Precise (16 page)

10
.40 am. Trust that my GP is late for the appointment. Ten minutes. I am breathing a little too quickly and am clammy.

I pick up a magazine beside me. It has pictures that once were vibrant and whole. I flick through the pages until I see an article titled, “Kate Moss: Baby bump or food baby?”. Years later, it’s apparent that Moss wasn’t pregnant in the first place. I scoff, snap the pages shut and put it back where it lay.

10.43 am. I tap impatiently on the plastic armrests of the waiting chair.

The last two days went by so fast I swear it was a whirlwind pretending to be my life. Liam insisted that he drive me here for support but my natural reaction was to push him away. Afterward, it was too late to grovel for him to change plans. Naturally, though, my friend Nancy popped by and, after three cups of tea and a couple of hours of
Seinfield
re-runs, we agreed she’d wait for me outside.

“Katie,” the doctor calls, shaking me back.

I greet him by his first name, Adam. He motions me toward his room with a beckoning finger. I sit on his vinyl chair where hundreds of other ill people like me have awaited their fates.

I have this habit of examining him on the occasional visit where we see each other. His round spectacles make me think of what Harry Potter would look like grown up, if he had Asian heritage. There’s nothing new about his attire; still a “tidy” feel about him, still the slicked hair and overly constricted tie.

“How have things been?” he says. I get the feeling it isn’t the first time he’s said this to me while I’ve sat here.

During the first few minutes, I can’t help but scan over everything in his room. At the portrait of a girl, of about seven years, on his desk—she clings onto his leg with a sheepish smile. At the plastic cup full of wooden paddle sticks that dissolve ill children’s excitement as they sit in this chair and realize the paddle pop stick doesn’t come coated in sugar.

Why does Adam’s room feel so claustrophobic when this type of thing doesn’t usually faze me? The walls seems so close together. This room feels like a cube I could throw a ball in, and it would bounce between the walls a few times before losing its spring.

After the initial chitchat—his wife is great, his seven-year-old girl is great, work is great and everything’s so goddamn great—Adam asks me questions about my family, friends, lifestyle, routines.

At first, I nod and agree in the right places, but as the appointment progresses, he asks me how
I
deal with grief, what the state of my relationship with my daughter is like, and I freeze up. What am I meant to say? My Mom threatened to call the CAT team on me?

Then Adam rephrases his questions so I answer sentence-by-sentence until we’re somehow having a conversation.

He pushes up his glasses for the umpteenth time. “What would you
really
like to talk about today?”

I should start from the beginning, where I think of Mom, ‘cause we’ve had a bad history for as long as I can remember. One time when I was five, Mom stopped playing dolls with me because the phone rang. When she answered it, her voice sounded hoarse.

“I wanted, um . . . ” I look to Adam’s cheerful girl on his desk. I’d once been like that.

I remember Mom at the beginning of her sobs, her voice just beginning to break. She didn’t use manners on the phone, like she’d taught me to use when speaking with people.

How do I tell Adam—beg him—to help me?

“That’s it, Logan,” Mom said, sobbing. Her back faced me but I could make out her shiny nails wiping around her eyes. “No more . . . no! Not you and me.
Them
. K-A-T-I-E is it.”

I knew how to spell my name from the last year when I was in kindergarten, so I didn’t know why Mom pretended I couldn’t hear her. At the time in the kitchen, though, when I heard my name, I didn’t understand what “it” meant.

I focus on the picture of Adam’s girl. “Paul. I need to . . . ”

Mom had put the phone down, walked inside the U-shape of the kitchen counter, and pulled the phone with her as she slipped down. I tiptoed across the tiles so lightly I remember hearing the pads of my feet stick and unstick. Within a few seconds, we exchanged our original positions: her around the other side of the counter, me crouched underneath outside the U-shape.

“We almost had him this time,” Mom said. She resumed in a whisper. “Katie jinxed us. She’s doomed Max and all our other babies. I swear it.”

Dad didn’t sound as worked up as she was. If Mom were on the other end, I’d have heard her hysterics clearly. But not Dad. He was so calm I didn’t have a clue as to what he was saying.

Mom began again. “I’m sick of the waiting, the disappointment, then the pain. I’m forty-five. Our time for others is over.”

As I sit in Adam’s vinyl chair, I’m twirling my hair faster to the motion of the butterflies fluttering in my stomach. Because I know what Mom will say. How this memory ends every time.

“If I hear another word about babies or trying, we
will
be through. Don’t you think it’s weird that now Max is the
eighth
one to die? What? Of course it’s her fault! That childbirth—it wrecked me. No, no. Listen to me, Logan. She’s a murderer.”

Five-year-old me learned: if I want my family to stay together, I must keep secrets. If I do exactly as she says, I won’t kill any more babies like this “Max”.

Thinking now about how Dad phoned to see how Mom was after her miscarriage, it changes what I planned to say to Adam. Those horrors have eaten Mom up for years, and those babies I killed before they had a chance to live have each been a weight on me whenever I think about my Mom’s aspirations, or my tattered family.

If I keep Paul’s and Marco’s secret any longer,
I
won’t survive.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me. The way Paul, my husband . . . ” I have to clear the tightness in my throat. “What I did to him. Everything I felt, I see and hear it
all
the time. I don’t think it’s normal.”

Though it must sound confusing to anyone else, he says, “How long have these occurrences been a problem?”

I drop my hair, wiggle in my seat instead. My underarms are so hot, my face burning. It has started.

“Since I killed him,” I say.

“Katie.” He pauses. “Did Paul die in non-suspicious circumstances?”

