Nic's Devotion: An Endless Series: Book One (28 page)

     “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Dr.
Mathews.” Carrie expressed softly.

     “None of that Dr. Mathew’s anymore. It’s Mona now.” Dr.
Mathews smiled kindly. “We left the doctor title in the past. I think of as
friends now.” She leaned back in her chair folding her hands in her lap. “So,
on the phone you said that you and Nic have been seeing each other and you
wanted me to convey to him the details of your past.” 

     Carrie’s hand tensed in mine. I rubbed the back of her
hand with my thumb. “Yes, I still have a hard time talking about it.” She
replied.

     An infinitesimal line appeared between Dr. Mathew’s
eyes as she looked at Carrie. “This is something you truly want?”

     “Yes, I can’t move forward until Nic knows the whole
truth.” Carrie jumped up abruptly. I stood as well but Carrie put her hands on
my forearms to hold me there. Her face was pale her eyes imploring. “I’m just
going to go outside. You stay here. I…”

     She halted in whatever it was she was going to say and
instead hugged me and I could feel everything she couldn’t say in that tightly
expressed embrace. Gathering her closer I whispered in her ear. “I’ll be here
no matter what.”

     She gave me one more squeeze before drawing away. Her
eyes were wet as she turned and left the room. It pained me to watch her walk
away suffering the way she was.

     “You care for her very much.”

     I tore my gaze from where Carrie had exited to the
doctor who was watching me thoughtfully. 

     “I do.” I stated decisively.

     Closing her eyes she took a deep breath before opening
them again. Her brown eyes were warm with relief.

     “You don’t know how comforted I am to hear that. Carrie
has gone too long without that in her life. From just watching you with her in
the last ten minutes I sense how deeply you care for her. I can also feel how
much she cares for you. Please, sit down.” She waved her hand at the couch.

     With one last look at the doorway I did as she asked.

     Dr. Mathew’s expression turned grim. “There’s no easy
way to reveal Carrie’s past so I’m going to just start from the beginning. Let
me tell you about the first time I met Carrie. I received a call at four
o’clock in the morning by the police asking me if I could come into the
hospital to help with a catatonic individual.”

     My heart clenched at the word catatonic.

     “When I arrived they led me to a room, but before I
went in the police officer explained to me the circumstances surrounding the
girl they wanted help with. The police got a call at around twelve thirty that
morning about a murder. When they arrived at the scene a woman answered the
door in hysterics accusing her daughter of killing her husband, the girl’s
father. When the police searched the house they discovered the murder scene in
the girl’s bedroom.”

     Dr. Mathew’s swallowed and a pained expression crossed
her face. I tensed at the look.

     “On the bed was the victim, John Harper, the father.
He’d been stabbed in the carotid artery with a pencil and was covered in blood.
There was in fact blood everywhere; all over the bed, the floor, as well as the
young girl huddled in the corner. She was essentially naked and covered in
scratches and contusions.”

     Oh, God, no! I felt like I was going to throw-up. Her
own father! I’d just come to a conclusion this morning that she hadn’t been
raped. My thoughts went to Carrie’s and my sexual foray this morning and I
couldn’t help thinking about what I might have put her through.

     “Do you need a glass of water?” Dr. Mathew’s asked
gently.

     I shook my head. “No, thank you. Just finish, please.”
I had to get through this for Carrie.

     “The police brought the girl in for questioning, but
she was too traumatized by what had happened and had gone into shock. That’s
why they called me in, hoping I could coax out of her what had happened. They
knew the basics of what went on in the room; the father was nude, Carrie’s
night gown was ripped almost off, and the bruising that was found on her body
all pointed to an assault, but they needed her side of the story to cover their
asses. Unfortunately, I was not able to get her to talk that night, or anytime
soon after, and instead of getting an open and shut case it remained open for
several months. So the only thing you will find in news articles about the
incident is that Carrie killed her father and she was hospitalized because of
it.”

     I swallowed painfully. “But she did eventually
remember?” I asked hoarsely.

