Hey Professor. How are you?

The time right now is… 6:49 PM, your time, which means the deadline for my essay is a little over 6 hours away.

And I haven’t started.

I have a plan, though. I’ve got a four-and-a-half hour drive ahead of me to get back to my hotel. And I was dreading it, because I did it already this morning going the other way, and I discovered that having nobody to talk to for four-and-a-half hours can drive a guy insane. Or at least this guy.

But then I remembered my phone has voice-to-text. Let me just see if it’s working…

Alright. It’s all one paragraph and there’s no punctuation, but it’s workable. Yeah. That’s fine.

Here’s the plan. I’m thinking if I get everything out there, if I can just spit out all of my thoughts during this drive, I’ll have just enough time to slap some formatting on it and send it over before midnight. And I’m not gonna get rid of any words either. Formatting only. And fixing typos I guess. But that’s it.

It’s been… a couple days, Professor. Holy shit. I don’t think I’ll forget this little excursion for as long as I live. And right now I just have to talk about it. I hope that’s okay.

This is gonna be a mess. And you’re not gonna accept it. And I’m still gonna fail. Just like every other course this semester, and every other degree I’ve wasted my money trying to finish. But so help me God, this time I’m at least gonna get something in.

So. Car’s in drive. Sun’s setting. Let’s get started.

Do you remember the last time we saw each other?

We’re in your office, right? You’re grading some poor bastard’s essay. I’m telling you how I’ve finally figured out what my essay is gonna be about. I’m also bleeding horribly from my neck. The gauze I got from the clinic on campus is doing just enough to stop me from ruining your carpet.

It looks every bit like I’ve just tried to kill myself, but you just take one look at me and go back to your work like this is a regular interruption for you. Like I didn’t just tell you the greatest essay idea ever.

“Pain?” I remember you saying. You don’t even blink. “Lots of psychologists have written about pain. You’ll have to be more specific.”

Well, you’ll be happy to know I got more specific. In fact, I probably took that advice a little too far.

It’s that cut on my neck that starts everything, you see.

I’m shaving in front of the sink in my shitty undergrad dorm, and I’m looking through myself in the mirror, and because I’m so busy thinking about what I’m gonna write about, I forget you have to lift your razor before you move it across your neck. Clumsy me, right?

So now suddenly I’m bleeding out into my sink and I’m looking at my red face in the mirror and the toilet paper I’m using to seal me back up is just not cutting it at all. And I realize something. I’m in so much pain.

I mean, the cut fucking hurts.

The fact that I have to go out in public like this fucking hurts.

The fact that I have to go to the clinic that smells famously like cat pee fucking hurts.

And the fact that all I have to show for my morning brainstorming session is a gash on my neck and zero ideas, well, that hurts like a bitch.

Suddenly the cut doesn’t hurt as much as the embarrassment. And I think that’s interesting. I wonder, what else happens to people when they’re in pain?

But you were right that I had to get more specific. You usually are.

Because pain is pain. Everybody knows it. Everybody’s had it, is having it, will have it again. Except those people with the weird nerve problem that makes them lose the ability to sense it. I used to envy them, but now I just feel sorry for them.

Anyways, I start researching right away. I wish I could say I go to the library, but I just fire up Google instead because it’s 2018 for fuck’s sake. One day you old fogeys will come around.

So I search for the word pain. I find out that I need to be more specific (turns out you’ve got a point), so I start searching random sentences that pop into my head.

“i’m in pain”

“i’m in so much pain”

“seeking help to relieve my pain”

I have like twenty of these, and I look through like the first twenty pages of results on each one. I’m just looking for a spark. Some idea. Something specific.

And then there it is.

Past all the narcotics ads, past all the unmentionable Craigslist posts and the My Chemical Romance fanpages, is a single forum post with no responses. It’s on one of those online medical advice websites. You know, where you ask strangers on the internet to be your doctor? Because those are always a good idea, right?

And it says:

HEADACHE LASTING A DECADE. ANY ADVICE APPRECIATED

Take that in.

This person—this tiny, insignificant, unheard voice on the internet—has been in pain for ten years.

I click the link. It reads:

Hi there,

I’ve had a headache for ten years. I feel it all over. It’s dull. It’s sharp. Nothing really makes it better. Nothing makes it worse, except time.

I go to sleep with it. I wake up with it. Nothing has any effect, especially not drugs. It’s tearing my life apart.

Any help is appreciated.

No bad ideas.

That’s it, word for word. You can look it up. I have it memorized.

