by Roxy Harte
I close my eyes, allowing the information to sink in. If it is determined she is brain dead there is a very real possibility he may want me to discontinue life support.
“Call her parents, Phillip. I have no right to make the necessary decisions.”
“If that’s what you want, knowing her wishes. Once you told me you loved this girl—”
“Phillip! Stop!”
“No, George. Once we were best friends, and I should have stepped in when I first realized that something was going on in your life that wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t, and I’ve regretted that for a decade. I’ve questioned a million times over what was said from both sides at that hearing. I’ve replayed every moment in my head of every scene inside and outside that courtroom. That trial didn’t just change your life. Everything I believed in was challenged. My life was affected as much as yours because of a young girl’s accusation.”
He pauses to take a breath and by all rights I should hang up on him because I do not want to hear his condemnations, the time is past for judgment, but I don’t hang up and he starts talking again. “I know you. I know the kind of man you are. Worse, I know me, and I’m not so certain I would have reacted differently had I been in your shoes. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
His admission floors me.
“You saw a broken human spirit and you wanted to give her hope. If that is criminal we could only hope all of humanity could be sentenced.”
I let him talk because I’m speechless.
“When the board of directors demanded I request your resignation, I should have refused. I’ve lived with regret for a decade and haven’t figured out how to make this right between us.”
I am drowning in emotion. Phillip is killing me with words.
“Do you remember when I stopped you in the hallway and asked why?”
“Yes,” I whisper, my chest tightening, remembering, not wanting to.
“Do you remember your answer?”
I tip my face up to the ceiling, blinking rapidly, crying despite how hard I am trying not to, trying so hard not to remember and remembering anyway. The hallway was so crowded and I was trying to escape out of a back door to avoid journalists at the front. Phillip suddenly stepped in front of me, grabbing my shoulders, asking me, “Why?” and me seeing past him to the courtroom doors where Gigi exited with her attorneys.
Gigi looked around the hall frantically, left and right, then found my face in the crowd. She screamed, “Forgive me?”
I nodded, mouthing, Yes.
Looking back to Phillip, I answered his question. “Because I love her, because loving her unconditionally is the right thing to do.”
Over the phone, I say nothing.
“Do you still want me to call her parents?”
“No. I’ll come,” I answer. “I’ll be right there.”
Hanging up the phone and leaving my office, I am going through the motions. Numb. Fearful. I take a second to wash my face and try to pull myself together before facing Lin.
She is waiting for me in the living room, sitting on the edge of a sofa, back straight. Upon seeing me she stands and smiles. I go to her quickly, pulling her into my arms and holding her tighter than I should, inhaling her scent, expensive shampoo and even more expensive perfume. Her hair is softer than silk, ink black and falling to her waist. I lift the weight of her hair and let it flow through my fingers like a waterfall, regretting that I answered the phone. “Dear, I’m going to have to cut our evening short. I’ll call you a cab.”
* * * * *
As I approach San Francisco General, I can’t believe that I am driving there to see Gigi after spending the last decade trying to forget her and failing miserably.
She was a fascination at first, a teenager, obviously troubled, and I’d wanted to help her heal from the moment I first laid eyes on her. I will never forget the first time I saw her, because even if I hadn’t taken the time to speak to her or become friends with her she was unforgettable.
I’d walked into a coffee shop, my mind elsewhere, and ordered a vente latte without looking up from the report I was reading. I paid and accepted the cardboard cup with plastic lid without missing a word. I was turning to go when I caught sight of her left arm, not her, just the inside of her pale, scarred forearm. She was obviously a cutter. I realized I was staring only after I’d counted to twenty…twenty raised white lines in a tidy row from the bend of her elbow to her wrist. A quick glance showed me that the other arm was similarly scarred. It seemed surprising, a curiosity even. She was bare-armed, seeming to wear her scars with pride and honor.
