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Marcus decided it was time to change the subject. “Where would you like to eat?”
She opened her driver side door and waited until he’d opened the passenger door to talk through the vehicle, “Since you insist on paying, shouldn’t it be your choice?”
“How about The Flying Squirrel? I’ll call ahead and make sure we can get one of the privacy booths, so our conversation won’t be overheard.”
* * * *
Heather’s mouth watered at the mention of The Flying Squirrel, but she just said, “Works for me.”
Marcus made the phone call and it sounded like he knew the person he was talking to. When he disconnected, she asked, “I take it you eat there a lot?”
Marcus looked away a second and then back, and when he finally answered, his voice was soft. “Before Mira died, when she wasn’t eating much, there were a few meals I could get there that I could convince her to eat. I’d call and ask what they could put together, and then go pick it up a couple of times a week towards the end. They knew what she liked, and were great at coming up with dishes she could digest.”
Heather blinked back tears as they formed. “We can go somewhere else. I don’t want you to go somewhere with bad memories.”
Marcus shook his head. “She’s been gone three years. I have so many happy memories with her, and I was so blessed to be in her life for the time I was allowed. If I couldn’t go anywhere we’d gone together, I’d have to leave Chattanooga.”
“You haven’t had a serious relationship with anyone since she died, have you?”
“I’ve had...” He breathed out. “Look, I promise to answer your question later. It’ll take a lot of explaining, and you aren’t going to have the vocabulary to understand some of it until I’ve gone over the other things we need to talk about. If you don’t feel I’ve answered your question by the end of our evening, please ask me again. What you need to know now, before we get to the fun details, is that I’ve put myself through all the grief counseling and other therapy I’d require of a patient who’d lost a spouse to cancer. If and when I find the woman of my dreams, I’m not going to keep her at arm’s length because life and the fates royally fucked me and killed Mira. Life is for living, not for playing it safe.”
* * * *
“Before we get started,” Marcus said as they shared an appetizer, “I’d like you to tell me your understanding of how your sensory issues affect your life.”
“You’re a psychiatrist — you’re supposed to understand this stuff. Why do I have to talk about it?” Heather’s voice sounded confrontational and defensive even to her own ears. Marcus was trying to help and she needed to do better, but he’d hit kind of a sore spot right off the bat. Too many therapists and guidance counselors who’d wanted to help, and too many who hadn’t had a clue.
“I want us to find a common vocabulary before I start. If you explain it to me, I can use your terminology. Also, if there’s something particular to your situation I’m not aware of, it’ll help me structure my recommendations to your specific needs. I have experience helping people enjoy sex — even people with severe sensory issues — but I need to understand you a little better before we get to that part of the conversation.”
Heather took a deep breath and dove in. “I was one month shy of my second birthday when my parents adopted me from a horrible little orphanage in Korea. I weighed sixteen pounds, and my mom says I was skin and bones. The medical information from my first doctor visit once they got me home says I was horribly malnourished.”
“You’ve seen it?” Marcus asked.
“Yeah. Mom kept records of everything, so she could explain it when I was old enough to understand.”
Marcus nodded for her to continue, so she kept going. “The only word I seemed to understand was the Korean word forno. I had zero language development, and I couldn’t sit up without being supported. I didn’t cry, I didn’t laugh, I didn’t smile. A few weeks after they adopted me, my hand got caught in a door and I didn’t react. At the time, they didn’t know whether I didn’t feel pain or just didn’t react to it, but my mom jumped into action to find out and try to fix it.”
She shrugged and looked at her plate while she recounted the worst of it. “From what I’ve been told, I’d been living with what was probably a long-term staph infection on my calf for no telling how long, and I had lots of nasty intestinal parasites. Food was in short supply and I was likely constantly hungry. There was no air conditioning or heat, meaning I was pretty much always hot in the summer and freezing in the winter.”
She looked up and met his gaze to see how he was taking it, and saw confidence in his eyes. He could handle whatever she told him without giving her pity, without seeing her as the poor little orphan.
“I appreciate you opening up, and I want to hear however much you’re comfortable telling me.”
He’d wanted to know how her sensory issues affect her life now, and while he likely understood what created the problem, she still needed to go through it before she could talk about what it did to her.
“Apparently, babies in this kind of environment often turn off their senses to keep from hurting and being hungry and cold and everything else. With no positive sensory input at all, I turned my senses way down to keep from feelinganything. Better to feel nothing at all than to be miserable. It’s a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, I was there long enough, my brain was hardwired that way. It could be altered a little, but couldn’t be rewired as if it never happened. So, I don’t feel physical painorpleasure, it’s just the way I am.”
She stopped to take a breath and to figure out what else he needed to know. “Pain is supposed to tell you to take your hand off a hot stove, or to stop running before you do further damage if you break a small bone in your ankle, or to warn when you’re getting an infection. My parents had to work with me to teach me not to do things that can cause me harm — like jumping off a high retaining wall because it’s fun. The landing didn’t hurt, never mind I broke an ankle.”
“Have youeverfelt pain?”
“I feel muscle pain sometimes, and I at leastsensewhen something’s burning me, which makes me pull away to keep from getting burned worse. It doesn’t really hurt, but I know how it feels. I broke my arm at seventeen — a compound fracture with the bone sticking through the skin, and that’s the first time I think I ever felt actual pain. It wasfascinating.” She grimaced. “For about five minutes, then I wanted it to stop.”
“How old were you when you jumped off the retaining wall? When did you learn how to give yourself sensory input?”
“Since my everyday life is basically a state of sensory deprivation, I was labeled a “sensory seeker” at a young age. My mom learned if she didn’t provide sensory input for me, I’d find it myself, and she rarely liked the things I did on my own. Once, I climbed on the roof to practice back handsprings. Another time, I walked the top of the neighbor’s fence like it was a tightrope, but it was a wooden fence and I got a million splinters in my feet. They didn’t hurt, but a bunch of them got infected and it ended up being areallybig deal with multiple trips to the doctor. Apparently, until I was about eight, if I didn’t get enough sensory input, I’d pitch these two-or-three-hour-long screaming fits. She said it was like I was possessed or something, and there was no way to talk to themeinside my body.”
“I know about the gymnastics and martial arts classes your parents put you in. What else did you do?”
