Off the Grid

After a quick shower, Graham ate oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins while drinking a coffee, listening to the radio and reading a paperback. He used to be able to read for hours at a time. After the incident though, he could only read for half an hour to forty minutes before his head would begin to ache. Then he would need a few hours off before he could read again. He folded a page down and put the book on the table. He cleaned up his dishes and the general mess that comes along with any meal and reviewed his list of today’s jobs he needed to do. He’d cut enough wood for the furnace to last him another month or so. He should check on the solar array and the batteries. If the solar panels weren’t pointed just right, he’d lose efficiency and he wanted his buffer batteries to always be full. He couldn’t afford to be inefficient. He had purchased a software program that moved the solar panels so that they followed the arc of the sun for optimal efficiency and so far, it was working. He would have to keep on top of it though and he might as well make sure the wiring was still good. One time, he’d found a cable gnawed on until the wires showed under the plastic coating. The poor animal probably that had done the chewing must have had a nasty shock.

After he checked on his electrical energy, he would look after his hydroponic garden. In one of his sheds, he had constructed a makeshift greenhouse. Inside were long cylindrical tubes with the components needed to grow his plants and fruits. The tubes had proven to take up less space and optimized his yield. With trial and error (mostly error), he had perfected his garden and even though it took up hours of his time almost daily to maintain it, he enjoyed it. It kept his brain still. Thoughts on improving his set up prevented memories of THAT TIME from creeping up on him. Waking up in the hospital with tubes everywhere, machines beeping, strange faces behind half masks and why couldn’t he see from one side of his face? Trying to ask questions, wanting to know what was going on, except there was something wrong with his face. His jaw wouldn’t work, his tongue felt strange and swollen in his mouth and why wouldn’t anyone answer him? And then the anger, out of nowhere, spilling out him and compelling him to get up and pull at the wires and wanting to know and trying to ask, WHERE WAS HIS FAMILY? WHY WAS EVERYONE TRYING TO HOLD HIM DOWN? And the rage overcoming him until blackness crowded the edges of his vision, throbbing with his frenetic heartbeat, and in the centre of his circular sight, the nurse who wouldn’t listen to him, who just wanted to hold him down and put him back to sleep oh, how he hated him. He remembered his hands reaching for the nurse with the bald head and sweaty upper lip, wanting to grab that nurse’s head between his hands and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until his eyeballs popped out of his skull because FUCK HIM and his non-answers. Before his hands could clamp onto the nurses head, the nurse stumbled back, glaring at Graham with terror swollen eyes and then more people rushed in to hold him down and plunge a dripping needle into his arm.

He dressed and stepped outside. On the front step sat a package. Graham frowned and looked around him, searching through the bare branches of trees, not sure what he was looking for, maybe another person wanting to catch sight of the freak and snap a photo to plaster across the internet. The anger rose up from his stomach. He closed his eye and breathed. He imagined the rage seeping out of him with every exhale. With calm reasserted and a tiny pulse of pain behind his eye to signal the onset of another headache, he picked up the package and walked back inside to the kitchen. He set the plain brown box with tape across the top of the table. Graham tore off the tape and opened the box. A book, Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith rested inside. Under it sat a note:

In the evening, Graham made dinner using the components from his garden. Tomatoes, leafy greens and potatoes were tossed into a salad. He added tofu for the protein and added a nice balsamic. The last two items he purchased from the store and he didn’t like that. He was striving for self-sufficiency here. He resolved to learn how to make his own tofu and dressing at some point. He hated going into town. After the incident at the mall, Graham could no longer eat meat. Couldn’t stand the smell of it and the one time he tried to force himself to eat some bacon (because who doesn’t like bacon?) he gagged it down and within minutes he was puking it back out. He didn’t understand why. And no doctor could tell him either. There was nothing physically preventing him from eating meat. It hurt his head to think of it and so he didn’t.

With a glass of water by his elbow, he ate with the radio playing in the background. Outside his window, snow drifted to the ground in thick flakes. Graham liked the way the snow lightened up the night. The white on the ground caught the moonlight and gave the snow a blue luminescence he thought quite beautiful. In the summer months, it would be dark outside. The earth and trees swallowed what light the moon spilled from the heavens and most times all he would catch would be his own reflection in the window and he didn’t want to see that. On the counter under the window sat the book from Jodie. He didn’t want to read it. It would be like consenting to her showing up and intruding into his life. He knew he would read the book though. Graham didn’t know what to do about Jodie. She wouldn’t be going away. She had the stubborn set to her eyes Graham knew all too well. Meghan wore the same expression. He had no idea how to make Jodie go away but what bothered him more was that he wasn’t sure if he did want her to get out of his life. There was nothing romantic in the notion. That inclination had been shot out of him. Graham did appreciate intelligence and good humour and Jodie possessed both in ample amounts. And for some reason, his head didn’t hurt around her, not in the way it did around so many other people.

“Let’s recap shall we?” His mother, Sonya said after he told her his problem. No phone line reached where he lived and cell phone reception was non-existent. Graham had to buy a satellite phone. It was expensive and he bought it for emergency purposes. The thought behind the purchase was to have a number in case his parents needed him or his ex-in-laws needed him for something. He didn’t talk to either group much. It hurt his head to talk to people. From the pain came the rage. He didn’t trust he could control himself when the anger rode through him. He thought of the dinner he had at his parents after he had been released from the hospital. They made him a meatless meal because he’d been complaining about the smell of meat when he was in the hospital. His parents drank wine. He drank coffee. He couldn’t remember what it was they were speaking about. It was something stupid though, something that shouldn’t have caused him to get so angry but then he couldn’t control it. The rage rolled over him in waves, crashing against and dismantling his control. He remembered being enraged at his dad. He wanted to stab him in the chest with the butter knife by his hand. What had his dad said? He couldn’t remember, even now. Graham did know that whatever his father had said, it had made him mad, so mad he broke the ceramic mug in his fist. The hot coffee spilled over his hand, shards of the mug dug into his hand spilling blood droplets onto the tablecloth. His dad stood on shaky legs and clamped his head with his hands with gritted teeth shiny and huge like piano keys. His dad grunted, a stream of drool shot from his mouth and he dropped to the floor. Graham blacked out at the table, his face dropping to the plate with a crack. What had his mom thought at the time? The two men in her life collapsing in front of her. When Graham woke up with one killer of a headache, an ambulance worker was shining a light in his eye while they secured his dad to a gurney and rushed him to the hospital. The doctor said his dad had suffered a stroke. No lasting damage had been done but it took the doctors awhile to make that assessment, but still, Graham was grateful that he hadn’t crippled his dad. They suggested his dad change his diet. But Graham knew it hadn’t been a stroke. It was another thing he could do. A new and terrible thing. But it wasn’t so new, was it? There had been that nurse. The one who stumbled back from him when he woke up in the hospital with terror shining from his eyes. From that moment at the hospital with his dad hooked up to beeping machines, Graham knew he couldn’t be around people. Even those he loved weren’t safe around him. When he told his parents what he would be doing, moving out into the middle of the woods, they did the normal parent thing. Instead, they wanted him to move near them, be closer, spend more time together. Except for his dad. Although his dad said he wanted him around, he didn’t mean it. He felt what Graham had done. Although he couldn’t explain it and wouldn’t say it out loud because it sounded crazy, his father knew Graham was responsible for his stroke and he was afraid of Graham. Graham needed to be on his own. He needed to keep away from people because he was dangerous.