Read We Are All Completely Fine for Free Online

would stand there making faces behind that God damn lumberjack beard, wrinkling his nose at the house that Stan had spent four decades in. “How the hell can a man with no hands be a hoarder?” the kid said once. He’d shove stuff out of the way, kicking Stan’s belongings like they were garbage, or worse, picking them up like he was appraising their value.
    “Why do you have a pistol?” the kid asked. It was a .357 police swing-out revolver, brand new and still in its case. Stan had found it on eBay.
    “None of your damn business,” Stan said. There was a lot more than the .357 in the house, but the kid didn’t need to know that.
    “How do you fire it?”
    “Shut up,” Stan said. “We’re late.”
    Somewhere in the house were his prosthetics. He’d gone through a dozen of them before giving up on them twenty years ago. They weren’t anything like the high-tech robot parts the soldiers had now; these were old-fashioned hooks and flesh-toned mannequin hands and strap-on shoes—original pirate material. Uncomfortable as hell.
    These days he rented hands, day nurses and Merry Maids and Meals-on-Wheels volunteers. The new ones always suggested he move into assisted living. They didn’t suggest it twice. I survived on scraps! he told them. For months! You think you can put me in a God damn prison?
    Oh, he could still crank up a good rant. The young ones quit the first time he reduced them to tears, and good riddance. He couldn’t stand wimps. He could instantly spot every variety of bad egg: the thief, the layabout, the cell phone watcher, the idiot. It usually didn’t take more than a phone call to get them transferred, and if that failed he could get them to quit soon enough. They thought he was old and helpless.
    He could see it in the eyes of the group, too. Well, most of their eyes. The youngest one, Martin, still wouldn’t take off the sunglasses. He decided to bring it up with Dr. Sayer before the meeting started.
    As the eldest member of the group, he thought it a good idea to confer with the doctor before the meetings and share thoughts about how therapy was going. Often she came downstairs right as the meeting was scheduled to start, leaving them no time to talk, but some weeks he could get a couple of minutes of one-on-one time with her.
    Today he was lucky. He’d commanded the driver to wait with him outside the conference room, and Dr. Sayer came down the stairs a few minutes before six.
    Her smile was bright and unforced. “Early again, Stan?”
    The first time he’d met her, at the pre-group interview, that smile had struck a chime in his heart. It was not lust (though he was not above those feelings, despite lacking the ability to act on them), but something finer, almost familial. In another life she could have been his daughter. Her wide green eyes were steady and accepting. She always looked at him directly, without revulsion. Seeing all of him.
    “Early is on-time,” Stan said. Before she could walk into the room, he asked her about Martin’s glasses. Did she realize that no one had mentioned them since the first meeting? It had been weeks and weeks. “Everyone’s so nervous about conflict they don’t want to bring ’em up again,” he said.
    “That’s a perceptive insight,” Dr. Sayer said. Stan felt the warmth of her approval. True, it was Barbara who’d suggested to him that conflict avoidance was a reason for the silence, but Stan had been thinking much the same thing, so it was his idea too.
    “I think you should bring that up in group,” the doctor said.
    “Martin will just say that you let him keep the glasses on,” Stan said. Which is what Stan had told Barbara.
    “Maybe,” the doctor said. “But that’s something we can talk about, too.”
    That was her thing: Everything had to happen in the group. And maybe he should share this insight.
    “I’ll think about it,” Stan said. He waved an arm to get the driver’s attention. “Wheel me.”
    The kid didn’t