Adventures of Matt Parkman, Chapter 8: Abuse
Ryan was not a good driver - seriously not a good driver. He'd driven cars only a score or so times in his life and most of those had been joyrides in stolen vehicles he cared nothing about. He'd never owned a car. Matt was not a good teacher - seriously not a good teacher. He expected Ryan to understand what he meant and became irate when his directions weren't followed as he thought they should be. He'd never tried to train anyone.
Even under normal conditions, this was not a good combination. The current conditions saw Matt angry and hurting, Ryan frightened and confused. Matt didn't volunteer information and Ryan didn't ask for it. In short order Matt was trying to make up for the lack of communication by enforcing his directions mentally. When an order wasn't followed correctly, Matt repeated it and ratcheted up the mental pressure - as if this would help. Ryan would then try something else at random and Matt would lash out angrily at him.
The abusiveness reduced the poor young man to tears before they got even halfway to the hospital. Ryan was sorry, he was frustrated, he was enraged that he had to let someone treat him this way. Matt had him pull into a McDonalds and park. He did, hands shaking and rubbing the steering wheel, agitated that the man he was trying to help was angry and unsatisfied with his assistance. He felt inadequate and useless.
Matt just sat there and stared out the window. His right side felt sticky and occasionally warm as new blood trickled down it. For the moment, he shut out Ryan's mind. The young man was upset and Matt didn't care to listen to it. He'd been yanking at his mind, doing the mental equivalent of shaking him. It was traumatizing him and Matt could see it was damaging his brain. The emotions were indicators, the tears like blood from a wound. Parkman worked on breathing evenly and calming himself down. The more he took his anger out on Ryan, the less useful he was going to be.
Quietly Matt said, "Do you have any money?"
Ryan wiped angrily at his eyes. "Yeah."
In the same tone of forced calm, Matt said, "Go in the McDonalds and get me a coffee. If you want something yourself, get it too." He added as Ryan opened the door, "Then come back out here." The man hesitated at that, then got out. Before he shut the door, Matt added again, "With the coffee! Come back out with the coffee." Ryan nodded and bit his lip, looking uncertain. Matt sighed. "And with whatever you get yourself. Just-" He clenched his teeth at a swell of frustration as he thought of a number of ways Ryan could screw up such a simple mission. He'd already proven that 'drive me to the hospital' was beyond him. Matt bit it down and said as calmly as he could, "Just go on."
He held his head. Why is it so complicated? Just go get me some freaking coffee. Do I have to tell you every step you should take? 'Open the door, order in English, pay the right money, take the change'? Can't he just assume some things? Christ. It's like driving. Just drive down the freaking road. Stay in your lane. Obey the speed limit. Good God that's a red light Oh My God STOP! He's the worst driver ever! He shook his head. His nerves were shot, his own calm lost. It didn't occur to Matt there might be a connection between Ryan's increasingly erratic driving and Matt's state of mind while he was issuing commands.
Fortunately for Ryan, Matt had calmed down by the time he came back with a large coffee, a soda and a burger. He got in and handed the coffee to Parkman, watching him carefully, trying to gage if 'large' was the size Matt had wanted. Matt seemed content with it, so Ryan sighed and put his soda in the car's cup holder. He unwrapped his burger. Parkman looked at his coffee and realized he had no cream or sugar. He sucked at his teeth and tapped his foot on the floor, looking out the window. A little more blood ran down his back.
Ryan looked at him apprehensively, preparing himself for another series of what he perceived as near-contradictory commands. Matt watched as Ryan fidgeted with his burger, not eating it and stealing uneasy glances at him. He scanned the other man's mind and then shut his eyes and exhaled. The kid was scared of him, wary. It reminded him uncomfortably of Janice's fear. Matt opened his eyes after several seconds and said, again in a tone of forced calm, "Okay. Put the burger down. Go back inside and get me tw- three creams and six sugars. Okay?"
Ryan nodded. He sat there for a moment, looking at Matt. If Parkman had not been reading his mind, he would have assumed the young man was being obstinate or stupid. Instead he was waiting in case Matt added something, as he had before. He was thinking that if he hadn't hurried off earlier, then Matt would have mentioned the cream and sugar. He blamed himself. Much more gently than the words themselves implied, Matt said, "Go on now."
