Kate nodded sympathetically, her heart already going out to her prospective patient. ‘Are these episodes common?’
‘Not more than once a month, if even that.’ Trevor frowned, ‘It’s just one of the anomalies attached to Grainne. She spends most of her time in a trance-like state, so why does she occasionally erupt into full-blown hysteria, without any apparent cause? Or any intermediate state?’
Kate wasn’t about to offer any wild guesses and instead asked, ‘Why have you been decreasing her medication?’
Trevor shot her a strangely guilty look and replied, ‘Her family have complained that when they visit she’s like a zombie, unable to communicate at all, so I decreased her dosage. Wrongly, as it turns out. Well, I say family but in fact it was just one of her aunts who chewed my ear off. A real old battle-axe called Eimear. She’s a hard woman to convince but she’ll just have to accept that Grainne’s fugue state is internally generated, and nothing to do with her medication.’
Kate noted his guilty expression but as she couldn’t fathom it she kept her peace and simply nodded again, knowing that silence is often the best tool for extracting information. And after a short, uncomfortable pause Trevor said, ‘Generally Grainne is placid but she can sometimes be violent as well as hysterical. Though the violence is generally directed at herself rather than others. That won’t trouble you, will it? I mean, if you decide to take her on?’
Kate smiled thinly, ‘Since you knew me I’ve spent five years working in an overcrowded public asylum in Oxford, amongst other things. Frankly, there isn’t much I haven’t seen or heard, and it takes quite a lot to upset me nowadays.’
Trevor nodded, ‘I can imagine. You’ve changed all right. In many ways.’ He leaned back in his swivel chair and studied her silently from under hooded lids, smiling a little to make his scrutiny less clinical. The years had been kind to her, the physical changes at least for the better; he well knew how she had struggled to control her weight in her youth. Her hair was the only part of her that had not changed at all; it was still long and thick and dark, with that faint auburn hint. He clearly remembered the smell and silky feel of it against his face, but to his trained, analytical mind the fact that she always wore it with a long fringe hanging in front of her face, half-obscuring her features, was significant.
In spite of the weight loss she still had enough curves to be feminine, and her new slenderness emphasized her high cheekbones and slender, elegant jaw. It was not kindness which had made him describe her as beautiful; he had always thought her attractive but now she was stunning. The smooth skin, full lips and huge hazel eyes were just as he remembered them, and still had the power to set butterflies fluttering in his stomach. But she looked strained and tired too, and her fingernails, tightly clipped to hide her compulsive biting, told their own tale. Plus, the lack of make-up and the severe cut of her black suit spoke eloquently of the traumas she had suffered, and the effect they had had on her psyche. In fact her whole life had, one way or another, been one long trauma that she had never really resolved.
After finishing his inspection he said softly, ‘I tried to contact you in England after you were attacked. Lots of your old friends did, but you just disappeared.’
The reminder of what had been done to her hurt, as always, and she hung her head in totally unreasonable embarrassment, her cheeks flaming red. ‘I wasn’t alone, as you know,’ she said painfully, wishing he would stop even though she knew he was motivated solely by concern for her.
He made a wry face, ‘Peter was my friend before you ever met him, and no one knows better than me what a great guy he is, but he’s no therapist, is he?’
‘Therapy isn’t everything,’ she responded with an attempt at lightness, ‘I just needed to get away from the rest of the world for a while. And I’m afraid that included even you.’
He shook his head disapprovingly, ‘Dealing with your problems by running away from them? For such an experienced counsellor you’re remarkably shy about analysing yourself, your own actions and motives.’
‘It’s none of your damned business what I did, or do!’ Kate flared suddenly, for he had touched a raw nerve, ‘So don’t come the psychiatrist with me!’
He smiled with maddening calm, his eyelids drooping in amusement, ‘On the contrary it is my business, because I love you. Oh, I know our affair ended after you took up with that awful guy, I forget his name, but I still care about you. I don’t have many close friends and I like to look after the few I do have.’
