Porcupines - 19. Chapter 19 - The "Scary Times"

Chapter 19 – The ‘Scary Times’

“Unk, what’re we having for dinner?” Brandon said after climbing up on a stool and looking over at Chuck. The little four year old had his face in his hands, elbows on the counter and looked very concerned.

“We’re having braised short ribs with sweet barbeque sauce and roasted potatoes. And, I made your favorite for dessert Bran.”

“Are we having candy bars?” Brandon asked. He was a little worried about the meal. It didn’t look like any kind of nuggets or macaroni was involved and he was hungry.”

“No,” Chuck smiled at his nephew. “I baked you a cake.”

“You made me a cake? All for me?” Brandon was suddenly quite excited about the ending of the meal at least.

“All for you. You could share some with us though,” Chuck teased.

“Anybody home!” a voice called from the front door.

“Moooommmmyyyyy,” Brandon yelled and jumped down from the stool. “Unk’s making dinner and he made a whole cake just for me.” The little bundle of energy ran straight into his mother’s legs, his head into her stomach.

“Ufff,” Kelli said after the impact of her little guy. “Your uncle’s here?”

“Yeah. Unk’s in the kitchen making snort hips and sweet stuff with toast.” Brandon said in one breath.

“Ummm. Sounds delicious,” Kelli grabbed her little boy and gave him a quick hug and a kiss. The little boy wasn’t ready to cuddle with his mother and squirmed to get out of her arms.

Kelli followed Brandon into the kitchen. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you here without a bag of clothes heading towards the door,” she joshed Chuck.

Chuck looked up and gave her a pathetic smile. Kelli didn’t know what to think but they were close enough she pressed him.

“I thought you’d be following Dylan around the restaurant tonight,” she kidded.

“No. I told you last night I was going to spend the night here. Dylan works late so I just want to be with you guys,” Chuck said but it sounded a little hollow. Kelli watched him as he was putting together their dinner. It was looking amazing as usual.

“How was work?”

“Not bad,” he said and began plating the short ribs and dribbling a warm, red sauce on the meat. It smelled so good. “How about you?”

“It was the usual. I have a new case. It’s a guy who was injured in a farm accident. He has some serious short term memory issues. He also can’t remember his children’s names. I wonder why I got into this field.” Kelli grumbled. “Sometimes it’s so hard to see these people struggle.”

“But then you wouldn’t get to do what you love,” Chuck said. “You love helping people get better. It’s your passion and you’re good at it.”

“I know,” she said pouring herself a glass of red wine. She wasn’t a gourmand but figured red with red meat. That was a safe bet.

“Why don’t you do what you love?” Kelli asked. She watched as her brother carefully and with great detail finished off the plate with beets cut precisely like matchsticks. His plates were works of art or at least they seemed so to Kelli. If only she had thirty thousand dollars to pay for Chuck to go to cooking school. He would be doing what God intended him to do. Making food that pleased the palate and excited the eyes was what he did. It was shame he couldn’t make this his life’s work.

“Let’s eat.”

**********************************

After a pleasing dinner, they all went to the living room. Brandon was playing with his cars and dinosaurs. In an elaborate story, the cars were trying to take over the giant lizards but they were fighting back. According to Brandon, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the king and the cars were his subjects. It was an odd scenario but the little boy had a vivid and active imagination.

Kelli and Chuck chatted about things. Chuck talked about the party and how his coworker Raleigh came out to him. Kelli talked about her coworkers and clients. She was developing some new strategies for retrieving memories through the use of recreational therapy. It was a tactile way for people with brain injuries to exercise a different part of the brain to access their thoughts. This was something that had worked with returning vets from overseas. These strategies had showed promise.

After they visited for a while, Kelli realized Chuck had said almost nothing about Dylan. Over the past two weeks he was all Chuck could talk about. She wondered if there was trouble in paradise.

“How’s Dylan?” Kelli asked seriously. She was on her third glass of wine and ventured a second question. “Is everything going okay?”

“Dylan’s perfect,” Chuck said and his eyes sparkled. “He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Sometimes I just can’t believe it when I wake up and see him lying next to me.”

“I’m glad Chuck. I’m so happy for you.”

“Kelli,” Chuck said but avoided her eyes. “Am I good enough for him, Dylan I mean?”

Kelli didn’t say anything at first. She was scared for her brother. Was this the return of his “scary times?” Would this escalate into a depression? Kelli decided it was time to fight.

“Don’t you say such an awful thing Chuck. Dylan is lucky to have you. And you’re lucky to have him. Please just be happy bro. Don’t overthink this.”