He went and returned quickly with exactly what Matt had told him to get. Parkman dumped them in and realized he had no spoon or other stirring tool. He capped the coffee in barely controlled frustration and put it in the other cup holder. He wanted to throw it on the kid. "Okay, let's go."
Ryan looked at the coffee Matt was not drinking. He was confused.
"Let's go," Matt said. "Now." His voice was tight, incensed. Ryan put his half eaten burger down and started the car.
They managed to get to the hospital without being involved in an accident, which Parkman thought was a miracle by itself. Matt kept his comments to a minimum and his thoughts to himself. Once in the emergency services parking lot, he said to Ryan as he was starting to get out, "Wait! Sit back down." He did. "We need a story. I was obviously assaulted. There's going to be questions. Do you understand me?"
Ryan nodded.
"Okay. Here's the story. It's real close to what happened. I came to talk to you about hiring you to do whatever it is you've been doing door to door. Some other kids on the street got out of hand. You don't know why they attacked me or who they were. Everything else was the same. Do you understand that?" Matt felt like an idiot having to ask constantly if he was understood, but he also felt like he was dealing with an idiot.
Ryan nodded. His mind was adding all manner of unnecessary details, already planning on "helping" by elaborating so much that any cop would instantly see the lies. Matt shut his eyes for a moment and took a steadying breath. The boy was genuinely trying to help him - he was just stupid.
Parkman tilted his head slightly and entered Ryan's mind. The other man twitched in the seat at the invasion, though he didn't know what was happening. Matt stilled him, easily able to control his body. He couldn't remove the memories or alter them directly, but he could change how Ryan responded to them and what he was able to say about them. In his mind would be the reality, but what came out of his mouth would be what Matt told him to say. On a whim, he tried to sink the memory of his first meeting with Ryan into the boy's subconscious, making it difficult for him to recall if he couldn't wipe it out whole cloth. He'd never had the opportunity to experiment and he didn't see how it could be harmful to squelch a small event like that. When it seemed like enough, he backed out.
The young man looked around the car uneasily. Matt waited a beat to make sure his subject's mental state was settled, then got out. Opening the car door with his right was painful. His shoulder was starting to hurt more. Another trickle of blood ran down his back. Ryan joined him as they walked into the emergency entrance. He shot him a couple perplexed looks because the young man didn't understand why he was hanging out with this stranger. Matt ignored him. He was beginning to get the impression that 'confused' was Ryan's base state.
Matt was processed through without much of a problem. Wednesday afternoons weren't a busy time for the emergency room. The doctor gave him local anesthetic and cleaned out the shoulder wound, then stitched and taped it. He x-rayed his hand and worried over it endlessly, insisting Matt see a specialist about the nerve damage. He gave him a referral and a prescription for antibiotics. Matt watched him write out the script. An idea occurred to him of how he could get relatively pure, unadulterated drugs without the dangers of confronting drug dealers.
Give me a prescription for something that will let me get high. The doctor's pen hesitated. He resisted. Seconds ticked by as the unnatural pause lengthened. Parkman cocked his head. This is interesting. I wonder if he's strong enough to tell me no? The doctor's hand shook slightly. He blinked and gave his whole body a little shake, then put the pen down carefully. He opened the medical file and looked at it blankly for a moment, trying to pull his thoughts together after the struggle. Matt leaned forward and prompted, "Aren't you going to write me another prescription?" He watched the man's face intently.
The doctor grimaced. "Do… do you need something… something for the pain?" He twitched a little. Matt's comment brought the command back up in his mind and this time instead of fighting it, he tried to find a way to rationalize it. "Something… something to manage the pain?"
Matt shrugged with his good shoulder. "Yeah, that's what I need. Something strong."
"Oh." The man blinked and sighed, looking at his prescription pad. "Well… I guess that's okay." He wrote it out. "You'll want to be careful with this stuff though. It's an opiate. They're addictive." He looked searchingly at Matt. "You haven't been… You've been taking drugs already?" He pawed through the various forms Matt had filled out during admission, flipping to the page where Parkman had denied any drug use.
"No, of course not," Matt said blandly, watching the guy with interest. It was rare for him to run into a non-special who could fight him. The usual form of resistance was reinterpreting his commands, which was just as often unintentional. The doctor had, at least initially, outright refused him. He was amused for the moment.
