The JereMike Collection

Sometimes, Mike forgets that he does indeed have brain damage.

It's not his fault. It's just so easy to forget that you're dysfunctional when everyone around treats you normally. Until he fucks something up, and everyone realizes how flawed he is, treating him like he was a deranged half-wit. He can't make a mistake without anyone blaming it on his head, on him, like he was the very mistake itself.

He learned to deal with it, growing up with it from a very young age. How young? He can't remember, and he's not sure if he wants to either. Hell only knows how much more of childhood he would have had if only his skull didn't have a gaping hole in it

He doesn't remember when it began, but he remembers having to live through it.

Most of it is clouded, fuzzy images of a white hospital room, an old nurse, and a window just out of reach. His mother hardly came to see him, too busy working multiple jobs to pay off what he imagined was an avalanche of incoming medical bills. Her son hospitalized, facing the possibility of paralyzation, fighting to keep both the bills and courts away while working on a schedule of two hours of sleep and one meal per day. Mike knew he shouldn't of been mad she couldn't visit, but he couldn't help but feel a pang in his chest when he awoke every morning to an empty chair beside his bed.

The nurse was probably the most pleasant memory he had of his time in care. She was an old looking, plump woman, probably in her late 40s at the least. She brought him toys and tucked him in at night, stayed and told him stories on the night's he couldn't sleep. When the doctors placed him on a strict diet, she would sneak him tiny cups of ice cream she had stolen from the break room, the both of them laughing when he'd throw the spoon aside and dive in. For a while, that woman was a beacon in the storm.

Mike wished he could remember her name.

After they were sure he wasn't going to be paralyzed, that his scarred skin wasn't going to pry his stitches apart after a few failed attempts, they placed him in mental and physical therapy. It was an incredibly slow process, a total of fourteen years spent going twice a week to different therapist, physician, and psychiatrist. Each of them had their own methods of helping him recover, though, they probably confused him more than helped now that he thinks back on it.

The covered a variety of issues, ranging from his short term memory loss, to executing multi-step tasks, to helping him understand that even as he grew older, his emotional and sexual urges would be affected as well. He remembers being told he would never be able to drive a car, swim in deep water or even hold a professional conversation.

While he may have proved those predictions wrong, he still found it difficult to work a coffee maker.

They tested his memory and attention span with cheap card tricks, combined with his hand-eye coordination of dance lessons. After a while he fell into a simple routine, one he kept up until his emotional boundaries were pushed to his limit, and he found himself delivering a solid punch to his psychiatrist's gut.

Not much longer afterwards they had him switch over to another phycastrist, and 'personalized treatment', which almost completely centered around his unavoidable aggression and impulsiveness.

Sometime after a few sessions, Mike began to see just how whacked up his reactivity really was.

He would be sitting alone at home, watching whatever was showing or flipping mindlessly through the channels. Then in the next moment he's outside in his pajamas, standing in front of his mailbox with the weekly newspaper in hand. He blinked. When did he walk out here?

Another time was when he was shopping at the market, looking for some food to hold him over for the week while his fridge sat empty, and thecabinets at home had pretty much lost their purpose. He was minding his own business, a basket full of necessities in on hand and a jug of milk in the other when suddenly he blanked.