So my mouth is hanging open as I read this post. And then I see the date it was posted and my mouth falls even further open.

Ten years ago.

There’s a chance this person has had a headache for twenty god-damn years. I mean, what the hell? I don’t know how Google pointed me to this post, but God bless its little algorithmic heart for doing so. Because it’s just guided me to the Pale Blue Dot of cries for help. Something’s telling me, There’s way more to this. This is something an aspiring psychologist could write an essay about.

I decide I need to interview this guy. No matter what. If anyone knows everything there is to know about pain, it’s the guy who’s had it for twenty years straight.

There’s just one problem. I don’t know who the hell he is. This guy has no info on his profile, other than the name he chose when he signed up.

‘NotSoGreat’

Take it from me—that describes a lot of people.

So I decide I’m not gonna let this guy’s post go unanswered. I decide I’m gonna leave a reply. I make an account, I get all ready to post, and as the little line is flickering the the giant white box, I realize I have no idea what to say. What do you say? But I try my best. And I know you’re always telling me you should never get too emotional when you’re studying somebody’s brain, that you always have to be impartial, but something about this post makes me think this guy might appreciate some emotion, so maybe look away now.

I reply:

Pain can come from anywhere. It can come from inside you, or from the outside. It can range from a papercut to a third degree burn, and even the former can feel worse than the latter if it’s happened to you more recently. Pain wants to help you, but it can just as easily destroy you. And no pain should ever last as long as it has for you.

I want to talk to you about your pain. Please respond and let me know if we can chat.

My only hope is that NotSoGreat’s account is tied to his email address and that he hasn’t gotten a new one in the last ten years. But, well, you know me. Any excuse to sit on my hands for a couple days and I’m all for it. Of course, I get no response.

End of story, right? Not quite.

See, if psychology doesn’t work out? Then maybe I can pursue a degree in private investigation. If that’s a thing. Or if it’s not I’ll invent it.

Alright, so get this.

There’s a little flag right under this guy’s name, and I don’t know if that’s automatic or if he put that there intentionally, but I’m thinking it’s my only hope. It’s blue, it’s got a yellow bird and a fancy crest on it, and written at the top it says: State Of Oregon.

So I start nodding in my chair. Easy enough so far.

But Oregon is a big state. Most of them are. I’ve got no name and no city and tens of thousands of acres to work with.

But I do have his profile picture.

They’re on a hill, this person in pain taking the picture, and his dog. A German Shepherd. They’re overlooking a city that doesn’t have any skyscrapers at all, just a messy grid of flat white houses and a whole lot of trees.

I’m thinking, This looks like a park. A kind of lookout point at the end of a hike where you can take pictures of your city and show off to people that you chose to do a hike that day, and that you saw your house from there.

The dog is on the left, sat down, facing the city. It’s looking back at the camera. And I know you’re not supposed to read into a dog’s expression, but I swear he’s glaring at me like I’ve just challenged him to a fight and he’s daring for me to make the first move.

From the right edge of the picture, there’s this long, skinny white arm, reaching out towards the city. With a thumb and a forefinger, it’s pinching down on a single house.

And if that doesn’t scream, Come find me, then I don’t know what does.

So I find him.

I Google for cities in Oregon this big. There’s not many. I search:

“lookout point portland”

Nope.

“lookout point eugene”

No dice.

“lookout point bend?”

Hello, Bend, Oregon! Hello, Pilot Butte State Scenic Viewpoint!

I’m out of my chair now. I‘m fist pumping. I’m checking out some photos from that lookout and right behind some Asian tourists posing for a photo op is that same freaking house.

I’ve already got another window open looking for plane tickets, and I’m not even questioning this stupid, terrible decision. I mean, no matter what I find, I have to miss classes finding it. And I could find nothing.

But maybe I feel I’m done disappointing my profs. Or maybe something supernatural is guiding me. Maybe it’s just that damn dog, daring me to come find its owner and ask him what pain really is. All I know is that I’m booking my ticket and under my breath, I’m saying:

“You want specific? I’ll give you fucking specific.”

---

---

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Oregon, Professor, but I think you should. Because I fell in love with it a little. And the reason for that won’t surprise you. See, Oregon doesn’t really know what to do with itself. But at the same time, it’s okay with that.

Because it has a bit of everything. It’s got mountains. It’s got cities and farms. A coastline. But Canada has taller mountains. New York is a nicer city. Iowa has farms on lock. And California has a better coastline. But all that’s okay with Oregon. Because it’s just okay at a lot of things.

