The afternoon was already upon him when he finally woke up from what he assumed must have been an untroubled slumber. Ever since he was a child he never remembered his dreams, but he always knew when they had been nightmares; something troubling yet ill-defined would carry over into those first waking moments and sometimes linger until he had gone through some of his morning routine. He was pristinely at ease this afternoon though, and he felt well rested, so he could safely assume that his sleep had been undisturbed this time. He was grateful for that small blessing, because nightmares had been uncomfortably common over the past few years, and he didn’t like how that lingering unease would filter further and further through his day tainting the rest of it with something approaching low-grade dread. This was especially true on the days when he knew that he had a shift at the institution ahead of him. The place was, at best, unnerving on the most innocent and comfortable days.
He stretched until he felt as if he might strain a muscle, rolling himself towards the edge of his bed before sliding his legs over the edge. He plodded from his bed into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror under fluorescent lights for a few minutes, zoning out in the process. He wasn’t an unattractive man. He was honest enough to admit that to himself without feeling overcome by shame brought on by his sense of modesty. It had been a couple of weeks since he had shaved and he eyed the razor on the countertop momentarily, but he didn’t feel any overwhelming motivations to rectify that situation just yet, so he casually disregarded the thought almost as soon as it surfaced.
He felt like he was getting plenty of sleep, but he could make out faint, dark circles under his eyes just the same. Otherwise he still looked as healthy as he could have expected. His skin was unblemished, but he’d always had a fairly clear complexion, and decent hygiene helped to insure that it wouldn’t become any cause for concern in the near future. It was almost disappointing, he thought, that he hadn’t started developing the gray hairs that his mother was already showing when she was his age; he always thought that maybe a moderate amount of gray in his hair might make him look somewhat distinguished, but he wasn’t really in any rush to begin his way along the downward slope of the aging process.
Finally done with his self-appraisal, he slid his boxers down to the floor and stepped into the shower. He always spent more time in there than was necessary or typically expected of a man, but he loved the sensation of the hot water, almost to the point of scalding, against his skin. Underneath the high-pressure stream of water, he closed his eyes and unconsciously imagined Leyna doing the same thing. He saw the beautiful contours of her form as he had only imagined it numerous times before, without her clothing obscuring the glorious sight. He imagined the water beading up on her pale skin, glistening in the steam-filled air of her shower. Even after sleeping for hours after seeing her, he just couldn’t dislodge these thoughts of her from his mind. He took these distracting musings as a sign that it was definitely time for him to finish up his shower. He wasn’t going to accomplish anything productive while fixating on her naked, wet figure in his imagination.
After he was done with the abbreviated version of his daily grooming process, he padded through the living room to turn on his television before making his way to the kitchen to find something to eat. The options were limited since he hadn’t been motivated to take a trip to the grocery store in the past week, but there were sufficient alternatives for him to be satisfied with what he had.
Nathan’s apartment was sparsely decorated, and upon casual appraisal hardly would have appeared lived in at all. Most of the furnishings that he owned were remnants left behind after the sale of his family’s home, things that he couldn’t quite part with for a variety of reasons. He hadn’t kept much, but sentimentality had required that he hold on to a few things, primarily the things that he found some utilitarian purpose in retaining in addition to the sentimental attachment. He subscribed to an almost monastic lifestyle, in large part because of the substantial amount of his income that was devoted to paying back his student loans. He had accumulated more than the average amount of debt due to a last minute change in majors that he felt he had to undertake. Far too frequently as he looked around his apartment he was reminded of the life that he had lived, of the history that had led him to the present, and the life that he was living now.
During the final semester of his senior year at MIT where he was pursuing a degree in chemistry everything changed for him, his mother’s deteriorating mental health began to degrade at an accelerated rate. The doctors referred to the collection of symptoms as early onset dementia, what he knew to be a catch-all diagnosis that definitely seemed to fit the conditions. It was painfully obvious that his mother was no longer capable of reliably providing care for herself, so he was forced to make a difficult decision, and his choice was to move back home and insure that she was being properly cared for and supervised. He regrettably withdrew from his courses, packed up the meager belongings that he had in the dorm that he resided in, and began the long drive back home.
