Bound Read Free Page B

ripped the paper from it.
    “Give me the goddamn thing, I’m a nurse. I’m taking my daughter home.” She nearly shoved the nurse away from the handles of my wheelchair and pushed it down the hallway herself. I could hear the rise and fall of her chest and I wondered if she was sad or angry. Probably both, like me.
     
    I didn’t want memories of the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I pushed the box onto the highest shelf of my closet, out of my view. Not seeing it meant not thinking about it, and not thinking about it meant getting past it.
    The house was so quiet. No classes to get to, no studying or packing to do. Nothing to occupy my mind with. I texted my friend Lacey from high school to see if she could meet me for coffee, but she was at work, like most other normal people.
    I sighed and looked around my childhood bedroom. It was time to double down on my efforts to find a job. Psychology majors weren’t exactly in demand in the Chicago area, but there were a lot of things I could do. I needed something to focus on. Something besides the aimless melancholy that had become my constant companion.
     
    ***
     
    June 2013 – Ryke
     
    How did anyone find what they were looking for in this hospital? It was all hallways and doors and elevators that only went to certain floors. Though I’d attended a lot of meetings here over the past year, I still wondered if I was lost as I wound my way through the maze.
    The dry erase board with “Bereavement Support Group” scrawled across it confirmed I wasn’t lost. I pulled my baseball hat down over my forehead and walked in.
    It was mostly the usual suspects: Rose, the 60-ish lady who always brought homemade cookies; Carlos, the young guy who’d nursed both of his parents through losing battles to cancer; and Trace, who no one wanted to sit next to because of his body odor. There were several other faces I recognized, and one I didn’t. She sat in one of the padded folding chairs arranged in a circle, and I recognized her expression.
    She was trying to decide whether or not to bolt. I’d done the same thing before my first meeting. ‘I don’t need to be here’, I’d told myself. ‘These people are all weak, but I’m not.’ But something had kept my ass glued to that padded chair. Something in the back of my head that said I’d been telling myself I was okay for more than a year, and I was tired of it. This seemed like a place where it was okay to admit I wasn’t.
    I never said much at the meetings, but talking wasn’t a requirement. I’d told these people what happened to Maggie, and it felt fucking amazing when none of them looked at me with the pity I’d grown used to. None of them asked me how I was feeling. They didn’t say anything – just listened. And there was something about listening to them that made me feel a little less fucked up.
    “Hey, guys.” The shrink who led the group, Kirk, rushed through the door with his worn out leather briefcase in tow. He was a thin guy with his head shaved completely bald. I hadn’t figured out yet if he was gay or straight, not that I really gave a shit.
    “Anybody want a cookie?” Rose passed around a paper plate layered with chocolate chip cookies as people took seats in the circle of chairs. I sat between Kirk and Carlos, feeling bad for the new girl when Trace flopped down next to her. Hopefully she had a bad sense of smell.
    “Hi, I’m Kirk, and I lead this group.” He blew out a breath, looking across the circle at the new girl. “Welcome. All I ask is that you introduce yourself, though you’re welcome to share more when we go around. We don’t judge here. This is a place for support , and everything in this room, including who’s here, is confidential.”
    He looked at me first, and I shifted in my seat. “Hi, I’m Ryke. That’s all I’ve got tonight.”
    Kirk nodded and looked at Carlos. “Hi, I’m Carlos, and I lost my mom 15 months ago and my dad seven months ago. I’m doing