I don’t know what I’d expected when I looked up, however, lifting my eyes to her face, I was taken aback by her beauty.
“Could I get a muffin?” I asked, feeling more than a little ridiculous that I’d obviously been staring an inappropriately long time.
She looked back at me, stone-cold, hardened, folding her arms across her midriff, hiding the evidence of her past suffering from me. “You want a muffin?”
“Yes, please…anything with fruit.”
“You want a fruit muffin?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
Reaching into the clear front display case she passed over the blueberry and banana-nut to lift up one from a tray labeled pineapple-mango-papaya. I looked past the muffin to look at her arm again, becoming mesmerized by its tragic beauty. She pushed the muffin closer to my face. “This one fruity enough for you?”
Meeting her eyes, I smiled, hoping that my smile made up for my rudeness. “Yes, wonderful.”
“Why don’t you ask?”
“Excuse me?”
She laughed, transforming her face from merely beautiful to a countenance capable of inspiring artists, musicians, poets. “You’re dying to ask about my scars. Isn’t that the only reason you’re ordering a muffin? You don’t have to order the muffin to ask. The answer is going to be the same no matter what you do.”
“None of my business, right?”
“Pretty much what I was thinking, yeah.”
“I’d still like to buy that muffin.”
“Three-twenty.” She held out her hand, baring her scarred arm to the harsh overhead florescence, and it was all I could do to muster the self-restraint required to not reach out and slide my fingers over the delicate lines.
I paid her. “Keep the change.”
Not moving away from the counter, I lifted the muffin and took a bite, mumbling, “Mmm, amazing. This is really good. Not that I’m surprised, just pleased.”
“Really? Because I am totally surprised you have become quite annoying,” she said sarcastically before turning her back on me. She picked up a damp bar towel and started wiping the perfectly clean counter.
“Thank you for selecting it for me.”
She pivoted, glaring and shaking. “I want you to leave now.”
I reached into my pocket, withdrew a business card and left it lying on the counter before walking to the door. I pulled the handle and it shuddered in my hand—an antique door and an equally old doorknob. The brass bells mounted at the top of the door jangled loudly. It was all slow motion and surreal because the last thing I wanted to do was walk away from this girl. I didn’t know anything about her but I wanted to. That part wasn’t particularly odd. I was a psychiatrist, after all, and being intrigued by people’s eccentricities was part of who I was but that didn’t explain the strength of the pull she had on me.
I heard her laughing as I walked through the door, and it wasn’t smug or sarcastic. She was laughing as if at some great funny joke, one that I didn’t even feel was directed at me. I kept walking, but I wanted desperately to go back and share the laugh. Instead I told myself to let it go, to forget her.
Gigi was unforgettable.
The next day I left work, planning on working out at the gym, and realized I was hoping to catch another look at her only after I was sitting on the park bench across the road from the coffee shop, the sun’s heat blazing dow
n on my back. I didn’t go in for another latte and muffin. I did consider how pathetic it would be when the police showed up and I had to explain how it was that I wasn’t stalking her, I just wanted to offer her friendship. Thank God the police didn’t show up.
At seven-thirty the sun was setting behind me, the reflection of pink sky in the café’s windows. I hadn’t moved from the bench for hours even though I honestly couldn’t be certain the girl with cutting scars was inside. She appeared suddenly, her back to me as she locked the front door and walked away. She climbed into the back of a black sedan with darkened windows I’d missed seeing pull up to the curb.
The scene repeated for three evenings in a row until finally it was Saturday and I didn’t have to wait to get off work to see her, except she never exited the building. Likewise, Sunday.
By Monday I was frantic, imagining all manner of horrific scenarios. I braved going inside. As soon as I saw her standing behind the counter, I released a breath I wasn’t even aware I’d been holding. The cappuccino machine hissed as she frothed the top of a ceramic mug. She looked up from her task, carrying the steaming mug forward and setting it beside a pineapple-mango-papaya muffin already sitting on the counter. She tapped the side of the mug with her black-polished fingernail. “Today you drink inside, save a tree and all that.”