The following months were excruciating and depressing for him. His mother had always been a pinnacle of stability and strength in his eyes, something timeless and enduring. Seemingly overnight she had been transformed into a stranger parading around in his mother’s body. Her appearance seemed different as well, weaker than it had been previously. It was only a few months earlier when he had been home or Christmas break, blissfully unaware of his mother’s deteriorating state at the time, a decline that she was actively working to hide from him, skirting around any symptoms that she had manifested in his presence and chalking them off as nothing more than weariness taking its toll.
It was a few months after he had returned home when he finally began looking into the programs offered by the state college that was located only a couple of miles from his family home. Because of the circumstances that he currently found himself surrounded by at home or maybe just because something in his priorities had changed, or perhaps it was something else entirely or a combination of numerous factors; whatever the cause, he found himself enrolling for classes the coming fall as a psychology major.
His course schedule, though not terribly demanding in comparison with the work he had been doing at MIT, required that he hire a nurse to provide part-time care for his mother. Though the transition from MIT to where he was now enrolled had negated his scholarships, it had freed up the funds that he had earmarked for his first couple of years in graduate school, money that he and his mother had laboriously set aside for years. Instead of graduating the previous spring and beginning work on a Master’s, he was starting almost from scratch as an undergraduate again. All of his previous credit hours had transferred successfully, but almost none of them had any relevance toward his new focus.
Paying the nurse out of the same account that he was tapping for his tuition, from the same funds that he had painstakingly set aside for the pursuit of an advanced degree that he knew would likely never be his, he shouldered a whole new collection of financial burdens by taking on another three years of student loans in order to obtain his psychology degree.
Those three years had slipped by in a blur for him, no time for reflection or pleasurable pursuits. The time he didn’t dedicate to his education was spent caring for his ailing mother, her overall state of mind deteriorating further and further with rapid progression. A cocktail of medications did occasionally provide brief intervals of behavior akin to her former self. Every now and again he would connect with a former childhood friend, but for all intents and purposes there was neither the time nor the inclination in him to maintain anything approximating a friendship with anyone that he encountered. So, beyond his mother and the short interactions with her nurse or one or another physician that was evaluating his mother’s condition, he spent those years alone.
He was relieved that his mother appeared to be reasonably lucid during his graduation ceremony, but that could Justas easily have been a figment of his hopeful imagination. It was, after all, less than a month later when she attempted to commit suicide. A moment of clarity had apparently led her to believe that she couldn’t bear to live the way that she was, as a shell of what she once was and a burden upon her only son. Unsuccessful as the attempt at self-termination may have been, it had effectively brought an end to his mother’s higher brain function.
The period after graduation became something less celebratory than he would have preferred. In her attempt to relieve Nathan of the burden that she felt she had imposed upon him, his mother had created a whole new series of responsibilities that fell upon his shoulders. He was frantic to find some way to care for her now, keeping her at home was impossibility, and the finances required to maintain her simply were not there. After going through the difficult process of selling the house along with almost everything of value that was contained within it, he was left with enough to keep what was left of his mother alive with the assistance of machines for a couple more years.
Nathan found himself left with fundamentally nothing, and more than enough debt for a single individual to comfortably carry; he was forced to accept the first job that was offered to him. This was how he found himself working overnights at the mental hospital. The pay really wasn’t horrible, the work itself was far from challenging, and the benefits were definitely well worth overlooking the fact that his occupation was certainly a step down from what he was hoping he might be able to obtain. It wasn’t the sort of facility that he was looking for, and the position wasn’t even close to what he thought he should be able to find, but he wasn’t in a position to be altogether too picky.
