Under Parr

by Andrea Bramhall

  “Just give her a chance to help you and she will.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Everyone’s scars were different. Everyone wore them differently, reacted to them differently. How could Kate be so sure that this woman was the one to help her?

  “Meet her. You’ll know what I mean then.” She reached down and unclipped Gina’s seatbelt. “Go on, or you’ll be late.” Kate pointed to the single-storey building they sat outside. “Just buzz the intercom and the reception staff will let you in.”

  “The doors don’t open automatically?”

  “It’s a psych unit, Gina. They have safety protocols in place to keep the patients who need to stay in, well, in. One of those involves a lot of card-entry doors, and another is a front door that is only opened with a security badge or a buzz from the front desk.”

  “I don’t want to go in there.” The nondescript building suddenly felt more like a prison or a fortress.

  “Don’t worry. They don’t keep people in who don’t need to be there. More often than not, they have to let people out who they shouldn’t rather than the other way round.” Kate chuckled mirthlessly.

  “You sound like you’ve had a lot of experience with places like this.”

  “Unfortunately. Every police officer does. A lot of crimes are committed by those who need help. Mental health help, and they can’t get it, or don’t take their meds because they don’t trust the people trying to help them. Or the really sad cases where you’re trying to talk someone down off the edge.”

  “The edge of what?”

  “Life, usually.”

  “You mean suicide?”

  Kate nodded. “Sometimes.”

  “How do you deal with stuff like that?”

  Kate gazed at her. “I have to. To make sure I’m there when I can really make a difference, I have to deal with it.” She squeezed Gina’s hand. “When I can stop a really bad person from hurting someone who doesn’t deserve it. Or so that I can catch the bastards and make sure they’re punished for what they’ve done. So that I can at least give the victims and their families that comfort.”

  “Hero complex, huh?” Gina asked with a smile.

  “You already knew that, gorgeous. Now get, before Jodi comes out here to see what’s keeping us so long.”

  Gina opened the door and walked the twenty steps to the intercom before she had the chance to think about what she was doing or where she was going again. All she could think about was Kate, and how she’d been there for her to stop the scars Gina bore on her body becoming scars that her daughter would bear mentally for the rest of her life.

  She didn’t remember buzzing in, or waiting in the reception area for Jodi. She was too busy trying to control her breathing. To stop her fingers from becoming the claw-like talons that were a classic symptom of her panic attacks. Slowly she became aware of a soft voice telling her to breathe, a hand rubbing her back as she sat with her head between her knees. Jesus, not again.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed between the panting intake of breath. Gina tried to force her lungs to expel the air she was pulling in far too quickly, but they wouldn’t listen. Black spots swarmed before her eyes, and she knew that the easiest thing would be to allow her body to shut down. To pass out and let everything reset to zero. To give in and let the fear win. But what was the point in that? What did that gain her? What was she here for if not to get over her bloody fears?

  She tried to remember the things Kate had told her to help her ground herself. Five things I can see. Five.

  “Lights,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry, what?” the voice beside her asked.

  But Gina ignored it. She couldn’t see a voice.

  “White tiles.” She blinked, still drawing in breath too rapidly. “Magazines.”

  “Oh, I see. Good work. Two more.”

  “Chairs.”

  “Good. Last one.”

  “Shoes.”

  “Excellent, your breath’s slowing a little. Four things you can hear.”

  “Buzzing.”

  The fluorescent lights overhead hummed like an angry bee about her head.

  “Annoying, isn’t it?”

  Gina nodded. Her neck was stiff. “Telephone.” The shrill tone was monotonous and seemed to never end.

  “Yep. Two more.”

  “My heartbeat.”

  “Glad it’s still there.”

  “Your voice.”

  “Will always be annoying. Now three things you can feel.”

  “Denim,” she said touching her stiff fingers to her jeans and running them along the seam of her right leg.

  “Good, what else?”

  “Wool.” She touched the deep green polo neck jumper she wore, and noted that her hands weren’t as stiff. Her legs didn’t feel so full of pins and needles either.

  “Good.”

  “And your hand on my back.”

  “Excellent. How about two things you can smell?”

  “Antiseptic.”

  The woman laughed. “Well, we are in a hospital.”

  “And your perfume.”

  “Angel. Do you like it?”

  Gina nodded and sat up in her chair. She stretched her legs out in front of herself and closed her eyes as she rested her head against the wall behind her.

  “Finish strong, Gina. Something you can taste?”

  Gina smiled and flexed her fingers. “Victory.”

  “Oh, I do love a fighter.” She squeezed Gina’s arm. “Well done. I thought for a minute there I was going to be picking you up off the floor.”

  Gina snorted. “You almost were.”

  “Welcome to the Reman Unit.”

  Gina opened her eyes and looked into the face of the woman who had been talking to her. Her breath caught as she stared.

  “Don’t start panicking again, Gina.” The woman smiled to diffuse the comment, but she was clearly steeling herself for an adverse reaction.

