What Doesn’t Kill Her (3 page)

Tell his story?

Like hell I will.

Today

Dr. Donna Hurst stood in the nurses’ station sporking dainty dips from a cup of peach yogurt, savoring each bite as if they were worthy of the effort. Not Donna’s favorite breakfast, but with only three weeks left before her Cozumel vacation, the tall green-eyed redhead—a youthful forty-something in white lab coat over a black silk blouse and matching slacks—was still fighting off that last tenacious ten pounds, especially around her hips.

Getting on staff at St. Dimpna’s Center—possibly Ohio’s premier mental health facility—had been Donna’s goal since she’d become a psychologist, twenty years ago. Achieving that goal had taken twelve years of moving from one facility to another, building a reputation, losing a husband, and alienating her two kids. But here she finally was on staff at St. Dimpna’s, and that still mattered to her.

Nibbling another spoonful, she looked through the chicken-wire-crosshatched window into the dayroom.

Several female patients lounged there, watching TV, mingling over children’s board games, playing cards, a few staring out windows on this sunny spring day. Despite a variety of ages, ethnicities, and medical conditions, the women had in common one thing: they were battling mental illness. All casually dressed—just no belts or shoelaces.

These were the doctor’s patients, and she had made—to various degrees—headway with them all… with one significant exception.

In her midtwenties—her raven ponytail and smooth features making her look much younger—Jordan Rivera sat on a sofa gazing up in silence at the wall-mounted television. She wore blue hospital scrubs, having already
adopted that outfit by the time Donna arrived here two years after the girl’s admittance.

Girl,
Donna thought, catching herself.
That’s how I think of her. Not woman—girl.

Doctor and patient had spent countless hours in one-on-one sessions, and to this day the only voice Donna had ever heard in those sessions was her own. Group sessions found the girl…
the young woman
… equally unresponsive. There and in all situations, Jordan Rivera remained mute.

Not medically so—nothing physically wrong with the patient’s vocal mechanism. Hers was apparently hysterical mutism, resulting from the trauma of the crimes committed against her and her family, a decade ago now.

The layperson might mistake this patient’s silence for catatonia, but of course the doctor knew better. While Jordan might sit, unmoving, for hours at a time, she didn’t display any of the rigidity of a true catatonic patient. Though catatonia could be caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, which surely made Jordan a candidate, Dr. Hurst would never classify Jordan as clinically catatonic.

Still, in addition to not speaking, Jordan Rivera often spent her waking hours virtually immobile, as if every emotion had been silenced, stuffed into some deep, dark recess of the young woman’s mind—a private place that Donna had not yet been able to reach.

Yet in other key respects, Jordan was a normal young woman. Since she had been admitted to St. Dimpna’s, shortly after the tragedy, Jordan had kept to herself, but she was no human slug. She stayed fit, working out as best she could in the dayroom, doing laps around the yard when allowed outside, and reading books and magazines from the selection provided to the patients, a limited variety to be sure, since all reading matter was carefully screened. No use of computers was allowed. Television channels were monitored, too, although screening their content wasn’t always possible.

Jordan’s solitary ways were such that she rarely had problems with other patients. A significant exception involved Kara McCormick—an incident about nine months ago, in group.

Jordan, several other patients, and newbie Kara sat in a loose circle. All but Kara were accustomed to Jordan sitting silently throughout. Toward session’s end, Donna turned to Kara, whose only comments thus far had consisted of smug grunts and snorts as other patients spoke about their issues.

“Kara, as the newest member of the group, would you like to introduce yourself to the others?”

A reedy blonde with pink-and-blue streaked bangs, eighteen-year-old Kara had been sexually abused by her stepfather until she had finally resorted to slitting her wrists. She still wore the gauze bandages.

“Kara,” the girl said sullenly.

Donna waited, but Kara stared at her bare legs as if the answers to her problems might be found on her kneecaps.

Gently, the doctor asked, “Would you like to tell the others why you’re here?”

Kara exploded from her chair, bisecting the circle to loom over Jordan, finger-pointing. “Why doesn’t
she
have to talk? Everybody else has to, what’s so special about
her
?”

Before Donna could speak, Kara was leaning in at Jordan, fists balled. “Too
good
to speak to us? And how come you’re wearin’
scrubs
? You’re no goddamn nurse! You’re just another loony tunes like the rest of us!”

Donna knew at once Kara was deflecting the attention from herself and her own troubles.

Jordan sat placidly, eyes on Kara. The doctor noted that not even verbal abuse brought this one out of her shell. It was almost as if Jordan didn’t hear Kara, although her eyes on the new girl’s face said otherwise.

“Kara,” Donna began, putting some edge into her voice, “Jordan is—”

“She’s
what
? Your frickin’
pet
?”

Donna was rising, to put herself between the two patients, but Kara beat her to the punch, literally—launching a tiny fist at Jordan’s blank face.

The mute girl rose, blocking the punch with a martial arts move, then grabbed Kara in a hug, pinning the girl’s arms to her sides. The two patients
were looking right at each other, Kara wild, eyes and nostrils flaring, Jordan as placid as when she’d been sitting there.

The mute patient was not fighting back, just stopping, containing the attack, though the skill of that kung fu–style move (
where had
that
come from?
) indicated Jordan could have done the new girl damage.

