Piper, Once & Again

by Caroline E. Zani

  “Listen now. Everything is taken care of. I heard your parents talking with a friend of yours on the phone—Sharon, I think—something about your neighbor taking care of your pets.”

  Pets?! This guy is pushing it. But I’m too tired to argue. Why am I so tired?

  Her thoughts were swimming and she just wanted to be at home.

  “Okay. So if I came in with a panic attack days ago why am I still here and why don’t I remember anything after that night?”

  She looked at the doctor, squinting. She realized he was a little nervous, a fact she found quite funny.

  “Well, you see Catherine, you—”

  She shot upright in the bed and pointed at him.

  “Catherine? Who is Catherine? My name is Piper. It’s Piper for Christ’s sake!”

  He looked at her with what she thought might be a smirk and asked her if she’d like something that would help her relax.

  When she only stared at him, he continued, “Well, yes. We are trying to get to the bottom of that. Your license reads Piper but your mother insists your name is Catherine. If you want me to call you Piper ….”

  She sprung out of the bed then, yelling.

  “Get me out of here! I don’t know what the hell my mother told you or what’s going on but I, Piper, not Catherine, am going home!”

  She lunged toward Dr. Randolph, only because he was standing close to the door that she wanted to get through. As she got close enough to see droplets of sweat on his wrinkled brow, he pulled a syringe from his pocket and when he saw his opportunity, stepped forward.

  Her weak legs gave out and sent her crumbling to the floor as the doctor ever so gently injected into Piper’s arm the sedative that would render her once again completely helpless. As he called for a nurse to come assist him, Piper thought of the Guiding Light, the soap opera she enjoyed with her Grandmother after school when she was in middle school. The dramatic hospital scenes always made her afraid of ever having to go to one. And now she realized that it was far more frightening than the one hour show could ever convey.

  The light dimmed in front of her eyes and the last thing she heard was her mother’s fading screams.

  “Catherine! Catherine? Mother Mary, please save her!”

  Chapter 22

  THIS TIME SHE WOKE UP in a smaller room, with only a clock on the wall behind a metal cage. She turned her head and tried to rub her eyes, but she couldn’t move her hands.

  What the hell? Who tied me down?

  “Help! Somebody? Anybody! Is anyone there?”

  She heard hurried footsteps and garbled voices in the hall outside the room, and when the door opened, in spilled shouts and cries and harsh fluorescent light.

  “Catherine? Or do you prefer Cathy?”

  The blonde nurse standing over Piper spoke in a voice she remembered from her sleep.

  “Where is Dr. Randolph? Actually, no. I don’t care. Where is my father? I want to see my father, please.”

  Piper’s voice began to crack when she thought about her Dad and how she hadn’t spent much time with him since she and Paul moved from the coast. Paul, oh Paul, I miss you, I need you. Her thoughts were beginning to spin and she could feel that familiar choking sensation rising in her throat again. She pushed it away and tried to breathe deeply to calm herself. The nurse took her pulse and calmly told her that her parents could come during visiting hours which would begin in about a half hour.

  Piper felt herself losing her grip as her impatience tugged at her like a child wanting a partner in crime. Begging, seducing. She sighed heavily.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the nurse quite politely.

  “Elise,” she responded in a friendly manner.

  “Rachel? That’s a pretty name.”

  Piper looked at her with an accusatory glare.

  “How would you like it if people called you by a name that’s wasn’t yours?”

  The young nurse shook her head with what Piper understood to be a mix of impatience and pity as she wrote something in the chart at the foot of the bed, the chart Piper would have kicked across the room if her feet had not been bound.

  She watched the clock on the wall and when twenty-seven minutes had passed, the door opened and her parents stepped in, cautiously.

  “Daddy!” she screamed, like a frightened child.

  “Daddy, I … I want to go home.”

  Her mother, startled, hung back in the doorway with an expression one might say was doubt mixed with intolerance.

  “Hey, Sweet Pea. How ya feelin’?”