Her brief anger faded and she smiled sadly, ‘I love you too, Trev, and it’s sweet that you wanted to help. But like I said, I had Peter then, and I didn’t need anyone else. Just time away from the whole world to lick my wounds. I’ve always dealt with things my own way, in my own time. You know that.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘I do know.’ By pretending they don’t exist, he thought but had enough sense not to say. Instead he grinned and said slyly, ‘You buried yourself off somewhere and wrote those bloody awful books.’
She instantly rose to the bait, unable to help herself, ‘Awful? Did you bother descending from Mount Olympus long enough to actually read any of them?’
He roared with laughter and twirled right around in his swivel chair until he was facing her again. ‘Yes, I did, actually! Oh Kate, it’s good to see you again, if only because you’re so easy to get a rise out of. I read them, and thought they were pretty good, actually. The first was a bit simplistic, but I guess it was aimed at the intelligent layman rather than mental health professionals. The second was better, and the last was the best of all. Quite scholarly, but still accessible.’
He waved his hand at the vast bookcase that dominated one whole wall and she saw, in a small section of their own, hardback copies of all three of her books. She turned back to him and shook her head in disgust, ‘Damn you, Trevor Jordan, you’re impossible! And if you think the last was the best you should talk to my publisher; it didn’t sell at all well and now I think she’s avoiding me in case I ever finish the fourth. Which, I may say, right now doesn’t seem very likely.’
He made a sympathetic face, ‘It went too deep for public consumption, I think. Too much scholarship and not enough sentiment and glib, chat-show solutions. The public want to be entertained, not educated.’
She grimaced ruefully, ‘Wow! That’s pretty much exactly what my publisher said. You always could get straight to the heart of problems, Trev, I’ll give you that.’
His good-humored expression faded as he lifted a file from his desktop and said, ‘Not this problem. I really need help here, Kate.’
She felt a tingle like a mild electric shock course through her body and drew in a deep, nervous breath before taking the plunge. ‘Tell me about her.’
He opened the file and began flicking through it. ‘The patient is one Grainne Riordan, a very troubled eighteen-year-old girl. I had a female psychiatrist called Sarah McGrath treating her but the bloody woman went and got herself a job in America. Selfish, I call it; imagine wanting to work in a country where they don’t take almost all your salary in tax. Anyway, the point is that now I’m stuffed, unless you agree to help.’
Kate frowned in puzzlement, ‘You’re no shrinking violet, you know just how good you are. Why not treat her yourself?’
He pursed his lips and said carefully, ‘Unless heavily medicated, Grainne Riordan becomes wildly agitated and even violent in the presence of men. Any man, except for her father, and sometimes even him. And her violent outbursts apparently include murder and at least one suicide attempt.’
Kate only raised her eyebrows and, after a pause to gather his thoughts, Trev continued, ‘Grainne Riordan was the original wild child, a party girl spending Daddy’s money on clothes by day and on drink and drugs at night. To say nothing of sleeping with a long succession of men.’
He shrugged his narrow shoulders, ‘She was regularly taking coke, hash and prescription drugs, all washed down with bottles of vodka. You name it, she was on it, includ
ing the odd syringe full of heroin. On the night in question she took a speedball of coke, heroin and amphetamines and had some sort of psychotic episode. She set fire to her own house, killing her mother -who was asleep inside- in the process. Actually, asleep is a bit of a euphemism; the mother had passed out after drinking the best part of a bottle of vodka of her own.’ He shrugged again, ruefully, ‘She was known to be an alcoholic, which might explain Grainne’s own weakness for drink and drugs.’
