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The psychiatrist didn’t start by discussing the break-in. Instead, he sat in the chair in her hospital room and asked about her weight. Listened to the litany of her losses. Calmly labeled her thinness self-harm, destructive, a sign of depression.
As if these are things you don’t already know. As if they matter.
She didn’t deny any of it. Told him she agreed. At last said, “When it came down to it, though, turns out I want to live.”
“Yes.” His eyes darted over her bandages, her bruising. “But you have a lot of work ahead. Trauma doesn’t end when the trauma ends. Everyone’s past forms their present.”
“That’s true,” she conceded, eyeing him with more interest. “It’s all still here, the past. What happened to my husband. The grief. This Cor—” Her voice cracked. “This man, breaking into my home. I wish none of it had happened. But it did. And in my head it’s still happening.”
“You need to grapple with what you’ve been through.”
“And help my kids.”
“They’re not the only ones who went through this. If you don’t look after yourself, what will they have? If they can’t depend on you?” The psychiatrist clasped his hands together in his lap. “Do you really want to stay where you are now?”
“No,” she said, understanding the psychiatrist wasn’t referring to the hospital, but to the way her mind was stuck in a dark well, clawing uselessly at distant light. “I don’t.”
She’d treated coming back to herself like a jigsaw puzzle, flipping and turning the pieces on the table, analyzing them, until she was able to arrange each memory—something hit you in the face on the trail, you saw him open the front doors, those sneakers—among the rest to form a complete picture. So as the psychiatrist asked her about the Corner, her frenzied flight through the woods, her physical injuries and how she’d incurred them, she answered as well as she could, picking up this or that puzzle piece, and when something took time to mentally arrange, she explained, “It gets jumbled. Bits of it slip away, then kind of spring on me. Images. Feelings. It’s—disorienting.”
“It’s only been four days,” the psychiatrist said. This seemed impossible to her, since in the odd twilight space of the hospital, she’d just arrived, yet simultaneously was sure she’d been there for weeks. “You may find that your memory isn’t what you’d like. That you have intrusive thoughts. Or that you’re reliving this person hunting you. That’s normal. A normal response to trauma.” He shrugged, added, “Sometimes people can’t remember everything, even with time. The mind can protect itself by sealing things off.”
“I guess I wouldn’t even know if that was happening,” she mused. “And I keep thinking that this…person…who broke in will try and find my daughter. But then, that would be illogical, wouldn’t it? Risky for him?”
As best she could—puzzle pieces not quite fitting, often having to force them together—she described the way the Corner had hunted her little girl. His behavior at the café. After all, if he’d tracked her down after four months, why wouldn’t he try again? And then there were the dangers of her father-in-law’s custody. The psychiatrist slowly drew out their history. Discussed her limited options.
“These are all reasonable worries,” the psychiatrist reassured her. “And I do think you’re correct. You getting home, you speaking with the police, helping them catch this man—those are the most efficient, effective ways to address these problems.”
The psychiatrist’s serious face, his measured words, “reasonable,” “efficient,” “effective,” “normal,” were a balm. They soothed her more than a press of the red button.
“Are you willing to continue counseling after you’re discharged? I can provide you referrals. And I do specialize in, publish about, post-traumatic stress. If you wanted, we could make sure you have an appointment with my office.”
Her broken face managed a smile. “I’d like that,” she said.
When she woke it was morning and the cuffs were gone. She rubbed her wrists in relief, sure that this small modicum of freedom was thanks to the psychiatrist.
Guess that means you’re sane after all.
She touched the bandage around her head, her eye. Patted her snarled hair.
It’s all still happening. It always will be.
“Hello,” the sergeant said.
This time she was able to pull the blanket over herself, yanking it up to her chin.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He took up a lot of room, legs splayed wide, elbows sticking out from the armrests of the pink upholstered hospital chair near her bed.
“I just—I didn’t see you.”
“You’ve got limitations.” He tapped his eye to indicate her half-broken vision.
“I thought visitors weren’t allowed?”
The sergeant shrugged. “Cops are an exception.”
“Right.” She started to breathe normally again. “So. Did you get him?”