Kara was going berserk, flailing as best she could, even trying to headbutt Jordan, who continued to hug her, as calm as a monk at prayer, even if the string of epithets spewing from Kara would have made a real monk blanch.

And still Jordan maintained her embrace.

Donna stood frozen at the sight, not willing to enter in and turn this confrontation into something even more physical. Like the rest of the group, the doctor gaped as Jordan hugged Kara until the girl’s rage ebbed, her energy sapped, and finally Kara was reduced to tears.

As Kara’s rage melted, Jordan released her grip. Kara did not throw a punch—she was way past that. Instead, she threw her arms around Jordan, the embrace reversed now, and the two remained that way until Kara was cried out.

Dr. Donna Hurst had witnessed some amazing things in group sessions, but nothing to top this. And despite Jordan still remaining mute, she and Kara had developed a friendship and some means of communication all their own. Kara would talk to Jordan, and manage to find enough response in Jordan’s face to constitute a reply.

Before long, Kara had even adopted Jordan’s uniform of light blue scrubs.

In subsequent group and one-on-one sessions, Donna had intensified her own attempts to communicate with Jordan; but no discernible progress had been made. Today would be like the hundreds of other sessions, Jordan sitting silent, listening politely, Donna talkative, sick of her own voice by the end of the hour.

Ditching the yogurt container, then taking a quick hit from her coffee, Donna prepared for another bout of frustration. When she opened the dayroom door, the noise level went up—patients talking to others and
themselves, chairs scraping on the tile floor, the professional voices of the morning show on the TV that Jordan watched from the sofa.

Sitting beside her patient, Donna said, “Good morning, Jordan.” She had long since stopped asking this patient, “How are you this morning?” It only emphasized the one-way nature of their conversations.

In any case, Jordan did not acknowledge the doctor’s presence, continuing to stare at the television.

Well,
Donna thought,
at least she’s engaged.…

Following Jordan’s line of sight, Donna said, “
Good Morning Cleveland,
huh? Wonder if anything interesting’s happening in the Mistake on the Lake today.”

Jordan, of course, shared no opinion on this subject. On the medium-sized flat-screen television, the host was saying something about breaking news.

“Jordan, maybe we should—”

The girl raised a hand.

That gave Donna a start—this was a direct reaction. Rare from this patient.…

On screen, a perfectly coiffed female reporter stood in what appeared to be a middle-class neighborhood, saying,
“Valerie Demson for WCLE Channel Seven News, reporting from Strongsville, where last night tragedy struck. An anonymous 911 call brought police to a house down the street…”
She gestured with the hand that was free of a microphone
. “… just behind me… where they found a family inside their home… victims of homicide
.”

“Jordan,” Donna said, “I’m going to have to turn the channel.…”

The nurse in the glassed-in office had the remote, and Donna cast an eye in that direction, but the desk was empty.

The reporter was saying,
“The murder victims were Arnold and Angela Sully and their teenage daughter, Brittany. Viewers may recall that Brittany Sully received national attention when she and another senior girl at Strongsville High went to the senior prom as dates. Police would not respond to speculation that a hate crime aspect may pertain to this tragedy.”

Donna rose to go switch off the television herself.

“We will follow this breaking story as it develops,”
the reporter said.
“This is Valerie Demson for WCLE
Channel Seven News
.”

After hitting the switch, Donna turned to see Jordan staring at her. Approaching the patient, the doctor said, “I’m sorry, Jordan. I know it must be difficult for you to hear about that kind of unpleasantness.…”

The young woman continued to look at her, but not blank faced—wheels obviously turning behind those dark eyes…
but what was Jordan Rivera thinking?

Raising her hand for silence was more direct communication than Jordan had made with anyone, with the possible exception of Kara, in a decade.

Donna sat next to Jordan again. “I’m sorry I didn’t get that turned off sooner.”
Wheels were turning.
“Obviously, there’s no way we can monitor everything that’s aired, and we don’t want to deny everyone the simple courtesy of being able to watch—”

Jordan’s head swiveled. Her eyes were narrow.

Donna reared back a little—the intensity of the woman’s gaze was like a door had been opened on a blast furnace.

Woman,
she thought.
Not girl. Woman.…

“What do I have to do,” Jordan Rivera said evenly, in a low husky voice unknown to her stunned doctor, “to get the hell out of this place?”

“You know what’s weird?” Kara McCormick said, grinning, running a hand nervously through her pink-and-blue bangs.

“No,” Jordan said. “What’s weird?”

“How your real voice sounds so much like the one I used to hear in my head.”

“You hear voices in your head?”

“No! I mean, the voice in my head I heard when you didn’t talk out loud.”

“You heard me when I wasn’t talking?”

“Kind of. That so hard to believe?”

“No. But then, Kara?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re fuckin’ nuts.”

Kara bubbled with laughter while Jordan just smiled as her mental-ward inmate pal punched her lightly on the arm.

“Well, maybe so,” Kara managed through her laughter, “but
you
are fuckin’ nuts
and
a bitch.”

That made Jordan laugh, too, though not as raucously as Kara. Around the sunroom, other patients were staring at them.

Like the dayroom, the sunroom had chicken-wired windows. This smaller area, though, was as good as its name, streaming as it was with springtime rays, and serving as a literally sunny place for patients to meet with visitors.