Pieces Of Us: Missing Pieces Series, Book Three by Walker N.R

Author:Walker, N.R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Doctor Chang sat beside me and put her arm around my shoulder. “He’s had scans and blood tests,” she said. “And there’s nothing abnormal. There’s no bleed or clot, no swelling, no new shadows. No abscess or infection. There’s no change to his previous scans.”

I wiped my face. “That’s good, right?”

She nodded. “Yes. But . . .”

“But what?”

“There is reduced thickness in the right prefrontal cortex and left superior temporal gyrus, some enlarged amygdala volumes, and reduced caudate volumes.”

“What does that mean?” I shook my head. She’d lost me after reduced thickness.

“Extreme stress.”

“Oh God.” I felt like I was gonna puke.

“Tell me what happened.”

I tried to think . . . Start at the beginning, Dallas.

“We left your office and went out for a late breakfast. He was fine. Happy, even. He was tired; he gets tired if we go out. But he was happy. He was keen to get home. We were waiting on formal test results from the sex health clinic and he wanted to go home because the mailman would have been . . .” God, that seems like a lifetime ago. “But his mother turned up. Last time he remembers seeing her was before he moved to Darwin. She told him he was disgusting and how being gay was the worst thing he could have done to her.” I took a shaky breath. “She told both of us that when we went to see her like four years ago, but Juss doesn’t remember that. Probably just as well.”

“So she just turned up?”

I nodded. “She read the interview in the Times.”

She nodded slowly. “The money.”

I put my hand to my forehead. “She’s a horrible person. She demanded money, and I yelled at her. She yelled back at me, and I yelled some more. Then Juss yelled.” I met her eyes and shook my head. “Doc, I’ve never heard him yell. Not ever. Not in all the years I’ve known him. I mean, he’d yell at the footy but never at a person. But he yelled at her and he threw his walking cane at her, and then he just shut down. He went all floppy and I carried him upstairs. I thought he just needed to sleep, ya know? When he gets too tired, he’s wiped out, so I thought he just needed sleep. He said his head hurt. I got his pills for him. Just his normal ones, nothing different. He only took what he normally takes. He crashed out for hours, and I thought he needed it. He woke up a bit when I went to bed, mumbled a few words, that kind of thing. And I just thought he’d be okay this morning. But God, he couldn’t even speak.” Fresh tears welled in my eyes. “Christ, Doc, what did I do wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “The yelling wasn’t ideal.”

“I asked her to leave and she refused. I should have picked her up and tossed her on her arse.” I swallowed back more tears and anger and guilt.

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