Sole Survivor

by Holly Dunn

  I thought back to the chalk drawing he had inspired me to make that night, and I made a mental note to ask Adrienne for it. I wanted to save and guard the memories of the good things—to stack them against the awful images in my mind of how it all ended. We had so much else we wanted to do together. His fridge was still full of food for a picnic we had planned to have that Friday. Instead, I was in the hospital and he was no longer alive. I couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened.

  I flipped through the program, noting the other sketches and images, one of which was from Winnie the Pooh of young Christopher Robin climbing the stairs, dragging his stuffed bear along. Christopher Maier had written, in what looked like an eight-year-old’s handwriting, “I love you. Love, Chris.”

  When I noticed a particular line in the program, I laughed out loud and sat up in bed.

  “Heather! Look at this,” I said.

  She leaned over to see what I was looking at. I pointed to the section titled “Communion Songs.” The first song title was “If I Were a Butterfly,” followed by the very lyrics we had been singing earlier that day.

  I started to cry, though still laughing through my tears. It was one of many moments where I felt like Chris hadn’t left me at all.

  CHAPTER 8.

  The Sunshine Box

  My five-day hospital stay culminated in the surgery to fix my fractured jaw. The procedure was fairly short, and I was completely under while they reset my jaw and wired it shut so it could heal. I looked like I was wearing braces, with metal intertwining all my teeth so tightly that I couldn’t open my mouth in the slightest.

  As soon as I came out of anesthesia, I started panicking. My nose was stopped up from the oxygen tubes, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I started sucking in air through my teeth as hard as I could. The anxiety was unbearable. My sister pleaded with the nurses.

  “She can breathe,” the nurse said. “Look, she’s breathing.”

  Then she injected anti-anxiety medication into my IV, and I started to relax.

  While I was in the recovery room, Dad started working on my discharge. Mom and Heather collected the few things I had in my hospital room, including a favorite pillow and blanket one of my sorority sisters had brought over to make my stay more bearable. By early evening, we were on our way out.

  My parents had gone to the police station to get my car keys out of evidence and then picked up my car. My family would take my car to the airport so Dad could fly us all home to Evansville.

  Before we left Lexington, we stopped at the Kappa house so I could get my belongings. My roommate, Laura, had packed some clothes for me to take home. I sat down on my bed and pushed the button on our answering machine. I knew I still had two saved messages from Chris, and I wanted to hear his voice again. One was his blissful greeting from Maine. Another was casual, like, “How did I miss you again? Answer your phone!” It pierced me to know he would never call again. Even as I listened, I wished I could pick up the phone and hear him still there on the other end of the line.

  Heather and my parents carried my bags down to the car. I was glad to finally be out of the hospital, but I was afraid of the pain I would feel. Throughout my hospital stay, my pain had been kept under control through intravenous medicine. I was sent home with a prescription for pills that I was supposed to crush and mix with liquid, but I couldn’t even drink anything yet. I started feeling the pain as soon as we got into the car. My whole body ached. My jaw, freshly set, throbbed until my head felt like it would explode.

  By the time we made it home to Evansville, it was dark out. Dad helped me up the stairs and into my bedroom, which hadn’t been redecorated since I left for college. The room was blue and cream with floral patterns—just as familiar and calming as when I was a teenager. Dad and Heather helped me settle into my queen-sized bed, propping me up on thick pillows so I could breathe more easily.

  When he left the room, I looked at my sister.

  “Heather, I think I made a mistake. I’m in so much pain! Everything hurts. I shouldn’t have left the hospital so soon.”

  Heather looked worried. She knew how much I was hurting, but there was nothing she could do for me at the time—sleep would be my only relief. She assured me she would call our family physician first thing in the morning.

  The next day, Heather secured a prescription for a nasal spray to alleviate the pain. Even once my pain was under control, I was utterly petrified about what would happen if I got sick. If I threw up, it would go into my nasal cavities. It’s hard to explain how hindered and powerless it can feel to not have agency over your own mouth. The hospital sent me home with a set of medical pliers meant for such an emergency: if absolutely necessary, I could cut loose the wires that held my mouth closed.

