Held & Pushed (2 book bundle)

by Bettes, Kimberly A.

  As I approached, I felt her eyes on me. I picked up my pace, hoping to pass by without an interaction.

  As usual, it didn’t work.

  “Hey,” she said. “There you are, Nicky. I’ve been wondering about you.” She sounded inebriated, her words slow and drawn out. From the amount of medication the doctors had her on, I was surprised she could talk at all.

  Ignoring her, I continued down the hall.

  She pushed herself off the wall and took a wobbly step toward me. Dodging her, I stepped left and kept walking, putting more pep in my step.

  “Hey, Nicky. You wanna do something later?”

  I remained silent, intent on not saying anything that would give her the impression I wanted to talk to her.

  She continued talking to me even after I’d passed by her. “Nicky. Hey, Nicky.”

  Unable to listen to her another second, I said, “Stop calling me that,” and kept walking.

  “Okay,” she said. It was the same thing she said each and every time I’d told her to stop calling me by that name. Yet she continued to use the unwanted moniker, always choosing to call me Nicky instead of Nicole.

  Without breaking stride, I continued down the hall to the very end, the last room on the right. Though I had an appointment and was expected, I knocked and waited for the invitation to enter the room.

  “Hello, Nicole. Have a seat.” He motioned to the brown leather chair directly across the desk from where he sat.

  I eased onto the chair and faced him for the last time.

  “So I see you’ve decided to leave us.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Well the last time I saw you, which was…” He consulted my chart. “Two weeks ago, we discussed whether or not you were ready to leave, and I got the feeling that you weren’t. What’s happened between then and now to change your mind?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing’s happened. I just…I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Some of the things you’ve said to me make a lot of sense.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like leaving the past in the past. Not carrying old baggage into the future with me. Not worrying about things I can’t control.”

  The doctor leaned back in his chair and nodded. He kept his eyes on my face, studying my expression, which was one that I hoped to be unreadable.

  I kept my hands folded in my lap and my fingers still, even though my thumbs wanted to twirl around each other. My legs remained uncrossed, feet flat on the floor. If I crossed my leg, I would bounce my foot. If I bounced my foot, the doctor might read something into that, something that could possibly delay my release. So I concentrated on keeping my hands and feet still, my face as relaxed as possible. I did all this while trying to appear as though I wasn’t concentrating on anything.

  “Nicole, when you came here, it was to learn to cope with the stress and the trauma you’d endured, both during your ordeal and in the months following. It’s only been thirteen months since you escaped your suffering—”

  “Since I escaped from the home of a killer. You can say it, Dr. Loyd. You don’t have to beat around the bush about it. I was kidnapped by a psychopath and held against my will in his basement for the better part of a year. You don’t have to sugar coat it. I know what happened.”

  “Okay then. It’s only been thirteen months since you escaped that house. Only two years since you were kidnapped. The things you had to see and suffer through while held captive were terrible. No one expects you to forget, especially not this soon.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll never forget.”

  “And no one expects you to. However, you’ve only been with us for three months. I’m not sure that we’ve covered all the ground we need to cover in such a short amount of time.”

  “Dr. Loyd, I think you forget that I willingly checked myself in to this hospital. I saw that I couldn’t deal with my problems alone and I sought help. Surely you agree that if I was aware I had a problem and had enough sense about me to seek help, then by the same token I have enough sense to know when I’m ready to leave.”

  Silence from the doctor, followed by a slow nod of his shiny, bald head. “Fair enough.”

  I continued. “And surely you’ve noticed the change in me since my arrival.”

  “I have. Look, Nicole. I’m not saying you haven’t made improvement. I’m just saying I think maybe you’re not quite ready to return to your life just yet.”

  “I have no life to return to, Dr. Loyd.”

  He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the oversized mahogany desk that stood between us. He folded his hands together, intertwining his thick fingers. He was all ears, listening to and scrutinizing my every word.

  Knowing this, I chose my words carefully.

  “My husband and I are separated. Not legally, just…we thought it was best if I didn’t live there for a while. He has our son. I won’t go back to them until I’m one hundred percent well. I can’t. I can’t put them through that.”

  I saw the look on the doctor’s face and quickly continued before he could make any brash judgments.

  “I see that you’re worried about that, but I’m okay with it. Really.”

  His eyes drew together in doubt and he asked, “You’re okay with being away from your husband and son?”

  “I am. It certainly isn’t the way it sounds. I mean, it’s not like he left me or I left him, you know? We did what was best for him and for our son Mason. We still love each other. I’m just afraid of exposing them—especially Mason—to the emotional hell that I suffer through. I don’t think they should see it. It’s something I have to work out on my own.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m doing everything in my power to keep my family together. But if I can’t, if I can’t come to terms with what happened to me and find a way to get past it, then I’ll give Wade a divorce and let him move on with his life. He can’t wait for me forever. He’s already waited longer and had more patience than most men would have had.”

  The doctor’s eyes never left my face as he listened to what I said.