  His voice was just as it had always sounded, so familiar and comforting. Her dad had been her best friend when she was growing up, always making her feel like the most important person in the world. He understood her and knew what made her tick when so many others hadn’t.

  “Dad, what’s going on, why am I here? Why is everyone calling me Catherine?” She whispered this last question so as not to get her mother riled up or bring back that nurse who seemed friendly.

  “Listen, honey, you’re here because you’ve been through a really awful time. The accident, Paul’s funeral, and, well, you just need some rest. You’ve lost weight, you were dehydrated and ….”

  Piper relaxed then as felt her father was making more sense than anyone else had since she woke up. Dehydration, weight loss. These were ideas she could understand and tolerate; they made sense.

  “Dad, why am I restrained? Why have I been here for days, and why is everyone calling me Catherine?”

  She noticed her father flinch as she said the name.

  “Dad?”

  She was not going to let him off the hook.

  “Dad, what?”

  He turned to his wife and nodded. Piper’s mother held a tissue in one hand that fluttered nervously near her throat. Reluctantly, she turned and left the room.

  In the silence of the room, Piper laid her head back and relaxed her neck, which she until now, hadn’t realized had become stiff. She turned her head slightly to look at her father, and saw his exhaustion, his worry, his grief written in the lines of his face. He slowly reached for her hand and as he did, tears silently rolled off his chin and onto his faded Levi’s.

  “You’re my little girl, right?” He asked this and struggled to keep from crumbling.

  She nodded, her own eyes now flooding, too. She wanted to wipe her face dry, but her hands were rendered useless by the leather straps.

  “This is hard, you know? I … I don’t … know if I can … I don’t know what to say, what the doctors want me to tell you.”

  She craned her neck now, lifting it as high as she could and clenched her fists.

  “The doctors? Screw the doctors! What the hell do they know about me? Dad, come on, talk to me. Tell me what you have to say. Please! I’m your daughter.”

  He looked into her dark, watery eyes, the eyes he had so loved since the first time he saw them that cold January night long ago. His baby, his only child. “Honey, the doctors say that you suffered a hell of a blow with all you’ve been through that… that you … it’s just that you shouldn’t be by yourself right now and—”

  She interrupted him for the first time in her life. “Dad! Dad. Listen to me, look at me.” She paused until he looked at her again. Not believing what came out of her mouth, she asked, “What’s my name, Dad?”

  He looked at her, stared into her eyes and said, quietly, “Piper. Piper.”

  Her heart leapt into her throat, her relief a welcomed friend. “Thank God!” she said. “So why the hell is Mom and everyone around here calling me Catherine? I don’t get it!”

  Her father sat back, taking his hand with him.

  “Your mother asked everyone to call you Catherine. It’s, it’s hard to ….”

  He rubbed his eyes and stretched back against the seat and looked up at the ceiling as if there might be some help up there.

  “Listen, I’m not supposed to discuss any of this with you. I don’t want to make anything worse for you.
I ….”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Dad, I’m tied to a goddamn bed in what I’m guessing is the psych ward of a hospital. I don’t see how you telling me the truth is going to make things worse. I trust you, only you, Dad.”

  He took a deep breath and looked at his daughter in the bed, so lost and pale. He had vowed to always protect her, no matter how old she got. Promises to his child were more important than any promise he made to doctors now or in the past. And his wife, well, for once, he thought, she was not going to tell him what he could or couldn’t say to his own daughter.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you everything. What the hell? It’s all gone to hell now anyway. It’s about time you knew ….”

  Piper took a deep breath and told herself to stay calm, to listen and, for once in her life, have patience.

  “Do you remember, kiddo, when you were really small? I’m talking four or five years old. Can you remember back that far?”

  She nodded, brows furrowed, “I think so. I remember kindergarten, I think. Or maybe first grade?”

  He nodded and cleared his throat, something he did when he was nervous. “Do you remember having an imaginary friend, someone you talked to at night?”

