A Five-Minute Life

The doctor stiffened. “Has there been a traumatic incident recently?”

“Of course not,” Doris snapped, while I wanted to scream across my tied-up tongue that yes, something had happened. Just the week before Grandpa Jack died.

Technically, Doris’ father wasn’t my real grandfather, but he was nicer than anyone had ever been to me as I was kicked around the South Carolina foster system. He took me to Lake Murray to fish. He bought me ice cream and snuck hard candies into my hand after dinner.

“Don’t tell your mother,” he always said.

Mother. Doris took in foster kids for the money, not out of kindness. She sure as shit wasn’t any kind of mother. How a man like Jack had a daughter like Doris, I’d never know. He was kind. He ruffled my hair instead of pinching me and he never called me stupid. When he died, he took with him the only sliver of happiness I’d had in my twelve miserable years.

Standing next to Doris at the funeral home, staring down into his casket, I started to cry. Doris dragged me into a side room, her fingers digging like claws into my skin. She gave me a rough shake.

“You don’t cry about him, you hear me? He wasn’t your family.”

“He… he was Grandpa J-Jack,” I said, my sobs breaking the words apart.

“Not your grandpa.” Doris’ dark eyes bored into mine as if she were putting some kind of goddamn spell on me. “You don’t talk about him like he’s yours ever again. He was my father. My kin. You ain’t my kin. You’re nothing but a check in the mail every month, so stop crying.”

I did.

I sucked it all in, pressed it all down. Everything I’d wanted to say to Grandpa Jack got stuck somewhere behind my teeth. The grief crowded my brain and stiffened my jaw, settling into a stutter that promised years of torment from school bullies and worse abuse from the woman who was supposed to take care of me.

Doris never took me for speech therapy or treatment of any kind. It wasn’t until seventh grade that I got any help. My teacher, Mrs. Marren, felt sorry for me and looked up some stuff on stuttering. She wasn’t a specialist, but she found some breathing techniques that helped me get through a sentence.

Inhale the thought, exhale the words. Nice and easy, James.

Inhale. Exhale.

Try singing. Sometimes music can help get the words out.

I inhaled out of the South Carolina memories and exhaled into present-day Boones Hill, Virginia. All my hopes set on a crappy little house and a job interview.

I put my helmet back on, gunned my bike and hit the road. In fifteen minutes, I was in Southern Hills, just outside Roanoke. To the southwest, the Blue Ridge Mountains slumbered under a clear blue summer sky. I followed a winding, two-lane path up the rolling hills, surrounded by vibrant green ferns and tall trees. An antique-looking sign in old wood and ornate calligraphy came up on my left.

“Blue Ridge Sanitarium, est. 1891”

A newer sign with brighter paint was stuck into the soil below.

“Specializing in long-term brain injury treatment, memory care, and rehabilitation.”

“Whackos and head cases,” the rental guy had said. I gave him a mental middle finger. We were all whackos and head cases to a certain degree. Some were just better at hiding it. For some of us, hiding it was our life’s mission.

I headed up the path until I came to a tall stone wall that stretched far on either side and disappeared in the woods. The wall was broken by a wide metal gate with a guard in a small outpost. I rolled up.

“Jim Whelan,” I said. “Got a job interview.”

A man in a light gray uniform with a security badge ironed on the front checked his clipboard.

“Whelan… Yep. You’ll see Alonzo Waters. Ground floor. They’ll tell you where at reception. Visitor parking on the left.”

“Thanks.”

The gate retracted with a lot of metal scraping on metal and I rode up the paved road. In another hundred yards, I arrived at the Blue Ridge Sanitarium.

The tall house looked like a plantation manor, which was probably what it had been until 1891. A solid, three-story mansion in red brick with white trim, fronted by four white pillars.

I veered toward the empty visitor lot and parked the Harley. The grounds were quiet but for insects buzzing in the humidity. No one was strolling the paths or sitting on any of the stone benches that lined them.

At the black-painted front door, a speaker box looked out of place on the old wood. I pressed the red button.