  When we got home, we figured out that the hospital had given us the wrong instrument. When we looked at the thick, blunt edges, we realized they were only a clamp and wouldn’t have cut through anything. Dad had another pair of wire cutters in his tool box that he taped to the headboard of my bed. I’m grateful I never needed the wire cutters for the length of time my jaw was wired shut, but Dad was going to be sure we could cut through the wires if we had to.

  That’s how I think of him—he’s resourceful. Whatever I worried about, he offered a solution. When I was a little girl, I got nightmares after watching the TV show The Incredible Hulk. I was convinced the huge green monster was going to smash a hole in my room and take me away. I ran to my dad (Mom was too deep a sleeper), and he walked me back into my room and told me the Hulk was make-believe, and that there was nothing to worry about. He kissed me and put me back to bed. After a monster worse than the Hulk smashed into my life, Dad still comforted me in those dark hours, held me, scratched my back, and told me I would be okay.

  As calm as he portrayed himself, I later learned that deep down Dad was boiling with anger over what had happened, and my entire family was fearful that my attacker remained at large. Every day at five in the morning, Dad left the house for a jog, and for the time I was home recovering, he took a Ruger 9-millimeter pistol with him on those runs. Though he had a permit to carry, he never kept this gun on him unless he was transferring large sums of money from his office to his bank. But during my weeks at home, he carried it on those morning jogs and, upon arriving back at the house, circled the property looking at every corner, bush, and shadow to be sure no one was lurking nearby.

  Over the coming weeks, the swelling in my face and jaw subsided and severe pain gave way to general discomfort. There was no way to open my mouth, so brushing and flossing were impossible. The only way I could clean my teeth was using a water pick. The wires irritated my gums and lips, even though the hospital staff had given me wax to put over the metal. It reminded me of wearing braces in ninth grade. I hated braces then, and I wasn’t fond of the metal now either.

  About two weeks after I left the hospital, I had the staples removed from my scalp, but it would be a full six weeks before I could have full use of my mouth and jaw again.

  • • •

  On Thursday, September 4, two days after I was home from the hospital, a sketch artist came by my parents’ house. Detective Sorrell hired him to work with me to craft an original image of the assailant. Detective Sorrell had told me he didn’t want to show me a bunch of mug shots of Mexican men, because he didn’t want to confuse me or inadvertently influence me into accusing the wrong person. The Lexington Police Department had been in the practice of using facial templates with standard features to piece together a composite image, but Detective Sorrell wanted to try something he believed would be more effective. During the assault, I had intentionally studied my assailant’s face. I knew if I lived through that night, I was going to do everything I could to ensure he was hunted down.

  My parents and I met the sketch artist in the living room. He was a kind man in his fifties—he felt like a father figure and immediately put me at ease. He sat in a chair beside me as I reclined on the couch, and my parents kept us c
ompany nearby. I described again what I remembered about my assailant—the dark, wavy hair that hung just below his ears, the thin mustache, the square frames of his glasses, the shape of his eyes. Our session took three hours, in part because I kept falling asleep. The sketch artist often worked on his own even without a lot of details from me. When I woke up at the end of the session, I was surprised to see what he had produced. The sketch looked remarkably like my rapist, and it unnerved me to see his likeness again. But I felt grateful to the artist for his uncanny talent—we had the best possible image short of an actual photo.

  • • •

  That day also happened to be my mom’s birthday. About a week before school started, Dad asked Heather and me if we could make it back to Evansville to celebrate. Birthdays in our family have always been a big deal. When we were little, my mom and dad made us Holly Hobby or Cookie Monster cakes so fancy they looked like they came from a bakery. In the years since Heather and I were grown, we have each gotten on planes to travel to other states to have dinner together on someone’s birthday. But that particular semester, it was going to be impossible for either of us to break away.

