TOM
I have seen small flashes of this side of her, the side with is simultaneously terribly afraid and brave beyond belief. That wound is going to need at least four stitches, and I want her numb, but I don’t have the injectables at home. This is ridiculous. If I were practicing at a clinic, I’d run her in there, but I’m not right now so she needs to go to the ER.
I wrap a tight bandage around the wound and sit her down on a stool. “Don’t move.”
She sits there like a statue as I go and get myself ready for what might be the fight of my life. To my relief, she hasn’t run off by the time I get back. She doesn’t look like she’s moved so much as a muscle, actually. There’s something more than a little eerie about it.
I offer her a pill. “Okay, take this.”
“What is it?”
“Codeine. It will take the edge off.”
“No thank you.”
I suspect she knows the pill in my hand isn’t codeine. It’s actually a sedative. She needs proper medical attention. I can’t sew her up here in the kitchen. I could make her take it, I suppose. I could grab her and force her to go to the hospital, call an ambulance with paramedics who will sedate her for me. The options run through my mind, but I know they’re all forms of betrayal she will not tolerate. If I force this now, I will lose her, maybe forever.
Hell. I’m going to have to do this as she’s asked me to. Without anesthetic. It’s going to be a mess I know, as soon as she feels the needle, she’s probably going to panic and cause more damage to herself and the property. Sometimes, dealing with this girl is like having a wild animal in the house.
“Okay,” I say, unwinding the bandage. “I’m going to give this a clean over the sink and then we’re going to do this. It’s going to hurt.”
“It’s okay.”
I know how she yelps when I paddle her butt. I know this isn’t going to be okay. But we really don’t have a choice right now.
She manages to hold still as I wash the wound out with saline and I start to think maybe this might work. She is pale though, so I make sure she stays propped against me in case she passes out. Don’t need a head injury as well as a gash to treat.
“Okay, now this is going to hurt, but try your best to keep still,” I say as I begin to suture her wound.
Mary holds perfectly still as the needle threads through her flesh. It’s almost frightening how in control of the pain she appears to be, but the look in her eyes tells me it’s not control. It’s dissociation. Someone… or rather, a whole lot of someones over an extended period of time taught her how to separate herself from pain.
Jesus. This poor girl. She told me she had been hurt and damaged, but I never truly understood until right now. With her sitting in my kitchen, barely blinking as I weave her hand back together.
“Good girl,” I soothe as I apply a last bandage. “All done.”
“All done?” She looks at me, and it is the most eerie thing, to see her return to her eyes, as if she just stepped out of her body for a bit.
“All done,” I confirm.
“Thank you,” she nods.
I tidy up the medical supplies, getting them out of her way. She sits there quietly, sadly, watching me.
“You see now, don’t you,” she says in a soft voice.
“What’s that, little girl?”
“You see how broken I am.”
I look over at her. “You’re not broken. I just sewed you up.”
“Yes I am,” she says without so much as a hint of a smile. “I’m cracked right down the middle.”
“You had some serious trauma,” I say, making sure everything is properly disposed of. “I don’t think you’re broken.”
“You’re either lying or stupid. Or maybe both.”
There’s a hollow quality to her words I don’t like. I feel as though she’s slipping away from me again, as if she’s not really in the room anymore. That, I won’t allow. She needs to stay present.
“That’s enough!” I snap the words harshly enough to get her attention. Usually, being sweet to her works, but right now she needs to hear something harsher and more stern. “You will speak to me with respect, young lady. I know you have had some very difficult experiences…”
“Difficult experiences!” She laughs at me in tones devoid of humor. “They cut my fucking womb out.”
At first, I’m sure I heard her wrong. Then I think she must be exaggerating.
“You mean you’ve had a hysterectomy?”
“I’ve had a fuck-you-ectomy,” she says bitterly.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what they did there. I saw them do it.”
This doesn’t sound right. People don’t see their hysterectomies.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fucking sure,” she says, confession coming in the heat of the moment as she loses her temper. “They didn’t like to put us completely under. Too much risk of death. And they liked to make us watch. They told me what they were doing. They pulled that organ out of me and they put it in a box, and they told me someone else would put it to good use. And that’s not even the worst thing I saw them do.”
