by DM Sharp
“Great, let’s get started. Can I go and see her now?” I ask, turning away before they can see doubt written all over my face.
“No, men and women are not permitted in the sweat lodge at the same time. She good. You come and have a beer.”
I go sit outside the sweat lodge, with my beer, listening the an old woman sing.
“He put it down. He put it down.
First Man put down the sweat house.
On the edge of the hole where they come up,
He put down the Son of the She Dark.
He built it of valuable soft materials.
Everlasting and peaceful, he put it there.
He put it there.”
A small boy comes and sits beside me. He looks happy, his toothy grin taking over his whole face. Poor Olivia didn’t have this happiness and a shiver goes through me as I try to put thoughts of her scavenging around garbage bins in the middle of the night out of my mind.
I ruffle the boy’s hair and he pipes up, “Mister, she not be long now. Four verses of the Sweat Bath Song must be sung before a Navajo can leave the sweat hogan. She not be sick no more.”
“Oh. Okay kid, if you say so.” I wink at him.
Someone yells, “Get him more beer.” I don’t argue. We’re stuck here, no phone signal, no phone battery, no medicine, no electricity and I doubt that any search could find us.
Dad, if you could see me now.
*
Something’s just not right. I can feel it inside of me, my gut, whatever. I have a deep respect for the Navajos and their traditions, but I’m from another world, another culture, and I haven’t got time for any more reasons or excuses. I just want to push my way into that sweat hut and see what the hell is going on.
It’s been four hours now and no one has come out. The medicine man’s rattle is starting to go right through me. I can’t take it anymore and, as I head towards the front door of the hogan, the medicine man’s nephew comes out.
“Your friend. She walks the Other Path. We must wait.”
“I don’t understand. What Other Path?”
“She must find her way. She walks the Path of Madness but my uncle is helping her. She must not choose the Path of Death. Come, we go.”
“I’m not leaving her any longer. I need to see her.” My intestines feel as if they have dropped out on the floor at my stupidity of coming here. Panic surges inside my chest making me catch my breath.
“Please, my friend, come. The sun must find her awake to count her among the living. My uncle will stay until that time.”
We stand opposite each other. Medicine man’s nephew isn’t going to let me go in and I’m not going anywhere. I hear a low rhythmic chant coming from the door. Soon the melodious rhythm grows in volume and began to echo all around us. The echoes join to form a ghostly chorus that send chills up my spine. I let nephew, who I have now learnt is called Harold, walk me away from Olivia.
We return to the home of Harold’s parents. This round log house, an adobe, built in the shape of an Eskimo igloo, is plastered over with a red-sand. And only has one small door and a smoke hole at the center of the roof. It would be my primitive accommodation for the night. There is a small fire in the center of the hogan and I help spread sleeping bags on the soft sandy floor. Harold’s mother brings us a hearty meal of Navajo tacos and bids us goodnight. In the corner lie our backpacks which someone must have kindly collected for us.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I awake to the sound of a distant coyote howl and silently slip out the door. I marvel at the spectacular display of brilliant stars spread across an inky black desert sky. The wind swirling smoke-like wisps of sand across the desert floor, and a tumbleweed silently rolls by. I wipe my cheek to find that it is wet. I don’t know how long I have been crying.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Love rarely overtakes, it mostly comes to meet us.”
–Wilhelm Stekel
Gabriel Carmichael
Harold has been filling me in about Navajo ways. I have learned that all must enter the hogan in a clockwise fashion, that the door of this circular wooden building is located on the east in order to welcome the rising sun and that they used a cactus called peyote to heal Olivia’s ‘pain.’
“You don’t take it personal Gabriel,” Harold said, “Outsiders are often discouraged from participating in a healing ceremony, in case they become a burden on everyone, or violate a taboo. The ceremony must be done in precisely the correct manner to heal the patient, and this includes everyone that is involved.”
He looks at me and I nod that I understand and respect what he says, before he adds, “A medicine man must be able to correctly perform a ceremony from beginning to end. If he does not, the ceremony will not work and your friend, she stay sick.”
Closing my eyes, I take a second to appreciate the warm sun on my skin and step outside the hut to breathe in the fresh air. I open my eyes, and my mouth drops open.
Standing in front of me is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. A round olive face, burning green eyes, the sun rays trickling through the long black hair making it glisten. I couldn’t look away. Years ago I tried to imagine a true beauty when I had read about Helen of Troy, and I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her—until now. At that moment I didn’t care about anything else.
I cleared my throat, in preparation to say something, acutely conscious of how dry my mouth had suddenly become. Something was so familiar about her.
“Are you okay, Gabriel?” pitched up a voice that I knew. I felt like I was drowning in confusion.
“Olivia? Is that you?” My eyes narrow as if making her image smaller would somehow help make sense of this apparition.
“Er, yes. You won’t believe what happened to me. That guy made my fever and my knee all better. Gabriel, are you listening to me?”
She doesn’t even take a breath.
Harold comes up from behind me and pulls a chair up, pushing my shoulder down so I sit straight down.
“See, your friend she no sick anymore, huh?” He winks at me. “Girl, he tired. He very worried about you.”
