Stolen Child

by Laurie Gough

  Meanwhile, Rob is like the Rock of Gibraltar. He told everyone he works for that he can’t work right now because of Quinn (which I’ve also done, which means zero income for the foreseeable future). Rob also gave up producing a play for Theatre Wakefield. He doesn’t talk to any friends or play his guitar or build his canoe in his shop. All his energy and attention are devoted to getting Quinn better and doing ERP with him. I’m in awe of him to tell you the truth. It’s incredible what a crisis can bring out in a person. I don’t even think he knew he had this inside him, this unwavering dedication, this crystal-clear focus where all that matters is getting Quinn back. I remember from my years travelling that sometimes things happen to you that are shocking and scary and you end up reacting in a way that’s surprising to you. You end up seeing parts of yourself that you didn’t know were there, things that have never been called upon before. It’s not always what you assumed was there inside you. And it’s not always good. But sometimes it is. Sometimes you just have to forge ahead and do what you need to do even though everything feels hopeless. Because what else is there? But it wears you down. I’m worn down. It’s really hard for me to see Quinn like this, a faint memory of the boy he was, slipping away from me by the day, the threads that tie us together as frail as a spider web. It’s also hard to do those ERP exercises with him. I really suck at it, actually. It requires a level of patience that I’m learning I don’t possess. Mostly, I find it emotionally devastating to see Quinn go through it all. I don’t know how I’d handle this without Rob. I’m barely hanging on as it is. We’re both so hollowed out we’re like ghosts you can see through.

  Laurie

  CHAPTER 19

  “Come on, sweetie. We’ll be there soon. Try to just keep walking.” Quinn was taking forever to walk to the children’s hospital in Ottawa. I’d parked that morning in a nearby neighbourhood to avoid the hospital parking lot and now wondered if we’d ever make it there. Everything took so much more time now since Quinn was continually getting stuck or backtracking. Simple things like getting dressed and tying his shoes could take half an hour. If we showed any impatience at all he’d sense it and it made everything worse.

  On arrival at the emergency wing, we were greeted at the door by a tall tree-limbed woman with purple Tina Fey glasses and hennaed red hair whose domineering stance and unsmiling face made me think she might moonlight as a bouncer. Her name tag said Olive. She asked why we were there. “My son is having some problems. OCD. It’s serious. I don’t know where else to go.” Olive gazed down at Quinn and her previously stern face opened up like a rose in a time-lapse photography film as her smile spread out for him. After I handed over his medical card she showed us to a waiting room of couches, where a TV played soundless cartoons and a few kids were lethargically playing on the floor. Quinn didn’t look at the TV — he’d never been into cartoons — and peered blankly into the middle distance as we took our chairs.

  Soon, a loudspeaker voice called us into an admitting office where I explained Quinn’s situation to two nurses who seemed concerned, especially since Quinn had been stuck in their office doorway for several minutes, embarrassed that he couldn’t cross the threshold. I felt horrible for dragging him into this stressful, unfamiliar situation but felt I had no other choice. When Quinn finally made it into their little office, they weighed him (seventy pounds, “not an ounce of fat,” they teased playfully) and took his blood pressure. Then we went back to the waiting room. While there, we watched a couple rush through the hospital entrance with their kid who’d just broken his arm playing soccer. The mother was almost hysterical as she let loose her breathless story to Olive. Clearly this couple felt the whole building should cease activity immediately to commence the repair of their kid’s bent, soccer-smacked arm. I was overcome with envy. It’s only a broken arm! I wanted to shout. Do you know how lucky you are to have a kid with a broken arm? I’d kill for that!

  It was one of those moments when I thought, Did I appreciate how carefree my life was before all this happened? Did I?

  Olive was having none of the broken-arm drama and made them follow the same rules as the rest of us. I felt like running over to hug her.

