Phantom Limb: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by Lucinda Berry

  “What’s going on? Is she okay?” Tobi asked.

  I didn’t have to look up to know she was feigning exaggerated concern or that Shelly was straining her ears trying to hear the conversation.

  “Get out of here. Leave her alone,” Rose said.

  “Look, we just want to be here for her.”

  “I said get out of here. I meant it. Go bother someone else.”

  I heard her footsteps walking away. Rose rubbed my head and smoothed my hair back and forth like I used to do to Emily. It made me start to cry again.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Did something happen? Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “My session with Dr. Larson was really intense. He made me talk about my childhood.”

  Rose rolled her eyes. “They love to talk about your childhood. I swear to God, I’ve talked my childhood to death. The shrink I see outside of the hospital is obsessed with getting me to talk about the time I was raped when I was nine, but really I’m so over it. I’ve—”

  I sat up and looked at her. “You were raped?”

  “I’ve never met a girl in here who wasn’t.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “You’ve heard how everyone talks in group. It’s always like that. People don’t end up here unless they’ve been through some really tough stuff. Was today the first time you’ve ever talked about your childhood?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t actually talk. I just completely freaked out in his office as soon as he started asking me questions about it.”

  She reached out to pull me close to her again. “It gets easier the more you talk about it. I swear it does. But I know what you mean. The first time is super intense and then once it’s out there, you can’t take it back, you know?”

  I started to cry again. My secret was out. This time, my sobs were soft and quiet. There was no violence with them, only an overwhelming sadness.

  “Shh … shh … it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

  The way Rose soothed me reminded me of how I’d comforted Emily in the last two years, but the moment I thought about Emily I wanted to scream at myself to stop pretending. I was never comforting her. I was only comforting myself. I was both the wounded and the savior.

  Rose didn’t ask any more questions. She just kept holding me.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Sorry? What are you sorry for?”

  “Being such a mess.”

  “Pshht, we’ve all been there.”

  I lifted my head. Shelly and Tobi were still staring at me, whispering back and forth to each other. Their concerned looks were gone and replaced with their snotty adolescent looks, as if I’d insulted them. Rose noticed them at the same time I did and shot them an icy stare. They didn’t pretend to be bothered by it. They never did.

  “Do you want to hear some good news? Something not so depressing?” Rose asked.

  “Sure.”

  “You’re never going to believe this. I’m totally freaking out right now,” she said. “I get to go home.”

  Her smile stretched across her entire face. Her eyes sparkled with new life.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Remember the meeting I told you about yesterday? That was what it was about. My mom showed up this morning and of course, she was totally annoyed because I’m sure she had to miss a court date or something, but whatever, I don’t care. Dr. Heimer was there and so was Mark. They went into this long explanation about how the team doesn’t think I’m ready to go home yet, but my insurance won’t cover my stay here any longer.” She was still grinning. “The team wants to send me to an extended care treatment facility for eating disorders, but my mom would have to pay for it and it’s like one of those super fancy treatment centers so it’s really expensive. And guess what? My mom won’t pay for it. She said she’s done paying for me to go to treatment centers that never make me better.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Oh, it gets better. I get to live in my own apartment. My mom doesn’t want me to come back home. She hates having to worry about me, so she’s paying for me to get an apartment. I get to live on my own. I’m so excited.”

  I couldn’t help but remember all of our conversations when she shared how she hated her mom being gone all the time because she had to be alone, and she didn’t like being alone. She always said she couldn’t stand it. I guess living alone was better than living here.

  “It’s probably not going to be for a couple more days. There’s all this paperwork that needs to be done and my mom has to find me an apartment, but I’m going to start packing. You want to help? It might get your mind off things.”

  I nodded. I was afraid if I started talking, I’d start crying again. What would I do when she left? Would I ever see her again?

  “Hey, Polly,” Rose called out to the nurses’ station. “Can you come with us to my room? Pretty, please?”

  Polly followed us to Rose’s room and went back to reading her book outside the door. I’d never been in her room before, and an elaborate collage covered an entire wall. It must’ve taken her hours to complete. It was plastered with pictures of stick-thin supermodels intermingled with dark and depressed poetry. I plopped on her bed and watched as she attacked the collage, tearing everything off, rolling the paper into balls, and tossing them into the garbage.

  “I’m not taking any of these. I don’t want to remember anything about this place.” She ripped more off the wall. “I mean, of course I’ll remember you. I’ll still talk to you. I’ll call you on the phone. It’s not like I don’t know the best time to get a hold of you. You can fill me in on all the daily drama.”

  I smiled back, suddenly feeling awkward. “I’m going to miss you. Do you have any idea when you’re going to get out?”

  “I don’t know. Hopefully, in a few days.”

  I wanted to be excited for her, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wanted her to stay with me.