  She shook her head, “No, not really, I mean, well, vaguely. Why?” Just then she had a scent-ache of lavender and of the seashore. And she was there riding a black horse that looked similar to Valo. But who was that boy with her? She took a deep breath and let it come rushing out.

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “Well, Honey, when you were small, real small, you would talk to someone who wasn’t there, and it would really scare the hell out of your poor mother. I mean, she just … she just about lost it a couple of times there. You would talk about this friend, I can’t remember the name. It was a boy, though, strange name. Anyway, you’d talk about him like he was right there in the room with us at the dinner table, or watching TV. I have to say, it was a little strange, but a lot of kids have imaginary friends, especially only children. That’s what they said—at first anyhow.”

  Piper tried to pull herself up, feeling the restraints pulling at her ankles.

  “They? Who’s they?”

  He smiled at her, wanting to keep her calm and feeling sudden relief that he could talk about this for the first time without being scolded or hushed.

  “Well, there were a lot of ‘theys’ back then, ya know? First it was your pediatrician, then the psychologists. But your mother, she wouldn’t stop there. She wanted someone to explain everything to her and some of these quacks, they just talk about theories and bullshit. So, anyway, she brought you to a priest, do you remember?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Yeah, talk about crazy. Your mother didn’t tell me she was taking you. The only way I found out was because he called me. Your mother told him you needed an exorcism, that you were possessed. Well, I told your mother then that she had pushed just too far. No child of mine was possessed. I mean I believe that can happen to people, sure, I think it’s real. But not you, not my baby girl. I knew there wasn’t nothing inside ya that shouldn’t be there. I thought maybe, and I know how this sounds, but I thought maybe you were seeing a ghost or something. Maybe you were seeing a spirit and that’s who you were talking to. But your mother, she just didn’t believe it. The priest agreed with me and that just about did your mother in, said the devil had us both fooled. She just wouldn’t let it go, so we brought you to Children’s Hospital in the city. And they ran every test you could imagine. And you were a little trooper. You didn’t complain once when they poked you with needles for blood or put you in that tube to take the CAT scans. You said your friend, the ghost or … well, he told you it would be okay—said he was right there with you. Do you remember any of it?”

  She shook her head again. No.

  “I don’t remember any of that, Dad. How old? Four or five did you say?”

  “Yup, you were just a little pup, so beautiful. There was something special about you kiddo. I knew it the second the nurse put you in my arms when you were born. You were only a little thing, less than seven pounds, but you sure did fill my heart.” He smiled at her and pinched her cheek, wet with tears. “I knew that anything bad I had done in my life, anything I ever did wrong or mean was just gone, right then. It was like God gave me a second chance to make things right, to let me show this little kid how to be a good person, to lead a good life. That’s all your mother and I wanted for you. We named you Catherine Elizabeth that night—”

  Piper jolted back against the pillow and drew a breath.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I said, we named you Catherine Elizabeth.”

  “No you didn’t. I … I don’t …what? How come I don’t remember that name? I grew up as Piper, that’s all I can remember.”

  Her father stood up and went to the door. He opened it slightly, motioning to her that it was okay, he wasn’t going anywhere. Seeing that no one was there, he quietly closed it again. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his weathered brown wallet. He walked back to his daughter and flipped it open as he had done a thousand times before and took out a picture of her when she was five years old. Funny how you can remember something so clearly when you see it or smell it, though you hadn’t thought of it for thirty years and you never would have until it was right there with you again. Something pulled at her thoughts then, but her dad pointed at the photo and caught her attention.

  The edges of the photo were tattered and wispy, having been handled so many times over the years. He sat back down and looked at the picture for a moment before he continued.

  “Honey, you and I are a lot alike, more so than your mother would ever like to admit. You see, she always felt a little left out at home. You were my sunshine, kiddo, and we bonded from day one. But your mother and you … it was like mixing oil and water. You’d be fine for a while but then you’d be at each other’s throats. I don’t know, I think sometimes she wasn’t meant to be a mother. No, that’s not fair,” he scolded himself. “She was a good mother. She is a good woman. But she just didn’t click with you, do you remember?”

