Kill the Silence

by Monika Korra

  My heart skipped a beat when he said something about a failure rate. Before I could ask him to repeat himself, he was scribbling another note, and I very clearly heard him say the letters “HIV.” I vaguely recalled filling out a consent form. It seemed that the good news was that their initial test showed that I was HIV negative, but that I’d still need to take an antiviral medication for quite a while and be periodically retested. I couldn’t remember if he’d said that the chances of contracting the disease were 10 to 15 percent or that I’d need to take the drugs for 10 to 15 weeks. The doctor asked me if I had any questions, and I just shook my head. He handed me the second slip of paper and left.

  I lay there on the bed, my mind racing, with images of that night flashing through it. I kept seeing the gun and that other woman’s shoe. The sound and the smell of the duct tape, the horrifying thought that they were going to tape my nose and mouth shut so that I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I had never thought before about how I might die. I’d never had any close calls that I knew of, except for those times when a car crosses the yellow line and then gets back in place a moment before you nearly collide.

  I’d heard a professor say once that in the strictest sense there was no such thing as an accident, that even if you hadn’t intended to be in an intersection when another car came through a signal and hit you, you’d made all kinds of choices that day that put you in that place at that exactly wrong instant. Maybe you left something in the house before you got in your car and that delay put you there. Maybe if you’d brushed your teeth for just two seconds longer and delayed your departure, that car might have gone through without hitting you. Maybe if you’d stayed at a party longer, had decided to leave sooner, hadn’t gone at all…

  I didn’t like thinking that way, about whether choices I’d made had led me to that moment when the men grabbed me. I knew that in comparison to Norway, the United States had a higher crime rate, that violence with guns was more prevalent, but that didn’t happen at SMU. We lived in a nice place. We were told to be careful—Robin and I had just talked about it—but who ever thought about such a thing really happening? I can’t say that I had the clichéd thought that this was all a dream and I’d wake up from it. I never had bad dreams, at least none that I remembered. Maybe there had been a time when I did dream of being alone in a hospital room, but I didn’t think so. But for a class, I’d read a bit about dreams, how the brain took bits and pieces of our daily lives, things we weren’t really conscious of, and put them together in ways that sometimes made clear sense and other times didn’t. There was a randomness to them, and as I lay there that’s what I thought about what had happened to me. This wasn’t something I could have predicted or prevented, and if I played the what-if game too much, and thought that how long I brushed my teeth had such dire consequences, I’d likely become paralyzed with fear, the brush so weighted with possibilities and problems that I couldn’t even lift it to my mouth.

  I knew that I had to gain control of my mind; with nothing to do but lie there, I had to focus on something else besides my desire to go home. Every time someone came in, one of the policemen, or someone from the hospital staff, the good nurse who checked on me a few more times—they all said the same thing. I was so sick of being told “not yet” that I never wanted to hear those words again in my life.

  The clock, a large round-faced one like the ones in some of the classrooms at SMU, seemed frozen. Occasionally the hands would thaw and twitch ahead a few minutes. At 7 a.m. I heard loud footsteps in the hall. Those weren’t the soft-soled sounds of anyone from the hospital. Those had to be high heels, and only someone who’d been out late the night before would still be wearing them. I slid off the table and ran to the door. Just as I was reaching for the handle, the door opened and Kristine, Viktoria, and George all rushed in. I only got a quick glimpse of Kristine’s face before she smothered me in a hug. She looked like hell, pale and drawn, her eyeliner and mascara smeared.

  Kristine squeezed me tighter and her sobs shook me. My face was pressed against her wool coat and I could feel my own hot breath steaming against my face. I began to feel faint, but I didn’t care.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry!” Kristine and I both said to each other. I knew that she was in agony after having the gun pointed at her and having to let go of me. I wished that I could take that pain from her.

  “I didn’t think I would ever see you again,” she said, her voice going from a hoarse rasp to a whisper, “I didn’t think I would ever see you again,” over and over, looking into my eyes and holding me as if to prove to herself that I was real.

  I looked at Viktoria, who had tears streaming down her face. Emotionally, she was the strongest among the three of us; this was the first time I’d ever seen her cry. How I wanted to be back at our apartment having one of our tea nights, enjoying one of her signature chai-and-soy-milk specialties, the three of us with Robin and our Spanish friend, David, all laughing and sharing jokes, telling stories about home, puzzling over the peculiarities of America and its residents. Those evenings together had made life more than simply bearable; they’d made it enjoyable.

  I wanted to hear what they’d all been through, to find out if they’d been in touch with Robin, but more than anything I just wanted to get away from that place.

  I looked at George and lost my composure again. I didn’t have a big brother, but there’d been boys and young men like him in my life before. I knew that he prided himself on how he took care of us. I knew that he’d feel like he’d somehow failed in his duty to protect me. All that was written on his face and more. He could barely make eye contact with me. I knew it had nothing to do with shame or embarrassment or anything that had to do with the sexual nature of the assault. He was hurting because I was hurting, because he’d just spent hours with Kristine and Viktoria, all of them in a complete state of fear and panic. George was the one who wanted to make things all right, to be of assistance in some way, like he’d been for the months since we’d first met. It was as if in the few seconds we looked at each other his face dissolved and recomposed itself into a half dozen different emotional states.