  “I was out of control before.” I paused before adding, “Honestly, I think I should’ve come here as soon as I escaped that house. I should’ve just checked myself in here instead of going home.”

  “You think that would’ve been best?”

  “I do. I needed someone to talk to, to vent to about the awful things I’d seen and done. I needed someone to listen to me, to understand what I’d been through. Someone qualified to help me sort out and understand my feelings. Wade tried. He did what he could do, but he’s not a doctor. He was in over his head trying to handle me, and I was in over my head trying to go it alone.”

  I stared at the front of the doctor’s elaborately carved desk, temporarily lost in the memories of Wade and Mason. I missed them madly, but I masked my emotions and carried on with the conversation.

  “I was a fool to think I could do it alone. That’s why I came here. You’ve been a huge help. Plus, I think distancing myself from the outside world helped me to put everything in perspective.”

  “So you don’t suffer with survivor’s guilt like you did when you first arrived?”

  “No. I mean, I still feel guilty, yes. I imagine I always will. I lie in bed most nights and wonder why I lived. Why did he kill all those other women but not me? What was it about me?”

  “You can’t begin to try to understand the reasoning of a madman, Nicole. They have no reasoning.”

  “I know that. But still. I can’t help but think I could’ve done something to help save those women.”

  “We’ve talked about this. Look how long it took you to save yourself. You are not responsible for those other women. You did not bring them into that house, into that basement. You didn’t torture them. You didn’t rape them, Nicole. None of that was your fault.”

  “I know. I know you’re right, but it still haunts me s
ometimes.” I watched my thumbs dance around one another and said, “I can still hear them scream.”

  Silence filled the room and for a moment, I was back in that basement, listening to the screams of the woman next me as she was brutally tortured by the man that would soon kill her. I heard the sounds of bones breaking, the sound of an ax chopping through their bodies and clanking against the cold concrete beneath them. I could smell the metallic odor of their blood as it spilled from their battered bodies and made its way across the floor and slid into the drain.

  “What about the nightmares? Have they increased in frequency or intensity?”

  Brought back to the present by the doctor’s questions, I adjusted myself in the chair, sat up straighter, and said, “I still have them. Once or twice a week. Not as often as before, and they’re not as bad as they used to be.”

  Lies. All lies. I was plagued by those nightmares, haunted by them both at night and during the day. They weren’t just figments of my imagination, but horrific memories of things that had actually happened. If anything, they had doubled in frequency and tripled in intensity.

  But I wasn’t about to tell the doctor that.

  “That’s good to hear.” He picked up his pen and wrote something in my file, which lay spread open on his desk. “I assume you’re taking your medication regularly,” he said without looking up at me.

  “Yes.”

  “I think I’ll reduce the dosage of your Prazosin then. If your nightmares have decreased, you don’t need to be taking such a strong dosage. We’ll work toward getting you off that altogether if we can. But if you find the nightmares increasing again, let me know immediately and I’ll up your dosage.” He continued to write in the file, pen scribbling across the page.

  “How are your nerves?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your stress? Anxiety? Have you had any panic attacks recently?”

  “No. I haven’t had an attack in a while.”

  He looked up to study my face for a few seconds, nodded, and wrote more in my file. “We’ll keep you on the Xanax and the Zoloft for now. Just in case. But we’ll keep an eye on those.” More notes in the file.

  When the doctor was finished writing, he leaned back in his chair and stared at me, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, forearms straight up. He held the silver ink pen loosely at each end and absentmindedly spun it with his meaty, well-manicured fingers. While he looked at me, I watched the pen spin. Around and around it went, slowly, reflecting the light from the overheard fluorescents and from the sunlight streaming through the windows behind him.

  For a full minute, I was transfixed by the shiny silver of the pen. In it, I saw the blade of an ax. I saw the silver of a spoon. I saw the metallic shine of handcuffs. I saw chains. I saw everything I never wanted to see again in the glint of that shiny pen, held in the hands of a man whose job it was to teach me to live with those very images.

  I was grateful when the doctor finally dropped his hands to his lap, hiding the pen from my view. Had he not done that, had he not broken the hypnotic hold the pen had over me, there was no telling how deep I would’ve gone, how lost in memory I would’ve become.

  “What about Austin?”

  Though every muscle in my body tensed and my stomach knotted, I did my best to appear as though that name didn’t instill in me a bone-chilling fear that threatened to curdle my blood and a soul-wrenching sadness that shattered my heart into a thousand pieces.

  “What about him?”

  “How do you feel about him now?”

  “How should I feel about the child I had with my abductor? Part of me misses him greatly because he’s my child. Another part of me is glad he’s gone because he’s a part of him.”

  “Can you not say his name?”

  “Whose name?”

  “Your abductor.” As an afterthought, the doctor said, “Or your son.”

  “I have no problem saying either of their names.”

  “Then say it.”

  “Austin.”

  “Now say the other name, the name of the man who kidnapped you from a mall parking lot. The man who raped you. The man who made you watch as he murdered a string of women. The man who tortured you, Nicole. Say his name.”

