Chapter 7

The doctor entered, took two steps - it was a small room - and lifted himself onto the examination bed while I sat on the chair next to the bed, a reversal that did not occur to me until much later.

I told him what had happened that night, how the punch really didn't hurt, how all the damage was actually sustained falling down the concrete steps. In the course of this he said in his soft voice, looking up from his papers only as long as he spoke, "You have P.T.S.D., Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

"P.T.S.D.? Me?" I thought. Isn't that only for war vets? But that would explain the pains I experienced where there were supposed to be none.

But the doctor said, almost under his breath, not to worry about it; the P.T.S.D. would fade. He always spoke this way, in soft, hesitant tones that gave the impression he was unsure of himself. He looked up at me for an instant, long and crooked nose prominent, and then hid once again in his papers, reverting to a shock of wild, black Indian hair in a white coat.

Trauma was everywhere - I wasn't entirely sure that my mousy doctor was free of P.T.S.D. himself. Indeed our very first experience - birth - is nothing but trauma. No one escapes that trauma without crying. If anyone tries, he is beaten until he cries. Welcome to the World: here is your trauma, baby. It remains to be seem whether death is equally traumatic, the sermons notwithstanding.