All Is Not Forgotten(18)
My eyes were suddenly open and I was seeing the curtain again. It’s light blue and it hangs on metal rings from this bar that goes around the room in the ICU. They put me in the same room where I was the night they gave me the treatment. The night I was raped. I hate saying that. They tell me I should say it—and think it—because it will help me accept it and I guess get better. But it hasn’t, right?
Jenny lifted her bandaged wrists in the air.
Whatever they gave me to sleep was still sort of there, so I felt pretty good. Like I was high.
“Like when you take the pills from your friends’ houses?” I asked her.
Yeah. Then all these thoughts came at once, like a stream of bullets. I’m dead. I’m alive. This whole year never happened—it’s still the night of the rape. I felt relief that this year had been a bad dream. But then I felt horrible that I would have to live it all again. And that made me come back to the most obvious thing, which was that I had cut myself. And then more thoughts fired out at me. It was like this shock that I had done that, and even relief that it hadn’t worked, because I must have been crazy to want to do it. But then all the reasons that had made me do it rushed in, and I was like, oh yeah, I wasn’t crazy. I had reasons, really good reasons, and they’re all still here. The bad stuff that I feel every day, all the time, was still there. It was like swimming up from the bottom of the pool and popping out of the water to find yourself exactly where you started before you dove in. You know what I mean? I was exactly where I was before. I tried to move my arms onto my stomach because that’s what I do when I think about it, about the bad stuff I feel, but my arms were tied to the bed rails. Then I just thought how angry I was that it hadn’t worked.
Jenny cried then. It wasn’t the first time. But these were angry tears.
It wasn’t easy, you know. I was so scared. I sat in that bathroom and I was crying and crying. I thought about Lucas mostly, and about my dad and what this would do to them. And my mom, too, though she’s stronger than they are. I imagined she would be really mad at me. I almost stopped but then I told myself, just do it and get it over with! The blade was really sharp and it hurt way more than I thought. It wasn’t the cutting that hurt, but the air when it went into my veins. It was like this horrible stinging and burning. I did both of them. Do you know how hard that was? With the pain of the first one, knowing how bad it would hurt again? They say you shouldn’t look at the blood because it will make you try to save yourself out of instinct, but it was too hard not to look. And they were right. My heart started to pound like wild and “Stop it! Stop it!” was screaming in my head. I started looking around for ways to bandage myself, but I had removed everything before I started because of the instructions I read. I knew that would happen, that I would try to stop. I had to fight it so hard. You have no idea how hard it was. I had to close my eyes and lie down on the floor and focus on the dizzy feeling, which actually was kind of good. Like I was just letting go of everything. So I did. I just closed my eyes and ignored the voices that kept screaming at me and the burning pain. And I just let everything go. I did all of that. I went through all of that and it still didn’t work.
“Are you angry?” I asked her.
She nodded, the tears flooding her eyes and running down her face.
“With whom?”
She took a while to answer. And when she did, she avoided saying the name but rather alluded to the target of her rage. What was she doing there? Of all the places she could have been. The pool wasn’t even open yet. There was still some snow on the ground. After everything! I mean, come on! Why did she have to be there?
Jenny said none of this when she opened her eyes and saw her father. She kept her feelings to herself. But Tom Kramer had enough feelings to fill the entire hospital. He folded himself over her bed.
Thank God! I kept saying that over and over again. I tried to hold her, but she was so fragile, her delicate arms with layers and layers of bandages, tied to the bed rails. I pressed my cheek against hers, smelled her hair and her skin. It wasn’t enough just to see her awake. I needed to feel her and smell her.… Christ, her face was so pale. It was different from the night of the attack. That night she looked lifeless. On this early morning, she looked dead. I never knew there could be a difference. But there is. There really is. Her eyes were open and she was looking at me and at the ceiling. But she wasn’t there. My beautiful daughter wasn’t there anymore. Dr. Baird came in with Dr. Markovitz. It was surreal, being back in the hospital with those two doctors again. I guess I had started to believe what my wife had been saying, that Jenny was better. That she would keep getting better, and that this dark moment in our lives was finally passing. I must have believed that. Thinking about it now, I must have started to take all my doubts and put them on myself. Like I was the one in the family who couldn’t get past it. Like maybe I was projecting my despair onto my daughter and that she really was okay. I was the one who couldn’t accept that this monster would never be found. And, God I can’t believe I’m going to say this out loud. I think I was mad at her, at Jenny, for not remembering. For not being able to help the police find him and punish him for what he’d done. Is that crazy? To be so obsessed with vengeance?
“No,” I assured him. “You are her father. It’s instinct.” I meant those words. And I fully intended to alleviate his guilt. I did so at the risk of encouraging his search for Jenny’s rapist, and for this, I have some regret that I did not direct him away from embracing his instincts without reservation. An instinct may explain a reaction. But that does not mean the reaction is the best course to pursue. In any event, Tom was relieved.