  “I have an idea.” Rose leaped onto the bed next to me and grabbed my shoulders. “You should totally live with me. We can be roommates. Oh my God, it’ll be so much fun!”

  “Really?”

  I hadn’t given a thought to what I would do when I got out. There was no way I was going back to Emily’s and my apartment. I couldn’t live with the reminders of our life staring me in the face every day. The thought of it gave me the same underwater feeling I’d had in Dr. Larson’s office earlier. If I was truly going to start over, I wanted a fresh start. Maybe living with Rose was what I needed.

  I started helping her tear down the collage while she chattered about how we would decorate our apartment, the colors we would use in the bathroom, and furniture ideas for the living room. She wanted to paint the bathroom yellow and her bedroom blue. She carried on about all the movies we’d see together and the restaurants we’d eat at like she was ready to start eating dinner again. It sounded so normal and I liked the way it sounded.

  22

  Lisa came to visit during visiting hours like she’d promised the night before. I spent the first part of our time filling her in on the breakdown I’d had in Dr. Larson’s office.

  “I’m sure it felt horrible, but I agree with Dr. Larson. He’s right about your ability to disassociate and going back in your history to where it started. It’s the only way to do it if you want to get better. As painful as it is, you’re going to have to start talking about your childhood and working through it.”

  I’d never talked about the special friends. Not ever. Not even with Emily. It wasn’t as if there’d been a time when we agreed not to talk about it, but we didn’t need to. What had happened to us was unspeakable.

  “It’s too awful.” My voice sounded weird again, like it did in Dr. Larson’s office.

  She took my hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t you give it a try with me?”

  “Mother wasn’t the only one who hurt us. She only
started letting us out of the bedroom so other people could do things to us.”

  “You mean the special friends?”

  “Oh my God, you know? How do you know?”

  “Emily told me.”

  When did Emily tell her? She never said anything about it. Why didn’t she tell me that she’d told her?

  “Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “We always knew you girls had been sexually abused. It was included in the medical report, but we never knew who did it. Bob and Dalila were convinced it was your mother, but I always suspected other people were involved. They didn’t think it mattered who’d done it and I respected their wishes. I never pushed.”

  “When did Emily tell you?”

  “Remember when the two of you came to see me after Emily got caught cutting?”

  I nodded.

  “Those weren’t the last sessions I had with Emily. Emily started coming back to meet with me during your junior year. I saw her in therapy for the next few years. We were working together right up until she died.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  I couldn’t help but feel betrayed. Why wouldn’t Emily tell me she was going to see Lisa? Why would she keep that a secret? Anger shot through me.

  “You look upset,” she said.

  “I am.” I didn’t want to be, but I was. Emily had told the one secret we shared while I’d always kept all of hers.

  “She was embarrassed to be in therapy again. She thought it made her weak. That’s why she didn’t tell you.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “Elizabeth, do you know how hard it was for her to struggle while you did so well? She talked about it all the time in our sessions. She wanted to have your strength. She hated who she was and the things she did. She was ashamed of her cutting and mortified by her behavior with boys.”

  For years, she’d gotten into trouble for the things she did with males. In elementary school, she got caught playing doctor on the playground with boys from our class and by middle school, she’d progressed to performing sexual acts on them. She lost her virginity when she was thirteen to a seventeen-year-old guy she met on the Internet. He took her to Chick-fil-A, then to the backseat of his car, and after they’d done it, she never saw him again. She was constantly in trouble with girls at school for sleeping with their boyfriends. Bob and Dalila caught her on more than one occasion posting naked pictures of herself online and in chat rooms with older men. She’d spent half our adolescence grounded from the Internet and her phone.

  She didn’t keep any of the things she did with guys a secret from me. She was proud and talked about it all the time. She swore she liked it and her level of excitement rose the more risqué the conquest. I believed her. I thought I was the one with the problem. Not her. I thought there was something wrong with me for not wanting anyone to touch me.

  And then, she suddenly stopped. She quit dating and stopped talking about hooking up with guys. I asked her about it a few times and she laughed it off. She said she was thinking about becoming a lesbian. I’d figured it was another effect of her depression, like she’d given up another thing she enjoyed in the same way she’d quit painting.

  “I remember when she stopped. It was the summer of our junior year. She used to be boy-crazy and then all of sudden she didn’t have any interest.”

  “Emily was never boy-crazy, even though that’s what it looked like from the outside. What she didn’t understand was that she was reacting to the sexual abuse in her childhood. One of the things I explained to her is how sexual abuse affects sexuality. When girls are sexually abused, they tend to behave in two ways—they either become extremely promiscuous, or they end up avoiding all forms of sexual behavior and become unresponsive to sex. I spent a significant amount of time with Emily explaining this relationship to her. She found it comforting that her sexual behavior was common given what she’d been through.”

