All Is Not Forgotten(5)

The words left his mouth and floated around them like they were of a foreign language. Charlotte shook her head and repeated the word “no” several times in a nonchalant manner. She assumed he had confused them with the parents of a different patient and tried to stop him from revealing any more to spare him the embarrassment. She repeated her name, told him their daughter had been brought here for “overdoing it” at a party. Tom recalled being silent then, as though by not making a sound, he might be able to freeze time before the moment continued down the path he had started to see.

Dr. Baird stopped speaking and glanced at the officers. One of them, Detective Parsons, walked over, slowly—and with visible reluctance. They stepped to the side. Baird and Parsons spoke. Baird shook his head and looked at his black shoes. He sighed. Parsons shrugged apologetically.

Baird then stepped away and returned to stand before the Kramers. Hands folded as if in a prayer, he told them the truth plainly and concisely. Your daughter was found in the woods behind a house on Juniper Road. She was raped.

Dr. Baird recalled the sound that left Tom Kramer’s body. It was not a word or a moan or a gasp, but something he had never witnessed before. It sounded like death, like a piece of Tom Kramer had been murdered. His knees buckled and he reached for Baird, who took hold of his arms and kept him on his feet. A nurse rushed to join them, offering assistance, offering to get him a chair, but he refused. Where is she! Where is my baby! he demanded, pushing away from the doctor. He bounded toward one of the curtains, but the nurse stopped him, grabbing his forearms from behind to steer him down the hall. She’s right over here, the nurse said. She’s going to be fine … she’s asleep.

They reached one of the triage areas and the nurse pulled back the curtain.

My wife has told me ever since we had our own daughter, our first child—Megan is her name, now off to college—that she projects scenarios like this one onto herself. When we watched Megan pull out of the driveway for the first time behind the wheel of our car. When she left for a summer program in Africa. When we caught her climbing a tree in the yard, what feels like a hundred years ago. There are so many more examples. My wife would close her eyes and picture a pile of metal and flesh twisted together on the side of the road, or a tribal warlord with a machete, our daughter sobbing before him on her knees. Or her neck snapped and body lifeless beneath the tree. Parents live with fear, and how we deal with it, process it, depends on too many factors to recite here. My wife has to go there, to see the images, feel the pain. She then puts it in a box, loads the box on a shelf, and when the nagging worry creeps in, she can look at the box and then let the worry pass through her before it can settle in and feast on her enjoyment of life.

She has described to me these images, sometimes crying briefly in my arms. What is at the heart of each description, and what I find so compelling for its uniformity, is the juxtaposition of purity and corruption. Good and evil. For what could be more pure and good than a child?

Tom Kramer set his eyes upon his daughter in that room and saw what my wife has only imagined in her mind. Small braids laced with ribbon falling next to the bruises on her face. Smeared black mascara on cheeks that were still puffy like a child’s. Pink polish on broken nails. Only one of the birthstone stud earrings he’d bought her for her birthday, the other missing from a bloody earlobe. Around her were metal tables with instruments and blood-soaked swabs. The work was not yet done, so the room had not been cleaned. A woman in a white lab coat sat beside her bed, taking her blood pressure. She wore a stethoscope and offered only a fleeting glance before looking back at the dial on the black rubber pump. A female police officer stood unobtrusively in the corner, pretending to busy herself with a notepad.

Like life “flashing before your eyes” just before death, Tom saw a newborn in a pink swaddled blanket. He felt the warm breath of a baby on his neck as she slept in his arms; a tiny hand lost inside his palm; a full-body hug around his legs. He heard a high-pitched giggle come from a chubby belly. Theirs was a relationship unspoiled by the pitfalls of misbehavior. Those were saved for Charlotte Kramer, and in this respect, I could see that she had, however unintentionally, given them both a gift.

Rage at her attacker would come, but not then. More than anything, what Tom saw, felt, and heard in that moment was his failure to protect his little girl. His despair cannot be measured nor adequately described. He began to weep like a child himself, the nurse at his side, his daughter pale and lifeless on the bed.

Charlotte Kramer stayed behind with the doctor. Shocking as it may sound to you, she saw her daughter’s rape as a problem that needed to be solved. A broken pipe that had flooded the basement. Or perhaps worse than that—a fire that had burned their entire house to the ground but left them standing. The key fact was the last bit—that they had survived. Her thoughts turned instantly to rebuilding the house.

She looked at Dr. Baird, arms crossed at her chest. What kind of rape? she asked him.

Baird paused for a moment, not sure what she was asking.

Charlotte sensed his confusion. You know, was it some boy from the party who got carried away?

Baird shook his head. I don’t know. Detective Parsons may know more.

Charlotte grew frustrated. I mean, from the examination. Did you do a rape kit?

Yes. We’re required to by law.

So—did you see anything, you know, that might indicate one way or another?

Mrs. Kramer, Baird said. Maybe we should let you see Jenny, and then I can discuss this with you and your husband in a more private setting.