  Two hours later another voice called us into another waiting room. This one was much smaller than the previous waiting room. It had four chairs, no windows, and what appeared to be a one-way mirror. I wondered if someone was watching us from the other side. We spent the next several hours waiting in this room. Quinn didn’t stop moving for a second, continually popping up to spring his hands onto the facing wall and chant, “I will win the 2024 Olympics, one hundred metres. I will win!” The rest of the time he placed his hand on his heart and looked up at the ceiling to repeat the same mantra. Since the day he’d climbed the tree and let my dad go, he’d probably repeated this mantra one hundred times a day. It was pretty much all he said.

  Finally, a young man named Noah, who had brown tousled hair and wore running shoes, bounced through the door, apologizing for the long wait and explaining that he was a social worker in psychiatrics. Psychiatrics. The word alarmed me, reminding me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Immediately, however, I liked Noah.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said to Quinn. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  Quinn reddened and managed to get out the words, “I’m just not … happy.” This was going to be like pulling teeth, I thought. Quinn hated discussing what was happening to him, even to us.

  Noah turned to me instead and I explained what he needed to hear. At one point he asked Quinn if he heard voices. Quinn shook his head. I realized Noah was trying to differentiate between Quinn hearing voices and an OCD bully demanding he do the compulsions. Somehow, Noah got Quinn talking more and they established a rapport, mostly about mountain biking. It didn’t take long for Noah, and the doctor who came in later, to ascertain that Quinn was experiencing chronic OCD and needed help immediately. Even though this hospital was in Ontario, Noah got the ball rolling for us on the Quebec side so we’d be bumped up on that two-year waiting list. The goal was to get him to see an OCD children’s specialist at a psychiatric hospital in Quebec.

  I should mention here that from the friends I’d told about our situation so far — who were steadfast in helping us however they could, researching OCD themselves, and sending me links — one thing kept coming up. People were asking if Quinn’s OCD could be a condition called PANDAS, which is OCD brought on by a strep infection. I’d looked into this early on but Quinn didn’t fit the profile. In kids with PANDAS, OCD almost always comes on full-blown overnight. Quinn’s OCD had come on gradually, triggered over the months from the emotional trauma of losing his grandpa. Still, I asked Noah if we could test Quinn’s blood for strep, just in case. They tested him that day. Since I never heard back, I can only assume he tested negative.

  When we left the children’s hospital, the sun was setting ruby red over the Ottawa horizon. Quinn spent half an hour getting back to the car, a ten-minute walk away. He had to keep stopping to stare up at the sky, hand on heart, and repeat his new chant about winning the hundred-metre race in the 2024 Olympics. He also kept picking up leaves to clutch them and walking backward because he’d “made a mistake” somehow. He got really distressed at one point when a stick he saw on the ground wasn’t lying right. Later, he said that the whole walk had been a five on the anxiety scale, that being in new places was torture because there was so much stuff on the ground. By stuff I think he meant leaves and sticks.

  Watching my son struggle on the street like that — mumbling to himself as he talked up at the sky, walking backward entire blocks — frightened me to the core. It felt like we were trudging across a bleak tundra rather than through an Ottawa neighbourhood. For the first time I wondered if he’d have to be institutionalized. I was aghast that something that looked like madness could descend like a cyclone out of nowhere into a bright little boy’s life.

  Quinn, you were skipping along through your childh
ood so sweetly. Like one of your coloured pencil drawings you were always adding more colour and cars and trees to. Why did you stop?

  That night at bedtime, I overheard Quinn telling Rob that he had to tap my dad’s picture thirty-six times to win the Olympics. Quinn was kneeling on the dresser, ready to start tapping.

  “Thirty-six times? Where did that number come from?” asked Rob. “Why don’t you try bargaining with your OCD like we bargained in Mexico? Tell the bully, ‘Thirty-six times? Are you kidding me? How about five times?’”

