“May I see him?” Susan asked.
The nurse stepped aside wordlessly.
Susan leaned into the glass. Diesel stood near the door, bashing his head against the padded walls, leaving smears of blood and snot that betrayed his tears. He wore a T-shirt, cut in the latest triangular-sleeve style, and olive green sweats with the trendy T’chana label and its signature parrots. Short and round, he looked more like a bowling ball than a child, especially bouncing from wall to wall.
“I’m going in,” Susan said, her hand on the knob before anyone could stop her.
“You can’t — ,” one nurse started.
“It’s not allowed,” the other said simultaneously.
Susan pretended not to hear them, turning the handle and opening the door. It was heavy, thicker than she expected, and also covered with padding.
Diesel ignored Susan, banging his head repeatedly against the wall, nose blood splashing in surreal patterns each time he did so.
The door closed behind Susan. She could see one nurse watching them through the window, and she guessed it had less to do with curiosity and more with protocol. The rules, perhaps state or national law, demanded someone placed in isolation be watched every moment. Susan imagined the other nurse running for assistance. In the end, she doubted anyone would bother her. To do so would only agitate Diesel, and the purpose of the Self-awareness Room was to give him a safe place to vent and calm himself.
Susan approached the boy. “Diesel?”
“Leave me alone,” Diesel growled. He stopped banging, grinding his head into the padding.
“Okay.” Susan stepped back, then sat cross-legged on the floor. She retrieved a wad of tissues from her dress pants and laid them in a dense pile beside her. She also had some Slookies, hard sour candies; but she knew better than to offer them to an obese patient on a strict diet.
The blood from Diesel’s nose dripped onto the floor beneath him in a steady patter, no longer squirting. Apparently, he had calmed a bit, at least enough to drop his blood pressure to a more normal level. She took that as a positive sign.
“What do you want?” Diesel said into the padding.
“Nothing.” Susan tried to keep her voice absolutely neutral. She had no idea what might calm Diesel and what might provoke him into another wild tantrum. “What do you want?”
Diesel hesitated. He seemed as uncertain as she about how he felt like behaving next. “Got any tissues?”
“Right here.” Susan patted the floor beside the piled tissues. “Come join me.”
Diesel turned slowly, studying the situation as if he expected her to leap up and net him. Finally, he came over, picked up the tissues, and clamped them to his nose. Tears and blood streaked every part of his face.
Susan’s training rushed to the fore. She should be wearing a gown and gloves and staying as far as possible from a biohazardous patient. It helped that she knew from his chart he did not carry hepatitis, HIV, or CIV; and she was legally vaccinated against everything contagious and known to science. “Sit,” she said, not expecting him to obey. “Please.”
To her surprise, Diesel sat. He kept the tissues clamped to his face with one hand, the other flat on the floor. He also sat cross-legged.
For several moments, they sat quietly on the floor together, neither saying a word. Susan kept her gaze from the window. Whether or not Diesel knew they were being watched, he did not need to be reminded of it. She let him speak first, knowing instinctively anything she said would only inflame him. Through the years, he had faced the inquisition whenever he acted in an irrational manner: “Why did you do this? Are you insane? What were you thinking?” She wondered what he might say if he had the opportunity to get in the first word.
“I’m a monster,” Diesel said softly. “I hate myself, and I want to die.”
And there’s the depression part. Susan wished she had had more training. Her immediate thought was to disabuse him of such a terrible notion, to assure him he was a sweet boy with a problem, not a monster, that killing himself would only create more problems for all the many people who loved him. But she was sure he had heard it all before, and anything she said in this vein would only shut down a conversation that had just begun, one she suspected had the possibility of yielding important information. “Why do you say such a thing?”
“Because I am. And I do.” Diesel hid behind the wad of tissue, not bothering to look at Susan.
That was useful. Now, Susan worried she had not only shut down the conversation, she had also left him believing she thought him a monster who ought to kill himself. What made me think I could handle this? Susan tried again. “Tell me more. What kind of monster are you?”
Diesel rolled an eye in Susan’s general direction. “I’m a food-hogging monster. If I could, I’d eat Tokyo.”
Susan could not help laughing. “What part of Tokyo?”
Diesel slipped into baby talk. “All of it. Da cakes. Da pies. Da can-dee.” He paused. “Da bui-dings, da people, da can-dee.”
“You said ‘candy’ twice.”
Diesel managed a smile around the tissues. “That’s my favorite.”
Susan could not resist. She slipped a Slookie into his hand and whispered conspiratorially, “Careful how you put that in your mouth. And don’t tell anyone I gave it to you.”
Apparently, Diesel did know about the nurse observing because he peeked sideways at the object, then made a casual motion of moving the tissues and sneaking it into his mouth. “I’m hungry all the time, Dr. Susan. I’m hungry right after dinner. I’m hungry in my sleep. I’m hungry while I’m still eating.”
Susan thought of all the psychiatry she knew about hunger. Most believed it a substitute for something missing, usually love. Nothing in Diesel’s chart suggested inadequate parenting. He had a married mother and father, at least one of whom visited him at every opportunity. They had cooperated in every way with his therapy. They had two other children, an older boy and a younger girl, who seemed normal in every way. From his dress and vocabulary, it was apparent he did not lack for attention, money, or education.
“If I ever threw up, I think I’d be hungry doing it.”
“Gross.” Susan managed to chat even as she mulled the pertinent.
“You’ve never thrown up?”
“I once broke into the freezer and ate three boxes of Popsicles, two things of ice cream, a cake, a loaf of French bread, and a package of shredded cheese in less than five minutes. They said I should be puking all over the place, but they couldn’t even make me.” Diesel seemed almost proud of the accomplishment. “I don’t throw up.”
Susan suspected if she had eaten all that, she would be in a coma. “Wow.” She could think of nothing else to say.
Diesel loosed a raw, honest belly laugh so fun and contagious Susan could not help joining him.
She finally managed, “I’ll bet you could eat Tokyo.”
Diesel laughed again, and Susan realized she loved that sound. She bet people did silly things just to elicit it.
Having stopped his nosebleed, Diesel turned to wiping blood, snot, and tears from his face.
Susan could not help wondering if someone took pleasure in Diesel’s overeating. Perhaps he or she encouraged it, either intentionally or subconsciously. More than one person might be to blame. Maybe even me. She felt a sudden pang of guilt at having slipped him a candy. She wondered how many people had tried to win his trust that way and vowed she would never do so again. “So, how’d you get the nickname Diesel?”