Kate shook her head sadly, though she had seen and heard far worse, and Trevor continued, ‘She was taken to the emergency room of Loughlinstown hospital at first, where she promptly tried to kill herself. Believe it or not, she smashed a window and cut her own throat with a shard of broken glass. She didn’t finish the job because she went into a drug-induced coma, but even so she came pretty close to dying. She came out of her drugs coma a couple of days later but remained in a strange, semi-catatonic state that persisted for months. She still lapses into it quite often even now. She didn’t stay in Loughlinstown that long, of course, since they don’t have a psychiatric unit. Right from the beginning it was clear that her problems were mental rather than physical, and as the police obviously couldn’t charge her while she was in that state, and as she was a minor at the time, she was made a ward of court. The first thing the court did was order her to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation, but as she hadn’t actually been charged with anything they let Riordan send her here rather than to a state institution. When she started exhibiting signs of removing from her catatonia and engaging with the world around her again I started trying to talk to her, with a view to counseling her myself. It didn’t work out well and, as I say, I replaced myself with a female psychiatrist.’
Kate frowned at him, ‘What went wrong?’
He sighed and ran his fingers through his untidy hair. ‘As we decreased her sedation Grainne started exhibiting signs of distress whenever I was alone with her. I won’t bore you with all the details but we soon discovered that it wasn’t just me; the presence of any man upset her greatly. We had to sedate her almost back to catatonia before she could stand having a man in the same room as her. That’s just one of the mysteries I need you to solve; why, from being afflicted with more than a touch of nymphomania, she now cannot bear to have men anywhere near her.’
Kate nodded, butterflies of excitement fluttering in her stomach as she realized that she was hooked already, that once more the game was afoot. But the butterflies were of excitement, not fear; this was what she had not just trained for but had been born to do. How had she forgotten that for so long? ‘So you brought in a female psychotherapist to talk to her. And that worked?’
‘To an extent,’ replied Trevor, ‘We were able to decrease her medication to the point where she could engage with Dr. McGrath to a reasonable level. When she was in touch with reality, that is, which wasn’t often. I’ll give you all Sarah’s notes, of course, but most days Grainne wouldn’t talk to her at all, and even when she did she didn’t make much sense. And she only worked with her for about six months so you can’t expect a lot of progress.’
Kate leaned forward eagerly, ‘Of course I’ll read the case notes, and her file, but right now I’m more interested in what you can tell me about her as a person.’
There was a pause before Trevor said slowly, ‘Grainne Riordan is an extraordinarily beautiful and sensual young woman.’ He stopped and considered before continuing, ‘Not just sensual but something more, something darker than that. Something carnal. When we were kids we would have said she was sex on legs. She reminds me of a young Brigitte Bardot or something, and although it might sound melodramatic I can’t imagine any man not being instantly attracted to her. Very attracted.’
Kate was always skeptical concerning men’s notions of a sex-bomb, knowing full well that they were generally the stereotypical big-breasted airhead a la Pamela Anderson that in real life most men would almost instantly grow tired of. So she paid little heed to his description of the girl but, to wind him up, raised her eyebrows and said teasingly, ‘Even you, Doctor? Were you hooked?’
He pursed his lips and said humorlessly, ‘On most of the occasions I met her she was so heavily tranquilized that she was more like a beautiful doll than a person. A slack mouth and empty eyes are not terribly appealing in anyone, much less in a woman already rendered more or less sexless by virtue of being a patient. On other occasions though, when she was fully alive and aware...’ He broke off and shook his head, ‘I have to say, on occasions I found her disturbing.’
Kate was silent, wondering what sort of girl –and she was only a girl- could have had such an effect on her old friend, who generally had more women than he knew what to do with, and was less susceptible than most to their charms, however potent.
He mistook her silence for disapproval and sighed before saying, ‘I’ll start at the beginning, shall I? The first time I met her was when I was called in by the DPP to perform a psychiatric evaluation on her in hospital. Grainne was under suspicion of the murder of her mother, and since she refused to make a statement -actually she was incapable of making one- I was initially called in to determine whether or not she was fit to stand trial.’
He shrugged and moved restlessly in his chair, ‘Needless to say she wasn’t, or she wouldn’t be here now. Since she tried to kill herself I naturally recommended that she undergo a thorough psychological examination before any charges were considered, and the authorities accepted my proposal and remanded her to my care.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ interceded a frowning Kate, ‘I’m a bit confused. If she wasn’t able to make a statement, why was she suspected of anything?’
