Chapter 21
He arrived at an open door, even if it was still technically one minute before his appointment time. “Sorry, I was running late this morning.” He walked in, knowing he didn’t look like he typically did. He moved over to sit down on the couch, not saying anything to the doctor.
Suddenly he remembered what was in his bag. “Oh, I forgot. The skating federation had some questions about how my progress was going.” He reached into the bag to pull out his phone and its charger as well as the paperwork. “Is it okay if I plug this in? I forgot to charge it last night.”
“It did. I think. We … well, umm, we’re going to talk about last night after my appointment here.”
She glanced down at the papers, a soft frown on her lips. “This is all confidential information.”
He dropped his eyes for a moment. “Yes, but that means you don’t have to tell them everything?” He really hoped that he was right.
“I will draw up a draft of my answers, and you can review it tomorrow to allow or change any of it.” She set the paperwork aside. “There is absolutely no reason for them to know about your date. You seem … not more relaxed, but less anxious might be a better term for it?”
“It was nice. There was … I probably shouldn’t say.”
“Dmitrii, you don’t have to tell me anything you do not want to.
The more I know about how you are doing in all aspects of your life does affect how well I can help you, though.
” Her voice softened as she looked over at him.
“It is nice to see you focused on something besides your skating once in a while. The reports from your other doctors all spoke of your hyper-focus.”
“I think not thinking about skating sometimes is good for me.” He let out a breath as she nodded. She had told him that exact same thing a few days ago. He had insisted that he needed to concentrate on his skating.
“I am glad you realize that.” She leaned back as she looked at him some more.
“I think I need to talk about two things. One in detail and one very much not in detail.” Dmitrii stood up and walked over to the window to look down at the parking lot.
He could see Tyler’s car still in the same spot down below.
“The not in detail one is that he was supposed to go home last night before it got too late, so he’s probably down there on the phone with his mom apologizing.
He said he’s going to be waiting for me when I get out of this appointment and have coffee for me so we can talk.
I didn’t mean for things to go this fast, and it’s a little overwhelming, but at the same time, it feels so amazing.
It’s been so long since I have felt like someone loved me.
So, I am just going to be happy with it for now and try not to worry about that. ”
“Love? And he stayed the night?” She didn’t ask if he had meant someone loved him romantically, or if someone loved him at all. Some details of his family life had become very clear through their talks.
“Yes.” He didn’t bother to hide the smile, but he shook his head. “That one I am not feeling right about going into detail over, but he is so wonderful.”
“So what is the one you felt you could go into detail over?” Her pen hovered over a notebook.
Dmitrii took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling before he spoke. “When I was six years old, I almost died.”
Dr. Aubrey set down the pen and notebook, every last bit of her attention focused on Tyler as he spoke. It was clear she had not expected that at all.
“I nearly drowned. They had to pull me out of the water. It was a little river behind the apartment block where we lived before moving to St. Petersburg. I didn’t know how to swim.
I still don’t. I wasn’t really conscious when they pulled me out, but I kind of remember things from when it happened.
Not clear memories. They’re all faded and confused, but I remember my grandmother crying and praying for me to be okay. ”
Dmitrii turned from the window, walking back to the couch.
He was horrible at staying in one place if he was revealing something he was uncomfortable sharing.
The doctor never seemed to have any issues with his need to move.
“I remember holding onto that. How my grandmother sounded. The fear and the pain in her voice. I had never heard that before, and it scared me. It felt like I had to fight to wake up for her, because I didn’t want her to cry.
I ended up being fine. They were worried for a bit because I hadn’t been breathing the whole time, but I was fine.
They kept me in the hospital for a few days and then they let me go home. I never went near the river again.”
Doctor Aubrey spoke, but her voice was low and gentle. “That isn’t on any of your records.”
“I don’t think that they covered anything from when I was that young. The reason I bring this up – I mean, it’s not like I’m trying to be an Olympic swimmer. I’m an ice skater. I don’t need to swim. The reason I bring this up is that the day of my accident. I don’t remember much, but I heard her.”
“Your grandmother?”
Dmitrii leaned back against an arm of the couch. “I know it’s crazy. I mean, she had been dead for almost a decade.”
“No, not crazy.” Dr. Aubrey’s voice was a little firmer as she spoke now.
“The mind is an incredibly complex thing. That you would remember and relive the exact experience that had helped you through a traumatic situation before is not surprising. It was probably very disconcerting, though, when you later realized what had happened.”