     Dr. Mathews nodded soberly her eyes sad. “The courts
placed her in the hospital I work at and she stayed in that unresponsive state
for three months. Others had to do everything for her; feed her, give her
baths, walk her for exercise. She slowly started to waste away.”

     My gut twisted in anguish at the thought of her
possible near death.

     “But then something happened, I don’t know what, but
something snapped her out of it. I was called in one afternoon to the news that
she’d woken from her unresponsive state. When I arrived she was sitting in her
bed crying and rocking herself repeating the word ‘no’ over and over again.”

     Shit! “She did that during two episodes she had in
front of me.” I exclaimed.

     Dr. Mathew’s took a deeply indrawn breath. “She does
that when scenes from that night flash through her mind. When she came out of
her catatonic state scenes from that night flooded her mind. It didn’t all come
back and I don’t know if it ever will, but she knows what her father tried to
do to her. She knows she killed him as he lay on top of her suffocating her to
death.”

    Oh, god, it just got worse. “You mean he was trying to
kill her as well as rape her.”

     “I’m not sure that it was intentional. There were no
signs of strangulation. Her father was a big man; six-one, two hundred and
thirty pounds, and she was a tiny thing at fourteen. His weight on top of hers
would have made it difficult for her to breath.”

     Nausea rolled in my belly again as pictures flashed in
my mind of what all he could have done to her. “So she somehow got a hold of a
pencil and killed him.”

     “Yes, but what you need to realize is that she wasn’t
aware of what she was doing, or what he was doing. She woke up in the middle of
the night and all she knew was that a heavy weight was pressing down on her,
hurting her. At first she just tried to get away, but she couldn’t. The bulk
was too heavy for her to move. These are her words as she recollects the
night.” Dr. Mathew’s quantified somberly. “Carrie heard and felt the sound of
ripping cloth and the weight on top of her began to hurt her more, and then it
got to where she couldn’t breathe. She said her vision was sparking and she
felt like she was dying. Her arms scrambled about instinctively and touched
upon something which she grabbed up automatically. Carrie said all she wanted
to do was get the weight off of her so she could breathe, so she used what was
in her hand hoping it would help.” Dr. Mathew’s voice broke and she reached for
a tissue on the table between us wiping at her eyes.

     I had to pull on everything in me not to bawl along
with her.

     “Carrie is more traumatized about killing her father
than she is about the attempted rape. When she realized it was her father she’d
stabbed and killed; well, I believe this is what caused her to fall into her
catatonic state.”

     My attention immediately caught on the word
‘attempted’. “She killed him before he was able to rape her?”

     Dr. Mathew’s frowned. “I thought you might at least
know that. Yes, Carrie stopped the rape. That’s about the only good thing
regarding the whole situation.”

     Carrie had stopped a rape that time, but were there
prior rapes before this. “Was this the only time he’d done this or was there a
history of previous molestation?” I asked, afraid of the answer. What if she’d
been molested for years? 

     “The medical examination showed that she hadn’t had
intercourse of any kind, and Carrie couldn’t remember if her father had ever touched
her inappropriately prior to that night. During the investigation they did find
evidence of child pornography in the homes personal computer, and John Harper
had a high level of alcohol in his blood that night.” 

     A sense of thankfulness overwhelmed me that she was at
least spared that, but that she’d had to go through any of that shit was
heartbreaking. And she’d said she’d had to do it alone.

     “Where was her mom through this, or the rest of her
family? She said her mother hates her and that everyone turned their backs on
her.” I asked furiously.

     Dr. Mathew’s expression turned angry. “As a
psychiatrist I try to look at all aspects of a situation, but I have a hard
time with Carrie’s mother. Mary was in denial of the whole thing. She didn’t
want to acknowledge what her husband had tried to do, so she wasn’t that
sensitive to her daughter’s situation as she should have been as a mother. I
recognized that Mary had a lot to deal with in the beginning. Her husband was
accused of assault and the attempted rape of their daughter, and then there
were police and family service people questioning her, but she only visited
Carrie twice during her time at the hospital and they were both at my
insistence.