Chuck played with his beer label. “I love him so much but I then get nervous. He has nightmares. I think he misses his old boyfriend.”

“So what?” Kelli asked. “He’s with you now. What do you care about some old boyfriend?”

“His old boyfriend is dead.”

“Oh.” Kelli thought about that. How terrible for Dylan. He’d lost a love to the grave at his age. What a terrible thing.

“You’re obviously making him feel better. For heaven’s sake, he declared his love for you after dinner just last week.”

“I know. I love him too. But…” Chuck didn’t want to continue. He was afraid if he started thinking about his fears it would make them become real. He didn’t want a “scary time” to ruin things with this man. He wanted it to work.

“Nothing. Dylan’s great and I’m so happy with him. I feel so good around him Kelli.” Chuck was trying to express how Dylan made the dark parts of Chuck so much lighter but didn’t want to say it. He thought if he did the magic would disappear.

“That’s good,” Kelli said. “But you know if you start feeling bad about things?”

Chuck interrupted. “No. I’m fine Kelli. I’m really good. I just hope I’m enough of a man for him.”

“That makes me think you are having thoughts,” Kelli said.

“I’m not. I just hope I can make him as happy as he deserves to be.”

Kelli sighed. That wasn’t Chuck’s “scary times.” That was just Chuck’s insecurity. She could handle this. It was the other stuff she couldn’t.

************************************

Later in bed, Kelli was thinking about Chuck’s comments. She wondered if now was the time for her to have “The Talk” with Dylan. After The Vow is engaged, The Talk is sure to follow. Right now, her mind wandered off to her first introduction to Chuck’s ‘scary times.’

She was probably twelve years old when she first noticed Chuck was unhappy but not because of something. Everyone is unhappy from time to time because things go wrong. Her brother had been always down at the time. It was so unlike him. Kelli watched him. So weird. He’d go to his room and lie on the bed and just stare into space. He didn’t even cry. He just didn’t care even when she tried to tease him. He didn’t react and Kelli didn’t understand it, then.

For a couple of weeks Chuck was there but he really wasn’t. He was fourteen and had started getting peach fuzz on his upper lip and had grown a couple of inches taller in just a month. While he wasn’t a great student, his B’s and C’s were becoming low C’s and even D’s which had never happened before. She knew because their mother and father talked about it after she was supposed to be in bed. She never needed much sleep and had a habit of sneaking out of her bedroom to listen to her parents watch television and catch up after they were supposed to be in bed.

It got bad enough Chuck wouldn’t come down for dinner one night and even after Mom and Dad both went to his room and alternately demanded and begged him to come to dinner, he didn’t respond. Chuck was oblivious to their words.

That night, Kelli heard her mom on the phone to Nanna. It was clear something was really wrong with Chuck but she couldn’t imagine what it could be. He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t vomiting or complaining. He didn’t have a fever. He just laid there like he was in a coma but with his eyes open.

The next morning Chuck wouldn’t get out of bed for school and Nanna came over. Kelli wanted to stay home and help but her parents wouldn’t let her. She worried all day at school. Was Chuck dying? Did he have some weird kind of cancer that just sucks the life out of you? Had he been bitten by a vampire? That was silly but she couldn’t figure out what it was. That scared her.

When she got home from school, Chuck was sitting on the couch with Nanna. She was holding him and while he was in a kind of daze, he was responding to her voice. Kelli tried to talk to him but he didn’t even see her. He acted like she wasn’t there and that really terrified her. Where was her brother?

The next couple of days, Nanna stayed over with Chuck and he didn’t go to school. Mom and Dad’s conversations at night were even more troubling. They talked about how he needed help and how they would pay for it. Mom said he should go to the hospital but Dad didn’t think they could find the money. Kelli wanted to help. She even went into her secret stash of birthday and allowance money and went to her parents. They both had tears in their eyes but said Kelli should keep her money. Kelli said she wanted Chuck to get better and started crying. Her parents hugged her and they all cried.

Chuck was sick with something but it wasn’t a virus or a cancer. It was a kind of depression that left Chuck in a fugue state. Kelli didn’t know what to do but Chuck got a little better every day as Nanna stayed with him and held him close. After four days, Chuck was talking to her though he was still a little hazy. When Kelli hugged him, he hugged back. He was returning from wherever he had gone.

They had tried medications and doctors’ visits but anything but a mild anti-depressive made it worse. Nanna said he just needed more love than most people. She thought Chuck just needed more hugs so Kelli gave her brother hugs all the time. She thought it helped. It seemed to her he was responding so she believed her grandmother. But, inside she doubted and wondered what was really wrong with her brother.

