I can only imagine the things she wants to “talk” about. I’m not sure what her clinical term for me would be, but I know what the layman’s term is—a head case. I’ve been kidnapped and held captive, and I actually tried evading rescue when a team of police officers came to “save” me. She’s probably already working on a book deal for this mess of a case.
“Certain instances?” My throat’s dry because of the drugs. In the closet, I spent what felt like a year with severe cottonmouth. It isn’t a feeling I associate with pleasant memories.
“Exactly.” Dr. Argent moves closer, still slowly, and reaches for the pitcher of water on my bedside table. She pours some into a glass.
“Certain instances being a girl who’s been found years after her kidnapping?”
She doesn’t commit to my assumption. Instead she rolls her hand. “Anyone the hospital staff feels could benefit from talking with me.”
She holds the glass out for me, but I don’t lift my head. Cottonmouth’s uncomfortable, but not as much as drinking from a cup being held by a shrink because my hands are restrained.
“I don’t have much of a chance for a normal life, do I? After all of this?” I shake my head when she tips the cup in front of me. “I know the stories of other girls who were taken and held for years. They don’t acclimate back into society very well.”
She shrugs in a suit-yourself kind of way and sets the cup back down. “True, some don’t adjust back into what you call normal life well. But some do. That’s why I’m here and why I’m hoping you’ll be receptive to speaking with me.”
“Some do?” I repeat. “Don’t you mean most don’t?”
“And if some—even one person—have done it, that means it can be done. That means you can do it too.” She pauses like she’s hoping those words will wind their way inside me, but that door, the one receptive to optimism, was sealed shut years ago. “You don’t have to let what happened to you define the rest of your life. You don’t have to tell yourself you have no chance for a normal life, because guess what? There’s no such thing as a normal life. You can make a new life for yourself— however you want to build it.”
My throat itches. I need to scratch it, but I can’t with my wrists restrained. I try twisting my neck around on the pillow, but that’s useless. “I already built the kind of life I wanted. Years ago. I want that life back.”
“And why can’t you have it back?” she asks gently.
I haven’t had a conversation with another person in forever. Even with Earl Rae, we never really conversed. We exchanged words and a sentence here and there, but we never sat down and just talked. I feel out of practice. I don’t recognize the voice or words or edge of bitterness in my tone. I’m the one talking, but it feels like someone else is calling the shots as to what’s said and how it’s said.
“Because the girl who created it is dead,” I say at last.
“No, she’s not. She’s lying in this bed right in front of me.”
I exhale loudly. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.” Dr. Argent shakes her head. “I believe we’re all free to create whatever kind of life we want on whatever day we choose. I believe, yes, you are going to have more challenges getting there than most would, but I one hundred percent know you have a chance at a new life. A good life.”
“A good life like becoming a hermit afraid to leave a house? Scared to wake up each day and realize there’s no waking up from the nightmare? Unable to have anything close to another loving, trusting relationship ever again?” I turn my head away from Dr. Argent. “That kind of good life those other girls are just reveling in?”
“No, the kind of life you want, not the one that comes easiest. The one you have to work really hard for. That kind of good life, so when someone else in my shoes has to sit down with another girl like you someday in the future, she can say some girls have risen above what happened to them and mean it. So the next girl can have a little more hope that it’s possible.”
I look at the ceiling as she slides into the chair beside my bed. I can’t keep talking about new lives and possibilities and overcoming the odds. I can’t talk about all of that positive shit because it’s just too damn depressing. Because I know . . . I’m too fucked up to even hope any of that’s a possibility for me now. “Aren’t you supposed to be like, I don’t know, understanding? I’ve been through something most people, a psychologist especially, would be sensitive to.”
Dr. Argent lifts her hands like she’s holding something in them. “You know how medical doctors have those electric paddles to bring a person’s heart back to life?”
My eyebrows move together. “Yeah?”
“I like to think of my ‘unique’ approach as those paddles that jolt your psyche back to life.” She lowers her hands and shrugs. “What you do after this is up to you, but at least it’s back. You can feel it, can’t you?”
My psyche? My soul? My feelings? I’m sure what she’s talking about specifically, but I do feel something stirring. I think it’s irritation more than anything, but she’s right—at least I can feel something. “You’re kind of crazy . . . and I’m supposed to be the crazy one.”