     After a while Mary made arrangements to move because of
all the publicity, but also because she wouldn’t have been able to afford the
house they lived in at the time. John Harper was a lawyer in Lexington and had
made good money. They had lived in a suburb similar to mine. Mary received an
insurance settlement, but since she didn’t work she was going to have to be
more frugal with what she had. If she’d applied herself and gotten a job she
could have a better place than what she settled on. I’m almost certain she
blames Carrie for her reduced living conditions as well as the estrangement
from her family and friends.

     The only other family Carrie has is her paternal
grandparents and an Aunt from Mary’s side of the family. The Grandparents are
in their late seventies. John’s mother had a mild heart attack when she found
out what happened; I heard that she recovered, but neither of them made any
attempt to contact Carrie or Mary since then, at least that I’m aware of.

    Mary’s sister, Laura, distanced herself from the entire
affair from the beginning. Her husband is also a lawyer, but in West Virginia,
and from what Mary’s told me they didn’t want any of the scandal attached to
their name.”

     Dr. Mathew’s frame slumped in her chair as she finished
up her account of Carrie’s dismal family background. Everything I kept hearing
just made me more furious and sicker to my stomach. Not only had Carrie had the
most horrific thing happen her, but to top it off everyone who was supposed to
care about her, love her, had abandoned her or treated her like shit. I wanted
to visit every single one of these people and pound them into the ground.
Unfortunately, most of them were women…or old. 

     “Did Carrie tell you that her mother kicked her out of
the house a week ago after calling her a tramp and slapping her hard enough
that Carrie had bruises on both sides of her face; one from the slap and the
other from hitting the door frame because of how hard she was hit. Carrie’s
mother told her that she’d just been waiting for her to turn eighteen so she
could kick her out.” I had to control my voice so I didn’t yell. The incident
still made me furious.

     A look of shocked distress covered Dr. Mathew’s face
for only a second before sad resignation replaced it. “I should be surprised
but I’m not. Mary showed a decided lack of interest when Carrie was released
from the hospital. I drove her home myself because Mary kept putting off coming
to pick her up, and then all Mary did when we arrived was show Carrie to a room
that was colorless and bare of anything but a bed and dresser.” She grimaced.
“I hated leaving her there, but it was her mother and I hoped with time they
might be able to build a relationship together again. Whenever I’ve called to
check up on her Mary would pass me off to Carrie who would tell me everything
was going fine. She’s done so well with school and the scholarship I believed
things couldn’t be as bad as I was imagining. I’ve known there was a lack of
affection in the relationship, but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

     Dr. Mathew’s leaned forward her eyes misty and intense.
“Carrie’s trained herself to not expect much from others. She’s had a lot of
disappointment and in a way I think she believes that’s all she deserves. When
you look at everything she’s gone through you see how strong her spirit is, but
she’s also a bit fragile. She needs to know that someone is going to be there
for her no matter what, not just physically, but emotionally.”

     I gritted my teeth and leaned forwarding gripped my
hair in both hands. The enormity of her words, even though I had already comprehended
most of it, washed over me. “I care about Carrie a lot. Hell, I’m pretty sure
I’ve fallen in love her, but the thought of screwing up with her, hurting her,
scares me half to death. She’s been through so much.”

     It astonished me a little that I wasn’t at all fazed at
spilling my guts to a woman I barely knew. Maybe it was because she was a
psychiatrist, or that holding back my feelings after everything I’d just
learned about Carrie seemed like a cop-out. 

     “Nic.” I looked up in beleaguered distress as Dr.
Mathew’s softly called my name. She was smiling at me sympathetically. “You
don’t have to be perfect; she’s not expecting that. Just be there for her when
she needs you, like you were for her today. Believe me, that’s all she truly
wants. From the little I’ve seen of you two together it’s apparent that there
is something special connecting the both of you, so don’t be afraid to move
forward with it. Every relationship requires work and will go through its ups
and downs, and just because Carrie has a traumatic past it doesn’t mean you
have to tip toe around her. She’s sensible and resilient. As long as she knows
you care about her she won’t mind if you mess up sometimes.” Standing up she
walked around the table separating us to stand beside me. Her hand settled on
my shoulder and there was a steely look to her gaze.