Kelli often thought she became a therapist because of Chuck’s condition. When she got into high school and he would get into these bouts of depression, she started reading about the disease. Kelli read books and articles about what it was and why the brain got stuck in that downward spiral. She hadn’t become a psychologist because she wasn’t all touchy feely but she had become a nurse that specialized in traumatic brain injury. Some of her patients who experienced a head trauma also experienced personality changes or episodes of difficult behavior. Sometimes they would begin falling into deep depression. Doctors always started their treatments with drugs; after all, they were in the field of medicine.

Kelli worked with patients and many times their families as well. She saw how mothers and wives, fathers and boyfriends would do whatever it took to get their loved ones better. As a result, they would suggest or practice things doctors wouldn’t even consider. Kelli found herself feeling as they did. She was willing to do whatever it took to help her brother. She’d even try something as half-baked as hug therapy to keep her brother from falling into his “scary times.”

At first she was reluctant to try such a strange thing but after thinking about how the brain works and how nerves and neurotransmitters worked, she figured it wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. The brain is an organic computer that runs on electric currents generated by hormones, basically chemicals interacting with one another. Too much of one chemical would be counteracted by more of another chemical to achieve an equilibrium or state of mind.

In the case of depressives or people afflicted with manias, the feedback system of chemical interactions was interrupted. Instead of the other chemicals balancing out the system, the brain would just keep adding more of one hormone to the exclusion of the others. Something needed to jolt the brain to bring back the balance. It could be artificial neurotransmitters or other drugs to stimulate or inhibit hormonal production. It could be talk therapy engaging the pre-frontal cortex and the hippocampus to reorient the pathways and the hormone levels. But, there was another way to activate the brain and create a healthy equilibrium. That was through physical engagement through the senses, particularly the sense of touch.

Exercise and physical therapy were known to be effective mood enhancers. But physical activity was only one way to engage the sense of touch. The other was to directly use touch in particular and physical closeness. Infants needed human touch to develop a healthy nervous system and normal psychology. Being held isn’t really much different than being hugged. Maybe being held and hugged was a way to help jolt at a spiraling brain into a better state of mind.

Maybe Nanna had something going with her theory.

At one point, Kelli had approached a doctor she worked with who was a noted researcher. After she explained her grandmother’s theory, the doctor scoffed. “Sounds like an old wives tale,” he’d said dismissively. “Hugs may be a nice, loving thing to do but I doubt they have any therapeutic effect unless it’s a placebo effect.” The doctor then paused and thought for a moment. He turned to Kelli and said, “But then the placebo effect does work sometimes. Besides, hugs can’t hurt.”

Kelli decided to keep hugging Chuck whenever she could. She taught Brandon to do the same. When he was baby, she’d keep handing Brandon to Chuck to hold. By the time her little boy was a toddler, he was constantly hugging both her and Chuck. Whatever science thought of Nanna’s theory, Chuck never had such a horrific fugue state as he did when he was twelve, except after HIM. His fugue states and manic phases were fleeting. It wasn’t pleasant but also Chuck’s “scary times” were fleeting. She thought it really helped.

So she tried it at work.

Her TBI patients were overwhelmingly male. Whether they were victims of war trauma or accidents, most of her patients were men who had parents but often failed relationships. They didn’t have much physical contact because without a mate, adult males rarely engage in prolonged touching even with their mothers. First, she just gave them hugs following therapy. That seemed to make the patient’s mood slightly elevated at the end of the session. So, she started putting hugs into the therapy sessions. Occasionally she’d give them a squeeze making it last. Some men were uncomfortable but she articulated her idea to them. Hugging helped mental and physical health. Who doesn’t like a hug? It seemed to make sessions more productive and her canceled sessions percentage plummeted.

Kelli decided to up the ante a little bit with her patients. She told her client’s families about the idea. It didn’t matter if they were in a relationship or not. Kelli told parents, children, and even close friends about hugging therapy. She found most were pretty reluctant about the idea but as she’d noticed, most families would do anything to help their loved one. Had she suggested voodoo dolls, there were people who would have tried them. Since it was just hugs and holding their loved one, most did it and even told her it was working.

Kelli yawned. She was so tired and the thoughts about how hugging was helping her brother and her patients made her feel relaxed. As she went to sleep, the words of her grandmother came back to her, “Kelli, honey, hugging can’t hurt him. Just remember that when you think it’s crazy. At least it won’t hurt anything.” It was like that doctor later said. Hugs were good things regardless.