by Tami Hoag
Slowly Dana had reached up and touched her mother’s hand, felt the brush of fingers over fingers, skin on skin. She stared at the mirror, watching the image in the mirror mimic her movements exactly. Just as slowly, she lifted her hand away from her shoulder and reached toward the mirror. The monster in the mirror reached out toward her. Her fingertips touched the cold glass and the fingertips of the image at the same time.
Panic grasped her by the throat as realization dawned. She was looking at herself. The horror-movie image in the mirror was her own reflection. And she began to scream and scream and scream.
She didn’t scream now as she stared at herself in the glass. She just stood there stiffly, staring as water dripped from the ends of her boy-short blond hair. This was what she looked like now. Just as her friends had been unable to recognize the personality that now occupied her brain, she was still unable to recognize the face that now masked the front of that brain.
The doctors, the nurses, the friends, the family—all told her not to be too upset, that there was still much healing to be done, that the plastic surgeons still had work to do. She would be as good as new, eventually, they told her. They said it so frequently and so emphatically, Dana knew it had to be a lie. The truth was never that hard to sell.
She reached out and swiped the gathering fog off the mirror with her hand, clearing a swatch of harsh reality.
Her right orbital had been shattered, and the cheekbone along with it. An implant had restored the cheek in order to give a foundation for the damaged eye area, but the eye drooped slightly, nevertheless, pulling from the brow bone down, making it look like that part of her face might have started to melt from the inside out. A madman’s knife had carved a curved outline around the apple of her left cheek, gouging deep below the cheekbone, slicing flesh and muscle. A marionette line hooked downward from the right corner of her mouth.
Picasso couldn’t have done a better job of distorting the female countenance.
Masterpiece. A voice whispered the word through her mind every time she stared at this reflection. Masterpiece. And every time she heard it, a fist of fear squeezed her heart.
She swiped a hand across the mirror again, wiping too low to again reveal the reflection of her face. Instead, in the spotlighted area of glass, framed by obscuring fog, was what she had come to call the Mark of the Devil. No matter how many times she looked at it, her heart’s immediate reaction was always one big thump.
The number 9 had been carved in the center of her chest, from the base of her collarbone to the midpoint between her breasts. The number had a quality as sinister as the dark voice that drifted through her mind. Coiled like a snake at the top, the number’s tail appeared to flick and twitch when she moved.
It must have looked shocking when she had been brought to the emergency room, a garish open wound, dripping blood. From a distance it had probably looked as if it had been hastily painted on her pale, delicate skin by a messy graffiti artist. Healed, the scar was raised and deep red and weirdly smooth to the touch. She touched it now, traced it with her fingertips.
Masterpiece.
She should have been dead. She should have been the ninth victim of a serial killer. But she had survived.
Why? For what?
To start her life all over again as someone she didn’t know.
The mirror had fogged over again, and Dana realized the air in the bathroom had become a suffocating cloud of moisture. Water pooled around her feet. She looked down, confused, then turned toward the shower stall. She had left the water running. Suddenly she was aware of the sound of it like a pounding-hard rain. She had left her wet clothes to plug the drain. The room was flooding.
She knew the feeling.
* * *
“SO TODAY’S THE DAY. You’re going home,” Dr. Dewar said. “How are you feeling about that, Dana?”
“Great,” Dana said without emotion, knowing her neuropsychologist would not be satisfied with her answer.
“Would you like to elaborate on that?”
“No.”
Janelle Dewar sighed. She was a woman on the downside of middle age with a softly rounded figure always draped in flowing skirts and tunic tops and adorned with chunky art-fair jewelry. Her shoulder-length brown hair was thick and liberally threaded with gray. She was a kind, practical woman with the patience of a saint.
She had been working with brain-injured people her entire medical career. Nothing surprised her. Nothing threw her for a loop. She never judged. She never told patients they shouldn’t feel one way or another. She was a rock, an anchor for people whose brains were pulling and pushing their emotions in all directions.
The idea of leaving Dr. Dewar and not having her steadying influence day in and day out terrified Dana. But what good would it do her to elaborate on that? It was time for her to leave the Weidman Center. That was that.
They sat in Dr. Dewar’s cozy conference room—Dana, Dr. Dewar, and Lynda. Dr. Dewar preferred to call it her den, to give a less institutional impression, just as she preferred her patients to call her by her first name, so she seemed more like a friend than a physician. The office was furnished with comfortable oversize armchairs, a love seat, a coffee table. There were large, leafy plants near sliding glass doors that opened onto a small private garden courtyard.
Dana stared out the window. A steady, soft rain was falling from a drab gray sky. How did she feel about going home? She would be going back to the house she had grown up in. She felt like she would be expected to fit back into a life to which she no longer belonged. She worried her mother would expect her to fall into place like a missing puzzle piece, like nothing had ever happened or changed. But everything was different. Everything had changed.
