Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 14
I was eating dinner when Dr. Ellison walked into my hospital room.
“My timing is perfect,” he said, licking his lips in an exaggerated manner.
I pushed my plate of soggy meatloaf and lumpy potatoes toward him. “Be my guest but be warned: the contents of this tray are not fit for human consumption and may be hazardous to your health.”
He smiled and crossed over to the bedside chair. “I’d better not chance it.” A light shone in his hazel eyes. He didn’t look away from my visual interrogation, but I glanced back at my discarded plate, awkward as a teen at her first school dance.
I looked back at him through my lashes. “And your reason for being here today...?”
“Is to talk about you, of course. See what I can discover.”
I sat up straighter. “What do you want to learn about me that you don’t already know?”
“Whatever you want to tell me.”
Our exchange seemed more like a speed-dating interview than an interaction between a doctor and a patient.
“I can’t think of anything interesting to share.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded. “Why don’t you just tell me how you’re feeling, physically and mentally.” It was not a question.
I suppressed a sigh. “I’m groggy right now. Very sleepy.” I yawned.
“Yes, that’s the meds hard at work. Are you in any physical pain?”
“No, other than this IV stuck in my arm. It’s getting red and raw at the injection site.” I raised my hand and twisted my arm so he could see the irritated skin on the inside of my elbow.
“The IV is providing much-needed nutrients and fluids, Caroline. You were severely dehydrated and malnourished when you arrived here.” He cupped his jaw with one hand. “How do you think that happened?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged with one shoulder. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention to my health. I was so busy tending...” I stopped.
You were not caring for your child, Caroline. You no longer have a child. My mother’s admonishing voice.
I opened my mouth to yell at her then; remembering she was just in my mind, I closed it.
“You were going to tell me you were so busy tending to Emmy that you had no time to eat.”
“I don’t want to talk about Emmy.”
“Why not?” His expression remained pleasant, but I knew it was a trick. A clever way to get me to reveal the things I couldn’t allow myself to even think about.
“If I talk about her, I’ll cry.”
He leaned back, clasped his hands, and steepled his pointer fingers. “Crying is a positive action. It’s what we in the mental health field call a healthy catharsis.”
“Not if I can’t stop.”
He placed his steepled pointers against his lips as if considering my words. “You will cry, and you may cry for a while, but you will not cry forever. Nobody does.” He spoke through his fingers, which made it look as though he were shushing himself even as he was speaking.
“I don’t want to cry or talk about what happened,” I said impatiently. “I want to sleep.”
“That’s avoidance, which is not wanting to discuss what happened. I’d be willing to bet that on some level you think you deserve it. That’s self-punishment.”
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. I had nothing to say, but of course I knew what had triggered my bizarre behavior. I’d killed her, my Emmy. I must have.
Dr. Ellison continued as though he were giving a lecture on the topic. “Guilt and shame block grief. They don’t allow you the introspection you need to be what we refer to as the observing ego—the entity within you that objectively explores the trauma. Breaks it down and deals with it, piece by piece.”
I looked at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“After trauma occurs, we should step back and look at what happened, but humans aren’t wired that way. There are many reasons why we have maladaptive wiring, and it has to do mainly with the fact that our species wasn’t originally meant to live very long, so the initial responses to trauma sufficed—they got us through the tough times.” He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Without getting all academic on you, I can tell you that besides punishing ourselves and trying to avoid what happened, we humans try to control the trauma. We want to make things better. That’s what you did, with your daughter. You gave yourself a do-over. You recreated a life with her where you were the perfect mother.”
Perfect mother . I flinched.
“It’s a mind game we play on ourselves: solve the trauma now and we’ve also solved it in the past. Something that happened years ago—in childhood even—is up for grabs today.”
I stared at him. “I don’t understand what you mean, doctor. I’m not sure I even want to.”
He smiled at me. “I really do understand your feelings, Caroline. Trauma overwhelms us. It changes the way we think. But deep down is the woman you were meant to be—the one who is desperately fighting to get out. It’s our job to help her.”
I wondered if he was right, or if that woman was not only resigned to hiding but longed to go even more deeply undercover. I thought of the stranger at 21 Pine Hill Road. Had my mind tricked me as I watched her bleed out? Perhaps she was a premonition, a glimpse of me in the future, the distance between us a temporary shield. A way to see my fate as an impartial observer.
“I suggest you try journaling, Caroline.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t really like to write. I’m no good at it.”
“This is a special kind of writing,” he said, sitting forward in the chair. “Think of it as a cross between a diary entry and an expenditure log, where you track everything going in and out of your account. When we add this form of therapy to traditional counseling and medications, studies show it reduces anxiety and depression on not only a conscious level, but subconsciously, which retrains patients to have more realistic views.”
“My child is gone, doctor. That’s as realistic as it gets, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he said. “But journaling helps you remember the trauma. It comes out in your writing—puts everything on the record, so to speak.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to remember. Why would I?”
He laid a hand on my arm. “So you can resolve the trauma. Once and for all, Caroline.”
I squinted at him, not sure I understood. “So I write down my thoughts—even negative conversations I’m having with myself?”
“Exactly.” He nodded. “Then you scratch out all the negative words and replace them with positive affirmations. Over time, the process becomes natural.”
I rolled my eyes.
He shrugged. “It’s easy to incorporate and costs nothing, so give it a shot. What have you got to lose?”
The jarring ring of my bedside phone cut into the quiet room, causing both of us to startle. Dr. Ellison stood, nodding at the jangling device.
“You answer that. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile, I’ll have the nurse bring you a journal.”
“Hello?” I said, watching the doctor retreat.
“Caroline?” Mary’s voice was tense. “I’m glad you’re still at the hospital.”
I swallowed my instinct to sigh. “Yes, Mary, I’m still here.” My voice betrayed the fact that I still hadn’t forgiven her for keeping me at her house against my will.
“That’s good,” she said. “You’re safe.”
“Of course I’m safe.” I wanted to hang up on the crazy old bat. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because someone’s in your house.”
My stomach dropped into my bowels.
“What? Who?”
“I don’t know. It’s too dark to see from my window. Whoever it is flashed a small beam, just long enough, I think, to get inside.”
“Don’t go over there.” I said, trying to control my shaky voice. “Just call the police.”