Chapter 77 Damon
Damon
Back in the present, I stare at Fernandez-Jones as I lie on the bed in his office.
There’s a bitter aftertaste in my mouth from the two anti-sickness tablets I’ve swallowed.
I don’t, I can’t, speak. Nothing has ever overpowered me like the ECT I’ve just undergone.
Not even my childhood urges to kill. He warned me that both nausea and migraines might follow treatment, and how they’d be more severe if I insisted on refusing his offer of a general anaesthetic or even a muscle relaxant.
He doesn’t understand that I’ve spent too much of my life as a spectator.
That I now need to feel the things I fear the most, including the electrical current going into my brain.
The details of what happened when he got to work on me are scant, but I do remember my whole body jerking then stiffening.
Fernandez-Jones tells me now the seizure was brief, half a minute at most, but it felt much, much longer to me.
Now, he has his notebook out and his fountain pen in his hand and he’s asking me questions, but I don’t have the cognitive capacity to listen or respond.
Instead, I’m thinking about what I’ve learned.
In a few short moments he has given me the clarity I’ve spent months searching for.
And as a result, I know almost everything.
Memories that were taken away from me have returned.
Not all, but enough to paint a more detailed picture of my past.
I think I must fall asleep, because I don’t remember catching him moving to the chair behind his desk.
He’s writing again in his notebook, too busy to spot me regaining consciousness.
He hasn’t seen me watching the man who’s returned so much of what he once took away.
I’m aware that guilt at what I’ve done in the past should be clawing at me like an animal trying to scratch its way out of a locked room.
I should be spiralling and racked with self-loathing.
But I don’t feel those things. Instead, a calmness has descended.
I’m no longer the person I was a few days ago, or even earlier today, when I first approached his front door. I have returned to the one they tried to erase. The one Fernandez-Jones met with when I was twelve.
The one he is about to become the first person to witness the return of.
I’m aware of Callum in the room with us, and before I turn to face him, he opens his mouth, once again pulling at the handkerchief I wedged into it. He is muttering that familiar phrase that always sounds something like ‘oodis’ as he tugs at it.
‘Oodis,’ he continues as he slowly pulls more of it out.
‘Youdis,’ he is saying.
No: ‘You dis.’
Now he holds the handkerchief in his hand. And finally, I understand what he has been trying to tell me, ever since he first appeared.
‘You did this.’
A sudden rush of energy passes through me and I hear what sounds like the crackling of static electricity.
I know I’m imagining it, but I still look to Callum to see if he heard it too.
He knows what I’m thinking because the corners of his mouth lift as his eyes narrow.
My head feels thick and heavy, like a crushing weight on my shoulders.
There is only one way to alleviate it. My expression mirrors Callum’s and we nod to one another.
Together, we look at Fernandez-Jones, who is completely oblivious to our candid exchange.