  I couldn’t help but recognize that I was the other extreme Lisa was talking about. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “We spent months doing a form of therapy called trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s a type of therapy that helps people work through sexual abuse and trauma. She found it helpful and she was able to stop her self-destructive behavior with men.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “Even though our work helped her stop acting out with men, I couldn’t stop her from hurting herself. It didn’t matter what kind of therapy we did or what techniques I used. Cutting herself was something she wouldn’t give up no matter what. I’ve never felt so powerless.”

  She let the tears spill down her cheeks. I understood her powerlessness and she might be the only person who understood mine. This time, I took a hold of her hand. We sat in silence for a few moments, but unlike the silence of Dr. Larson, it was a comfortable silence.

  “Emily was a tortured soul, but you don’t have to be. I’ve always stressed the importance of seeing the two of you as individuals and separate people.”

  She must’ve said it thousands of times to the Rooths over the years and probably as many times to me during our private sessions.

  “Even though it might not feel like it, the two of you are not the same person. Remember when you came to see me the week before you tried to kill yourself and how you told me that you loved Thomas? It was clear you needed permission to love someone else besides Emily. Dalila used to call me all the time to talk to me about how you believed and acted like Emily was still alive, but she hadn’t called me in months. I figured you’d finally come to terms with Emily’s death and weren’t still living like she was alive. When I saw you that day, you seemed like you were doing well. Better than I’d ever seen you. You’d fallen in love and needed permission to let go of Emily.” She paused, looking deep into me. “I’m giving you that same permission again. It’s okay to let go of the hold she has on your life and create a new life for yourself without her.”

  It wasn’t that easy to let go. I still had questions that wouldn’t go away.

  “What I don’t understand is why the last night happened. Ultimately, I was killing myself and there wasn’t any reason to kill myself. If I created the story about Emily, wouldn’t I just have to rewrite the script? Or stop pretending she was alive? Why’d I have to die?”

  I’d existed as two people in order to keep Emily alive and it was surprisingly logical, especially since all the other twins I’d read about did similar things. Maybe not to the extreme I had, but all of them had made efforts to keep their twin with them and not face their loss. I didn’t want to deal with Emily’s death, so I pretended it hadn’t happened and then I created a make-believe Emily and pretended to be her whenever I needed to. It wasn’t the part of the story I had a problem with anymore, as bizarre as it was. Killing myself was the one crucial piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit in the explanation.

  “I think you were finally ready to let Emily go,” Lisa said.

  She still wasn’t answering the most important question.

  “But then why did I try to kill myself?”

  I could tell she’d never thought about this part of the scenario. The explanation about creating an imaginary Emily so I didn’t have to let go of her was understandable. Needing to let go of the delusion of her existence once I’d fallen in love with Thomas also fit perfectly with the explanation. All of it did, right up until the point of trying to kill myself. Why was I the one person who saw a problem with this part of the puzzle?

  I’d asked the same question I was asking Lisa at the team meeting earlier in the morning and no one could answer it then either. They’d stared at me until finally someone spoke up.

  “That’s a very good question. It’s one we are hoping you’re able to answer once you begin feeling more comfortable,” one of the female psychologists said. All of the others had nodded their heads in agreement in their typical fashion.

  Lisa’s response was similar to hers. “I guess you’re the only one who knows why you did it. It may take a while for you to be able to remember why, b
ut unfortunately, there’s also a chance you might not remember. You may never know what happened or why you did it. Some people never recover memories from traumatic events. There may come a point in your recovery where you have to just accept you’ll never know. You might have to learn to get comfortable with not knowing.”

  “So, I’m just supposed to forget all about it?”

  “Is it important for you to know why you did it? Do you think knowing why helps you to get better?”

  “Wouldn’t you want to know why you tried to kill yourself?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I would. Do you want to know what I think happened?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “I think you were acting as Emily when you tried to take your life. You’d acted as Emily for so long that the line between where you ended and she began was completely blurred. It was almost nonexistent. And Emily very much wanted to die. Even when she was alive. My guess is you tried to kill yourself while you were acting as Emily, even though you didn’t want to die. You weren’t trying to kill yourself, but you were unable to step back over the line into Elizabeth again in time to stop it. Does that make sense?”

  I shrugged. “A little. I guess it could’ve happened like that. How did somebody find us? I mean me?”

  “You took pills and slit your wrists.”

  I looked down at my arms, and saw the scabs and stapled stitches working their way up my arm like a ladder. For some reason, seeing my wounded arms for the first time wasn’t nearly as startling as it was when I saw my legs. I didn’t react to them. It was as if I half-expected the damage to be there. Now I knew why Shelly and Tobi acted the way they always did towards me—their eye rolling and knowing looks with each other. They saw my arms. They always had. They thought I was lying to them or playing games. And Rose. My sweet Rose. She’d always seen my injuries too, but knew enough not to say anything. Not to push me until I was ready to talk. It made me like her even more.