“Well, if I took him to a . . . I could have changed things.”

“What was his cause of death?” Adam says, rephrasing.

“Aneurysm.”

He writes something down, then looks up. “How have you and Ella coped since?”

“Ella talks about him a lot, and cries sometimes when she speaks of him. She wants to know when he’ll come back. She still paints family drawings of the three of us.”

“And you, Katie. What problems have you come to talk to me about today?”

I get it. He spent several years training in medical school for a good reason. But that day crouching under the counter follows me everywhere.

It felt right to cope by shutting off. But sitting here with Adam? It feels wrong.

The park, that bed. It’s another dose of poison. My day turns from the Paul guilt, fear, anxiety, to being suffocated by Marco and eternal helplessness.

I let my husband die. I was drugged, bashed and raped.

It’s hard to hold up and walk straight.

Nancy is waiting outside, Liam is probably nowhere near as productive at work today because of worry, Dad would probably be watching a documentary so Mom wouldn’t bug him and he could worry on his own without multiplying her anxiety. And Ella. She needed me to do this right from the start. She’s the only reason I’ve somewhat survived.

For Ella’s birthday this year, she’d told me I could buy her a new toy pony instead of an iPod or iPad like her friends. At her age, I was an obnoxious brat. Where did Ella get her humility?

I would—will—do anything for her. So, I tell Adam about the triggers: chlorine, the master bedroom, talking about Paul’s death. How the adrenaline response numbs everything else and freezes me. How sometimes when I’m in a “state”, even the whistle of a kettle startles me, as if it were a gun going off.

“How many hours sleep did you get last night?” Adam asks.

“I don’t know. I wake a few times a night. Last night . . . mmm, four and a half.”

“What things disturb your sleep?”

Thump
. “When I wake in bed I realize it’s been a nightmare, but I don’t know it at the time. I still don’t get how it is always a dream.”

He pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Mm.”

He understands what I’m saying. How is this possible? I don’t even understand the jumble falling out. He must know much more than I’m aware of.
Shit!
I haven’t answered with what could be considered “normal”, stock-standard answers. It can’t mean anything good.

“Do you drink more than two standard drinks at a time for greater than two days in a week?”

“Um.”
Lie? No. Just say it; you’ve said this much
. “Yes.”

“When was the last time you used illicit drugs?”

Thump. Thump.
“I don’t use them.” This is okay. I’m doing
okay
.

“How often do you use sleeping pills?”

I
am
fine. This is routine. My voice chokes up before I speak. Take short breaths, try to sound even. “A, er, couple times a week.”

I tell myself to breathe but this is quickly becoming a pointless task.

“How do you get along with your friends and family?” he says.

What do they have to do with my health, or mind? What does he mean?

I draw shallow breaths even though it feels like a dozen bricks weigh down my chest. “It’s a little complicated.”

He removes his glasses then rests his arm on his desk.

He knows something. I need an injection (I can’t; I’m afraid). No, it’s radical surgery. Oh God, please don’t cut me. Why am I thinking this?

Thump, thump, thump
. What’s that noise?

“Katie,” he says. My name feels like a red and bumpy rash in my mouth. “Thank you for answering so well.”

I’m sure he means to be comforting. I’m sure.

“The symptoms and experiences you’ve described to me are characteristic of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD. It develops in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event involving life-threatening situations or serious injury.”

Thump
.
Thump
.
Thump
.
Thump
. His words stick like fresh dough.

“Recovery involves hard work, and you do have to talk through your traumatic experiences, but with enough motivation, you are able to eliminate the thoughts, triggers, and psychological and physical reactions. And you, Katie, I know you can get through this.”

I stare blankly, not able to feel my fingers or toes. My existence below my jawline feels worlds away as the walls close in on me. Great. I’m a fucking idiot and suffering from what . . . overreaction?

Please.

“With the right treatment, PTSD won’t be a life sentence, Katie,” he says, motioning with his hands. “I’ll be referring you to a specialist, which we will talk about shortly, who can determine a complete diagnosis for you through further testing.

“Over the years that I have known you, you have been a pleasure to help. I truly wish you the best with your treatment, so I want to talk personal options with you that suit your individual needs best.” His eyes soften, his cheeks forming little apples underneath.

My face is a mask atop a stiff body. Even my lungs are stiff, unusable. This is surreal.

Thump.
I realize the sound is
my
heart, in my head, beating to explode me.

I only catch pockets of words in his next ramble as he details specifics of the disease. I think I nudge my chin up and down once I see his mouth open and close.

My brain is thumping louder, pushing away the list of items that doom me to a pre-set existence.

This is what fears me most; that I’m not good enough to pass my life.

When I was five, I wasn’t good enough to keep my mother happy; her attempts to extend our family as if I had killed the fetuses and stillborns; or to save Paul’s life. The last insult was being stripped of my dignity.

A tingle buzzes through me as he continues to describe more and more about the disorder: lost ability to express emotion, a feeling like I can’t explain the horrors I know, how no one would understand me, not really.

My throat is so tight I swear to God someone has cut off my windpipe. The pressure hurts in the same way it would if someone had their foot shoved on my throat, pinning me to the floor.

That
isn’t
me
he’s summarizing
.

I tell him no. No, he’s wrong. That isn’t me: the woman with a disorder, the one who isn’t good enough.

My shoulders hunch under the pressure.

Adam talks more about me having PTSD and routes to recovery. How I can overcome PTSD with the right help. PTSD, PTSD, PTSD . . . The disorder flashes angrily at me.