  “We’ll celebrate when it’s not so busy,” Mom had said.

  And then those horrific circumstances precipitated our being together after all. It was a sweet moment, the four of us piled up on my bed, Mom blowing out candles on her cake and opening a few presents. I was thankful to have them all so close. Heather stayed with me in Evansville for the rest of the week before she had to go back to Nashville, but she returned every weekend.

  My family spent a lot of time with me in those weeks at home. I did most of the talking. They didn’t necessarily have to say anything profound—their listening was what I needed most. I’ve come to understand that there isn’t much one can say to someone who has been through severe trauma or tragedy. Sometimes just being present in the pain is enough.

  I imagined they were having a hard time handling what had happened. The attack on me had traumatized them as well, even if indirectly. My mom has an uncanny way of adapting to hard situations. Even though she often wore her heart on her sleeve, she was resilient and even aloof when needed. She was my cheerleader, strong and supportive. And although he was always affectionate and loving, my dad wasn’t inclined to talk about his feelings or show his emotions. Seeing him cry a few times while I was in the hospital was an unusual experience for me. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but having yet another tragedy befall one of his kids must have been unbelievably painful for him.

  My dad was married once before, when he was younger, and had three other children before Heather and I came along: John, Kathy, and Michael. Little “John John,” as the first-born child was nicknamed, died of pneumonia when he was just a toddler. Then, when Kathy was twelve, she was in a car accident with her babysitter and ended up thrown through a windshield and seriously wounded. Thankfully, she recovered from the accident with only a few scars.

  By the time I was born, Kathy was leaving for college at the Kansas City Art Institute. When she came home on breaks, I loved to brush my teeth with her, standing side by side with her at the sink, her reflection so much taller than my own. Heather and I adored our big brother Michael, too, and fought over who would make his bed in the mornings. When he was in high school, he drove an enormous black truck that took a step stool for me to climb into. He sometimes took me home from school or picked me up if I got sick. We missed him terribly when he went off to the University of New Mexico.

  He never graduated from school. When he was twenty-three, Michael died in a collision while driving his fiancée’s car. Heather and I were only twelve and eleven at the time.

  Before he lost Michael, Dad tended to relax and read the newspaper on Sunday mornings while Mom, Heather, and I went to Mass. But after the accident, Dad started going to a Baptist church, the tradition of his youth. My father’s faith carried him through an unthinkable tragedy. In the midst of my ordeal, I was finding my own faith shaken to the core.

  Mom and Dad reached out to Chris’s parents, Tom and Ann Maier, shortly after the attack. My dad knew all too well the pain of losing a son. They had been encouraging me to reach out to the Maiers too, but I was feeling such deep guilt about surviving the attack that I was afraid to face them.

  Our families were so alike. Two loving parents and two close siblings; a Catholic, Midwestern upbringing. Chris and I had bonded over so much similarity between our childhoods and family lives. But I had made it through that night of hell, and he hadn’t. I was haunted for the longest time about how I was unable to untie Chris’s hands. I replayed that moment over and over in my head, rethinking what I should have done, how I might have gotten him free. So many times I questioned why I was still alive. What was special about me? I was happy to be alive—my family and friends were certainly happy I was alive—but how could Chris’s family be happy that I was still here and their son wasn’t? I was certain they wouldn’t like me, simply because I had survived.

  After I’d been home for a few weeks, my parents convinced me to finally make the call. I stood in the den with the phone against my ear, fidgeting nervously and listening to the ring, until it clicked and Ann answered the phone.

  “Hi Mrs. Maier, this is Holly Dunn.”

  There was an awkward silence at first.

  “My mouth is wired shut so I apologize if it’s hard to understand me.”

  That made her laugh, and her laugh was a relief. I wasn’t sure what to say. I don’t remember much of what we discussed, but talking to them at last helped dispel my fears. They told me they supported me and wanted me to get better, and they wanted me to be happy. Over time, with their encouragement, I was able to gradually let go of the guilt I felt at having survived.