  Piper thought about it for a moment.

  “Well, yeah, when I was a teenager, but not when I was little.”

  He rolled his eyes then and rubbed his face hard, turning it white and then red.

  “Oh God, this is hard. Agghhhh. You and your mother would argue over this little friend, name started with a ‘V,’ I think, I can’t remember. Anyway, she would get really angry with you and tell you that you were lying, that you needed to stop lying or she was going to send you away to a school where’d they’d make you stop lying. But I never thought you were lying. I don’t know what it was exactly, but it just didn’t seem to me that you were lying; you really believed this friend was real. He … he taught you things, for Christ’s sake.”

  For a moment Piper had an image in her mind of the rosary beads her mother always had. And not just one. There was one in her bedroom, one in the kitchen, the living room, the entryway and one on Piper’s nightstand. Together they would pray before bedtime. Piper closed her eyes as her father talked. She remembered feeling Elizabeth push the rosary beads under her pillow as her mother kissed her goodnight.

  Piper furrowed her brow.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for starters, horses. God, I never saw a kid handle a horse like you did. Even from the time you were, oh, about four, you would explain to us all about how a horse should be taken care of, what to feed it, how to treat its wounds, trim its hooves. At first, I thought it was funny, that you were just making it up or something. But then I started asking people who owned horses, and they told me all that stuff was true, but that some of the things I asked about were strange.”

  She raised one brow.

  “Strange, how?”

  He continued, “Well, you were describing the way they took care of horses back in the old days, hundreds of years ago. That’s when I started
to think that maybe you were talking with someone on the, well, on the other side, so to speak. I don’t know, Sweet Pea, it just threw us for a loop.”

  Piper was trying to take it all in, but she couldn’t believe her ears.

  “What else, besides horses?”

  “Flowers! God, you knew the names of plants and flowers that don’t even grow in this part of the world. That’s what convinced me. Christ, you talked about herbs that heal stomach problems and kill infections, plants that make a woman go into labor, which flowers smelled the best together—like perfume. It was unbelievable. You wanted a garden and you knew just how to prepare it, too. You planted vegetables, strawberries, flowers of all kinds. It really scared your mother, disturbed her, ya know? Neither of us knew the first thing about flowers or horses and here we have this little four-year-old … it was really something.”

  Piper took a deep breath and turned her head toward the wall. She was feeling tired and a little sick to her stomach. What does all of this mean, what’s wrong with me?

  “Dad? Why did, or when did I become Piper? I’m still confused.”

  He looked at her and stroked her hair as she lay facing away from him.

  “Well, that’s a little more complicated, Honey. Maybe we should leave that for another time.”

  She turned back to him abruptly, straining her neck.

  “No! Dad, I need to know it all, please, don’t stop now.”

  He sighed deeply and rubbed his tired eyes.

  “What the hell am I doing here? I don’t want to hurt you in any way. Maybe I don’t know what’s best for you, ya know? I mean, I love you more than anyone, Piper but maybe I ….” A tear rolled slowly down her cheek and onto the pillow. He felt such sadness for her, and so he continued.

  “By the time you were almost seven, the doctors and the psychologists and teachers all agreed that you needed to be treated somehow, so that you could be, ya know, like a normal kid and not see ghosts anymore, if that’s what was happening. I mean, it’s not like you were miserable or anything. You were a lot of fun, and you were a great kid, too, the best! But it just seemed that you weren’t going to have a normal life if things continued like they were. So there was this doctor, in Connecticut. He said he could help without medications or exorcisms or any of that bull. So we made an appointment and we went. At that time, Sweet Pea, the only thing I knew about hypnosis was what I’d seen on the TV, the stage kind, with the swinging wristwatch, ya know what I mean?”