All For Anna (8 page)

“No, I’ll call my
insurance and have someone come out. It will just be an hour or so wait. Hey,
you hungry, Green?” Dr. Bradley asked. Her face seemed to perk-up at the
thought of breakfast.

I wasn’t hungry for
food, but in that moment, I was hungry for conversation—
real
conversation. It was as if the months of living in my hole of social silence
had finally reached maximum capacity.

“Sure, where to?” I
asked.

“I know just the place;
it’s only half a block away. Let me call my insurance hotline and get this tire
thing going. Then we can walk there.”

Twenty minutes later we
were sitting at a local diner with a large order of flapjacks and coffee. We
talked about what it was like to move from Dallas to Phoenix, and the
differences in people, climate, weather, houses, and even food. We laughed
about the culture and how it compared to the
high society
back home. It
had felt good—really good, almost normal.

That had started an
almost once a week tradition at the pancake house on 5th Street. It was strange
at first to think about eating with a doctor of her position and caliber, but
neither of us spoke about it outside of those mornings. It soon became
familiar, routine, and even downright homey. She had become a
friend
,
the only one I had outside of those that were obligated to me through blood.

Susan and I had shared
a lot with each other over pancakes and coffee. Things I hadn’t felt compelled
to share with anyone—even Stacie. By the third month of our breakfasts
together, I finally stopped avoiding the questions surrounding the
real
reason behind my move. The hardships with my parents and friends back home and
the major shift in my career focus had been a suspicion of hers for a while.

As I retold the story
of the accident, I kept only to the facts. It had been the first time I had
told it. I didn’t shed a tear; I didn’t deserve to shed a tear.

Susan slowly began to
chip deeper into my hard exterior, asking me questions that even my own
subconscious had been afraid to ask. Though I had once been concerned about her
sympathy toward me and how it could affect my job, she never coddled me.
Instead, she pushed me harder, especially at work. Sometimes I wondered if she
was deliberately trying to break me, to see if I would throw a fit of rage or some
other kind of nonsense, but that never happened.

In my eighth month of
working under Dr. Bradley, she pulled me aside in a staff lounge with a very
concerned look on her face.

“Green, I want a
truthful answer. I have given you the benefit of the doubt for some time now because
I always see you eat a hearty-sized meal at breakfast, but I just can’t let
this go on any longer. You need to be honest with me, starting right now.”

I was shocked at her
accusatory tone. Panic ripped through me, trying to identify what she was referring
to. I came up with nothing.

“I...I’m sorry, but I
have no idea what you are talking about,” I said.

“Your weight, Green.
You’re shrinking by the second and I need to know what is happening with you.
The staff is noticing too, and there are many suspicions going around about an
eating disorder. I want to believe that we are friends enough for you to
confide in me if you need help,” she said.

“No, no I promise
Susan—I  mean, Dr. Bradley—I  swear to you I eat! I eat normally. It’s...it’s
not the eating, it’s the running I’m doing. I run… I run…”

I couldn’t finish.

Why did I run? To lose
weight?

No. That may have been
a nice side effect, but that wasn’t the reason.

I hadn’t stepped on a
scale in years. I stood puzzled by my own lack of thought.

Dr. Bradley broke the silence.

“You run
from
the
pain, right, Tori? You run
because
of the pain. When you said you had
taken up running, I thought it was for health reasons or even a new hobby since
you’re low on companionship here,” she said, pausing before looking into my
eyes again. “How much? How much are you running?”

I had never tracked the
distance—not even once. The trail I ran on was at least a 12 mile loop, but I
had only just recently mastered that. My runs seemed to be much longer after stressful
days at the hospital, the days where I aided children—young, sick children.

“I’m honestly not sure.
I don’t really keep track of the distance. I just go until...I can’t go
anymore,” I said.

The truth was powerful.

That admission, even to
me, was one of great magnitude. Susan opened and shut her mouth twice before
speaking. Concern and something else I couldn’t quite place registered on her
face.

“That’s your cope Tori,
you see that right?” she asked.

She wasn’t looking at
me now. It was more of a rhetorical question, her own personal “ah-ha moment”
that I was watching unfold before my eyes.

“All these months I’ve
been trying to stir something in you, something deep and real. Any emotion at
all would have been encouraging to me, but you are shut down, locked out of
your own grief. I pushed you, harder than any new RN or young resident on this
floor. I was trying to get you to break, to crack under the pressure so you’d
release what’s behind this dam you’ve built up. But nothing breaks you. I
couldn’t figure out how you were able to keep it all in, but it finally makes
sense now. You don’t keep it in...you fight it
with
pain,” she said,
turning to me again. “Show me your feet.”

I could feel my mouth
gape in surprise as I stared at her.After a second of processing I said, “Dr.
Bradley, I really don’t want-”

“Show me your feet,
Green.”

This was no longer my
friend Susan, but my attending doctor who spoke to me.

She locked the door to
the lounge as I sat in a chair and slowly took off my shoes and socks. Her face
contorted in what could only be described as horror, which quickly shifted to
pain and then finally to what looked like understanding.

We both stared down at
the torn flesh, red swollen scabs, and blisters. It was the first long look I’d
given them. My socks and shoes had almost always covered them, so the moments
for scrutiny were short-lived, during my shower time only.

No words formed in my
head. I had never told a lie to Susan. She was too smart for my deceptions, too
quick for my diversions.

