiatrist offered, giving me an intuitive look. “In my experience, severe dissociation like the kind Mr. Kinney is exhibiting is almost always tied to childhood trauma.”


 

 

Chapter End Notes:

5/23/21 - Do I hear a chorus of ‘Poor Brian’? You know I love to torture our boys. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. I somehow always manage to get them to their HEA, though, so please bear with me. TAG

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