“It was.” Dmitrii sat down, his elbows on his knees as he clasped his hands in front of him.
“I am not a religious person. My grandmother was. Rationally, I don’t think her praying did anything when I was first unconscious, and it clearly did not do anything the second time after the accident from the jump. ”
“Didn’t it?”
“You’re a medical doctor. You can’t believe in–”
“I never said I believed in anything. Your own words expressed how her voice and her pleading served as an anchor for you to hold on to mentally. When you were a child, it comforted you and gave you focus to help wake up. After the skating accident, did it not also serve as a tie to the real world? You were badly injured, and waking up from a head injury like that is one of the things in modern science that is not fully understood. Many neurosurgeons and neurologists credit the words of a loved one or a song or even a scent as what helped a patient reach back to consciousness and wake up. So if even the doctors who deal with the most physical aspects of the brain believe memories and those we care about are critical, why can’t we extend that to the vivid memory of your grandmother’s voice? ”
Dmitrii nodded. He wasn’t really agreeing at the moment. Instead, he was thinking over her words. Maybe it made sense. “She was the most important person in my life.”
“She loved you?”
“My grandmother loved me more than anything. She would do a million little things in the day to show me how she loved me. Every morning she woke me up with a soft kiss on my forehead and whispered that it was time for me to get up. She cooked a hot breakfast for me and told me to eat up and be strong and healthy. When I walked to school, she always watched from the door until I was out of sight. She was so wonderful. I miss her.”
Dr. Aubrey gave him a moment, just watching him as he sat there and wrestled with his next words. Finally, Dmitrii was ready to speak. “When I heard her on the day of the accident, I was positive I was dead.”
“I can see where you came to that conclusion.” Dmitrii had never mentioned his belief system before, but the thought that if one heard a dead relative that they must be dead was a rather logical one
“I was so positive that I was dead that it didn’t seem like there was a reason to fight.
I just let myself sink into the blackness.
Nothing in the blackness hurt. Nothing in the blackness was cold.
It wrapped around me like an embrace. Every time I started to come out of it, I didn’t want to.
Things hurt too much. I kept going back to the quiet and the dark.
” He held one of the throw pillows from the couch, his fingers just working one of the edges as he slowly rotated the cushion, needing to do something with his hands.
“I think we are getting to the core of why you have been so profoundly affected by the accident.” She watched him carefully.
This revelation was unexpected, but often the most important aspects of the healing journey were unexpected.
Her voice remained soft as she asked, “Are you worried because you didn’t want to wake up, or are you worried that if it happens again you won’t want to wake up? ”
“Both.” He shrugged his shoulders, looking over at the woman. “I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to die, but I’m scared I won’t fight it as hard as I should if it happens again.”
“It’s not uncommon for people with head injuries not to wake up right away, and some people talk about having been someplace familiar or in a dream world before waking up.
There is every possibility you needed to recover more before waking up.
The medical report says they kept you under light sedation.
Those types of sedation are documented to increase the incidence of hallucinations. ”
“I was going to say, ‘but this felt so real’, but of course a hallucination would feel real. It wouldn’t be a hallucination if it weren’t. I just, I don’t know.” He leaned back on the couch, letting his gaze go to the ceiling, watching how the light from the lamps reflected on the white surface.
Dmitrii fell silent as he listened to the doctor talk, just nodding along as she reassured him he didn’t need to be worried about that experience.
He agreed that he’d look over the resources she was going to send him about what people experienced in similar states of consciousness.
Although he felt a little better by the end of the session, he swore that sometimes sitting on that couch for an hour and being brutally honest about how he was could be more exhausting that being on the ice training.
As his hour ended, Dr. Aubrey smiled at him. “I am going to assume you wish to see the boy now instead of spending more time here?”
“I … yeah.” He didn’t bother to hide his smile. Even after tearing the bandages off of his deepest wounds, the thought of Tyler waiting still made him smile.
“Think about what we’ve talked about. Thank you so much for being honest with me today.”
“Lying to you only hurts me.” He stood up, grabbing his now partially charged phone.
“True. Try to have some fun today. We can go over this paperwork tomorrow at our meeting.” She was still smiling as Dmitrii said goodbye before walking out of the office.
The improvements on the ice he had been showing were one sign of progress, but sessions like today were a much stronger sign that Dmitrii was finally ready to really work on healing.