Seriously, name a famous landmark in Oregon. Like, world famous. That’s right, you can’t.

Oregon: We’re Not Trying Too Hard.

Oregon: Don’t mind us.

If I could marry a state, well, I’d probably go with New York. But I’d hang out with Oregon whenever I could.

I’m off-topic.

It’s a plane, a bus, and a walk to get to the house in between NotSoGreat’s forefinger and thumb. And I have an itch the entire trip. An itch that I can only scratch with my pen and my notepad, which I’m clutching in either hand the entire time. I must look like I could interview the first person that made eye contact with me. But really, I’m just taking in the sights. I don’t even care that it’s raining the whole time.

And then I’m there. In front of a big brown door.

And then I’m knocking. And then it’s opening.

The house is bigger than I expected. Two stories up, one story down. The inside’s this expansive foyer with a winding staircase and a chandelier that’s got so much glass it could double as a disco ball if you shone enough lights on it. I’m thinking, It’s the wrong house. I screwed up. Nobody with chronic pain could live here. NotSoGreat could never have a life this good.

This house also has a 50-something-year-old man standing with one hand on the door and his whole body leaning against the frame. He’s got a trimmed beard and is wearing business clothes even though it’s Saturday.

And I’m having flashbacks to writing my reply in that random forum thread. To how little of an idea I have of what to say. Or how English works.

Only this time, I have an actual person in front of me.

“Hi,” I start.

“Hello,” the man says, his eyebrow climbing up his face. “Can we… help you?”

“I’m looking for a friend,” I say. It’s borderline the truth. I clarify, “Their… head hurts.”

His eyes flash. His mouth opens a crack. Suddenly I hear footsteps—socks on wood—patting towards the door, and a woman appears, the same age, in a short green dress. She’s holding a pair of knitting needles in a fist by her side, and a half-made scarf in the other.

“Alex?” the man says.

I’m thinking, Alexander. Alexander the Not So Great.

I say, “Alex, yeah, that’s him. Alex.”

Their mouths close. The woman presses her lips together as she sighs through her nose and crosses her arms.

“Alexandra,” the man says.

I’m thinking, Alexandra the Not So Great.

I’m thinking, You idiot.

I’m thinking, These two are Alexandra’s parents, and they’ve just realized that I don’t know who the hell she is.

I stutter. “I-I-I—”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad.

“I saw a post. Online. From her. She was looking for ideas about her headache. I wanted to ask her a couple questions.”

I hold up my pen and notepad like they’re a bribe.

The air gets thicker. There’s this miasma choking my heart. There’s this heat stinging my eyes.

They keep staring. I’m realizing that no matter what they say, It’s not going to be good news. I wait for it.

The father says, “We haven’t seen her in three years.”

FFFFFFFFFFFuck me.

I wish I could say I’m looking for a way out now. I should be. It’s a dead-end. Nothing to see here. But instead I’m just recalculating. Because I’ve come a long freaking way. And hell, I did say that I’d interview the first person I saw, so, what the hell? Why not these two?

I tell them who I am. I tell them where I’m from.

I tell them I’m studying pain. And that I thought she would be an interesting case study.

“There’s a lot more to her than her pain,” the mother says. “Do you understand that?”

“Okay, I’m not just studying pain,” I say on the fly. "Also… what it does to someone. How it changes them.” I lower my paper and pen. I say, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

Even though I do.

They look at each other. They shrug. And for some crazy reason, they say, Okay. Sure. They say they have some time.

So they walk me inside—ask me to please remove my shoes—and they take me to their living room. It’s got framed pictures all over the mantels and shelves and tables. Pictures of the two of them, a lot younger, with an ever-present little girl. She has short blonde hair and she’s never, ever smiling like they are, except for the pictures where she’s with her dog. The one who challenged me ten years into the future. The one who’s probably no longer around.

“What would you like to know?” Alex’s father asks.

“Everything,” I say. “But from the start.” I click my pen open.

“The start,” the man repeats. His eyebrows do a little hop. “I guess we should start with the crackhouse.”

---

---

So, Professor. Let me tell you about Alex.

Like most of us, Alex comes into the world as a screaming child. Unlike most of us, she's five years old when she comes into this world, or rather, when the police find her in the basement of a crackhouse in Portland, screaming herself hoarse.

Somebody hears the screaming coming from inside, followed by a group of ragged, missing-teeth drug addicts spilling out of their beloved crackhouse and into the street, various clothing and pills and needles falling out of their hands and pockets as they go. And the wailing keeps going and going until the police arrive and storm inside, and that’s where they find her. The girl who would later be named Alex.