The door bells clanged loudly behind me as I closed the door. A quick look around the café assured me we were alone.
She kept talking. “Why are you spying on me?”
I crossed the room, pulling my wallet out of my hip pocket while I walked. “I’m not spying, I’m—” Hell, I didn’t know what to say. Swallowing hard, I admitted the truth. “The fact you cut yourself so many times and displayed them for the world to see instead of hiding them intrigued me.”
“You want to shrink-wrap my brain and offer me a prescription cure?”
“No!”
“You think I should be ashamed, remorseful, hide the ugly truth from the world.”
“What is the truth?”
She snickered and I realized only then that she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, which hid the scars. She pushed up her left sleeve to reveal a bright-red wound, scabbed over but still very new. “This one was for you.”
My forehead wrinkled as I processed what she was saying. “For me?”
“Sure. At some point I will hurt you or disappoint you or fail you. I cut myself as atonement.”
I hid my mouth behind a sip of cappuccino, asking, “How many psychiatrists have you told that one to?”
“You’re the first.”
“Riiight.”
“Are you accusing me of lying? Because I’m not! It’s the truth.”
Her youth was revealed in her quick defensiveness and I had to remind myself of that very important fact. She was young. I couldn’t counsel her without parental permission, and I was walking on very thin ice. “I believe you.”
Her eyes narrowed, and I realized she was assessing me as methodically as I had been evaluating her. Turning, I took my mug and muffin to a nearby table and sat down. I knew I should walk away. I told myself to run as fast and as far as I could, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave.
* * * * *
Gigi is still in surgery when I arrive, and so I take a seat in one of the well-worn waiting room chairs. I find myself alone in my vigil as it is still too early in the day for the scheduled surgeries. Televisions anchor the room, but the noise coming from them is a vague nuisance.
After a while the surgery waiting area fills up. Four hours have passed since I arrived. Long windows bank one wall and the rising sun announces the beginning of another day.
I select a magazine and pretend to read, but the words blur into fuzzy lines of meaningless nonsense. In the hallway a toddler throws a temper tantrum. I look at my watch and find I have lost an hour staring at the page. I let out a heavy sigh. Worried. Anxious. Words cannot even begin to describe what I am feeling. I stand and pace, but a few minutes later I sit again.
Two men enter the waiting room and even before they introduce themselves as such, I know that they are police detectives. So I’m to be questioned. Great.
I steady myself with a deep cleansing breath. I almost went to jail for this woman once, knowing I’d done nothing wrong. It had been close—a coin toss—heads I do time, tails I don’t. I call upon inner calm to keep my voice steady. I am more innocent this time than last, but I am not fool enough to deny that this looks bad.
“Dr. Kirkpatrick?”
“Yes, I am Dr. Kirkpatrick.”
The first one flashes a badge. “I’m Detective Carr,” he says, then nods to the other. “This is Detective Robbins.”
“Detectives.” I stand and walk across the room, away from curious ears, expecting them to follow. I have become the most entertaining thing happening in a room of people who would kill for something to take their minds off their own worries. The detectives fall in step quickly on either side of me.
“We’d like a moment of you time.”
I lead them to a room reserved for physicians to deliver news of how surgery went. I drop into a chair and motion to the empty seats across from me, assuming what I hope is an air of nonchalance. “Sit?”
Detectives Carr and Robbins exchange a glance before sitting down, a single chair between them. Detective Carr comes right to the point. “Did you see Ms. Marconi earlier this evening?”
“No.”
“Any idea what happened to her?”
“I haven’t seen Gigi in almost a decade.”
“The admitting physician speculated she was restrained and strangled.”
“Ten years,” I repeat. “That would comprise every day in between, including tonight. That is, if you are insinuating I had anything to do with what happened to her.”