  Watching his Adam’s apple bob up and down and his shoulders heave into a sigh was more eloquent than any words he could have managed.

  “Let me get you home,” he finally said, and then his tears came.

  In a sense, we were all grieving in those moments, all of us wishing that there was some script that we could turn to, to tell us what to say, how to feel, how to act. I wanted to let them all know that I didn’t expect anything from them but to just be there. That was enough. Their support and their signs of grieving were enough. I had no stopwatch to time it; there were no qualifying standards that they had to meet. Their compassion wasn’t some emotional gymnastics exercise that they’d have to perform and I’d have to score, assigning a degree of difficulty and execution points. That they were there, that they’d been going through their own version of a painful assault, was enough. We were united in that.

  Eventually, the words came easier, too easy, and we all began talking over one another’s sentences. A police officer came into the room. We all stopped and looked at him. “Look over this stuff tomorrow,” he told us. “It’s information about where you can get help.”

  He held up a large manila envelope. Viktoria reached for it and peered inside. She took out a few pamphlets and brochures.

  “Tomorrow,” she declared, tucking the envelope under her arm.

  I smiled at her gratefully, thinking of the times when I was studying and she’d taken a textbook or a notebook away from me and said that very same word. A warm feeling of appreciation spread over me. I’d so desperately wanted my friends to be there with me throughout my time at the hospital. My mind had been racing, trying to take in not just what I’d been through but all the information the medical people were throwing at me. I kept telling myself that I needed to remember this, and then the reminder to remember seemed to displace the fact that I wanted to be a
ble to recall. I needed to slow things down, but I couldn’t. I knew that there were things I needed to do; I was distracted by an overwhelming desire—to be held and comforted and cared for by Robin or one of my friends, to feel, even if just for an instant, that I was safe.

  I have all the help I need now, I thought. We’d all come to rely on one another for support through all the ups and downs of our new lives in an unfamiliar environment. Though we had different backgrounds, we’d bonded in a way that felt like we’d become a little family. When tragedy struck, that’s who you wanted to be with, not with professional people who were there to treat you, but with friends who wanted to comfort you.

  While my friends were all there, the kindhearted nurse who had originally spotted me in the hall poked her head into the room. She was holding a folded stack of clothes on which sat a pair of shoes.

  “These are extras I keep in my locker,” she said. She must have realized that I didn’t have any clothes to wear home.

  Then she handed me a garbage bag.

  “When you’re home, you can change into your own clothes, and then just throw these away. You shouldn’t keep anything around that reminds you of this night.”

  I hugged her and thanked her.

  I went to the restroom next door to get dressed. I pumped handfuls of soap from the dispenser, washing my face and then gargling with pure water over and over again. When I was done, I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

  “Hold on a minute,” a different nurse said. “Come with me.”

  Back inside the room, she handed me a bag full of medicine and explained what I was to take, when, and for how long. And she told me about what side effects to expect. I could barely pay attention to a word she was saying. Headaches. Nausea. Sleeplessness. Dizziness. Unexpected bleeding. All I wanted to do was go home, and I finally said so.

  “Please,” I said. “Just let me go. I want to be home with people I know and trust.”

  I was partly out the door when she stopped me.

  “Wait! You have to go to the pharmacy to get your medicine!”

  I stared at her strangely. I was holding the big bag she had just given me. She had to be joking.

  “We don’t have it all here. You have to bring this prescription and they’ll have the rest for you.”

  We all went to the hospital’s pharmacy, following the green line on the floor in a maze of turns. Though I probably shouldn’t have been, I was surprised when the person behind the desk handed me a mound of paperwork to fill out. It was so overwhelming that the tears began stinging in my throat.

  “How are you going to pay for this today?” the woman behind the counter asked. “Cash or credit?”

  “Can’t you send me a bill?”

  “No,” she said. “You have to pay now in order to get your medication now.”

  I suppose I could have told her that, just a few hours earlier, I’d been kidnapped at gunpoint, gang-raped, and had everything stolen from me, including most of my clothing, but I just said, “I don’t have any money to pay right now. Everything is at home.”

  The two of us stood there staring at each other.

  “I’ve got this.” George stepped next to me, reaching into his back pocket as he did so. I looked up at him, and he was already handing a credit card to the woman.

  Over his shoulder, I could see Viktoria talking, the phone pressed to one ear, the other waving in the air like she was conducting an invisible orchestra. I had asked her to call Robin. I knew that, based on how I’d dealt with the pharmacy woman, I couldn’t really trust myself to remain composed. I’d seen how George was dealing with things, and I knew that Robin would be even more devastated by what he might think of as his failure to protect me. I felt bad for putting Viktoria in that position, and I felt bad for feeling bad.

  I felt George’s hand take mine. “Let’s go home now, Monika.”

  On the drive, Viktoria filled me in. Robin wanted to come to the hospital right away and asked for directions, but it was pointless for him to head out when we were so close to leaving. She told him to stay home and that I would contact him when we got back.