“Gabriel, why are you staring at me like that?”
“Your hair, it’s …” Gone is the wild burnt red color and lopsided pony tail.
“Oh, yeah, they must have taken all that orange dye out. I didn’t even know it was possible. This is what it’s really like,” she says, as she pulls her fingers through the cascades of wavy black hair.
I close my eyes again and look up at her from under my lashes. How can this be the gaunt, pale, troubled teenager that I knew?
Suddenly, as if someone has just dropped my brain along with my senses back inside my head, I jump up and start fussing around her, trying to feel her forehead, checking her pulse and looking at her knee and head where the cuts were, my medical training jumping into action.
“I told you. I’m okay now. You’re the one that’s behaving like a weirdo.”
She’s right. There’s no sign of any fever, no sign of any infection.
“I’m sorry, Olivia. Hey, why don’t we get something to eat? You can tell me what happened and we can start thinking about how we’ll get in contact with the camp.”
She smiles and I notice her white, uneven teeth. I want to duck my head into a pail of freezing cold water so I stop staring at her, and she starts talking as we walk away from the hogan.
*
Olivia Carter
“Gabriel, it happened at night. I was in bed and I woke at three a.m., opened my eyes and the room was spinning. It was a terrible feeling and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know what was happening. I felt like I was broken.”
“You’re doing great, keep going,” I say. When I look over at her it’s like she’s in a trance, her green eyes unblinking.
“I traveled through a foggy mist to a beautiful forest on the other side. There was the greenest tree I had ever seen with a huge raven sitting on the branch. I could see
its piercing eyes studying me. Under the tree, were my parents. I had been afraid of my dad as a child. He appeared younger, a handsome man with wavy hair and eyes the color of blue sky, very like my Uncle Preston. We stared at one another and I felt his shame and remorse for being an alcoholic, emotionally abusive father. My fear melted away and I was filled with gratitude for what he had taught me.
“The shaman suggested I look into my father’s eyes and tell him what I felt. I said, ‘Dad, thank you for telling me that I could do whatever I wanted in life, for believing in me and helping me to believe in myself. Thank you for teaching me to be resourceful, not to be afraid to take risks and to go after what I want in life.’
“Though I had forgiven my father a long time ago, words are more powerful when spoken directly to the person. I felt an instant healing for both of us. After allowing us some time together, the shaman then said that my father’s spirit would cross over and I would not see him again. I felt sad, hearing this, but I also felt a great sense of peace knowing that my father’s spirit would finally go home to the light. I watched him fade away as the shaman guided his spirit across the veil. I had always wondered where my father’s spirit ended up … I had never encountered him in my travels to the spirit world, though I had seen other close family members … Now I knew.
“The shaman asked if I was ready to release the raven and I told him the raven could go. I heard the rattle and whistling in the background and the raven disappeared. The journey lasted an hour but it felt more like ten minutes.”
And I’m crying, my body racked with sobs. Then his strong, chiselled surgeon’s arms are around me and he’s kissing the crown of my head.
Chapter Twenty-five
Gabriel Carmichael
All I know is that I can’t let this person suffer anymore. For the first time in my life I feel that there is nothing that I will not do for Olivia Carter and I know that this is dangerous.
Olivia and I set off again with our backpacks aiming to reach basecamp by the end of the day. Harold had managed to send word to Camp Cedars that we had to stop off but were safe. I knew that their main worry was Miguel.
As if reading my thoughts, Olivia looked up at me, her eyelashes longer than anyone’s I’d ever seen and asked, “Do you think that they found Miguel?”
I couldn’t find it in my heart to say straight out what I really thought so I just nodded. Something gripped me in my chest every time I looked at her. It’s as if I could see her pain and I needed to take it away. Years had gone by, and I, a surgeon, had never felt like this before.
I wanted to know everything else about her. “What do you remember about your father?”
“I loved his large, calloused hands because they were so gentle.”
“Wow, I don’t know what happened here but you’ve come so, so far.”
“Hmmm …”
She drifts off somewhere before I can catch her attention, her eyes glaze over and I see the pain ripple through her. There’s definitely something else.
“You can tell me anything, you know.” I wait. There’s a long pause and she bites her bottom lip and looks upset. Shit, not what I wanted.
I decide to try again. “You look upset, Olivia.”
Her bottom lip is trembling and my golden-hued girl goes all pale before she throws down her backpack, tears streaming down from her eyes.
I drop my backpack and walk up to her, wiping away her tears with my thumbs. I can feel her trembling, “Whatever is it, Olivia? You’re safe. You can tell me anything.”
“I want to sit down,” she says, her eyes avoiding mine.
“Sure. Just take your time.” God, I can feel myself trembling. Something tells me that I’m not going to like what I hear.
She looks right at me, her eyes bloodshot. “I asked him to stop and he didn’t. I tried to push him a little. It seemed so futile. He was so heavy on top of me. He was pinning me to the bed with his body, pinning me from the inside. It hurt so much to lie there and take it, but it seemed that it would hurt more to struggle. I should have, though. I should have yelled and kicked and screamed. Then I would know it was real, and so would he.” Her voice breaks.