She’s standing in place, wearing a dress a size too small and probably stolen from the thrift store. Her eyes and fists are clenching, her head is thrown back and her mouth is gaping. A woman, it has to be her mother, is sprawled out on the floor, the remnants of foam still seeping out from the corners of her mouth. A rubber tourniquet is still wrapped around her elbow.

The police want to help. Really, they do. But Alex’s moaning is freezing their feet to the floor. It doesn’t sound like a young girl. It’s too deep. It wavers between different tones at random, like that of an animal who can only roar sadly. Then one officer—smart guy this one—realizes why she sounds like she does.

She’s deaf. Alex is deaf.

The officer stalks up to her and just hugs the poor thing. Funny, how easy it is to approach a problem when it’s not a mystery, right? And Alex just collapses into him and keeps screaming that deep, mournful scream until she falls asleep and they carry her away.

They take her to the station and try to find out who she is, but of course, there’s nothing. She’s unregistered. The mother herself is unregistered too. All they can see from her is that she has a sewing machine that she used to make dolls, and that doesn’t exactly narrow it down.

And this girl can’t speak, or communicate in any form. She’s an alien, as far as anybody is concerned. She might as well have been born right there in the crackhouse, next to her dying mother, at the age of five.

So she ends up in the care of these two. The ones I’m interviewing. They were really her only choice, the father being a well-off businessman, and the mother being a social worker for deaf children. And the two of them are smiling at me as they’re saying this. They say they never cared that she was quiet, hard to reach, hard to relate to at times. They say she’s the best thing that ever happened to her. I believe them.

I’m starting to wonder why they’re telling some random asshole all these things. Not wondering enough to ask, though.

It’s not an easy transition for young Alex. Going from a drug den to a two-story suburban house with two loving parents is tough, even if it’s a pretty sweet trade. In fact, these two are so loving, that a few years into the new arrangement they offer to get her one of those cochlear implants—one of those things that gets embedded in your skull, with a little outer part that loops around your ear. And together these two gadgets bypass all the mechanical nonsense in your ear and sends signals straight to your brain. And then the deaf can hear.

You know those videos, right? Where the deaf baby hears their mother’s voice for the first time? Well her parents want that for Alex.

But she refuses. She doesn’t let them. She says, or I guess she signs, that she’s alright the way she is. And she doesn’t much like the idea of doctors drilling around in her skull.

Fair enough.

The parents get kind of quiet now, back in the living room, like they want the story to end there. I kind of do too, but nobody’s getting fooled. I ask, “When did the headaches start?”

“Headache,” the mother corrects, practically slapping me with the word. “There was only one.”

I hold my hands up. “Okay, sure. Sorry. When did it start?”

They say she’s 12, maybe, when she first makes the sign. With both hands, a thumb and forefinger pointing towards each other, twisting a little, and pinching the space in front of her forehead. And you don’t need to know sign language to know what that means.

My head hurts.

So they give her aspirin. She keeps signing. A head massage. Keeps signing. There’s low pressure, they tell her. That causes headaches. So they wait for the storm to pass and for the pressure to go back up. It does, but she keeps on signing.

Eventually she stops. They ask her if she’s feeling better. She shrugs. They shrug. And then they go to work, drop her off at school, whatever. She’s stopped signing, but only because her arms are tired. They tell me they wish they had pressed her harder. Paid more attention.

A bit later, she’s 13. She’s been doing that headache sign for a few months now, off and on. Each time the aspirin, the massage, the waiting patiently for the storm to pass. Each time it doesn’t work. I mean, they tell me it does sometimes, because she’ll smile and she’ll nod. She’ll say, That’s better, with a big two thumbs up gesture. I’m thinking little Alex is a liar.

And I’m still wondering why they’re telling me all these things. Maybe it’s helping that I’m not writing anything down. I’m just listening, with my ears and mouth wide open. I decide to keep doing that.

The father continues.

Eventually, they hear a strange noise from upstairs. Like a struggle—like someone’s broken inside and she’s fighting them off tooth and nail. They run upstairs and they find her in her room, silently roaring. She’s on the floor, pounding her head so hard she must have been seeing lights. She only stops to pinch and twist the space in front of her forehead with her thumbs and her forefingers.

My head hurts.

“I mean, what are you supposed to do?” Alex’s mother asks me. Pleads with me. “What are you even supposed to do?” She puts her head in the space between her thumb and her forefinger. She looks away.