She worried that people who had known her would look at her like she was a freak. She had been a story on the national news—the abducted newscaster, then the victim who killed the serial killer. People who had followed the story would know as many details about what she had endured as she did. How did she feel about going home to that? Apprehension and dread pressed down on her like an anvil.
“Dana?” Dr. Dewar prompted.
Dana pretended not to hear her.
Her mother tried to fill the awkward silence with awkward talk. “We’re so excited to have Dana coming home. After everything she’s been through, after all her hard work here, we’ll finally have some time to be a family again, just be together, maybe take a vacation somewhere warm. It’s a new beginning.”
Under the sugary enthusiasm, her mother had to be as anxious as Dana was. Dana could hear the edge of it in her mother’s voice. She could smell it beneath the cloying layer of perfume her mother had put on to mask any nervous perspiration. Lynda would be taking home her daughter, a virtual stranger.
“It is a new beginning,” Dr. Dewar said. “And, as exciting as that may be, it’s normal to also be a little apprehensive about this transition,” she reminded them. “For both of you. There’s going to be a period of adjustment. Don’t make the mistake of setting unrealistic expectations. Don’t put yourselves under that kind of pressure.”
“No,” Dana’s mother said. “No pressure. No pressure at all. We’ll take everything a day at a time. I just want to keep a positive outlook. We could have lost her. We’re so lucky to still have her—”
“Don’t talk about me like I can’t hear you,” Dana said.
“I’m not talking about you like you can’t hear me. I’m telling Dr. Dewar how I feel,” her mother said. “You can do the same. If you chose to participate, you wouldn’t feel left out.”
In her mind, Dana frowned, though it was doubtful anyone noticed. Her face had been carved into a permanent frown.
“I’m just saying I feel lucky to have you alive and with us,” her mother said. “How do you feel?”
“I feel so lucky,” Dana said so flatly that her answer was probably cons
trued as sarcasm, though she wasn’t sure if that was how she had meant it or not.
Her mother looked away, upset.
Dr. Dewar broke the tension. “Dana, what are you going to do each day when you get home?”
Dana felt herself freeze for a second as the answer eluded her. She felt ambushed. No one had told her there would be a quiz.
“Breathe,” the doctor said softly.
Dana drew a breath and let it go.
“What are you going to do each day when you get home?”
“The same things I do here,” Dana said. “Follow my routines. Implement my strategies.”
“I’ve spoken at length with Dr. Burnette,” Dr. Dewar said. “Do you remember who that is, Dana?”
Dana concentrated on her phone, clicking through a series of commands, bringing the name Burnette, Dr. Roberta up from her contacts list. She read aloud the note she had made to go with the name. “Dr. Rob-erta Bur-nette is the thera-pist I will be working with when I get home. She received her under-grad-uate and doc-tor-ate degrees at Purdue Univer-sity.”
It frustrated her that she still stumbled over multisyllabic words when reading aloud. She recognized and understood the words, but there was still a slight disconnect getting them translated from visual recognition to speech. She looked up at Dr. Dewar to gauge her response.
The doctor arched an eyebrow, a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. “Someone’s been busy on the computer.”
“I have,” Dana said, missing the intended humor.
“Dana’s always been a research fanatic,” her mother said. “She was born to be a reporter.”
“I’m glad you’re back at it,” Dr. Dewar said. “Curiosity is a great sign. It tells me you’re making strides to overcome your adynamia. You’re rediscovering your passion for something.”
Dana said nothing. She had taken it as an assignment to find out about the new therapist. Research was work, not passion. Research was a strategy against being taken by surprise. But she kept that to herself. Adynamia—her apparent lack of motivation and enthusiasm—was her enemy. It was always the first topic of conversation in her evaluations, the stumbling block that impeded her from progressing toward normalcy.
Dana felt the words adynamic and bored should be considered interchangeable. Eight months into rehab, she was bored and listless. As much as the frightened, apprehensive part of her wanted to cling to the routine and familiarity of this place, another part of her craved stimulus and wanted to move on to life beyond the walls of the Weidman Center. The internal conflict left her feeling impatient and irritable.
“Her office is only about half an hour from our house,” her mother said. “I can run you down there and go do my errands—”
“I can drive myself,” Dana said. “I have a car. I can drive a car.”
Her mother frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetheart—”
Dana shot her a hard look. “I don’t care what you think.”
“Dana . . .”
“Lynda . . .”
“If the route isn’t too complicated, it should be fine for Dana to drive herself,” Dr. Dewar said.
“See?” Dana said.
Her mother frowned harder.
“Go together the first few times,” Dewar said. “Then start with short drives close to home on your own.”
“I’m definitely going with you to start,” Lynda said firmly. “And that’s the end of it.”
“I’m not sixteen,” Dana grumbled.
“No,” Dr. Dewar said. “You’re not sixteen. You have a brain injury. Cut your mother some slack. She needs to see that you can do things for yourself, Dana. That’s only fair.”