  I wanted to say his name so the doctor would see that I was well enough to leave, but my mouth had gone dry, making it virtually impossible to speak.

  “There’s liberation in speaking the truth, Nicole.”

  It was increasingly difficult to keep an unreadable poker face, to keep my nostrils from flaring, my lips from pursing, and my stomach from retching. Difficult, but not impossible.

  “Ron. His name is Ron.” The words left a bad taste in my mouth. It was the taste of blood and rotten dog food, both things that would forever remind me of the monster who’d ruined my life.

  “So you’re okay with Austin not being a part of your life? You’re okay with what you did concerning him?”

  “As okay as I can be, I suppose. It’d be a lie if I sat here and told you that I feel good about what I did. I don’t feel good about it at all.”

  “Exactly how do you feel about it?”

  “I feel like a horrible person and a bad mother. I feel that I failed him.” My lower lip began to tremble so I bit it, hoping to take my mind off the hurt that always accompanied thoughts of Austin.

  “Do you want him back?”

  This was a loaded question. I weighed my answer before giving it.

  “Under different circumstances, yes. But as things are right now, no.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “My life is a mess right now. I’m not in any position to try to be a mother to anyone. That’s why Wade and Mason are gone.” It pained me to say those words, but I had to pretend indifference in front of the doctor. “When I leave here tomorrow, I’ll have to find my place in the world again. Plus I don’t know if…I just think he’s better off where he is now than with me.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  I sighed. “I was going to say that I don’t know if I could handle him living in my house. I don’t know if I could stand to look at him every day, to look at his face and see his father. To have a constant reminder of what I went through and how he came to be. I just don’t know if I could do it. Not yet.”

  It was true. Seeing Austin’s face every day, a smaller version of Ron, was a torturous memento. It had driven me to the brink of sanity and nearly pushed me over the edge. Seeing his face was a constant reminder of who he was and from where he came. From the color of his hair and eyes to the shape of his nose and chin, he was the spit and image of his father. A rapist. A murderer. A maniac.

  “After all, Dr. Loyd, living with the child of my abductor is a huge part of the reason I ended up in here.”

  “Are you blaming the child?”

  “No. Absolutely not. It’s not his fault. He didn’t ask to be here. And if I were a stronger person—a better person—I could’ve overlooked everything and just accepted him as my child. But unfortunately I’m not a strong person.”

  “Nicole, that’s not true. We’ve gone over this before. What you went through, what you survived, proves that you’re a strong person. You’re without a doubt one of the strongest people I’ve ever treated.”

  I shook my head slightly and let my eyes fall to my hands, which were folded in my lap.

  “Then why do I feel so weak?”

  Dr. Loyd tilted his head and thought about my question. He picked a piece of lint off the sleeve of his green wool sweater before replying.

  “The human mind is full of self-doubt. For example, say an apartment complex housing a hundred people catches on fire. A firefighter risks his life by running into the burning building over and over, saving the lives of ninety-nine people. Yet he still feels that he could’ve done something more to save the one person who died. He doubts himself, his actions, and he carries guilt with him all of his days, even knowing that he did all he could. Knowing that if n
ot for him, ninety-nine other lives would’ve been lost. Self-doubt. It’s what we do. It’s a perfectly normal reaction, Nicole.”

  “Well this doesn’t feel normal to me.”

  “How does it feel to you?”

  I swallowed the lump that was beginning to form in my throat and sighed. “Like I’m suffocating. Like there’s this huge, heavy weight bearing down on me and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t lift it, can’t move it, can’t scream for help. I feel…helpless. I know that it’s my fault, that if I’d been stronger and just kept Austin, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t take that chance.”

  “What chance?”

  “The chance of keeping him.”

  “Why would keeping him be a chance?”

  “For one thing, had I kept him, I would’ve been running the risk of hurting him.”

  “You wanted to hurt him?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I was afraid that I might. You know, eventually.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  I hesitated to answer. These were all things we’d gone over before, in previous sessions, so this wasn’t new territory. That didn’t make it any easier to talk about though.

  “Because I’d already thought about it.”

  “You thought about hurting your baby?”

  I nodded as the tears fell from my eyes. “I did. I didn’t want to. I really didn’t. But there were times…I heard my name in his cries, spoken in the voice of his father. When he looked at me, I saw Ron looking at me through his eyes. I know it’s crazy and it was all in my head, but it’s what I thought and felt at the time. Had I kept him, I don’t know what would’ve happened. I don’t like to think about it.”

  “And this is what caused Wade to worry about the safety of Mason?”

  “Yeah.” I sniffed, the crying causing my nose to run. Dr. Loyd leaned forward and handed me a tissue. I wiped my nose before continuing. “I told him that I would never in a million years hurt Mason, but even as I said it, I doubted myself. I don’t think I would. I had no reason to. But in that state of mind, I couldn’t be certain that I wouldn’t. Like I said, I was unstable and I needed help.”