Dr. Vargas sucks her lips in and then nods, smiling in a sad way. “PTSD isn’t a mental illness. It’s a psychological injury. What I mean by that is it changes your brain. Your hippocampus shrinks blurring lines between the past and present memories, you have increased activity in the amygdala where your emotions are processed and it's linked to fear responses, and your ventromedial prefrontal cortex shrinks and that regulates your negative emotions when confronted with specific stimuli.” She makes some notes with these terms and hands them to me. “With complex PTSD you could be triggered easily, get intrusive thoughts, feel mentally exhausted, have less emotional reserves, and sometimes interpret things incorrectly. And none of that is your fault.”
I swallow and stop myself from replying. She doesn’t understand. No one ever will. I didn’t fight back hard enough, I gave in all too often, and I didn’t protect my mom. “How do I get better?” I’m not sure why I bother asking her this since it seems a preposterous idea. How do you get over losing the one person you had in this whole world?
“First of all, you need to treat yourself gently. When you get down on yourself, you need to remember the injury to your brain. Since you’ve been here at the Wellness Center, we’ve been working on stage one and stage two of healing. stage one is all about establishing safety. We were working on tools to use to remind yourself that you’re safe now. Also, getting a sense of stability. You received your GED, even received a scholarship to Belmont College. Stage two is more complicated. It’s working on remembering and mourning the losses while keeping stabilization. You were doing so well with that.” She pulls a drawer open and pulls a disc from it. “Some of our sessions were recorded for the study and if you’re up to it, watching them may help you recover some memories.”
“Is that possible?” I scratch the back of my neck and try to stay present. My mind has been wandering more and more with the lack of sleep.
“Grappling with repressed memories can feel defeating, but I can tell you that those memories aren’t gone. They’re in your mind and will resurface eventually. Maybe not completely or in ways you’ll understand, but they will.” I took the disc, but I don’t intend to watch it.
“What comes after stage two?” It seems futile to find out, since I feel like I’m back at the beginning of stage one.
“Reconnecting with society. Forging some healthy relationships with people, often others who are working towards the same goals. Finding a place to live, a place to work, and continuing to feel stable. It doesn’t mean that therapy ends, you’ll want to continue working with someone, but it won’t be quite as often.” It doesn’t feel possible. To form connections or carry on. A numbness falls over me. Dr. Vargas continues to talk about methodology and continued therapy. I shut down. I blink, nod, and float away. I see her face. Not my mom’s, but the blonde woman that has dominated my nightmares. I wish she’d finished what she’d started and killed me.
32. CALEB
In the past couple of days, I’ve realized that Hutton is hiding more than I would have guessed. When he left the hotel and I followed him, I had no idea what I was in for. It wasn’t the sanest move I’ve ever made. It’s lucky he didn’t bash my skull in outside Camp Carroll to get me off his back. The abandoned medical facility where we headed to didn’t have what he was looking for. In a fit of rage, he destroyed a whole wall of expensive-looking equipment. I backed up and nervously watched. Would he have noticed if I shoved one of the standing microscopes into my backpack…the things I could study with it made my head spin. All this equipment is going to be wasted.
If the FBI or any other law enforcement agency was keeping guard over Camp Carroll, we didn’t encounter anyone. Being careful to avoid anyone, Hutton led us in to the backside of the camp and into a parking ramp at the base of the medical research labs. He wasn’t in any mood to talk, no matter how much I tried to stave off my nerves by asking him what he was doing.
“Lift your feet up when you’re walking,” Hutton snaps at me. I purposely march with my knees high to get him to laugh, and he glares at me.
“Sorry.” I make sure to keep my face serious. “I forgot you don’t have a sense of humor.” He mumbled under his breath, and we trekked on. We could be heading towards death. The thought crossed my mind several times on the trip into the mountains of upstate New York. But God wanted me to see him leaving that hotel and I felt compelled to follow. I trust God, even if the reasons are unclear to me why we’d be there.
