This is the seventh part in a series, so if you have not already done so, you might want to read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI before continuing.
I was still sitting under the bridge, wondering how I could make it up to Michael (somehow I didn’t think a Happy Meal toy would be sufficient) when I saw Sam come charging at me with all the fury of a mother whose child had been threatened.
Oh, boy.
“How dare you yell at a child like that!”
I held my hands up, palms facing her. “Sam, can I please explain myself?”
“Oh, please do,” she said, her voice full of sarcasm. “I can’t wait to hear what you have to say for yourself.”
I sighed. This was never easy, but I tried my best. “My brain doesn’t always work quite right. It’s why I can’t hold down a job. Sometimes I see things and I could swear they’re real, but then I blink and it’s gone. I don’t always know what’s real and what isn’t. So, when I was yelling at Michael just now, I didn’t know I was yelling at Michael. I thought I was yelling at someone who turned out not to be there at all.” I struggled to find something else to say to make me sound less crazy, but it’s hard to make crazy shit sound like it’s not crazy.
Sam was quiet for a while. She had her arms crossed over her chest and her side turned to me as she looked at me out of the side of her eyes. Her mouth screwed up at one end as she wrestled with something.
Finally, she huffed out a breath and looked off to one side as she said, “Michael’s brain doesn’t always work the way people think it should, either.”
This was so far from the reaction I had been expecting that I didn’t know how to respond. I just stood there, staring at her dumbly until she continued.
“He has Autism. It makes it hard for him to interact with other people in the way they expect.” She paused before saying, “It also means it’s sometimes hard for him to understand things from someone else’s perspective.”
I sighed. “Especially when that other perspective isn’t real.”
She nodded, her lips still clamped so tight they formed a thin line.
I couldn’t help letting loose a little chuckle. It was hardly called for, given the situation, but I felt so relieved it just came out. “It’s not like he’s alone in not being able to see things from my perspective. I’d argue no one can see things the way I see them. That’s kind of my whole problem.”
Sam huffed a small laugh of her own and finally let her arms fall to her sides. “I’m sorry I came at you like that.”
“You had every right to.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“OK, maybe not. But you were just doing what any parent would have done in that situation.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I tend to be extra sensitive when it comes to Michael because he’s so sensitive and so few people seem to get it or even try.”
I nodded. I knew exactly what that felt like.
“Have you been diagnosed?”
I nodded again. “Yeah. When things first started going wrong, I got a diagnosis, but my insurance wouldn’t cover the cost of the meds, and things got worse, until, well…” I trailed off, holding my arms up in a gesture of helplessness that also took in everything I was in that moment.
“What were you doing before all that?”
“I worked security at a building downtown.”
Sam nodded in that way people do when all the pieces start falling into place. “And you can’t carry a weapon if you can’t trust what you’re seeing.”
“Bingo.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t you come over to the high school? I’m an administrator there. I’m sure we can find something for you.”
I was afraid to trust my ears. “Really?”
“Really, really. It’s that one just over there.” She pointed to the school I had noticed in my wanderings of the area a few days earlier.
“I can’t tell you what that would mean to me,” I said.
“You were nice to my son. Before you started screaming at him, at least.” We both chuckled before she said, “You don’t know what that means to me. If I can help you get back on your feet, it would be the least I could do.”
To be continued…