  “Jodi?” Gina asked in a quiet voice.

  The woman nodded. “I know it’s a shock, but as you can see,” she pointed to her own face, “I do know what you’re dealing with.”

  Jodi’s face was terribly disfigured. The right side of her face was a patchwork of skin that all looked to be different colours. All pale, but some paler than the rest. Her nose was more of a beak. Hooked but tiny, almost lost in the centre of her face, like it had been burned away and all that was left was what had been bone. Her right eyelid never closed. It never blinked. It wasn’t there, and inside the socket was an eyeball that looked flat, lifeless. The hair over what was left of her right ear was missing mostly. A huge patch with just the odd tuft of blond hair here and there.

  “What happened?” Gina asked without thinking. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Why not? I’m going to be asking you the same question later. Turnabout’s fair play, right?”

  Gina sat quietly. Not sure what to say.

  “Acid attack. An ex didn’t want me to be with someone else, so decided to mutilate me with battery acid.”

  “Jesus.”

  Jodi shook her head. “No, sadly, he wasn’t there that day.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault, and you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Should we go to a more private room? Are you up to walking yet?”

  Gina nodded and followed Jodi down a short corridor to an empty room with a small coffee table in the centre and two chairs.

  “And yes. It still hurts. Inside and out, unfortunately.” She smiled sadly and indicated for Gina to sit down. “The scars on my face don’t hurt so much as the damage I sustained to my trachea. I get a lot of infections as a result, and I feel like I always have a cough. It gets irritating. My eye is always dry. The socket I mean. Because my tear duct was burnt out, I have to use drops to try and lubricate the socket. Or wear an eye patch. I haven’t decided yet which I’m going to settle on. That’s
why I’ve only got a temporary eye.” She tapped the false eye.

  Gina shuddered and crossed her legs.

  “Sorry, did that gross you out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry. I forget about that sometimes.”

  “Is he in prison?”

  “Who?”

  “Your ex.”

  “She was.”

  “Was?”

  Jodi nodded. “She was released five years ago after serving four years.”

  “Four years? But she tried to kill you.”

  Jodi shook her head. “She was ill. The judge passed a sentence of indeterminate length and she wouldn’t be released until she no longer posed a danger to society. After four years she was released when her doctors assessed her to meet that criteria.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t the best news I ever got. I couldn’t be at the sentencing. I was in hospital having another operation.”

  “Another one?”

  “Yes. So far I’ve had almost two hundred surgeries.”

  Gina stared at Jodi then glanced down at her own covered chest. She felt pathetic. This woman had gone through hell and on the other side she was helping other people with their own demons. She was so strong. Strong enough to give her strength to others. Gina couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be that strong, that compassionate. It was as compelling as it was intimidating, and Gina was torn between basking in the warmth of her gaze and running from the overwhelming intensity of the woman. What right do I have to sit in the same room as her?

  “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  Jodi frowned. “Why?”

  Gina shook her head. “I just do.”

  “I’ve seen that look before, Gina. It’s the one that says my own scars are nothing by comparison, so why am I here? It’s the look that tells me you’re questioning your own worthiness to feel the way you feel.” She reached forward and took Gina’s hand. “You have every right to feel exactly how you feel. You have every right to feel violated. To feel angry. To feel hurt. Every single right.” She squeezed. “My history doesn’t lessen yours. It’s simply mine. There is no right or wrong, no table of comparison. There’s no judgement on what scars someone has to bear to justify this feeling or that one. It simply is. You feel what you feel, I feel what I feel. We deal with those feelings together. And the rest of the world,” she said with a small conspiratorial smile, “well, they can just go and fuck themselves.” She let go of Gina’s hand and sat back in her chair. “If you want to leave, I won’t stop you. But I can guarantee that you’ll end up regretting it. And I think you know that. Don’t you?”

  Gina felt herself nodding, but it was like she had no control over her body.

  “You don’t have to talk to me, but if you want to stay, if you want to work through whatever it is you feel, then this is the only way I know how to do it. It was the only way that worked for me. And believe me, I tried a lot of different shit. Drink, drugs, suicide. None of it got me anywhere. Well, they did, but nowhere that I wanted to be.”

  “I have a daughter.”

  “All the more reason to avoid those coping methods then,” Jodi said. “It can’t hurt to give this a go. If it doesn’t work, what have you lost? A few hours of your time. Okay, you can’t get them back, but it won’t cost you anything, and you can always say stop.” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “You’re the one in control here. No one else, Gina. You.” She caught Gina’s gaze and held it. “Do you understand?”

  Gina nodded.

  “Good.” She clasped her fingers between her knees. “So, where do you want to start?”

  “Aren’t you meant to tell me where to start?”

  “Am I? I thought this was actually supposed to be all about you. Not me.” She laughed gently. “But I usually find the beginning a good place to start. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “Kate didn’t tell you?”

  Jodi shook her head. “I prefer to hear what you have to say. Someone else will always put their slant on an event. Makes it their story, then. You know?”