“I won’t scold you,
Tori. I refuse to be your mother, but I
will
be your friend. I know that
I am almost twenty years your senior, but I get you. I
really
get you.
Our stories aren’t so different, you know? I didn’t have a tragic accident that
ended in the death of a child, but I lost my husband almost fifteen years ago
and I know what it is to grieve a loss. I’ve grieved the loss of the life I
loved and the loss of the lives I’ll never know—the ones he could have fathered
if I hadn’t been so selfish about the timing of our family,” she said, taking a
deep breath before continuing. “I’m alone, Tori. This job is my
whole
life
,
and sometimes it’s a very sad and lonely life. Don’t waste yours on this. Don’t
waste yours on what you can’t earn back...guilt
doesn’t fade with time.
Take that lesson from me.”

With that, Susan opened
the door and walked out. I sat staring at my ugly, disfigured feet, replaying
her words in my head. Susan had allowed me to think she’d always been single.
Hearing her speak of a husband was a shock, but hearing her own words of grief
and guilt were even more mind-blowing.

Susan
knew
.

She understood.

Our connection had been based on more than just
our Texan heritage, but on what could have been the greatest common denominator
of all: death.

Friday morning had come
too soon. I watched the second hand tick on the far wall of Dr. Crane’s office.
With each rigid movement my anxiety increased.

Today I would tell her
about Anna.

“Victoria, I’ve made
quite a few notes during our last two sessions together. I’ve compared them
with some notes from your file, but before we talk more about those, I’d like
to hear the last part of what happened the night of the accident. You had
stabilized the driver of the other car and noticed the empty booster seat on
the passenger side, is that correct?”

Wow, well I guess we’ll
just jump right in, then.

“That’s correct,” I
answered.

“Where did you find the
little girl, Victoria, and what was her condition?”

“The six-year-old
female was found about five yards away. I was able to get to her quickly
because the headlights were shining in the grass where she...landed. Her
condition...was critical,” I said, focusing hard.

“Was she breathing when
you got to her? Go ahead…tell the story in your own words. I’ll hold any other
questions until the end.”

I didn’t hesitate this
time. The longer I paused, the worse it was to re-tell
.
I wanted to
detach, to speak the words without having to think about them.

 I can do this.

“It was difficult to
find her breath because the rain was still coming down hard. I checked for a
pulse and couldn’t detect one. She had a severe puncture to her right side and
lacerations on her forehead and left leg. I took off my shirt and used it as a
compress, and then started CPR immediately. I tried to keep pressure on her
side in between chest compressions,” I said, pausing only briefly before
continuing on. “When I heard her mother open the car door I was hopeful she could
assist me. But, as soon as she took a step out, she cried in pain and fell to
the mud, unconscious. I don’t know how long I was out there. I had no phone to
call for help…it gets fuzzy after that.”

I stopped then, unsure
of what to say next. Dr. Crane sensed my uncertainty, and filled in what she
knew from the report.

“The ambulance came
then. The report said a rancher was out looking for livestock in the storm when
he heard the impact and called 911. All three of you were transferred to Mercy
North. It was there that Anna Watson—the little girl—was pronounced dead on
arrival. Her mother was treated for a severe concussion, a broken ankle and
minor abrasions. You were both released the on same day, is that correct?” Dr.
Crane asked.

My mind skipped over
the scenes that haunted me the most: the EMT who pulled me off Anna, the moment
I awoke in the hospital room with full recollection of what had happened, and
the doctor who told me Anna’s fate. Those were the worst. Those were the
hardest for me to think about, much less talk about. I fast forwarded my memory
to the day I was released from the hospital. I nodded in response to her last
question.

“Was there any
interaction
between you and...Johanna Watson, Anna’s mother?”

The question rattled me
as a shiver traveled down my spine.

No one knew about
that—no one.

I hadn’t told a soul
about the conversation I’d had with Johanna—not even Dr. Bradley—so where was
this coming from?

Intuition, maybe?

A mere coincidence
since we had both been released on the same day?

“No.” 

I wasn’t willing to be
pushed any further, not on that one. There were some things that no amount of
therapy tricks could get me to reveal. Dr. Crane’s head snapped up in attention
as she assessed my stiff posture. I could practically hear the debate going on
inside her head. I held my ground.

She was too smart to
press me on it.

“Victoria, you asked me
last Monday what it was that we were doing here—you and I. I didn’t answer you
due to our time restraint, but I wanted to be fair to you and answer that
today. I’m a big believer in trust-based therapy. If I’m not open with you, then
I shouldn’t expect it in return. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure,” I said, still a
bit miffed at her last line of questioning.

Though a big part of me
wanted to tune her out, my curiosity had already been sparked. What impending
diagnosis could she possibly reveal?

I’m a lost cause.

“As I stated before,
I’ve taken a lot of notes. Most of them are not on
what
you’ve said, but
how
you’ve said it. How your body responds as you speak is actually more
important to me than
what
you say most of the time,” she said.

I nodded, though I
didn’t understand.

“The brain is a very
unique organ as I’m sure you know from your anatomy studies. There are so many
parts of the body that it controls: our speech, our sight, our hearing, our
heart-beat, our emotional well-being. Its ability to connect it all is what
keeps us in balance—in sync. You, Victoria, are
not
in sync. The trauma
you’ve experienced has left you in a state of disconnection. Your life prior to
the accident looks very little like your life today.” She shifted in her chair
and put my folder back on her desk.  

“You’ve mastered—for
now—a complete compartmentalization between your emotional responses, your
mental responses, and your physical responses to what happened that night. This
kind of response to trauma can be expected anywhere from a few days to even a
few weeks after a traumatic event has occurred. Once that initial response
period has passed though, the brain should settle and the shock should
dissipate. I think you and I both know that is not the case with you, Victoria.
Would you agree with that statement?” she asked.