“What about… the hospital?” I suggest.

“Yeah,” the father says. “We’re getting to that.”

It was right away, they say. Right after the incident in the bedroom, they get in the car, both of them, and they go to the hospital as a family. They demand the best doctor, and they get him. Real diagnostic genius, this guy. He gets right down to Alex’s level and as he’s doing the standard checks he’s asking her to describe it for him, as her parents translate.

Dull? Okay. Sharp? That too? Okay. Where? Everywhere? Hmmm. Troubling.

So he draws blood. It’s the best blood he’s ever tested, he says. He schedules her for an EEG, whatever that is, and again, she passes with flying colors. And he’s saying these things to her with a big smile on his face. So far, no issues. So far, everything is fine. Her mood, her parents are telling me, is only getting worse.

So he books her for an MRI. He even offers to run the test himself since the parents are starting to like him. He says if anything is going wrong in there, he’ll find it. He promises. Alex asks if he can then take whatever he finds in there out. He pats her on the head and tells her, Let’s run the test first. Her parents remember the icy glare she gave him after he says that. They don’t even have to translate for her.

When they first go into the room with the MRI, the giant metal tunnel that cuts you up into slices and shows the doctors every piece of you, Alex gets uneasy quick. More clingy than normal. But they go in. She lies down. She stares up at the giant metal ring that she’s just been told is gonna get really, really loud. She shuts her eyes.

The doctor slides her inside, gets her parents to tell her to lie perfectly still, and then all three of them go into the other room, and the doctor turns on the machine.

And for the first time since her mother died and she came into this world, she starts to scream. She screams like nothing else. She clutches her head and finds blood.

Everybody present learns a lot of things that day.

Turns out the crackhouse woman wasn’t Alex’s birth mother. They did look nothing alike, her adoptive parents tell me. But the real giveaway is that a drug-addicted outcast in a crackhouse basement could never afford a cochlear implant.

Turns out she has the inner part already. Had it when she was a baby at some point, and the surgical scar healed up so well that the cops, the parents, and the doctor all missed it. If she’d had the outer part, too, she could hear. If she’d had the outer part, they wouldn’t have stuck her in that machine.

Turns out that the ‘M’ part of the MRI knows exactly where her implant is.

Turns out it wants to bring it out to show everyone what it’s found.

It almost rips her ear off, and it tears her skin in several places. The doctor schedules her for emergency surgery and he takes it out himself, grafts on as much new skin as she needs, and does it all free of charge. He tells the parents that it must have been installed incorrectly and caused the headache. Case closed.

The parents scream.

They say, “Why wasn’t there a check for this?”

In my chair, I say, “Yeah, what the fuck? What the actual fuck?”

The doctor makes the mistake of saying there is something he could have done. That he could have done an X-Ray first but assumed it would be a waste of time. His best excuse is that they didn’t make it clear how, let’s say, underground, the first five years or so of her life were.

That excuse doesn’t go over well.

He apologizes. They sue. The parents, I mean, but with Alex’s unmitigated blessing. They sue the lab coat, the shirt, and the pants right off of him, and just like that, it’s goodbye Doctor Assumptions. The thing about malpractice insurance is that it gets so expensive after you use it that you wonder if you ever really had it in the first place.

There’s a long silence, back in the living room. They both look at me, hands clasped together. They want me to say something, or at least it sure looks that way.

And then it hits me. Why they’re telling me these things.

They want absolution. And they’re not picky where it comes from.

I find I don’t know what the hell to say. I find that’s becoming a theme in all this. I wait for them to stop looking at me. To stop thinking I can give them anything because I’m not exactly a smart person already and if they think I can…

Sorry…

Let me just take a breather for a few minutes.

---

---

I leave soon after this story. Because there isn’t much left to tell, and it ends with Alex leaving her parents at age nineteen.

She has to take a few months off school, first. Then finish it just that little bit after all friends.

‘Friends’ isn’t the right word, the parents tell me. The mother punches the table a little and says they abandoned her.

I ask, “Why?”

“Because she hasn’t stopped signing,” the father says. And then he does the motion in front of his own forehead.

Alex goes through high school, which is a great place to rebirth yourself, right? But she does no such thing. There’s no new friends. No old friends. No romance. No success, but no failure either. She just gets through it. And those are her parents words, not mine. She gets through it. That’s all her life is at this point, her mother says. Getting through it.

I want to say, What else is new?

Shortly after high school is when Alex leaves. But not before she withdraws and withdraws and withdraws. She spends days at a time in bed. She talks less about her headache with her parents, and they tell me they don’t know why.