  “Yeah. Might have made this easier, though.”

  “Easy doesn’t always get the job done.”

  Gina took a deep breath and searched for the right words. She’d repeated them so many times to the police that she found they came quite easily. “I was attacked by Ally Robbins. She forced me into my own house with her. I went to make sure she stayed away from Sammy, my daughter.”

  “And what did she do?” Jodi asked her after a few moments silence.

  “She wanted information. About Sammy’s dad. He was working for her, smuggling drugs out of the harbour at Brandale Stiathe. But she couldn’t get hold of him. He’d been arrested and was basically ratting her out to the police. Selling out her whole operation to try and reduce his sentence. She didn’t know that. She just couldn’t find him, so she came after me.”

  “Are you and Matt still together?”

  “God, no. I haven’t been with Matt in a decade. Matt was a mistake.”

  “One that left you with a daughter?”

  “Yes. Sammy’s the only reason I have—had—anything to do with Matt at all.”

  “So she wanted information about Matt?”

  “Yes. She tried to get it out of me with a gutting knife.”

  “As in a fish-gutting knife?”

  Gina nodded. “She tied me up. With my hands over my head tied to the banister railing. I was in the hallway. Right in front of the front door. I have to pass by that spot every single time I go in or out of my house. Every time I go upstairs to the toilet, I have to walk past that spot.” Gina stared out, not seeing, not blinking. Her vision turned inwards, her eyes seeing Ally’s face as she twisted the knife in the air in front of her. “She threatened to take me on to her boat and feed me into the bait station.” She shuddered. “I can still see that grinder in my mind. It’s effectively a massive blender. So big and powerful that it grinds bone and muscle and sinew to a pulp. She was going to turn me into bait.”

  Jodi waited before saying, “But she didn’t.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “So what did she do?”

  Gina wrapped her arms around her body, trying to find a little warmth. “She cut my top off me and started to use her knife.” She ran a finger across her own belly. “She sliced me here first.” Then she traced a line across the top of her breast. “Then here.” The other breast. “Here. And here.” She finished with the second cut down her belly. “Then she got bored and decided she wanted to play noughts and crosses on my back. Then it was solitaire, so she started to carve out the game board on me.” She hadn’t realised she was crying until she felt the tears drip on to her hand.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Kate. Kate happened.” Gina smiled through her tears. “She saved me.”

  “How?”

  “She hit Ally with a rounders bat after she crept in through the back while her colleague distracted Ally at the front door.”

  Jodi smiled. “That sounds like the Kate Brannon I know.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “She was the detective on my case. So this happened six weeks ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it hasn’t gone to court yet.”

  “No. We’re still waiting for a date.”

  “In the meantime, she’s in prison, and you feel what?”

  Gina shrugged. She didn’t want to voice her fears. To Jodi or anyone else. She just wanted to forget it ever happened and carry on.

  “Come on, Gina. Tell me how you feel about what happened.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I don’t want you to say anything. I want you be honest with yourself. Forget that I’m here. Pretend that you’re in the room on your own.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  Gina frowned but did as Jodi asked.

  “
Good. Now, imagine you’re here on your own. Just talking to yourself. What do you want, Gina?”

  “I want for it to have never happened. I want to see myself when I look in the mirror, not this stranger that looks back at me. I want to be me again. I want to see me again. Not this patchwork quilt that she made me. I want to look at myself and believe that someone else could find me attractive again, because I certainly don’t.” She slumped in her chair. “I want to not be so vain that a few scars matter so much. I want to be strong enough that I can walk into somewhere new and not have a panic attack. I want to be able to say yeah, that happened, but I’m still here. I want to be what my daughter needs to get her through her own ordeal.”

  She let the silence stretch taut between them. She pictured it forming like a spiderweb across the room. Silken and shimmering in the light, but cold. So cold. She could see her breath beading on the strands, thickening them and adding moisture in the frozen air. The spiderweb turned instead to a giant snowflake. A fragile, brittle shield that would shatter and melt at the first touch.

  “Instead of what?” Jodi asked quietly.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You want to be what your daughter needs. You say that as though you aren’t that at the moment.”

  “No, I don’t think I am.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “Someone she feels she needs to protect.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she hid the fact that she was being bullied from me because I was dealing, or rather not dealing, with my own issues instead of helping her through hers.”

  “You think you’re a bad mum?”

  The statement held no judgement in it, yet Gina couldn’t help but bristle. “I would do anything for my daughter. She’s my whole world.”

  Jodi held up her hands to placate Gina. “I’m not suggesting you’re a bad mum. Not for a moment. Quite the opposite. I think a mother who worries that she’s doing what’s best for her child is the epitome of a good mother. We’re only human, Gina. We all make mistakes sometimes. If we don’t question what we’re doing and why sometimes, how can we be sure we are doing the right thing. I merely ask if you think you’re a good or bad mum. Because I think motherhood is a huge part of your identity. And if you see yourself as failing in that part of your life, I think it will have major implications on other aspects too. Do you understand what I mean?”