The Fence - Dick Lehr [75]
Mike, Kimberly said. What’s wrong?
When he first sat up it had all seemed so very real. But then he heard Kimberly’s voice and began to realize where he was—in bed next to his wife. The house was quiet. He’d had a nightmare.
Kimberly asked about what. But Mike wouldn’t say. More wakeful, he grew self-conscious about crying. Embarrassment replaced the fear. The two emotions were foreign to a man known for his poise and courage.
What was it? Kimberly asked again.
Mike still wouldn’t say. “He just didn’t want to talk about it,” she said.
The nightmare wasn’t a one-time occurrence. It came back the next night and again most nights in the weeks to come. In it, men in blue uniforms were after him. They were Boston policemen; Mike recognized the uniforms. But he didn’t know who they were; they were faceless. They invaded his house and were usually armed. They opened fire as they came toward him. Mike had his gun, but he was one against many.
Eventually Mike talked to Kimberly about the dreams. “The theme is usually the same,” Kimberly said. “Our house is being stormed by several policemen with guns and he’s shooting back. They’re shooting and they’re killing us.”
Kimberly’s commuting to Philadelphia for medical school had slowed down during her fourth year. She’d arranged to do her training in Boston area hospitals and was mostly home. The flexibility was fortuitous. Once Mike got hurt, she was able to stay with Mike to oversee his care and work on comforting the boys.
To protect Mike Jr. and Nick from the truth, she actually adopted the official explanation for his injuries. The next day she told them their father had banged his head after slipping on ice. Five-year-old Nick, in particular, was scared his father was going to die. She reassured him he was not. But Nick stayed frightened and easily upset. Kimberly found herself putting Nick to bed early and sitting with him until he fell asleep.
The boy’s fright tore Mike up. “He wouldn’t talk to me.” Mike was bedridden and helpless to do much of anything his first week home. It was like he was trapped in a thick fog. He hated to move. The slightest turn caused the room to rock. “I couldn’t get up quickly, or turn my head quickly,” he said. “I would get dizzy and fall.” The best chance to keep the world still was to move in slow motion. To go to the bathroom the morning he got home, he shuffled across the bedroom, and that’s when he saw for himself what he’d overheard at the hospital: His urine was “very dark, dark, with strands of like red in it.”
His mind was off speed too. He couldn’t find the words to complete a sentence. He would start, and then the words seemed to slip through his fingers. When he wanted to call out to one of his sons, he couldn’t. It was like his mind was stuttering.
“Just to remember my kids’ names was, like, a struggle.”
It was scary, and Mike was a wreck. Neither his body nor his mind felt like it belonged to him. Following an examination, a neurologist concluded that Mike had post-concussive syndrome and post-traumatic vestibular vertigo, medical-speak for what was causing his splitting headaches, dizziness, memory loss, and cognitive difficulties.
No matter how much he slept, he continued to feel sluggish. “I went out to a doctor’s appointment, came back, and lay back down.” In a way, not much had changed since right before he blacked out near the fence: He felt tired and just wanted to go to sleep. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about what happened.
Mike may not have felt much like talking, but others did. His mother, his sisters, and Kimberly were boiling mad about the beating and right away wanted Mike to do something, even if they didn’t know specifically what that meant. Within days of his coming home, his sister Lillian wanted to photograph Mike’s face to document visually the extensive swelling, bruising, cuts, and bumps. She and the others