Her (47 page)

I squinted my eyes to see. Dr. Cuvo took one step closer. I squinted harder. Dr. Cuvo turned to Dr. Pelchat, annoyed at the laughter. As he turned his head back to me, his eyes started to roll to the back of his head, where I could only see white. His arms took on a super-fast speed of motion and stretched out to me. The chart was up close and suddenly in my face.

KRISTEN FAILED!!!!!!

The terrorizing laughs grew louder as I pulled my hair in fear and anger. “No! No! No!” I screamed. I tried to run into the room with Nick so that I could hide from them and protect Nick.

“No! No! No!” I continued to scream.

Suddenly strong arms were wrapped around me, and they were holding me back.

“No! Let me! No! Stop! No!” I swung my arms wildly at whatever was holding me back from getting to him.

“Kristen. It’s okay. It’s all right, Kristen.” This sweet voice that spoke to me was like an angel coming to rescue me from the terror.

I didn’t feel completely safe yet, and I was sure that Nick wasn’t safe. I tried to swing a little more, but suddenly I didn’t have as much strength as I’d had in my dream. I felt tired and my head was heavy, like I had just woken up.

“Come on. Calm down, sweetie. It’s okay. It’s me. Kristen. It’s Ms. Mosley.”

I opened my eyes and saw the angel’s face. It really was Ms. Mosley sitting beside me. And I was in Bent Creek. I was in my bed, sitting up, and Ms. Mosley had one arm wrapped around me while she used her other hand to hold both of my arms from swinging. When I saw the gleam of the softly lit night light on the wall, I realized that I was not dreaming anymore.

I pressed my face against Ms. Mosley’s shoulder, where I let my tears fall. I didn’t care if Mena woke up and saw me crying. I didn’t even care that I was crying on Ms. Mosley, and, from what I could feel, I could tell she didn’t mind, either. Her hand went from her tight death grip holding my arms to softly holding my hands to comfort me. We stayed like that until I finished letting out my tears.

I finally stopped crying and sobbing. I pulled away from Ms. Mosley.

“What happened?” I asked her.

“I was going to ask you the same question,” she said.

“I think I was dreaming.”

“It must have been something awful, Kristen.  I could hear you screaming from the main unit. I’m surprised you didn’t wake up your roommate.” She looked over at Mena, who was motionless and still wrapped in her cocoon.

Ms. Mosley turned back to me and asked, “Did you have a nightmare?”

“Yes,” I told her.

She asked, “Well, do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t really know how to say it. It was just really scary. I couldn’t control anything. It was too evil.”

“Did you say your prayers before you went to sleep?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t normally say a prayer before I went to sleep.

“I find that whispering a little prayer before I go to sleep helps me get to sleep faster, and it comforts me in knowing that God is watching over me.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And whenever I find myself stuck in a nightmare that I can’t seem to get out of, I call out to Him. I even get on my knees inside of my dream and start praying. Sometimes I have to do that. And he sends his angel and pulls me right out.”

“I guess He sent you to me again,” I said. I wanted to make her feel like her words were having an effect on me. In actuality, I had begun to ponder. When she said that she felt the comfort of knowing that God was watching over her, I thought of something else.

“I hear everything,” she said. “And what I don’t hear, I take it as God telling me I don’t need to hear it.” She smiled warmly.

I couldn’t smile back. The thought stuck out in my mind.

“What’s going on there? You still troubled by that dream?”

“A little,” I said. “Ms. Mosley? I have to ask you something.”

“Yes? You can ask me anything,” she assured me, with a touch of her hand to my shoulder and a gentle squeeze.

“If someone dies, do you believe that they go to heaven if they are good, and if they are bad, they go to hell?”

“I believe that God passes judgment on everyone when they are called home and, yes, they are sent on to their eternal resting place. Though hell doesn’t really seem like a place for rest.”

“If someone kills himself, does God pass judgment on that person to go to hell?”

“I’ve heard that in Sunday school, listed among grave sins that will send a person straight to hell, but I heard a lot of other things, lists of reasons. It used to scare me because I knew that I wasn’t perfect. I was bound to make a mistake or two in my life. One being my bad habit of smoking. I know God doesn’t like that. But you know something? I learned a lot more about God and his great justice as I studied more and started to understand. Through the teachings, I heard many different reasons from different preachers growing up about the things that God sends people to hell for, and what He finds acceptable enough to let us into heaven. And what I found was that all of these preachers were saying that what was going to get us into heaven were deeds that
they
were all doing so that
they
could appear to be more righteous. What they were teaching us were their own opinions of how righteous they thought they were, and they tried to tell us that, if we were like them, then we would be able to go to heaven, no matter what. It was a different one each time. As I learned more about our Heavenly Father and what kind of God he is, I came to appreciate something that the preachers never told me.”

“What?”

“I learned and came to appreciate that no man - not the preacher, not you, or me, or any other man or woman - can judge a person and say that what they do or how they live their life, or even how their life ends, it is what is going to get any of us into heaven. That is God’s job because He is the reader of our hearts. It’s not fair for me to say that anyone who kills themselves is going to hell, because I don’t know that person’s heart, their reverence with God, or their complete state of mind. There are illnesses that can drive a person completely insane. Some don’t even know what they are doing if they do commit suicide, because they are unstable. Then, there are people who sacrifice themselves to save others, and they do it, knowing that they will have to die. Does that mean that they’ve given up on life and God? So Kristen, I can’t answer you with a straight yes or no. I can only say that God would be the one to ask when you get there, because He is the one who can read your heart and who will finally judge you.”