  Quinn actually laughed a little. Rob continued. “And then OCD comes back and says, ‘What? That’s insulting! Thirty times, final offer!’ And then, Quinn, you say to the OCD, ‘The guy down the street is telling me only five times. Give me a break here, dude, or I’m walking.’” Rob stomped across the bedroom as if on his way to another OCD bully with a better offer. “And then OCD calls you back and says, ‘Okay, okay, how about ten times? We have a deal my friend? Ten times? Let’s shake.’”

  Quinn’s face brightened. “Okay, wait, let me try that.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds and when he opened them, he said, “Okay, I made a deal. Eight times.” He proceeded to tap the picture eight times. When he jumped off the dresser he looked almost triumphant.

  I gave a silent thanks to the chance that had brought Rob my way fourteen years before.

  Later that night I was in the living room reading yet another book about OCD — the only kind of book I ever read anymore — when Rob came in. I asked him how he did it, how he could stay so positive in the face of losing Quinn. “Doesn’t this whole thing depress the hell out of you?”

  “Of course it does, but so what? That’s a small price to pay. Staying positive is the only option. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters except.…” He stopped talking and sat down on the couch. He closed his eyes. This was the first sign I’d seen of a breakdown in Rob since all this had begun.

  “Except what?”

  He opened his eyes again. They were wet. “Getting him back.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Let’s just go over your questionnaire again,” said the hypnotherapist. She and I were sitting at her kitchen table while Quinn was by himself in the living room. “So, Rob lost his mother when he was eight?” she asked, reading my questionnaire.

  “What? No. God, no. His mother lost her mother when she was eight. In the 1930s.”

  “Oh, sorry, I see.” She looked down at my questionnaire again. It was obvious she hadn’t read it until now.

  I was getting impatient with this nonsense. I’d liked what she’d done before with the coloured feet and was hoping she’d do something like that again. “But what does that have to do with Quinn’s OCD? OCD is genetic and, in his case, it was triggered by my dad’s death.”

  “Actually, it has everything to do with it. Emotional trauma from his paternal grandmother could be the reason he’s going through this today. This might be the key right here.” She was pointing at the questionnaire excitedly. “Rob’s mother losing her own mother, I really think we have something here.” She looked at me intently, her eyes reminding me of a faraway glassy lake.

  She then quizzed me about my own mother and how her mother had developed Alzheimer’s (although in the 1940s it wasn’t called Alzheimer’s but a hardening of the arteries leading to the brain) when my mother was sixteen. “So, in effect,” said the hypnotherapist, “your mother lost her mother when she was young, even though her mother didn’t die right away. And that’s similar to Rob’s mother losing her mother when she was young.” When she read the part of my questionnaire where I discussed Quinn’s birth she nearly hyperventilated. “Oh, my, this is making so much sense,” she said. “Since Quinn was delivered by an emergency C-section he developed colic.”

  “Pardon?” I interrupted. “There’s no evidence that C-sections cause colic. I never read about that connection. Colic is something to do with the nervous system not being fully developed.”

  She continued reading, ignoring me. “And he was taken away from you right after the birth. He didn’t get to bond with you immediately. This, combined with both his grandmothers losing their mothers. Interesting. This is all telling me something: He has a bonding anxiety issue.” She slapped her pen down on the table as if that sealed the matter.

  Whatever concessions I was willing to make for her flakiness before had drained away to feeling sheer annoyance. Later in the conversation, she seemed flummoxed that Quinn’s OCD had become stronger, not weaker, since he’d resolved the grandpa issue. Resolving the grandpa issue up in the pine tree was something she’d taken full credit for. I told her I’d been reading about how common it is for OCD to switch themes but that didn’t interest her. She also seemed baffled that Quinn’s childhood had been happy until now, and that he came from a loving family. What puzzled her most of all was the lack of known murders and suicides in the lives of his ancestors.

  “Anyway, I think you’ll see a huge improvement when I’m finished with him today. Hypnosis cures OCD with a ninety-three percent success rate,” she stated flatly.

  “That’s incredible,” I said. “I find it hard to believe, though. I can’t find anything at all about that online.”