I wait and give her time and raise my eyebrows in encouragement.
“But Gabriel, it was so surreal. I was so preoccupied with my pain …”
The focus of her eyes has changed from good eye contact and actively responding to the flow of the conversation to eyes being half glazed over coupled with a loss of conversational focus.
“Every time he thrust I cried out, and he shushed me over and over. He didn’t want to think he was doing something wrong.”
In my mind I will her to breathe. I don’t want to interrupt her.
“I know that I told him to stop over and over and he didn’t and that is rape, but why didn’t I hit him or scream or something? I am so distraught … He was my best friend, so I am having all these conflicting emotions about it, and about him. I really loved him as a friend and trusted him and he did this to me.”
“You’re doing really well, Olivia. Keep going.” I look down and my fist is clenched with all the blood drained out of my knuckles. I move it so she doesn’t see it.
“I was drunk. So, so drunk and that’s on me.” She tries a lopsided smile unsuccessfully.
I want to grab her and hold her close and kill the person who did this to her, but I sit still, acutely aware of my breathing, trying to keep it slow and calm. I hear words coming out of my mouth, like a robot. “I’m really proud of your ability to survive what happened to you. I know, absolutely, that you’re not guilty of being bad in any way whatsoever.”
Good, it worked. She looks up at me, her dusty face streaked with tears, before looking down at the ground, and says, “Also, he knows about everything that happened to me as a child and he still destroyed what little trust and sanity I had left. At times, I think I want to drive to his house and put a bullet in his brain, but I can’t even bring myself to call the police.”
Her eyes have become distant and she looks blank, like she’s lost somewhere. I need to get her back. “Olivia, it seems to me like something just changed and that you went away somewhere. Did it?”
A flare of anger lights up her eyes. “No, you are wrong. I am right here and nothing changed.”
“Okay, I accept that. I will always believe you and I believe you now. However, usually when I see these signs, it means that someone has dissociated. I need to know how you work, so I need to be able to ask you about it whenever I notice this change in you. You just keep being honest with me and I will eventually get it right. Is that okay?”
I see confusion in her face as she tries to work out why I’m being so distant and talking like this. Shit, I think I’ve lost her so I hold out my hand in a gesture of comfort. She checks nervously before taking it. Good. I need to keep quiet now.
“And he kept sending me messages saying how sorry he was and how he had a loaded gun under his bed. I told him that he could blow his head off for all I care and then he didn’t text me back the rest of the night. I FREAKED out thinking he had done it but WHY DO I CARE!!! I want to hate him so badly and I do, but then I have feelings like that … like I still love and care about him. Is that normal? What do I do?”
She crumples, her whole body racked with sobs, half screaming and shouting as I hold onto her for dear life. I kiss the crown of her head.
“You’re safe now, Olivia. No one will ever hurt you again. I promise.” I say it over and over again, until the sobs subside and I know that we are both emotionally spent.
Chapter Twenty-six
Gabriel Carmichael
Something about her face has changed on our hike back to basecamp. The pain is still there, but the fight that I saw in her eyes the very first day in the hospital is also there. We talk more and I make it clear that I honor that she was able to do whatever was necessary in order to survive, to get to this place.
The hours pass and I’m able to tell her that the past is
not a prologue and that it’s up to her to change the script of her life, allowing herself to heal, finally breaking through the defensive barrier that has kept her stuck and miserable for so long.
As the voices and noises at basecamp start getting louder, I tell Olivia, “You cannot change what was done to you. But, you can heal and not spend your life as a victim who constantly has to dissociate in order to survive.”
“And that’s what I do with the drugs and alcohol?”
Her voice sounds so sad and pitiful. I wish I could just take all her pain away.
I nod and smile at her. “And that’s exactly what you do with the drugs and stuff.”
We both stop as basecamp comes into view.
Olivia pulls out the hairband that’s kept her hair in a tight ponytail at the back of her neck and shakes a glorious mane of shiny black hair all over her shoulders.
“I’m scared.”
“I know. One step at a time.”
I want to tell her that I’m scared, too.
*
Olivia Carter
I can feel my heart thumping and my mouth has gone all dry as we see basecamp in all its glory in front of us, so I pull out the ponytail at the back of my neck and shake my head to distract me from my fast heartbeat. I don’t know what the Navajo ladies used to wash the dye out of my hair, but it’s never felt so soft or shiny.
My mind goes over the Navajo rules that the medicine man told me: avoid contact with dead bodies, don’t stare straight into an evil person’s eyes, never drive away from a coyote that crosses your path without sprinkling salt in his tracks, and never say harsh words because they have the power to kill.
I see Cynthia running towards us. A shout goes up and Shirley drops something and starts running. Loud cheers and enquiring faces engulf us. Hands are grabbing my backpack from me and patting me on the back, dragging me away to sit down, voices asking me if I want some water. I look up and see Dr. Nathaniel Carmichael standing with his hands in his pockets staring at Gabriel. His brows are furrowed and his eyes are hard. His nostrils flare as Gabriel’s eyes meet his and he walks away towards his office, Gabriel following, his head bowed.