The two men look at each other. Detective Carr says, “We’re merely doing some preliminary work. Can someone substantiate your whereabouts yesterday should events warrant it?”
That did it. I go from merely annoyed to pissed as hell in seconds. Standing, I grind my teeth together and count to ten before I growl, “You mean in case she dies before you have a chance to get answers from her?”
Stone-cold faces look back at me, but they don’t answer the question.
“I was with a friend all evening.”
“Good, then you have nothing to worry about.”
A tap at the door saves me from my worst thoughts. A nurse peeks in and tells me, “She’s out of surgery, Dr. Kirkpatrick. Dr Moyer said you could see her now.”
* * * * *
I enter a small room directly outside the operating room, a staging area before she is wheeled into recovery, usually utilized for patients not expected to survive. Their next of kin is invited in to say their prayers and goodbyes. It isn’t a good sign.
Even though I know what to expect, I am still taken aback by the sheer depersonalization of the process. In a drug-induced coma, she lies naked on a gurney, IV lines running to both arms. A respirator tube sticks out of her throat, the bandages around it dark-red with blood. A suction tube disappears into her mouth, and tape across her lips holds it in place. A feeding tube is inserted in her nose. Catheter tubing runs from between her legs to a clear plastic bag attached to the side of the bed. EKG wires run from leads stuck on her chest, and a sensor glowing red wraps around a finger on her left hand. Intermittent bleeps compete with the harsher sound of forced air emanating from the respirator.
She is nude. She will be covered with a sheet once she is deemed stable enough to go to recovery.
Trembling, I reach to touch her but immediately stop myself, focusing instead on data provided by the monitors at her side. If I didn’t believe Phillip, I cannot deny the truth of the machines. The woman on the gurney is barely alive—but is she Gigi?
I want to believe that this woman is not the girl from my past but my gut tells me that it is she, even though based on appearance alone I couldn’t venture a guess. Gigi as a teen was emaciated, dye
d her long hair black and hid behind elaborate eye makeup.
This woman is beautiful, even in her ashen and bruised state. Her hair is light, blonder than mine, and cut in a short pixie style. She is long and lean but curved with womanhood, her hips flared, her breasts full. She is covered with tattoos. The Gigi I knew had none. Aside from the obvious physical trauma she looks healthy.
To keep emotion at bay I quickly gather information, running my eyes across her naked body, inventorying her lesser injuries, most superficial…various bruises similar in size and shape to those made by a riding crop, a wooden ruler and a belt…all evidence of recent BDSM play. Slowly I take in the larger injuries—her left arm in a cast from her fingertips to her elbow, the bulky bandages and brace around her neck and the respirator forcing air in through the base of her neck.
Taking her right hand, I rotate her wrist and catch my breath when I see faded cutting scars. Gigi.
I turn, startled, at the sound of the door behind me opening. I expect Phillip and am surprised when it isn’t him but a petite woman with dark hair streaked gray wearing a navy-blue suit, who introduces herself as staff clergy. She wants to know if I am a friend or family, she wants to explain to me the extent of Gigi’s injuries, and she asks if I know Gigi’s religious affiliation before assuring me that she can pray with me regardless of denomination…all before I find my voice. I finally do. “I’m Dr. George Kirkpatrick. I don’t need any assistance, thank you.”
“Oh! I apologize. I thought—”
I turn my back on her, shutting her out, shutting her down, in full-fledged superiority mode, not as a Dominant but as doctor, leaving her no option but to exit without another word, taking her flustered embarrassment with her.
I would like to think, in what I consider my post-enlightenment era, that I am no longer this man, but I am, and the role is all too familiar, all too comfortable. Lifting Gigi’s chart, I find her initial trauma assessment written by attending physician David Marx, who listed cardiorespiratory arrest, severe laryngeal trauma. Additionally there are surgery notes, but I want more, answers I believe no one at this hospital can provide me with.