Blind Date A Book 2020 – Book #15
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Chapter 1
Perhaps the day would have been different if they had just given him his meds. Reuben’s headaches had gotten progressively and severely worse.
“All out,” the man had said behind the counter. He had little tubes behind his ears and Reuben wasn’t about to fall for his trap. He had learned, been reforged, made into another man entirely. He would not be bad like before.
More than anything else in the world, Reuben wanted to see his wife again. Even though it hurt to try to remember her he knew he’d been married. He’d been in love. His doctors had told him he wasn’t ready for a relationship again. Maybe never. They had said his memories might gradually return, but now they all seemed to be coming at once, painful, like his brain had been submerged in broken glass. But the doctors had also told him he’d been making good progress, that he was being a ‘good boy’. And Reuben had been a good boy and he didn’t want to complain. He didn’t read too well and he was slow to learn, but he attacked knowledge with a tenacity that allowed him to keep pace with his doctors’ expectations.
He studied the pharmacy man’s—pharmacist’s—face. His pursed lips, semi-lidded eyes, glasses slid midway to the bridge of his nose. Everything about his face and crossed arms said ‘disapproval’, though Reuben didn’t know why. He turned away from the pharmacy counter, intent on finding something to keep the pain away. It hurt not to keep the routines the doctors had given him. He was not the man he once was, not that monster, and the pharmacist would not force him into being one again.
Reuben turned back and asked the man where they got their drugs. He kept his eyes down like the behavioral specialist had taught him. Reuben had a tendency to display an ‘aggressive stare’ as one doctor had put it. Reuben didn’t understand how looking at someone could be aggressive. The man behind the counter told him his meds came from Bentonville, Arkansas if he felt like a drive, then laughed for some reason. Reuben couldn’t drive, but he could walk, and asked him which direction that was. That was even funnier to the man and Reuben stood there, the pain in his head cresting again. He waited until the red had faded out of everything and the man had left.
He left too and went to the nearest gas station and asked the man behind the glass where their maps were. The man looked at him, puzzled, and said he didn’t even know if they even had any maps. He asked Reuben why he would even want one. Didn’t he know about MapQuest? Why didn’t he just look for whatever he needed on his iPhone? Reuben didn’t know what either of those things were. But he didn’t like how the clerk was speaking to him and disliked even more how he was looking at him.
Reuben fled the gas station, the pain in his head doubling and still he didn’t have his medication. It wouldn’t be too long before he couldn’t take it anymore and something happened. He passed by another one of those coffee places, the fifth or sixth one he’d seen today, and turned his head away. Reuben hated coffee. Couldn’t stand the smell and the taste was even worse—like cigarette ash and acid. The intense memory of his brother tricking him into drinking coffee flooded his mind. He’d downed the whole thing and become violently ill, Ronald laughing at him the entire time as he’d heaved his guts out into the sink.
He had been bigger than his older brother since he was five years old, partly because of the disease that hadn’t stunted Ronald’s growth, but had made him rail thin. Reuben had always been careful around him, but Ronald had pushed him too far and he gave his older brother a beating. Of course when their mother had seen the vomit in the sink and a bruised, unconscious, and broken Ronald on the floor, Reuben had been blamed for it all. She had whipped him mercilessly with a phone cord until she’d left bloody crescents in her palm from her fingernails.
Reuben needed to get somewhere he could think. Home would have been best, but it was too far a walk for his aching head. He’d assumed he would have had his drugs by now and wouldn’t have minded the trek on foot, but even the thought of walking now made his head hurt. The doctors had told him it would take days of him not taking his medication for him to feel any ill effects, but Reuben knew better. One day, even one hour passing without him taking a pill when he was supposed to, he would feel it. He didn’t need any more evidence than the razored ache in his head right now. He knew he would eventually do things, terrible things. He couldn’t remember what he’d done in the past beyond brief snatches—shadows of images of people he’d hurt—but understood if he didn’t get his medication soon he might hurt people again. The doctors had all told him how he was changed, but if that were true, why did he need pills still? And why couldn’t he be with his wife?
Reuben didn’t want that. He was better now—different. He would show anyone looking. Reuben crowbarred a smile across his face. If anyone looked at him right now, they would only see a happy, normal person, just like them. People were supposed to be happy, even if they didn’t look like they were happy. He would be perfectly happy-unhappy too. Before he’d killed himself, Reuben’s court-appointed therapist had explained perfectly happy-unhappy to him over many, many sessions.
People walking by didn’t seem to be smiling and they didn’t smile when they saw him. But every time he thought he was on the verge of all his senses going white with agony, he just kept the smile glued on his face and forced it back. A lot of people walked around him and they didn’t look perfectly happy-unhappy. They just looked plain. And that was sad. And sadness reminded him he was alone.
He needed his wife just as much as he needed his medication. He could nearly remember her name and if anyone could make him better it should be her. She could make him better than perfectly happy-unhappy or maybe even just happy. Reuben decided right then he would go to her. But he didn’t remember where she lived.
A man was yelling somewhere. Reuben turned to look. He must have been walking without paying attention because he didn’t recognize where he was. But then again, he didn’t know where he was most times. The man was standing in the doorway of a brightly lit building, waving furiously, but Reuben didn’t know who he was talking to. Reuben thought it was odd for that building to have so many lights on in the middle of the day. The man was yelling for someone named Tree to come over. Or maybe he was talking to a tree.
But then he began pointing at Reuben. He realized the man had been talking to him and must have been trying to be ironical or somesuch. The man had on a tie and Reuben’s daddy (before he stole his mama’s false teeth and all her money) had told him never to trust a man in a tie.
He took Reuben’s hand and did his best to shake it. But his fingers were too small to fit right and he settled for pinching Reuben’s fingers in a soft, balloon-handed grip. The man gave a no-lip smile beneath a pencil-thin mustache, revealing a gap between his front teeth. A tube rests perfectly between those two spaced teeth and his eyes glisten like they are made of glass. Several men rushed another man almost as big as Reuben through the door behind the little man. He spoke really fast which agitated Reuben and he found his attention drifting to the big man currently being kicked over and over again while he lay prone between two cars parked at the curb.
The man in the tie took Reuben by the hand and led him inside, talking rapid-fire the whole time. Reuben’s brains felt like they were sizzling in his skull and he tried to focus on something other than right now. All those words were making his head hurt even more, but he could smile just as hard.
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