by KC Decker
When I pad into Sutton’s office, it’s with the understanding that a mental institution is the best I can hope for. With a mind that routinely sabotages body and soul, there is no hope for me.
“Good morning, Mercy. This is Dr. Gingham. He is going to be guiding you through some relaxation and focused attention techniques today. We talked about this before, he is going to utilize an approach called Regression Therapy, which is a treatment that focuses on resolving significant past events believed to be interfering with a person's present mental and emotional wellness.”
I nod a cursory hello to Dr. Gingham before taking my seat. He seems a little put off that I don’t shake his extended hand, but he recovers by shoving it back into his pocket and staring at me.
“Dr. Gingham, would you please give us a minute?” Sutton says without taking his eyes off of me.
“Of course, just let me know when you are ready to begin,” he says as he shuts the door behind himself. Sutton immediately squats down in front of me.
“Mercy, is everything ok? Are you still comfortable trying hypnotherapy?”
“I want to go back on antipsychotics. The hallucinations are becoming pervasive again, and I just want to shut them out. I haven’t slept, I’m anxious all the time, I’m dep—”
“Mercy, I’m not going to blindly throw meds at you. Antipsychotics are not the correct course of treatment,” he says as he slowly shakes his head. When he continues, it’s with less strain to his voice, “What happened last night, and why wasn’t I called?” The tenderness in his voice allows the tears I have been fighting to breach my lids.
“Because I’m all alone. You can’t help me anymore.”
“Stop, don’t say that. You aren’t alone.” He leans in and pulls me against his chest. Holding me tightly, he strokes my hair and coos into my ear, “You are not alone. I’m right here.”
I pull away and lightly tap his forehead, “You are with me here. I want you here,” I finish as I lay my palm on his chest, over his heart.
He places his hand over mine before he answers, “Mercy, you have me here. Can’t you see that? You are all I think about, but I’m desperate to see you through this, so I can still look myself in the eyes. I have turned your treatment a hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction, I have taken a decade of your mental health care and dumped it out on the floor. How can I not see you through to the other side? I would be a monster if I followed my heart.”
“Then, be a monster.”
“You don’t know what you are asking.”
“Then hypnotize me, and let’s be done with this.”
“I need to clear up one more thing before Dr. Gingham comes back,” he says as he places his fingers beneath my chin, raising it and directing my gaze into his.
“The next time I see your pussy, it will be when I am no longer your doctor, and I am burying my tongue in it. Do you understand?”
“Why do you say stuff like that to me?”
“Because you need to know the effect you have on me. And, you also need to know how important my job is to me. Mercy, you can heal from your past. You need to trust me. But you also need to know I am not a robot. I’m asking you to play nice—for now.”
“Whatever you say, doc.”
“Don’t dismiss my feelings like that, Mercy.”
“Why not? You dismiss mine just fine. In fact, I thought that’s what this was all about. Right? Dismiss feelings, heal my schizophrenia, rinse, and repeat.”
“Mercy,” he almost growls. “I can’t be your doctor and your lover.”
“Who said anything about love?”
“Are we going to keep talking in circles, or are we going to figure out what’s causing your nightmares?”
“I’m ready when you are. Go ahead, fix me.”
Sutton exhales a loud breath before standing and walking to the door and calling Dr. Gingham back in. Once we get all the pleasantries out of the way, I’m directed to lie down on the couch. Sutton perches his ass on the windowsill while Dr. Gingham moves the desk chair closer to where I am.
“Mercy, I will be inducing a trance-like state in which you’ll have heightened focus and concentration. You will remain in complete control. Regression therapy focuses on areas of conflict and other potentially negative aspects in your life. The goal is to isolate the causes of negative emotions and determine their cause in order to better address them. Does that make sense?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“Hypnosis is simply a tool that can help facilitate various types of therapies and medical or psychological treatments. You see, through a trance-like state, we can achieve a heightened state of awareness, open the door to the unconscious mind and help find the conflict, turmoil, or hidden pain. Through this process, we are able to reveal the invisible connections between events and feelings. Regression can be very healing and transformative.”
“Great.”
“Do you have any questions for me or for Dr. Sutton?”
“Not about hypnotherapy.”
“Excellent, then I’ll just dim the lights, and we can get started.”
“I’d like for you to focus on my voice. You find the cadence of my words to be soothing, so as I guide you into a state of deep relaxation, each word draws you deeper and deeper into a tranquil state. As you feel yourself let go and completely relax, I’d like you to visualize a staircase. Each step you descend brings you a hundred times deeper into your relaxed state. Let’s begin.”
Chapter 19
Sutton:
Watching Dr. Gingham induce Mercy into a state of deep relaxation borders on ridiculous. He has spent nearly thirty minutes walking her down some stairs and then going through each body part to individually relax each one.
His hypnotic suggestions don’t seem to have an effect on me because I am decidedly, not relaxed. In fact, I’m even more high strung than before because all I can think of is how badly I want to abuse her trance-like state.