He could see the doctor didn't believe him at all. He'd been practicing for the better part of two decades. He was already considering that Matt's knifing might have been related to the procurement of illegal drugs. He wasn't going to report him to the police, but he was concerned on Matt's behalf. The concern annoyed Matt. His amusement evaporated as his mood shifted quickly.
Parkman reached out to take the prescriptions from the table. The man put his hand on top of them firmly. Matt blinked at him and let go for the moment. The doctor said, "I'm prescribing you morphine. There are a number of side effects to this and similar drugs you need to know about. They include depression, headache, restlessness, insomnia, bad dreams, mood swings and irritability, as well as a craving for more: more drugs, stronger drugs, especially the longer you go without them. They disorder your thinking, make it hard to have relationships with the people you love." He paused, shifting to face Matt directly. "Do you have a family, Mr. Parkman?"
Matt inhaled sharply. He wasn't going to discuss this with a stranger, even if he had nearly every symptom the man had listed. Give me the prescriptions. The man released them, looking at him reproachfully, certain he was right and Matt was an addict. Matt thought that was ridiculous, but he wasn't going to waste his time arguing about it. He couldn't possibly have become addicted so quickly. He needed the drugs to see the future, needed them to help people. Addiction was a risk he was fully prepared to take if it let him save even a single life. He was sure it would come up as a danger, but later.
Parkman went to leave, but stopped next to the nurse's station. He looked out at Ryan, who was sitting where Matt had left him, picking at a scab on the knuckle of one of his broken fingers. At that moment, Matt wasn't angry with him. Ryan had behaved himself through the hospital policewoman's questioning about the attack and his stuttering uncertainty of what had happened had turned out to be very helpful. After only a few exchanges with him, she'd turned to Matt and took his version exclusively.
Matt turned and walked back to the doctor before he could move on to another patient. "I have a friend out there with broken fingers, got them broken last week I think. I'm going to bring him back here. You'll splint those, do what you can." You'll help him. Do what I tell you to do.
The man frowned severely at him, but there was nothing Matt was asking him that conflicted with his natural inclinations. "He'll have to go through triage."
Matt nodded and told him, "You go take care of the paperwork. I'll bring him back here."
Reluctantly, the doctor did as directed. Ryan was confused, but pleased at the idea his fingers might have a better chance of healing properly. The doctor again fussed that he needed to see a specialist, but he didn't think it was as important as Matt's case. He gave them another referral and applied simple buddy wrapping after alignment, giving directions for Ryan to keep the fingers immobilized as much as possible. The taping and bandages would also serve to keep him from picking at the scabs.
They left and Ryan drove him back to his apartment so Matt could get new clothes, ones that didn't have his blood all over them. Ryan looked at the regression painting on the wall, mesmerized by it. Finally he said, "Did you paint that?"
"Yeah." Matt pulled his shirt on with some difficulty, finding buttoning it to be harder than he'd expected with the bandages on his left hand. Fortunately his index and second finger hadn't lost any feeling. He hadn't made up his mind yet about seeing a specialist. He was concerned about showing up anywhere that he was expected to be. The apartment wasn't in his name, which had originally been to conceal it from Janice, but now would serve just as well to confound the police. He'd listed his residence as her house. He was by no means unfindable, but it would be difficult.
"That's awesome." The young man said of the painting, sounded truly impressed.
Matt lifted his brows at him, feeling oddly pleased that Ryan thought his paintings were cool. He smiled a little, not sure why the regard even mattered to him. Ryan was poorly educated gutter trash at best. Parkman's youth had been rough, but he'd made something of himself, gotten through the police academy and finally even made detective, all the while dealing with a learning disability. Ryan hadn't managed to graduate high school, though he had no idea of his past. Matt thought very little of him. It made Matt feel better anyway.
A/N: Ryan is drawn from life. While I could tell all manner of colorful stories about him, I think it is best summed up by his own words. His parole officer asked him why he had tried to break into our house, and he told him, "That bitch didn't see me! I ran off before she got the door open." Thus confirming that he'd been 1) outside his area of intensive house arrest, 2) breaking our restraining order against him, 3) trying to break into our house and 4) unbelievably stupid. He went back to juvenile hall and we moved away. In the painfully long years that we knew of him, I learned a fair amount about his background and I can say I was genuinely sorry for him. He was quite the product of his environment and his mother made Virginia Gray (Sylar's mom) look like a saint.