Chapter 3
Elisabeth~
Now, while most of my patients attended therapy in one of the common rooms that were assigned to each therapist, I had a couple that didn’t like to leave their rooms, and so I went to them when it was time for their sessions, and Luther Daxton was one of those patients.
He was most comfortable in his own surroundings, and I was okay with that.
Most of the patients at St. Dymphna’s were never going to leave this place, and so my job was to help them through the rough days, not to necessarily ‘cure’ them.
I also had something in common with the patients at St. Dymphna’s, and that was that I was also Catholic, having converted when I had turned eighteen.
While my parents had been extremely disappointed, they hadn’t stood in my way of being true to myself, something that I was extremely grateful for.
Though I hadn’t been able to explain it in a way that they’d comprehend or in a way that hadn’t made me sound crazy, I had begged my parents to understand that something else had called to me, and it’d been a real identity crisis when I’d been raised so devoutly to my parents’ teachings.
Still, they hadn’t crucified me for my decision to convert, and to this day, I appreciated their sacrifice.
Now, whether by chance or design, my name had meaning, and I had spent quite a bit of my childhood wondering if there’d been some deeper meaning to what my parents had named me.
According to the internet and scriptures, Elisabeth meant God’s promise, and Batya meant daughter of God.
Granted, none of us had control of our last names, but I’d always wondered if God’s promised daughter had been tied to the nightmares that I’d had as a child.
Only, they hadn’t felt like nightmares, even though that’s exactly what they’d been.
At any rate, I had also discovered that Elisheva was the Hebrew version of Elizabeth, and though I only heard that name during those nightmares, it’d been hard to believe that there hadn’t been some deeper meaning behind it, but since I hadn’t had a nightmare in years, I guess it no longer mattered.
The only thing that mattered was the right here, and I did my best not to live in the past or lose myself to memories that faded with time anyway.
“Hello, Luther,” I greeted as I knocked on the doorway before entering his room. While most of our patients weren’t allowed to roam around freely, we had a few that could. “How are you feeling this morning? I heard that you had a rough night.”
He quickly sat up on his bed, crossing his legs, his arms resting on his elbows.
Looking at him, Luther appeared average, a passing stranger that you wouldn’t look at twice.
He was five-foot-ten, had dirty-blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and was a little on the slim side, but not in an unhealthy way.
He was also only twenty-seven, making him one of our youngest residents here.
“God came to me last night,” he said, confirming what the night-shift nurses had reported. “He came to me.”
Luther was here because he insisted that God spoke to him, and his parents were wealthy enough to house him here.
Now, while he didn’t seem a danger to himself or others, his insistence that God spoke to him was concerning enough.
If he would just give up that claim, he’d be able to live a regular life and be at home with his family.
However, Luther was adamant that God spoke to him, and so far, no one had been able to convince him otherwise.
“And what did He say?” I asked, my tape recorder and notepad in hand as always.
“He said that you were going to need soldiers soon, and that I needed to be ready,” he answered, his blue gaze bright. “He said that I have to be ready to fight alongside you.”
While Luther speaking with God was a common therapy subject, this was new.
Never had Luther ever mentioned me during one of his conversations with God, and while it wasn’t necessarily a conflict of interest at this point, bringing me up specifically might pose a problem in the future.
No matter what, I couldn’t have a patient becoming fixated on me.
“Did He say why I needed help?” I asked carefully.
“He didn’t say that you needed help,” he clarified. “You won’t ever need help. He said that you were going to need soldiers to fight alongside you, and I’m one of those soldiers.”
“Well, we all need help sometimes, Luther.”
He shook his head rapidly, his shaggy blonde hair whipping around his face. “Not you. Never you. At least, not for this.”
“And what is this?”
“You already know,” he replied, his brows knitted in disapproval. “He said that you already know what’s coming.”
I ignored that part since this had nothing to do with me. “What else did God tell you?”
“That you don’t need help, but you do need to connect,” he answered. “You can’t do it if you don’t connect.”
“Connect with God?” I asked, my pen flying across the notepad as he spoke.
Luther shook his head. “No, not God.”
“Then who or what am I supposed to connect with?”
“You already know,” he repeated, beginning to sound agitated with me. “He said that you already know everything.”
Needing to pull him away from his emotions, I asked, “What else did He say about you being a soldier? Did He give you any specific direction on what is needed of you?”
“I have to protect you,” he answered. “We all have to protect you. That’s all. If we protect you, then you’ll handle the rest.”
“Did He tell you how to protect me?”
His brows furrowed again. “He said that we have to believe in you. If we believe in you, then we’ll be granted a victory, because only those who aren’t afraid to die can be victorious.”
Yeah, no,
Psychiatry 101 taught you that allowing a patient to speak about death was a no-no. You had to interest them in life, not death, and though it was a basic teaching concept, you weren’t always able to steer a patient away from the topic.
“Can you tell me how your conversation with God made you feel?” I asked. “The nurses said that you seemed upset when they came to check on you last night, and so that’s why I’m asking.”
He shook his head again. “I wasn’t upset.”
“No?”
“I was...worried,” he clarified. “I was worried, not upset.”
“And what were you worried about, Luther?”
He cocked his head at me. “You.”
“You were worried about me?”
He nodded. “Yeah, because God said that nothing bad can happen to you.”
I relaxed a little, that last sentence making me feel a little bit better about his episode.
Since I was Luther’s doctor and in charge of his care, it made sense that he’d want to make sure that nothing happened to me.
If he ever hoped to get out of here to live a normal life, he couldn’t do that without my help and guidance, so I could see why he’d believe that God told him to take care of me.
“Well, I think that God doesn’t want anything bad happening to either one of us,” I replied, keeping my voice even, doing my best not to come across as condescending.
“That’s why we have to stick together when they come,” he said, and while this would be easier if I could just ask him to recite the entire conversation verbatim, that’s not how this worked. “And they’re going to come soon, Dr. Batya.”
“Did He say anything else?”
“He said that I can finally go home once my work here is done,” he answered, and my heart skipped a beat.
It was hard not to feel compassion for people that needed your help the most, and even though Luther didn’t know it, I wanted him to be able to go home to his family more than he did.
“God said that He’d leave me alone once my work here is done. ”
“Well, I think that anything’s possible when God is involved,” I told him honestly. “I think that He truly wants what’s only best for His children.”
“You’re going to beat them all, Dr. Batya,” he said, back to not making any sense. “But you have to connect first, so...so go do that, and then we can form a plan afterwards.”
“I can do that,” I lied. “But how about we take a walk in the garden and talk some more? It’s a beautiful day out today.”
His brows scrunched up in thought. “Well, we probably should. I mean, with war coming soon, it might not be so beautiful later.”
War?
“Okay, well...I’m going to call Paul to join us, if you don’t mind,” I said, referring to one of the day-shift orderlies.
Luther nodded as he said, “I wonder if Paul is one of your soldiers, too. He’d be a good one.”
As I just smiled at him, I knew that I was going to have to re-evaluate his medication intake.