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-- from the desk of Dr. Leslie Thompkins, 11:37 pm --
Dear Bruce,
After your last visit, I feel that there is much to be resolved concerning Richard’s health and wellbeing. I write this letter in confidence; it is undoubtedly not the news you want to hear, but I know that you prefer the truth, however difficult. I cannot in good conscience leave this matter unattended.
Based on my observations, in addition to anecdotal data from our interview, Richard displays several behaviors consistent with and sufficient for a diagnosis of PTSD.
Despite his cheerful affect, he exhibits hyperarousal as evidenced by hypervigilant behaviors…
Rituals change. Once, sleep was a dust red comforter stretched thin across three nestled bodies and the golden stars adorning the cover of Le Petit Prince. Change is the shift of seasons, the sun’s daily cycle of moods. Dick knows this.
Change is one night of a whirlwind of streets and languages and spices and the next, roots made of stone in a city ruled by gray clouds.
Two weeks is what it takes for the last of the chalk to wash from the swirling creases of his fingertips. One more is needed to strip the last of the sawdust from behind his ears, between his toes and the treads of the shoes he doesn’t let Alfred throw out.
His new room has carpets thick enough to swallow him. Facing east are two windows with eighteen panes each. They are the type from story books, criss-crossed with frames where snow snuggles on winter days.
Every night, he runs his fingers over the locks once, twice, three times. He pushes the locks until their necks squeak in protest and then just a pinch more, deep enough to puncture the peel of his skin and cut through to the bone. He pulls the curtains closed tight enough to suffocate the light.
Bruce gave him the baseball bat when Dick asked about playing. It is made of maple, which means it is good, but Dick has no interest in a game that passes slower than syrup.
He keeps it next to his bed, tucked between the nightstand and bed frame, handle up. It takes practice to find the handle in the dark. Dick learns quickly.
...in addition to sleep disturbances, as you described…
Bruce remembers the nightmares. What it is to awake to gunpowder and alley smog tickling his nose in the darkness of a bedroom.
He knows the screams that shred a throat to ribbons. He knows the best way to conceal a flashlight beneath sheets, the best stories to read the nights that blood and death are seared onto his eyelids.
Bruce thought the dark terror was confined to his bedroom.
Blankets do not smother the muted glow of the flashlight that Dick stole from Alfred’s utility drawer. It slips beneath the door, as timid as a whisper. Bruce’s fingers rest heavy against the door. He moves silently past and does not comment on the circles bruising beneath Dick’s eyes. Nor does Bruce utter so much as a whisper when exhaustion sucks the rosy brown from Dick’s skin and replaces it with a skeletal pallor.
His heart leaps and strains to wrap his arms around Dick, to carry him away from heartbreak and Gotham before its gray stains his skin forever. The cold fear of overstepping keeps his knocks from landing and freezes his feet from stepping closer.
A scream sends him through the door three nights later. It is guttural and deep and claws at Bruce’s stomach and splits his soul. The scream doesn’t stop, just keeps unraveling, far too great a coil of grief for the small body curled in the center of the bed.
According to your and Dick's reports, sleep disturbances include trauma-related nightmares…
A hand grabs Dick’s shoulder as he plummets down the endless yawn of a fall, arms outstretched towards his parents. Their palms are streaked and sizzle with blood, reaching as they call out to him.
The abrupt, sickeningly unfrayed ends of the lines twist like spaghetti. Dick! Quieter, more dreamlike. The yellow and red stripes of the bigtop race and blur. Mijo, ayúdame. Pajarito. Save us. Dick!
“Dick!”
Their mouths stretch with screams.
“Dick, wake up!”
Bruce stands over him. His hand, pale and sure as marble, grips his shoulder. Darkness settles in the slopes between the bones, the valleys of muscle and tendon and vein.
“Bruce?” Dick’s throat feels raw, like he swallowed fire instead of breathing it. An endless sea of white sheets stretches to either side, and he is marooned upon it.
But Bruce. He rubs Dick’s shoulder, too soft for a hand that could crush a pomegranate to a pile of ruby seeds.
It dulls the cold that wraps around his ribs and trickles between their gaps. They sit together in the dark.
...and, for all his wishes to return to the familiar comforts of the circus, Richard avoids any reminders of his trauma…
Dick slips into the kitchen with all the commotion of a docile ghost. Alfred is folded primly over the stove. He smooths a towel over his hand to lift a teapot. The air is heavy with a rich orange humidity, one that is vaguely familiar, then intensely so.
The abrupt absence of the kettle’s whistle sends silence screaming into Dick’s ears. It tunnels and burrows deep into his brain, amplified by the should-be.
This scent belongs to his family’s trailer on performance days; earl grey for the Flying Graysons, maman would say with a wink. The kitchen counter should be cluttered with mismatched plates and utensils, tea stains, and crinkled butter-yellow Lipton wrappers sprinkled on top.
But the Wayne manor counter is immaculate. Alfred’s precise cloth strokes shimmer in the blue morning light. There is no anticipation, no flamenco music to color the air.
It is strange, Dick thinks, that the scent of tea can ignite cool flames within his bones that lick and climb until everything, all of him, is burning.
His chest heaves. The image of maman and papá perched on the bed, blue-white-yellow mugs in hand, bleeds into crooked lines, dust dancing in the air from the impact of their bodies. Dick throws back his chair and tears from the room. He locks the bedroom and bathroom doors and tucks himself against the porcelain chill of the bathtub.
Some time later, Bruce knocks at the door. Dick peels himself up, made of pins and needles and tingling feet. He spends the rest of the day wary of the kitchen’s perimeter; he will not chance another whiff of earl grey. Not for a long time.
Finally, the extended period of symptoms, including depression/negative mood, suggests progression from acute stress syndrome to PTSD. It is imperative that we take steps at this point to prevent the progression of long-term psychological damage...
Grief paints Dick’s days in muted shades of red and yellow and green. He grows to expect sleepless nights and sweat-drenched sheets. In turn, he finds late night companions in Alfred, with his old movies and stories, and Bruce, who wears the colors of his own grief to prevent its spread to others.
When he joins Bruce in his family’s colors, Dick, too, fights the nightmares, the guilt, the hiss of acid that makes his knees tremble. When his heart feels heavy enough to break in two, Dick mends others with a Grayson smile and a Bruce Wayne open hand.
Dick is a patchwork, un mosaico, bright and overflowing with color. Deep blue-gray anguish accompanies sunny yellow joy and chartreuse tinted terror. Laughter and tears mingle and change with the tides.
And Alfred dries his eyes with a soft smile. And Bruce guides him through the nights.
I would like to see you and Richard within the next two weeks to discuss future steps and treatment. You have a good heart in your care, Bruce. There is not a doubt in my mind that Richard has the capacity to heal and transcend the constraints of tragedy.
Keep in touch.
Best, Leslie