His initial reservations against accepting the position were proven less relevant than he had feared. The environment was actually stimulating in ways that he hadn’t even considered, though he admittedly found the place a little spooky in the late night hours. The silence provided him with time to think, something that he quite desperately needed to do, after spending so much time at the frantic pace that the previous years had forced upon him. During the course of the previous few years, he had gone through his life almost wholly unaware of just how little time he was taking for himself, how little he had even entertained the thought that he might actually need to take some time for himself.
Now, he actually had that time, and he was beginning to learn the benefits that could be derived from silence and time not spent dedicated to pressing responsibilities.
More than the silence, though, something else was having a very profound impact on his state of mind and the personal realizations that he was becoming aware of since he had accepted this job. That thing was Leyna.
He only worked with her occasionally, no more than two or three days during any given week, but those relatively rare periods of time quickly became the best thing about his week. He found himself almost perpetually thinking about her whenever his attention was free to wander. He was very much unwilling to assume that his thoughts of her could even potentially be a negative thing.
Nathan didn’t have much of a dating history, and that was putting it kindly. His experiences with women were limited primarily to caring for his mother for the past handful of years, but he wasn’t unfamiliar with the concepts of courtship and romance. The fact that his most recent serious relationship had ben while he was in high school was a bit of a stumbling block for him, but nothing that he didn’t feel that he could overcome if she would give him the time of day. It was just going to take him some time before he could build up the nerve required to begin sincerely expressing any thoughts of a romantic or intimate nature in an extroverted manner. He had no difficulty admitting these thoughts to himself, but admitting them to another living, breathing human being might take a great deal more concerted effort.
The fact of the matter was that he was almost terrified of sharing any of his thoughts with her, anything of a personal nature, at least those thoughts that pertained to her. He had been out of the dating world long enough that he lacked the confidence in his ability to adequately convey what he wanted to say without making a complete fool of himself. It had been years since he had experienced the advances of a woman, at least anything less subtle than a prolonged glance or maybe a smile, so he wasn’t even sure if he would recognize interest from anyone, especially someone that he desired so strongly himself. Any perceived cues could easily be nothing more than his wishful thinking taking hold and distorting something totally innocuous and transforming it into more than it really was.
In reality, he needed her to do something very obvious, something clear and not easily open to misinterpretation on his part. It was going to continue being a nightmare for him, these feelings seething beneath the surface, fighting to break free of the restraints that he had imposed upon them. He knew he would probably never open his mouth and express what he so desperately ached to say to her, not without something from her giving him the faith in himself necessary to take that leap. He already felt mildly alienated around her, petrified at times that she could see right through the mask that he deliberately wore, and into the core of him. He knew those fears were ridiculous and verging on being outright paranoid at times. If she were aware of what he thought of her, it would be a damn clear indication of her lack of interest that she hadn’t said anything. Of course, there was a chance that she was just as plagued by doubt and insecurity as he was, even though he couldn’t begin to comprehend how she might have cause to feel that way.
It wasn’t healthy, what he was doing to himself. He knew that he couldn’t keep dwelling on his unresolved and quite likely unrequited desire for her. It was enough that he had her friendship, or it should be, he kept telling himself. It was obviously unlikely that anything good could come of his thoughts always finding a way to return to his wishful thinking regarding her.
He needed to get the hell out of his apartment, to do something active and productive. There was a well-stocked exercise facility on campus, and as alumni he was welcome to take advantage of the equipment any time that he wished. That was precisely what he needed, something to get his blood pumping, to distract him from these thoughts of Leyna, it was necessary that he take action to change his state of mind.
He had a gym bag always ready in his closet. He grabbed the bag, turned off his television, locked the apartment, and headed out. She couldn’t haunt him all the time, it wasn’t good for him to allow it, and he was damn sure that exhausting himself through working out would clear his head for the first time in a couple of weeks. Even if it didn’t work, it was worth the effort of trying.
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