“What if your preachers were right? What if God does send a person to hell for committing suicide, no matter what? Then what will that be like?”

“Hell? What is hell like?”

“Yes,” I said, with a bit of desperation in my tone.

“Well,” she began. I could tell that she now felt obligated to answer, since she had said so much already. “From what I’ve been taught, if you are judged to go to hell, all of the sins that God has not forgiven that you have committed are laid before you, and you are tormented and punished in those sins to remind you of your wickedness. This continues on for eternity.”

I was now staring at her. She was cutting deep into me. I spoke up. “These were the things that I had learned. If you are good, you go to heaven, and if you are bad, you go to hell. If a person commits suicide and God judges them to hell, they have to be tormented by their sins forever. Then, that person would be jumping off a building or shooting themselves in the head, or whatever they did to get sent to hell, all over again. Forever!”

The thought of restless torment frightened me. Then I thought of Rocky being stuck in hell. I thought of him having to run down the hallway of the Boys’ Unit in Bent Creek, being forced to haunt it so that he could be tormented by his eternal sin.

Ms. Mosley saw that I was scared, and she wrapped her arms around me. She gave me a gentle hug. As she leaned into me she said, “Remember what I told you. God is the reader of your heart, and He is the only one who can judge you. He will always take care of you.”

CHAPTER 49

The next morning I woke up from only two hours of sleep. After Ms. Mosley had left me, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Mr. Sharp had hidden inside my pillowcase. I'd been afraid that Ms. Mosley would come back in and find us. She had comforted me enough to make me calm. I wasn’t afraid, because she'd helped me appreciate that I had a chance to have a peaceful, eternal rest someday, and that God was really taking care of me. I believed that He had to have been, in order for Ms. Mosley to be there to pull me from that horrible dream. It wasn’t the first time she had been there for me.

I knew that my family session was going to come faster than the previous day had gone by. I tried to think positively and think about all that Geoffrey and Ms. Mosley had said to me. I thought of what Dr. Pelchat had told me about BPD and how Borderline Personality Disorder was not me. We were going to work hard to treat it and cure me. Knowing these possibilities made me feel more hopeful. I was only afraid of seeing Nick again after that night. I told myself not to think about it, so that I wouldn’t make myself feel badly again. I knew the time was coming, but I didn’t have to think about it.

Before Ms. Mosley came into our room to make sure we were up to get our vitals checked, Mena and I dressed for the day. Mena looked at me while I dressed, and I felt her eyes on me. It was a bit uncomfortable, because she was really staring.

Exasperated, I finally said, “What?”

She asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Wake up! Vitals! Come on, girls!” Ms. Mosley’s loud voice filled the hallway of the Girls’ Unit.

Mena said, “You better hurry up and put a different shirt on. I can see your fresh cuts. Hurry! She’s coming.”

I quickly pulled off my shirt and put on a longer-sleeved shirt that was in a drawer nearby. Just as I got the shirt over my head, Ms. Mosley burst in and started to yell, but saw that Mena and I were already awake and dressed. She smiled at the sight of us.

She said, “It’s good to see that, for once, you beat me to it, Mena. Come on, girls, it’s time to get your vitals checked and start the day.”

The day started with vitals, then breakfast, and then our Goals Group Therapy session. This was the only time I had to see how many new people had arrived during the previous night. It seemed like new patients were always being admitted to Bent Creek.

On Saturday, Goals Group was with Dr. Pelchat instead of Dr. Finch, and Geoffrey sat in on the group with us as a second mediator. Dr. Pelchat said that this group therapy session was going to be different from our other Goals groups. In this session, we were going to talk about future goals. Goals that we wanted to accomplish when we got out of Bent Creek. He said that they could be long-term or short-term goals. The key was to get us thinking about life after Bent Creek and to help us realize that it would continue on when we were out of here. It scared me to think about going back to work and continuing with my home schooling and then graduating. I knew Mom was going to start talking about me moving out to either go to college or get my own place. She had already hinted at it so many times. But I had other things to think about and try to work out before all of that. I especially had to focus on my treatment. I hoped that Mom would understand that when Dr. Pelchat explained it in our family session.

Tai volunteered to speak first in Goals Group. She stated that her long-term goal was to get along with her step-mother and get to a point where she could really try to respect her as her father’s wife.

“Why is that a long-term goal?” Dr. Pelchat asked.

“Have you met my step-mother?” She laughed. “She is not easy to like. But I’m willing to try. It’s just going to take some time.”

“That is a realistic goal. You really can get along with her if you both put forth some effort. Maybe that is something you will want to bring up in your family session on Monday.”

“I will,” Tai said. “Dr. Bent and I agreed that it will take us both to agree to get along, and I do want to tell her that I want to try. I mean, I don’t have to look at her like a mother. She’s not my mother. But she is my father’s wife, and I have to respect her as that. As long as she understands and respects that I am my father’s child, too.”

“Well said,” Geoffrey voiced.

“I’ll say. Is that really Tai speaking?” Dr. Pelchat commented.

I laughed, along with the people in the room who actually knew Tai. Mena sat back in the chair directly to my left with her arms folded across her chest. She had the “I don’t care” look on her tight ponytail-lifted face. The look of intimidation did not stop Dr. Pelchat from telling her to speak up next. He was her doctor, and he was used to her ways.

Mena did not argue or put up a fight. She did take her time answering by making us wait while she yawned and stretched. Then she finally spoke. “I have a long-term goal.”