  “If you ever want to talk about Chris, or about what happened,” I said, “please call me.”

  The call lasted maybe five or ten minutes. We closed saying we hoped we would meet someday. And we would—about two years later. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but looking back I can see I was their last connection to Chris, and they cherished that. At the time, I just wanted to ease their hurt in any way I could.

  Both Ann Maier and Chris’s sister, Elizabeth, sent me cards and wrote very sweet letters while I was home recovering.

  “I feel that although I don’t really know you,” said Elizabeth in her letter, “this experience has somehow fused us together forever.”

  Her words were prophetic; the Maiers would, in fact, become an extended family of ours in the years to come.

  • • •

  The weeks at home were much like my days in the hospital—I slept most of the day and night, only awake a few moments at a time, and with an endless stream of visitors stopping in to check on me. Everyone wanted to be helpful, but few knew what to say. The situation was so out of the ordinary, so utterly foreign to anyone’s experience.

  The longer I was home the more people and packages arrived to comfort me. The living room looked like a funeral home with all the flowers. Perhaps such color and beauty is the only answer to such darkness and pain. Hundreds of bouquets and arrangements of every variety filled the tabletops, ledges, counters, and mantle, and even took up space beneath the bannister on the staircase. Countless get-well cards and letters and gifts piled up around the bouquets.

  One of the most memorable gifts came from a family friend. Not long after I had returned home, Mom stuck her head in my bedroom door to see if I was awake.

  “Holly? Nancy Grimes is here to see you.”

  Many of my parents’ friends had called or come by to see me—and several of them had even confided that they were rape survivors themselves. Though I understood these women just wanted to help, I wasn’t ready to receive their painful stories. Nancy, on the other hand, wasn’t coming to share any traumas with me. She wanted to relieve me of the one I already had.

  Nancy knew my parents socially, but I had come to know her through the local branch of a Christian m
inistry called Chrysalis that hosted biannual retreats for teenagers. Nancy and her husband, Larry Grimes, had been two of the original founders of Evansville’s Chrysalis chapter. In April of 1995, during my senior year of high school, I attended one of these weekend getaways at Camp Reveal, a hundred-acre campsite owned by the Evansville Rescue Mission. All my life I had been taught about God. Like all good Catholic kids, I received my first communion in second grade. I was confirmed in eighth grade. My family gave up things for Lent. It never crossed my mind that God didn’t exist, but to me as a Catholic kid, God was higher up—a separate and distant entity, not actually close by, leading me along a particular path.

  That weekend at Chrysalis was a turning point in my faith as a young person. While I came from a wonderfully loving family and understood the basic concept of God, the retreat turned out to be a transcendent experience that made God completely real and personal and intimately concerned with me and my life. I suddenly got it—I didn’t have to jump through a million hoops for God to approve of me. He loved me simply because I was his.

  I learned to pray. I sang worship songs with the rest of the camp. I felt it must have been God’s plan that I be there that weekend—there was a purpose to it. Once the weekend was over and I went on to college, however, I can’t say my spiritual epiphany entirely stuck with me. I wasn’t ready to let God lead my life. I still wanted to be in control and make my own choices. But that weekend set an important foundation. It had been a glimpse into the realness of spirit.

  Nancy had been one of the adult leaders during my high school Chrysalis experience. After I was attacked, she heard news reports about an assault on an Evansville native and University of Kentucky student. She later said her first thought was, “I wonder if Holly knows her.” She was devastated the day she learned I was her.

  When Nancy walked into my room that day, I was sitting up in bed. As soon as she saw my mangled, swollen face and heard my strained greeting, she immediately started to cry. She sat down on the edge of my bed. I leaned up to hug her, and we simply cried together. She hugged me the way my sister had hugged me—like she wanted to absorb the pain and the horror and take it all away. We sat that way for what seemed like a long time before either of us spoke.