  “You can’t trust the internet,” she said.

  “Can I ask where you got that statistic? I’m just curious so I can find it myself.”

  She thought for a moment and said, “The American …” and then trailed off, adding that it was from a real scientific study. When I asked her again why everyone with OCD wasn’t running to the nearest hypnotist if it was so wildly successful, she said, “Because it’s not mainstream.”

  I sighed. I realized this was probably another $125 down the drain. But it’s my own fault for being here with this crackpot lady. Maybe I should just run into the living room right now, grab Quinn, and we can flee out of here.

  Instead, I waited in her kitchen drinking peppermint tea while she and Quinn had their session. At the very least she’ll put him in a relaxed state, I thought, give him a forty-five minute vacation from OCD. Half an hour later, they emerged, she leading the way. An unnaturally large smile was stretching her face open. It was hard to tell what was going on with Quinn. He definitely seemed perkier than when we’d arrived, but he also seemed to be trying to tell me something, like, That was stupid.

  As he was tying his shoelaces to leave I noticed his fists were clenched into balls, which made tying his laces extremely awkward. I couldn’t help myself and blurted out, “Oh, Quinn, sweetie, you’re still clenching your fists.” I was on the verge of tears. I’d just handed over my cash to this woman who was so strongly convinced she’d just helped him and here he was doing one of his most intensely debilitating OCD rituals. And just five minutes after their session had ended.

  Back in the car, Quinn immediately said, “That did nothing. She kept talking about family secrets. I didn’t know what she was talking about.”

  A wave of outrage swelled through me. “Family secrets? Like Rob’s mother losing her mother in the 1930s, or my grandmother having Alzheimer’s? How are those secrets? Anyway, let’s not worry about it. Some people are just plain wacky, Quinn. At least we tried.”

  Still, I was silently steaming as we rolled out of her driveway. Family secrets? What was she thinking saying that to a child? We drove to a nearby pharmacy at a mall. I’d promised Quinn I’d buy him a toy car for having to go through this hellish week of appointments — besides the children’s hospital and the hypnotist we were also seeing our family doctor the next day and a private psychologist in Ottawa the day after that.

  Like many pharmacies, this one had a turnstile to enter and a different turnstile to exit. After I paid the cashier and had walked back out into the mall, I noticed Quinn was still inside. Over the displays of shampoo I called to him. “Are you coming? Let’s go get some lunch somewhere.”

  He was just standing there, ins
ide the pharmacy. He shook his head. I immediately realized what was happening. He couldn’t exit the way he’d entered. The turnstile only goes one way and he was stuck. Suddenly, I was fuming, not at Quinn, of course, but at the hypnotist. Or maybe the person I was most angry at was myself for dragging poor Quinn to see someone like that. What had I been thinking?

  I stalked back into the pharmacy and bent down to level my eyes on his. “Quinn, my love, this isn’t your fault. I’m going to get you out of here and then we’re going back to have a talk with her.”

  Quinn nodded. I did “the yank,” as his soccer coach had done, literally dragging him out of there. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Back at her house, we sat in the car for ten minutes in the driveway. I didn’t know if I should go through with confronting her or not. What good would it do? It was Quinn who finally convinced me. “You should try to get your money back. It didn’t work at all,” he said quietly from the back seat. He’s right, I thought. At the very least I’m showing Quinn that I’m not a chickenshit, that I confront people when the situation warrants it. This warrants it. I wouldn’t ask for my money back but I wanted to ask her again about those claims of the success rate of hypnotism on OCD.

  I rang her doorbell, my heart hammering, my breathing ragged. When she opened the door I watched a glimmer of unease pass over her face like a dark cloud passing over the sun. It must have been a shock to see me in that state. “I just wanted you to know,” I said, “that Quinn’s OCD is as bad as ever. He just got stuck at the pharmacy.”

  She didn’t flinch or smile. “Well, it can’t be expected to work right away. My kind of work takes patience.”