She has become hypnotically pliable, and all I can think about is asking her to take off her shirt. I think I could alter the relaxation technique to have her become a hundred times more relaxed with each piece of clothing she removes. Hell, I’m getting hard just thinking about it.
I wonder if I could hypnotically suggest she let me fuck her up against this windowsill and then forget all about it and leave feeling completely free of whatever trauma in her past landed her here.
She will be my undoing for sure. Besides the fact that she is strikingly beautiful, her stone-cold innocence is what makes me want to bend her over my desk and teach her all about men and their erections.
The irony in all this is that I wrote my dissertation about transference and counter-transference. Can you fucking imagine how hard God is laughing down at me right now? My entire future is on the line, and all I can think about is how many sexual positions I can introduce Mercy to.
A cough from the resident hypnotist redirects my focus from the way her shirt snugs up across her chest, to his pointed look. Did he just ask me a question?
“I’m sorry, Mercy. Can you repeat that last part?” he says with wide eyes and a chin sweep that directs me to her face.
“Purity rites. You asked why I didn’t like the sect leader. That’s why.”
“Mercy, as if you were watching it happen on a television screen, I’d like for you to elaborate on the purity rites. What did they entail, exactly?”
“Unmarried girls have to go with the Prophet, so he can administer the rite of purity. If he finds us impure, it means we are not a true Believer, and we will be cast out to live and eat with the animals.”
“And what does it mean to be found pure?” Dr. Gingham looks at me with disgust in his eyes. I think we both know what it means.
“I’m not sure.”
“Does it mean the girls are virgins?”
“I don’t know that word, what does that mean?”
“Mercy, how old are you right now?”
“Six and a half,
” she answers in a small voice. I launch myself off the window sill, and in three long strides, I’m almost by her side. I’d take her hand if this asshole would sit back down and get his hands off of me.
Dr. Gingham boldly shakes his head and walks me backward a few steps before he holds his hand in front of my face, indicating that I need to stop. When he sits back down next to her, it takes him a minute to collect himself.
“You’re doing great, Mercy. I’d like you to go back to the day you received your purity rites. Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what happens during this time.”
“I’m crying because I’m afraid of the Prophet, and he is squeezing my hand. Mama is crying too, but she isn’t making a sound. He takes me into the church, but it’s empty. No one is singing or praying… There is a back room… It’s behind Jesus on the cross.” Her breaths have started speeding up, and I want to go back in time and castrate this fucking pedophile.
“Mercy, you are completely safe from this man, he cannot hurt you.”
“No. I’m not safe. He is a bad man.”
“You are watching what happens on a screen.”
“But he is hurting my hand. He’s squeezing me and dragging me into the little room. There are others here.” She is becoming agitated, and I want this to stop right now. There is little doubt she was sexually abused as a child and that her “hallucinations” are a direct correlation of such. I don’t need the gory details in order to help her.
“Who are the others?” Doctor hypnosis asks.
“Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Calloway. Mr. Stands. And Mr. Williams. They are smiling at me and telling me not to be afraid. They are trying to make their faces nice, but I don’t like them.”
“What happens next, Mercy?”
“They’re all holding me down on a table. Mr. Calloway lifts my dress up, and the others pull my legs apart.”
“—Great job, Mercy, you can leave the hidden room now. Those men will be fed to the pigs later, and you will never have to worry about them ever again. Go ahea—"
Dr. Gingham gets right in my face and growls at me to shut my mouth. He is almost purple with anger, but I don’t care, I’ve heard enough.
“The goal here is to isolate the source of her negative emotions and determine their cause in order to better address them! Now, you can either leave the room or sit quietly on your hands, and keep your mouth shut!” he grinds out, right in my face and hardly audible otherwise. For such a slight little dude, he is a scrappy little fucker.
I thought this was a good idea before. Now, I’m having a hard time remembering why I thought so. I open my mouth to say that’s all for today—she is my patient, after all—when she speaks.
“The Prophet says I have to repent. I need his help. He says that only he can save my soul. He wants to fix me with love. Love, he says.”
“Ok, Mercy, we can come back to that at a later date. For now, I’d like you to imagine a brightly lit stairway. You feel completely safe and secure, and you realize that there is no danger associated with the staircase. In fact, you want to go up a few stairs.”
“Ok.”
“These particular stairs represent years, so each step you take advances you a year at a time. I would like you to take two steps up the stairs. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you eight years old now?”
“Yes.”
“Is this a happy time for you?”
It takes her several minutes to respond, but when she does, her forehead knits with tension, and her breathing becomes evidenced in the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
“No. No…it’s not a happy time.”
“I want you to take another step up the staircase. Now you are nine years old. Is this a happy time for you?” He knows this was the year of her life she was abandoned at St. Vincent’s—just before her tenth birthday, and this asshole is asking her if it was a happy time? What a dick.
“I will never be happy again.”
“What do you see?” he asks, as though he can’t see the tears pooling in her closed eyes. It’s all I can do to stay quiet.
“His face is red, and the vein in his forehead is sticking out. He is really close. His breath is hot, and he is screaming at me.”