‘The circumstances were pretty conclusive, if I remember correctly. I told you her mother died in a fire at their home in Foxrock, just over a year ago. The police found Grainne wandering aimlessly about in the garden, wildly agitated and completely incoherent, wearing only a dressing gown soaked with petrol. She also had a box of matches in her pocket, though as she’s a smoker that doesn’t mean much. Anyway, the house was totally destroyed and investigators quickly established that it was arson, so suspicion obviously fell on her. Apart from the fact that she was cataclysmically stoned she already had a history of drug abuse and aberrant behavior. To be honest I think the fire was probably a suicide attempt that went wrong, or even an accident, rather than deliberate murder.’
‘Were there no witnesses to the fire?’
He shook his head, ‘The two of them were alone in the house. It was a neighbor who phoned the fire brigade. She’s an only child and Riordan himself only got home after the blaze was pretty well out. Apparently he was at his club.’
He said this with a touch of disdain, which Kate ignored, knowing that he believed parents should entirely subsume their lives into those of their children until they reached adulthood. Instead she asked, ‘So what’s happened since she arrived here?’
‘I told you; after she physically recovered, and started showing some early signs of mental recovery, I conducted several interviews with her myself before passing her on to Sarah. We learned a lot more from Sarah’s sessions than mine, but even so we’d hardly scratched the surface when Sarah left. It’s immensely difficult to talk to Grainne, to snap her out of whatever make-believe existence she’s hiding in from day to day, but whenever she came into the real world long enough to discuss such matters she expressed terrible remorse for the death of her mother. Thinking about this would then drive her back into fantasy, or into wild, paranoid rages. She seems to have detached herself totally from reality and moved into a fantasy world of her own making, presumably to protect herself from the shock and guilt of her mother’s death. I have to say I’ve never seen such extreme disassociation before; most of the time she has no links at all with the real world. For quite some time she regressed in her own mind to the age of four or five, and refused to discuss anything that happened to her after that age.’
Kate pursed her lips, already fascinated
and feeling a strong desire to meet the girl who might become her first patient in so long. In too long, perhaps. But would she be able to help someone as damaged as Grainne sounded? ‘What treatment was she given?’
‘We haven’t tried any chemical therapy yet, just sedation. She’s been here over a year and Sarah tried every test in the book on her, both mental and physical, without finding any trace of clinical illness. M.M.P.I., GAF, DSM; everything. The only useful tests were the Rorschach and the T.A.T., which revealed extreme stress and fear of personal danger from unknown, malevolent figures. And her dreams are unbelievable; full of sex and violence and death. In all these dreams she’s the target of rapacious predators. Such powerful, repetitive dreams can obviously be very revealing, but without more data they could have too many different meanings to be of any practical use to us right now. Sarah became convinced that Grainne had no clinical illness, that she detached herself from reality as the result of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by her mother’s death. So she reduced her sedation to the bare minimum necessary to keep her calm and tried regressive counseling to get to the root of the problem. She hadn’t got very far before she left us but she did at least re-establish Grainne’s personality and memories up to the age of ten or so. If you discuss anything with her from that period of her life –when she talks at all- you talk to the real Grainne; a very sweet and lovable child-Grainne. Mention any more recent events in her life and she slides away again, either into fantasy or a type of self-imposed catatonia. Sarah was supposed to begin advancing her through the next few years into her teens but instead she got married and emigrated.’
Kate grinned in spite of herself at his disapproving tone and said, ‘Bloody women, eh? Buggering off and getting married before completing her job?’
He stared at her blankly for several long seconds before shaking his head, ‘It wasn’t the marriage I objected to, it was her moving to America with her new husband that caused the problem. With the recession came the return of the brain drain, alas. But even re-establishing her real memories, her real personality, up to the age of ten was something, I suppose. Though they weren’t very deeply sublimated, I have to say. And now I need someone to carry on Sarah’s work, to bring her up to the time of the trauma and hopefully help her to face her own memories rather than retreat into fantasy again.’
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