  I sat in the front seat and George drove. I looked at the dashboard clock and it was 7:30 in the morning. The sun was fully up and I felt the way a vampire might feel: I hadn’t had any water for hours; I’d cried out the rest of the fluids in my body, and each time I blinked against the painful sun, I felt like I’d dragged a dish scrubber across my eyes. My head seemed hollow, like it was a balloon on a stick.

  “I can’t believe that we have exams in a few days,” Kristine said.

  I was grateful that the conversation had turned to something other than my attack.

  “We’ll be all right,” Viktoria said. “We just have to promise each other we’ll make the others stick to the schedule.”

  “That’s right,” I added, “We just have to focus. Losing a day like today will just make that easier. We could always come up with excuses not to before, but now—”

  I let the thought hang there. Only after I’d said the words did I realize how little I really knew about what “now” might mean for me, for all of us.

  We lapsed into silence. Rush-hour traffic was thick, and a couple of times I saw George catch himself just before he slammed his palm on the steering wheel. He chewed at a thumbnail, and I realized that he didn’t have final exams to worry about and in comparison to everything else the traffic was a minor annoyance, but I had no idea how long it was going to take until I was truly at home again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Home

  When you spend nearly nine months each year living somewhere other than the place of your birth or the country where your family and most of your friends still reside, you don’t use the word “home” as casually as other people. Maybe that’s true of all students who go away to college. But some people say it and just mean “I’m going back to my room,” or “I’m going back to my apartment.” In those cases, they’re talking about a building, a location, a place, and it wasn’t just my newly adopted English that had me instead saying “my place” nearly every time I referred to my housing situation. But in the hours after the attack, that no longer seemed right. In the hours since the attack, I realized, home had become Robin; home had become a state of mind, the sense of belonging I felt with him and my friends.

  As George drove us along streets whose names had become familiar to me, I felt a bit of my exhaustion lifting. As each cross street passed by, it was as if my vision grew clearer, the early-morning haze outside the car and inside my head seemed to clear. As we made the final turn toward home, we headed east. The sun was still low on the horizon, and through the bug- and sap-spattered windshield of the car, everything was alternately ablaze in an aura of light and dimmed in shadow. I looked at my friends, all of them still wearing the same party clothes, and wondered if they wanted to get home as badly as I did.

  I took in short, shallow breaths. I was so eager to see Robin. I felt like I did at the starting line of a race, when every second felt like forever, when my fingers and toes went numb, and my vision narrowed.

  I had my hand on the door’s lever as we pulled into the driveway. I eased the lever back, but the door wouldn’t open. Hearing the door’s lock mechanism release was like the sound of the starter’s pistol firing. I was off and running. The oversized clothes made me feel like I was running in deep sand or snow. Instead of my usual running form, I ran with my hands above my head, pistoning them forward, shoving aside imaginary obstacles.

  I came to a halt when I saw Robin. He was sitting on the stairs, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of jeans even though it was 28 degrees out. His chin rested on his knees and his arms hung down. When he heard me approaching, he looked up and sprang to his feet in an instant.

  We each closed the distance and held on to each other fiercely. I wanted him to be as close to me as he could be, to feel as much of him against me as I possibly could. I rose up on my toes, wishing that there was a way
for him to crawl inside my ridiculously billowing clothes and eliminate any remaining distance between us.

  “I got into my car to drive and I didn’t know where to go, so all I could do was to wait here. I wanted to be there.” His voice was nearly strangled with emotion.

  A rush of love filled my heart. I was so happy to see him. There was nothing to say right then; we just held each other close. He cried; I didn’t. Despite everything that had happened that night, at that moment, I felt happy. It felt so right to be home and to be with Robin. It was as if all the spinning had finally stopped. Everything had been so out of control, and now I was at last grounded and safe. I was where I was meant to be.

  I leaned into him as we walked up the stairs and into the apartment. It was as I’d left it. My stack of textbooks and notebooks still lay on the table along with a confetti of tiny Post-it notes and tape flags. I picked up an uncapped highlighter, thumbed its orange stump, and inspected the tiny stain.

  Shrugging out of my borrowed coat, I turned and looked at Robin. He brushed away a tear and brushed his hair behind his ears as he adjusted his red ball cap.

  “How do I look?” I asked, raising my hands to reveal fabric-covered fists, and then I looked down at the pool of slacks around my feet.

  We both laughed, and resumed breathing again, a bit of normalcy edging some of the uncertainty into a corner of the room.

  I stood on one leg and kicked with the other. I caught the clog. Robin raised his eyebrows and clapped his hands quietly and briefly.

  “The circus life for you.”

  I wanted to keep the banter going, but my anxiety was remorseless, standing there just outside my spotlight ready to pull me back into the darkness. This wasn’t my home. This wasn’t my place any longer. I was certain that someone was there, in the room, lying in wait. I felt a bubble of anxiety rising out of my stomach and expanding in my chest. My breaths were short, sharp, and insufficient things that narrowed my vision and constricted my throat. I wanted so badly to brush my teeth, and the desperation to do that struggled against the fear of going into another room alone.