“What is he screaming?”
“Child of satan! In my name, I cast out the devil!”
“Mercy, I’d like you to notice a doorway to your left. The door is warm and welcoming, and you understand that when you pass through the door, you will be leaving any feelings of fear and anxiety behind you. Go ahead and walk through that door. When you close it, any lingering adverse emotions completely drain away. You feel utterly relaxed and revitalized, and when you wake up, you will have no recollection of any residual strain or discomfort from your session. I’d like you to take several deep breaths. With each inhale, you become more alert until you are ready to open your eyes.”
She blinks her eyes a few times and then looks over, first at me, and only then, at Dr. Gingham. She sits up and runs her fingers through her hair, as though embarrassed to have drifted off. All I want to do is hold her and make sure she is ok, but seeing as that’s professionally frowned upon, I will refrain from doing so. At least until this guy is out of my office.
“Did it work?” she asks, with no discernible memory of the events that just took place.
“I think it went as well as can be expected. How do you feel?” Gingham asks while I bite my tongue.
“I feel rested, but I’m not sure that’s what we were going for,” she says with an embarrassed giggle.
“Well, I’ll tell ya, the thing about regression therapy is that it can help point to some areas where we should focus. It’s not a treatment, it’s a tool, and I feel very confident that I can help you.”
“Great. I look forward to the help,” she says as she turns and cuts her eyes at me. Was that a non-verbal dig? Is she insinuating that I can’t help her? What the fuck was that?
“This type of therapy has several goals. The first is expression and release of emotions previously repressed. And the second is relearning or reprogramming the subconscious mind. It will take some time, but I’ve had some extraordinary results with this kind of thing.”
“So, we need to do it again?”
“Oh, yes. Today was just a cursory glance. If it aligns with your treatment goals, I’d like to see you twice a week,” Then he looks directly at me and annunciates, “In my office.”
“Alright, I’m game. I believe I have nine a.m. available most days,” she says, sweetly. Saccharine—sweet, that is.
The fuck? 9:00 is my time.
“Actually, I will have to get back to you on that, Dr. Gingham. Thank you for your time, we’ll be in touch,” I say as I shuffle him toward the door.
“Dr. Sutton, may I have a word with you in the hallway, please?”
“Of course.”
When I follow him out of my office, I’m suddenly aware that most psychiatrists would not have been so possessive over a patient. I wish I’d had enough sense in my head to have realized that sooner.
“I acknowledge that some medical doctors tend to see things in black and white, and don’t always accept the many shades of gray, but I’d like you to give me an opportunity to work within the confines of that gray area, to unlock her subconscious mind. What may seem like cut and dry childhood abuse to you can have a distinct role in her current affairs. There are lingering effects from her childhood trauma that can’t even be quantified at this point.”
“I agree with you, I’m just a little worried about all the anxiety and trauma this will bring to the surface, that’s all. There is little doubt she’s been through hell.”
“Agreed. Will you let me help her?”
“Uhhh,” ok, so he is not on to me and my lecherous ways after all. He thinks I doubt his ability to do the job. “Yes, I suppose we can give it a few sessions before we assess the efficacy of it…but I’d like to be presen
t durin—”
“Absolutely not. With all due respect, doctor, I’m highly respected in my field, and my track record speaks for itself. Believe it or not, I am equipped to handle anything I may uncover.”
“I’ll speak to my patient and get back with you. Thank you for coming.”
When I face Mercy in my office again, she wastes no time before asking, “Who is Mark?”
“Huh?”
Chapter 20
My hallucinations are back with a vicious vengeance since going off the antipsychotics. The men are with me almost nightly. The soaked sheets are commonplace. My throat, raw from screaming, is now standard. What isn’t standard was the slap to my face that drug me from the abyss.
She apologized after she did it. I think it surprised her that she actually struck a patient. But the ridiculous thing was that I didn’t recognize it wasn’t part of the hallucination—and I fought back until I was hauled into the hallway by a rather large orderly.
Now, I’m sitting here in nothing but a t-shirt—the last clean and dry article of clothing to my name, while my damp sheets are stripped and bed re-made. Both the nurse and orderly are keeping their leery distance, but I’m the one who got hit. Well, technically speaking, the nurse did too, but that was reactive…And I’m certain there is a protocol for handling delusional patients, and I’m pretty sure slapping them isn’t part of it.
If I wasn’t ruminating in angry feelings right now, I’d mention to her that I’m not planning on telling anyone that she smacked me. So, she can stop worrying about losing her job. I might even take credit for the handprint on my cheek if she plays her cards right.
“Everything ok in here?” Sutton asks, obviously getting faster at springing from his bed and racing back to the hospital to peel me off the ceiling. Good, maybe when he gets sick of having his sleep interrupted, he will put me back on the antipsychotics.
I get it, he doesn’t want me to be schizophrenic, but this is getting ridiculous. I had been going months between hallucinations, now I have several a week. That’s not the kind of progress I want to be making.