“I don’t want to be fair,” Dana said without emotion. “I want to be normal.”
Her mother pressed a hand to her lips as tears welled up in her eyes. She looked away, out the window, not wanting to face the truth—that her daughter wasn’t normal, that she might never be considered “normal” again.
“You have a new normal now,” Dr. Dewar said. “And you’ll build a new normal every day. You’ve got a mountain to climb—both of you. And you do that one step at a time. There will be many days when you feel you’re taking one step forward only to fall three steps back. You just have to keep trying. That’s all you can do. Use the tools we gave you here at the center, and do the best you can every day.”
5
Dana was quiet as they started the long car ride home through the rolling southern Indiana countryside. The rain had stopped, but swollen gray clouds still crowded the sky. Fall was sweeping down from the north on a blustery wind. The grass was still a vibrant green, but shades of red and orange rippled through the trees. The leaves on the white birch trees fluttered like golden spangles as they passed.
For a while she tried to look out the window at the countryside, but the dips and turns in the road upset her equilibrium, and nausea forced her eyes forward. She fidgeted in her seat, tugging on the shoulder strap.
“How long until we get there?” she asked, hoping the answer would be sooner rather than later.
Her mother sighed. “About an hour and a half.”
“Did I ask you that already?”
“That’s okay, sweetie. I don’t mind.”
“I don’t mean to keep asking the same thing over and over.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I’m sure it’s really annoying. I would be annoyed if I had to listen to someone ask the same questions over and over.”
“It’s all right, honey,” her mother said. “I don’t care if you ask the same question a million times.”
“Of course, if someone asked me the same question over and over, I might not remember that they had asked already,” Dana pointed out. “So I guess that’s the bright side.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“I should write down in my phone what I already asked so I can check to make sure I haven’t already asked it.”
She pulled her iPhone out of the pouch of her oversize pink hoodie and flicked a finger across the screen to the notes icon and began to type.
QUESTIONS ASKED
3:17 PM Q: How long 2 home?
A:
She couldn’t remember the answer.
Frustrated, she heaved a sigh. She felt stupid, though she knew she wasn’t. She was intelligent, had always been an A student and an overachiever. The fact that her short-term memory came and went didn’t make her less intelligent. It just made her feel that way—which made her think other people would feel the same way about her. They would think of her as brain-damaged. They wouldn’t want to be around her because the idea made them uncomfortable. Everyone had loved Before Dana. No one would have chosen After Dana.
“Why didn’t Roger come today?” she asked.
She looked at her mother, gauged the beat of silence, the deep breath, the way her hands tightened and relaxed on the steering wheel.
“Did I ask you that already too?”
The forced little smile. “It’s okay.”
Dana looked down at her phone and typed.
3:26 PM Q: Y didn’t Rgr come 2 get me?
“Roger wanted to come today,” her mother said, “but he had commitments.”
ANSWER: He didn’t want to.
“Then he didn’t really want to come, did he?” Dana said without emotion. “If he really wanted to come, he wouldn’t have made other plans, would he?”
“That’s not true, Dana,” her mother said. “Roger’s running for reelection, and he’s still running the business. He has a busy schedule that isn’t always under his control. That doesn’t mean you’re not important to him.”
“Just that other people are more important,” Dana pointed out. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t like him anyway.”
Her mother’s ja
w dropped. “Dana! That’s not true!”
“Lynda! I’m pretty sure it is.”
“You and Roger have always gotten along!”
“But I don’t think I like him,” Dana insisted.
“I don’t know why you’d think that. You just don’t remember; that’s all. He’s been like a father to you since you were fourteen. He’s been there for everything since your dad died—your school activities, graduation, college, moving you to Minneapolis. You don’t remember any of that?”
Dana shrugged. Her memories of Roger Mercer were as adynamic as she was. They evoked no strong emotions in her. He was simply present in the pictures in her mind and the photographs on her phone. When she looked at those images, she couldn’t say what she felt about him. But she knew she didn’t like the man who had come to see her during her stay at the Weidman Center. He had shown up exactly once a month for a few hours on a Sunday. He had come out of duty and nothing else as far as Dana was concerned. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t want to look at her. He grabbed any excuse to leave the room—a phone call, a coffee run, the men’s room, to check on the baseball game on the television in the visitors’ lounge. Maybe he had been close to Before Dana, but he wanted nothing to do with After Dana.
She supposed she couldn’t blame him. She would have preferred Before Dana as well, but she didn’t have a choice.
“You’re just tired,” her mother declared.
“Am I?”
“Like Dr. Dewar said: Leaving the center is a big step. It’s a positive step, but it’s stressful, too. You have a lot of emotions swirling around inside of you—good and bad.”
“Not really,” Dana lied. “I’m adynamic, remember? I don’t have emotions.”
If her mother was going to say something, she swallowed the words back and kept her eyes on the road. One of the emotions Dana had just denied having bit her in the conscience. Guilt.