Aaron’s eyes tear up. “I don’t want to be here. In that kind of world. It’s all so bleak.”
The rocking chair squeaks as his dad drags it toward Aaron a couple inches.
“That’s depression, Aaron. What you just said. That’s your brain on depression. I know. I’ve been there, kiddo. It sucks.”
Aaron just stares at the blue paisley sheets below him. “It really does.”
His dad tilts his head and gives him that super-supportive smile that he should really patent.
Aaron smiles back and he knows, without seeing it, that it must look like a sad smile. And suddenly all the unsaid stuff feels like it’s tickling his uvula.
“I’m sorry,” he says when he can’t keep quiet any longer.
“Whatever for?”
“You shouldn’t have to have a son who has a broken brain. You didn’t sign up for this.”
His dad kisses him on the top of the head and grasps his hands.
“I most definitely did sign up for this,” he says.
Aaron knows it’s the truth.
The hand squeeze tells him it’s true. But he can just barely feel the truth of it.
CHAPTER 5A: APRIL 22
At therapy on Monday, Aaron learns that Dr. Laudner celebrates weird things.
The doctor gives him the same test he took on Friday. Aaron tries to answer the questions as accurately as possible, because he wants—needs—to believe the diagnosis. He’s still not convinced this is real.
He hands the test over and watches the bearded doctor as he scores the test this time, the way he mouths words while he reads. Then Laudner looks up, smiling, and hands him the test back. On top is the score: thirty-seven.
“Moderate depression,” the doctor says, a big smile on his face. “That’s a huge difference in three days. Massive, actually. The meds often take weeks to work. Congratulations!”
Aaron imagines a surprise party, a banner reading Congratulations! You’re moderately depressed! hanging in the doorway.
“Yay,” Aaron says, deadpan. Dr. Laudner smirks. He’d be a decent audience if Aaron were to be a comedian.
“So how are we feeling today?” the doctor asks as he waters the fern that sits directly to his right. He did this same thing Friday. Aaron imagines it as a nervous tic his doc has, that he does it at the start of every appointment. He imagines a waterlogged fern being taken out of the doctor’s office on a gurney.
“My emoji would be, like, not a sad face. I mean. I’m still kinda sad, but. Maybe more of a constipated face.”
This makes the doctor laugh. “Is that becoming something of a problem?”
Aaron nods dramatically.
“Petralor can do that. I can give you something,” the doctor says, and Aaron puts his two hands together and bows in his direction.
Dr. Laudner says, “So let’s talk about school. Let’s talk about a plan. Had you asked me on Friday, I would have said you were going to be out awhile. Now I have to say I’m simply not sure. Do you think you’d want to go back this week if you keep feeling better?”
“Yeah. I dunno. Maybe?”
“That about covers all the options,” Dr. Laudner says.
“I like to make sure I leave no qualifier unturned.”
“You’re a smart kid, aren’t you?”
“Guilty, I guess. I don’t get the grades of a smart kid, but that’s probably on account of my not enjoying the whole homework thing.”
“Ah. What do you enjoy instead?”
“Not. Not doing homework.”
“Ah. And do you sit in silent prayer when you are not doing this homework?”
“Sometimes I write songs.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s great.”
“Well, depends who you ask, I guess.”
“Say more about that.”
Aaron crosses his arms over his chest. “Well. My dad likes my songs. When he listens to them, anyway. And that’s not fair, ’cause he does listen to them, he just didn’t that one night, the night before the … you know. I sent out a YouTube clip of a new song to a bunch of people, like seventy. I got two hits.”
“Ouch.”
The doctor saying this has a funny effect on Aaron. It’s like he expected the doctor to make excuses for other people—they’re busy, or whatever—and when he doesn’t, it makes Aaron’s jaw feel tight.
“Well, usually I get more. I mean, I’m not a total loser. I’m not …”
“Say more about that. Do you think I think you’re a loser? Because I don’t.”
Aaron throws his head back in frustration. “Never mind, okay?”
“Okay. But I’d like to come back to that sometime, okay?”
“Oh, good,” Aaron says, and the doctor grins again, which makes Aaron feel a little bit more understood, at least.
“So … going back to school. What feelings come up around that?”
Aaron shrugs. “Scared, I guess.”
“So let’s see how you feel tomorrow and make a decision then. Sometimes normalizing life is the way to go. Sooner rather than later. Let’s talk about the fear, though. What’s the fear for you? That it will happen again, what happened?”
Aaron rubs his forehead. “More like dealing with people about it. Everyone’s going to know I’m crazy.”
“You’re not crazy. You suffer from depression, like many, many other people. You had a frightening episode where you nearly attempted suicide. What’s actually going to happen, if you’re at all like my other private school patients, is that all day long people are going to treat you like their own private confessional or therapist.”
“Oh, good,” Aaron says. “That sounds fun.”
Dr. Laudner takes a sip of his coffee and crosses one leg over the other in a way that makes Aaron wonder if he’s gay. Aaron thinks about the fact that the doctor has a penis in his pants and a butt around the other side and how weird it is that every man he passes on the street has both, and how do men even deal with everything, and what even is sex? And how is it that people don’t just combust from strangeness, from this odd desire, and his dad must, too, ew, ew, ew, and god would it be so, so good to finally get to—and how normal the perverted, and how perverted the normal, and it’s all just about enough to make you go insane.
“So what’s on that interesting mind of yours?” the doctor asks.
Aaron shrugs again.
“I’m thinking it’s time to push you a bit. We’ve stayed pretty general to this point, but I want to get a little deeper now. Medicine is just one of the tools we use here. The pills are there to help you with the chemicals in your brain. We also do talk therapy. And so far, you’ve been a little—uninterested in that part. Why, do you think?”
Aaron glances around the office. He has so many books on his bookshelf. The one he always sees is called The Road Less Traveled, and because he’s Aaron and there’s no cure, he keeps reading it as The Roadless Traveler, imagining it’s a story about a traveler who refuses to take roads. And then he thinks about highways, and different states, and whether sex feels different depending on what state you’re in. Then he looks up, realizes he’s being stared at by a doctor, and scratches his left temple.