I want to point out that they clearly have trouble relating to it. That her friends probably did too. That talking about it wasn’t really getting her anywhere.

But I don’t know for sure, so I stay quiet.

The next part of the story is something they don’t know but I do. At some point after high school, she takes her dog to Pilot Butte Scenic Viewpoint. She squeezes her home with her thumb and forefinger and takes a picture. She makes a silent cry on the internet.

But that’s not all she does. She also saves money as a waitress for a couple years and never buys anything for herself until the day she sits her parents down and tells them she’s leaving. She tells them, She’s found a job, a place to live, and a shitty old car to get her there. All at once. They don’t have a chance to tell her she’s not ready, because clearly she’s ready as hell.

She’s nice enough to give them an address. And they visit a few times, but they always have to be the one to ask if they can come, and over the years they ask her less and less and less, because it’s exhausting. They don’t get anything from these visits anymore.

They’re not saying this part, though. I am. I’m remembering your lectures, Professor. How you said people only visit each other—only build and maintain relationships—if they have something to gain from it. I remember hating that part of your lecture, but you’re dead-on right. You usually are. And when these two tell me they haven’t visited her in over three years now, I figure that’s because it must be as fun as visiting a puddle of water that lives an hour away.

And of course, it’s not like the puddle ever comes to visit them.

Because Alex never comes back to the house that she pinched with her thumb and her forefinger in a photograph all those years ago, not having any idea that she was gonna send some snotty upstart psychologist on a wild goose chase after her.

Not having any idea that he was gonna keep going.

I ask the parents for the address.

---

---

I’m at the new apartment by the time the sun goes down. And good thing too, because I wouldn’t have been brave enough to try and find it in the dark. You might say Alex returned to her roots after she left mom and dad, what with her new digs being a basement apartment in a complex that looks permanently water damaged, located in a place where you can hear sirens more often than you can’t.

I knock on the door, and this time, before it opens, I give myself time to think of what to say. I mean, I come up empty-handed, but I at least try.

Who opens the door is someone I’m not expecting. It’s not Alex, unless she got a sex change and grew a couple feet. Maybe got a couple tattoos. Took up smoking, shaved her head, and started a serious training program.

“I’m looking for Alex,” I blurt out right away. I’m thinking, If she’s not here, I want to know as fast as possible so I can leave.

The guy in the doorway take out his cigarette and tosses it in a jar by my feet.

“You a friend of hers?”

“Not really.” I suddenly have to swallow. “I only know her through her parents.”

“Oh, fuck,” he says back. He looks ashamed of me. “What did they tell you?”

“Uh…”

“About their poor little deaf girl? With the chronic pain?”

“Um…”

“Well, it’s all bullshit. Sorry, kid, but you’ve been lied to. Just as she lied to them. Just as she lied to me.”

I should turn away and leave now, but I don’t. I ask, “What do you mean?”

He pulls out another cigarette. I don’t even know where he got it from. He says, “Come inside.”

I say, “Okay.”

I’m thinking, Why am I walking inside right now?

I’m thinking, This is where I die. In a dilapidated shit-heap with an angry thug.

I’m thinking, Hang on. This guy doesn’t seem like the absolution type.

Turns out this guy’s name is Derek. Turns out he knows Alex about as well as one person can know another. Turns out a car, a job, and an apartment weren’t the only things Alex got when her parents weren’t looking.

“Four years, we were together.” He shakes his head and takes another drag. “You know what it’s like being with someone like her?”

I say, “I don’t.”

“First, you feel kinda sorry for her. Deaf and in pain? Fuck, what a sell. What an interesting person. You think that maybe you can help her.”

I ask, “You do?”

“Yeah!” he yells. “You think, maybe you can help each other. He rubs his arm. There’s a big gash down the side of it, under the snake-skin tattoos. It’s the first time I notice it.

He continues, “But then, helping’s not enough. Suddenly you have to go easy on them all the time. Suddenly they need special treatment whenever it’s convenient for them.

Once again, I’m not writing. I’m kind of too scared to.

“And look, I get it. She had some rough going growing up. Her childhood that she can’t remember. The accident at the hospital. Being deaf. It sucks. But a person like that, they start to get addicted. And then when people no longer care about those things, she comes up with this headache. And you believe her, because, fuck, what reason do you have not to?”

He starts to count on his fingers:

“And when that becomes old news, she starts losing her memory. She stops focusing on anything. She stops taking responsibility for things. She loses her job. She wants you to bend over backwards for her.”