We spent a lot of time looking for Achilles. He didn’t bother to tell me what Achilles was. For all I knew it was a futuristic weapon, that would have made more sense to me than what it turned out to be. When he spotted a scraggly looking gray cat darting under a shelving unit in the storage area of the parking lot, I was shocked to learn that it was Achilles. A cat? Hutton grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck then snuggled it close, whispering to it. I almost dropped in shock. That cat was not the least bit clean. He’s touching it though.
“Wait… are… what?” I can’t seem to ask a question. “You’re holding a cat.”
“That’s the most intelligent observation you’ve made today,” Hutton says in a flat tone. “Grab that.” He points to a canvas tote bag partially under a tarp. Now I’m his servant. I do as he asks because I’m still shocked that he’s touching an animal.
We don’t take a lot of time at Camp Carroll, skirting around cinderblock housing units, a large garden, and a big white house enclosed by an electric fence. “Where are we going now?” I asked Hutton following behind him through the brush surrounding the trees.
“Back.” Well, that’s informative. I ask God to protect us, since we’ll need it. The cat starts to meow and make strange noises. We stop and look at it. The cat managed to scratch up my arms when I tried looking at the wound on his neck. It’s not deep and I reassured Hutton he should be okay if we get him clean, put some antibiotic cream on it and cover it. In distress, he made me repeat myself twice more about the cat living. It’s clear… he cares about the cat and Eden. That’s about it.
Hutton’s hotel room is silent as we watch Eden swab the inside of her cheeks. The news that she could have started her life in the same lab as Hutton leaves us all speechless. Hutton doesn’t seem affected, but not much does get a reaction from him. I think he knows a lot more about Eden’s life than he’ll say.
“How long will it take to get the results?” Hutton asks Dean. “It took too long to get drug test results from the FBI. Can you speed this along?”
Matt rolls his eyes at Hutton. “Why the urgency, what are you keeping secret?”
Hutton ignores Matt and says to the other agent, “Test me, too.” Dean prepares the second testing kit, while Matt leans in and whispers something to Eden. She has an ease with Matt and Blaine that I wish I had with her. She sees me as a friend, but I want more.
The cat scratches at the bathroom door where he was corralled, and I duck inside to check on him. He hisses at me, and I chuckle to myself. He’s a bit like his owner in that respect. “Hi, mighty Achilles, let’s have a look at that neck.” Kneeling next to him, I move back the gauze to take another look, while pressing his body against my thighs. This time in the light of the bathroom, I can see what looks like a piece of plastic of some kind inserted under the skin. Since I doubt anyone was microchipping a stray cat in the middle of the woods, this discovery has me feeling panic. Whoever is hunting Hutton and Eden, may have done this.
I make my way back into the hotel room. “Umm… Matt? Hutton?” I wave my hand. “Could you come look at something?”
Showing them the edge of a microchip, Hutton says, “Rip it out. Now.” Me? Why do I have to take it out? I look around for the box of rubber gloves while Hutton gets agitated. Again.
“That’s a stretch. Why would they put a tracking device in a cat that was abandoned months ago? It’s a damn miracle you even found it,” Matt asks standing back up and crossing his arms.
“They cover all their bases,” Hutton says in a sullen voice. “It’s all a game to them and they always win.” I have to ask him to move back, while the screeching cat has the piece of plastic removed as quickly as I can.
Matt takes the fourth of an inch square microchip and wipes it with the bathroom towel. He calls Dean in and asks him to have it looked at to see exactly what it is. Hutton wants it destroyed immediately.
“We need to know what it is,” Matt says sternly to him. “If they tracked us to this hotel in Pennsylvania, it’s already done.” Hutton picks his cat up and rests him against his chest while he gently runs his hand down his back.
Eden appears in the bathroom door. “What were you doing to the cat?” She looks ready to light into us for torturing it. Her eyes fix on Hutton and the look on her face softens. “Is he okay?”
I speak up, “He’s just as ornery as his owner, but he’ll be okay.”