She’s shaking. I want to hug her, but I think touching her right now might set her off even worse than what she is. So I stand there, and I listen as she tells me the things I’m sure she hasn’t told anybody before.
“What was the worst thing you saw them do?”
I don’t want to hear it, not really, but I need to. She needs me to hear it. She needs to be able to bring this stuff to light and have it not destroy her world.
“After they took me, in between experiments. They used me as… they made me… assist in some things.”
“What things?”
She’s getting that faraway look in her eye again, and her voice is going flat, recounting something nobody should ever have to remember, let alone experience. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. But it’s too late now.
“A woman tried to escape. She almost made it out. She was down in the normal wards, screaming about being a captive. But they caught her and they brought her back up, and they…” her eyes go dark and hollow. “You don’t want to hear this.”
“I do.”
She looks at me, and before she even opens her mouth, I feel a chill in the air. Her eyes are a portal to the place she was held, and it’s as if I can feel a small amount of what it was like to be there. The hair stands up on the back of my neck. My heart beats faster.
This girl who has been so much lively trouble is now still as a statue. The color seems to be sucked from around her and when she speaks, her voice has a tone to it which makes it hard to even recognize.
“They took out her liver.”
I cough. “What?”
“Just to see what would happen.”
She runs her undamaged fingers back and forth over the counter, as if trying to soothe herself. She looks out the window, then back at me.
“It took her three days to die.”
“Jesus,” I murmur, horrified and slightly confused. “I wouldn’t have thought you could live more than an hour or two.”
“Three days,” she repeats. “They made me take notes. They made me watch to see what would happen if I ever tried to escape. If it wasn’t for Ken… I would still be there. Missing more and more parts until…”
I wrap my arms around her as she cracks and starts to cry. In an instant, she transforms from cold statue to broken woman. The tears flow in a torrent of pure misery and grief.
They took so much from her. They carved out the thing at the very core of her. They took her chance at motherhood and they stripped her faith in humanity away. There’s no getting that back. Once you’ve seen things that depraved, you’re forever changed no matter what happens afterward.
She needs to cry. I need to fucking kill someone, but I subdue my more vicious impulses to comfort her. It’s hard. I don’t know how to make this better - because it can’t be made better. What they’ve taken from her can’t ever be replaced.
I understand so much more about her now. And I know why Ken is so insistent she be safe. Mary deserves to be safe. She needs to be protected and cared for. She needs to be shown that the world still has softer sides. I’ve been doing all that basically on instinct, from the first moment I saw her standing in the airport looking lost and waif-like with that backpack that damn near dwarfed her.
“Nothing like that is ever going to happen to you again,” I promise her. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you, okay, little girl, I’ve got you.”
Her tears are more like the howls of a wounded animal. I am hearing the sound of pain repressed for months on end, bursting free from the dam she constructed to hold it back. Afghanistan would have kept her safe from it. In dangerous places, the mind naturally blocks the worst of trauma to keep the individual alive. But she’s here now, in a suburban kitchen, and in her disappointment at missing Ken, her defenses have finally failed her.
All I can do is hold her through it all, carry her to the couch and let her curl up in a little ball in my lap and cry through the misery and the pain and the fear. It takes a very long time, and hearing all that coming from her sweet mouth is almost too much for me to handle. I want to go and tear the throats out of everybody who had a hand in hurting her, but she needs me right now, and she needs me to be warm and open and loving.
“Are you okay?”
She asks the question in a small voice, her face stained with tears as she peers up from under wet, dark hair to inquire after my well-being.
“I’m fine, little girl,” I reassure her.
“You’re not,” she says. “You’re angry. Like me.”
“I am angry,” I admit as I hold her close and try not to think murderous thoughts. “I wish I could do something to hurt those people.”
“Ken hurt them,” she says. “He hurt them badly.”
“Oh I bet he did.” I’m almost jealous that he got to do that. I want to hurt them too. I want to hurt anyone who ever hurt her.
“So now you know,” she says. “Now you know all the things. More than anybody.”
“I do,” I agree. “And I still want you, little girl.”
“Why?” Her voice cracks. “I’m broken.”
“You might have been broken, but you’re healing,” I say. “That’s why this hurts so much.”