He keeps going like this for awhile. And Professor, this is the part that I think will make you proud. Because when I arrived at that door my heart fucking bled for this girl. After everything her parents told me, I mean, how can I not feel sorry? But then, this prick. This Derek guy.

He’s making some really good points.

I’m thinking, either I’m writing an essay about what pain does to a person, or I’m writing an essay about why someone would fake it. I’m thinking, I don’t care which is true.

I’m being impartial. I’m not being emotional. I’m just looking for answers.

Meanwhile, Derek’s voice is shaking a little, but he’s still venting:

“And then one day you go see a psychologist with her and they tell her it’s all in her head, and she just freaks. She jumps over the desk. She grabs them by the suit jacket and keeps signing and signing and fucking complaining.”

I’m thinking, This guy would be good at charades.

“Then she makes up some bullshit about not caring what the psych said. She just wants to move to Cannon Beach and settle down and never have kids and just wait until she dies in as easy of a life as she can have. Fuck, can you believe that? And when I tell her no, she just runs out. Doesn’t even take her phone. She just gets in her car and she’s out of your fucking life.”

There’s a long silence now. I think this is the first time he’s ever put this to words. I’m thinking, I’m getting great psychologist practice.

He breaks the silence. He says, “I learned sign language for this fucking girl.”

The silence comes back worse than before.

I break it this time. I say, “Cannon Beach?”

He says, “Yeah. Really small town on the coast. She said we should move there and build a house. I tell you, it’s all about running with her.”

“Cannon Beach.”

“There’s no way she went there, kid. She doesn’t have the follow-through for it.”

And I say, “Goodbye. Thanks for the chat.” Because I have to get back to my hotel and go to bed. And I have to rent a car and drive for four-and-a-half hours tomorrow.

And the drive is as awful as I expect. I’ve already told you that. But I’m still stuck with the feeling that this is going to be worth it. That I’m being neutral. I’m being impartial. I’m only here to study somebody’s pain, or somebody’s fake pain, or somebody’s imagined pain that still feels real even if it’s not. And I’m going to write an incredible essay in one day, start to finish, and I’m finally going to achieve something.

Sometimes I think I’m Superman. Which is weird, because I’ve never been Superman in my life.

I mean, deep down, I’m not expecting anything. I figure I’ll find nothing, but at the same time, I’ve already got enough material to work with if I stretch it enough. But maybe, just maybe, there’s a little more info in Cannon Beach.

The first place I go is the hospital. Call it a hunch. My legs feel like I’ve just run for four-and-a-half hours, and my back feels like it’s turned into concrete, but I make it there. To the hospital. Because where else is a girl in her condition gonna go?

I stop off at the front desk, and I say, “I’m looking for a girl who might have been through here. She had a headache?” And I’m thinking about her mother saying she’s more than her headache. But I gotta admit, it identifies her pretty well.

Because the nurse laughs. She says, “Yeah, she’s been through here.” She pages a doctor to come downstairs to see me.

---

---

The doctor greets me with a lot of warmth. A nice handshake, too. Not too firm, not too soft.

He takes me to his office. The whole time, he’s lecturing me about doctor-patient confidentiality. He’s telling me he can’t just talk about any of his patients, and he can’t even say who has and who hasn’t been in this hospital. He’s saying these things really loud.

Then we get there, and he sits me down, the two of us surrounded by a bunch of models of the brain—some that can be taken apart, some that aren’t supposed to be taken apart, but have been anyways. He shuts the door.

“But then,” he says, “Alex wasn’t my patient. Not in this hospital, anyways.” He folds his hands across his lap. “Sorry for the lecture, but… I don’t want to get accused of malpractice twice.”

My shoulders drop. “You?” I say.

Him. Obviously.

“I see I’m famous,” he laughs. “I don’t suppose it’s for a good reason.”

“The MRI.”

The doctor frowns. “Let’s not talk about that.”

I squint. “What else is there to talk about?”

Instead of answering me, he starts talking about something else.

There’s a reason the nurse knew the girl with the headache. My hunch was right; Alex’s first stop, after breaking up with poor Derek, is this very hospital in Cannon Beach. Right down to the same front counter and the exact same nurse, just about a year ago. She walks right up, waits for the inevitable, “Can I help you?” and then, in the deranged voice of a monster, she asks the nurse to go fuck herself.

Then her middle finger goes up. Then the other. She spreads them wide, and starts dancing around the lobby, saying, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck all of you.” Her voice is deep. Wavering. Like a monster trying to speak.

