Can You Have a Talk When Only One Person is Talking?

I made Mikey seven huge roast beef sandwiches and a giant glass of chocolate milk for lunch and sat next to him while he ate. I talked to him. I don't know if he understood me, but maybe somewhere back in his brain it got filed. One can always hope.

I asked him what he was feeling. I asked him what he wanted for dinner. I asked him to tell me what he was doing on the computer. I asked him if he still loved me. I told him I loved him. I told him I was afraid. I told him I was going crazy. I told him I missed him.

He didn't say anything, of course. He just ate his lunch. Sometimes when he looks at me, I think he's still in there. I imagine him in a prison, locked behind a door waiting for someone to show up with the right key and let him out.

It's agonising, you know? It's only him and me here. I'm the only one in the world, apparently, that he still allows contact. He'll attack anyone else who comes close. It's why the Army was so happy to dump him on me -- afraid he'd kill someone in the hospital. I'm the only one he'll let near him. That's got to mean something, doesn't it? It's got to mean he still loves me, right?