She gets all their attention. Then she moans, “Thanks for nothing,” as she departs.

And everyone’s feet are frozen to the floor, because of her voice. Except one doctor, smart guy this, who has it all figured out. This doctor finds her familiar, and pretty soon he’s sprinting to his office to grab his keys.

He follows her South, South, South. She runs red lights. She blares her horn. Even an ambulance has to stop for her to blaze through. The doctor, following the rules of the road, loses her pretty quick. But he doesn’t stop searching for that shitty green car, with the bumper hanging low on the back. And eventually, he finds it.

She’s driven out of town, all the way to the top of a cliff.

A cliff leading to the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Ocean two hundred feet below, littered with jagged rocks.

She finds her wailing, maybe for the last time since she came into this world. She’s leaning against the wheel well of her car. Something under the hood is on fire. He walks in front of her. Her eyes don’t move. He says a word, then remembers himself and pulls out a pen and paper. He writes:

Head still hurts?

She starts signing like crazy. Gesturing at the car. Then pinching with her fingers. Then her head. Pinching. The car.

He figures the car broke down right at the crucial moment.

He writes:

What have you tried?

She snatches the paper and the pen. He thinks she’s gonna throw it over the edge, but she just starts writing. Scribbling. Slashing at the paper. She lists and she lists and she lists.

Aspirin
Massage
Storm
MRI
Acupuncture
Osteopathy
Chiropractor
Drugs
Drugs
Drugs
Therapy
Meditation
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Pain Management
Everything
Everything
Everything


She throws the list on the ground. He picks it up and reads it over carefully. He write something and hands it back to her. He has to tap her shoulder to get her attention.

How about an X-ray?

---

I’m not gonna cry. I don’t even know this girl. I’m not gonna cry.

---

Professor.

Pain can come from anywhere. It can come from inside you, or from the outside.

Alex’s parents were in pain, because they couldn’t help their daughter no matter how hard they tried. The doctor was in pain, because he lost his career and had to start over somewhere else. Derek was in pain because he poured four years of his life into a relationship only to have it come to nothing.

Alex.

Fucking Alex.

Fuck’s sake, Professor.

Alex was in pain because she had a piece of a sewing needle inside her brain.

The doctor tells me, “It showed up on the X-Ray like a candle flame.”

Here I am.

I tell him, “That’s wrong.” I say, “That’s bullshit. How was there no entry wound? How was she even alive? How did the MRI not kill her instantly?”

The doctor puts his hand on my shoulder. He’s smiling, like he’s reliving a pleasant memory. “If the needle was put there when she was a baby, her head would expand and grow around it. And my guess is it was nonmagnetic.”

“How the fuck?" I respond.

I want to hurl. I want to punch things. I want to drive all the way to her shitty boyfriend’s house and run him over.

So much for being impartial.

“Why didn’t she tell anyone? Why didn’t she call her parents? Her boyfriend?”

Why didn’t she get a spot on national television to tell Planet Earth to suck it?

“I hope that’s not what you’re going to do,” he says. He’s serious. Grave, even.

I ask, “Why the hell shouldn’t I?”

“Because if she wanted them to know, she would have told them herself.”

“But…! It wasn’t all in her head!”

His head drops. He comes around to my side, and he waits until he has my attention. Then he says:

“Why does the needle change anything?”

And all I can do is just rub my face in both hands and swear. And then a couple tears come and I’m sniffing. I tell him, “I’m sorry.” I throw in a, “Fuck.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “Your reaction doesn’t hold a candle to hers.”

“Where is she now?” I ask.

“Not here. But I assume somewhere to get surgery. Maybe in a country where it would cost less.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“That’s none of my business.”

Words can be such a brick wall sometimes. I bend forwards and let my pen and notepad hit the floor. He gives me a second, but I need ten minutes. At first, it seems like it’s all been a waste of time.

But it starts coming together. I start to realize… I might have an essay. Or at least, as many words as one. And soon I’m driving back. Skip a few hours, and, I am… back at my hotel.

Oh my god, I just scrolled through it. Fuck, I’m sorry. About a lot of things.

I guess…

I don’t know.

I wish I could say that there was a hero in this essay, but there aren't any. Alex treated those around her like garbage. The doctor should have done the X-ray the first time he met her. Her parents could have tried a little harder, and Derek could have just given her the benefit of the doubt.

In the end.... I’m glad Alex found the source of her pain.

I guess the rest of us will just have to keep looking.