by D. J. Palmer
“Another day in paradise,” said Eve with a dull smile. “You’re late, Doctor.” Her tone was mildly chiding.
Mitch closed the door behind him, blocking out the noise well enough. Medium-security protocols meant his patient wasn’t shackled or handcuffed, and she was permitted to be alone with him without any accompaniment. This was good for therapy but potentially bad for Mitch, should Eve make false claims about him. There were security cameras in the visiting rooms, but not in here. Since therapy was about building trust, Mitch had no issues giving his patient the benefit of the doubt, and he’d hope for the best.
“Sorry for the delay,” Mitch said. “I’m still not good at finding my way around here.”
“You seem smart to me. You’ll catch on soon enough.” There was a mischievous look about her as she leaned over the table, getting closer to him, her eyes narrowed a bit in an assessing way. “But if I were you,” she added, talking now in a conspiratorial whisper, “I’d go and get a better job somewhere else.”
Mitch’s return volley was a smile that didn’t convey any disagreement.
“According to the notes Dr. Palumbo left, you don’t talk much during these sessions.” He allowed his grin to widen.
“I talked enough for him to decide I was a whacko psychopath, so let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson. It’s best to keep tight-lipped here.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, and Mitch noticed that Eve sat with her hands interlocked on her lap. For all her posturing, she was still quite defensive. Mitch made a mental note to pay close attention to her nonverbal cues.
“Let’s wait until the minute hand hits twelve and then I’ll start.”
“Start … not talking?” Mitch sought clarification.
The minute hand rounded twelve, and she nodded her answer.
“I’m not of the same mind as Dr. Palumbo. I’m here to help, not to judge. But I’m not going to be of much assistance if you don’t talk to me,” said Mitch.
She said nothing. It was time to go hunting.
“At least tell me if you’re Eve,” Mitch said. “Can you do that? We spoke in the ER. You were friendlier then. Why the cold shoulder?”
Nothing.
Mitch cleared his throat uncomfortably. Connecting with Eve was challenging enough, but reaching the others seemed as insurmountable as scaling Everest in a blizzard.
For a time, he studied the girl, noting how her eyes stayed glued to that clock, and thought more about what she was doing. She was making a statement, that much was obvious. He might be the doctor, but she was the one in control.
Fighting for control was something Mitch understood and could relate to on a personal level. He controlled his sadness enough to get up and go to work each day, then come home and help with dinner and cleanup every night, wishing all the while for the darkness to somehow magically disappear. Much like Penny had done with her alters, he had also created different personas.
The lack of security cameras in the room actually gave Mitch an idea: Eve wouldn’t talk to him unless she trusted him. She was the “host” personality, the one whose job it was to let others in or out. That decision applied not only to her alters, but also to her doctor. So how to build trust? Mitch mulled it over in his head. Perhaps he’d have to give to get. And what could he give her that would make her trust him? A possible answer came to him.
“I know you hate these sessions,” Mitch said. “But you at least gave Dr. Palumbo a fair shot before you went silent on him. Why not extend the same privilege to me?”
Nothing. Not a flicker of her eyes in his general direction.
“I am, you may be surprised to know … a bit like you.”
She didn’t look his way, but Mitch sensed she was listening now.
“I’ll tell you what.” Mitch uncrossed his legs, his body forward on the table. A tiny pulse of energy beat rhythmically at his temples. “Let’s make a deal.”
Eve pointed to her ears. “Listening,” she said.
“I’ll share a secret with you, something about my life. Something personal. You can ask me questions about it and I’ll answer as best I can.”
Eve mulled it over, and judging by the slim smile on her lips, found it somewhat appealing.
“And the deal? What do I have to do in return?” she asked in a clipped voice.
“The deal is that you share a secret with me. Whatever it is, make it something substantial, something you might not want someone to know, at least not until you trusted them. So? What do you say? Do we have a deal?”
She eyed him suspiciously, though it wasn’t for long. A resigned look eventually came to her face, which she followed with an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
“Whatever,” she said, somewhat overplaying her disinterest. “I’m curious to know if you have something good to give, because honestly, I don’t think you do. I think this is going to be a big disappointment, but—” She cut herself off before shifting her gaze to the ceiling. She appeared to be mulling something over in her head.
“But if it’s good … really good…” She leaned forward in her chair, closing the gap between them, close enough to give Mitch a whiff of the harsh cleansers used in the industrial-strength soaps and shampoos given to the patients. “I’ll give you something really good in return.”
A sinking feeling momentarily pervaded Mitch’s stomach as he second-guessed his strategy, but there was no turning back now. “I have depression,” he said, followed by a sudden pang of nerves when his confession did not draw her gaze. “It’s a clinical diagnosis, and I take medication for it. Hasn’t been easy. Depression treatments don’t always work, and they left me feeling pretty discouraged.” He saw her neck move, a little twist to the left, her head inching his way.
“I took different drugs, tried different therapies, and I’m not cured. Doesn’t work that way. Some days it’s better than others and I think I have it under control. Other days … well, not so much. It’s been part of me for most of my life, but I’ve masked it well. I don’t like talking about my mental health issues. I think I’m supposed to somehow be above it because I help people get over their illnesses. But I’m not my disease. I’d still go see a cancer specialist who had cancer herself if I trusted her to cure me. She’s not her disease, and neither are you. I want to get to know you … all the facets of you … and try to help. That is, if you’ll let me.”
Now, she was looking him squarely in the eyes.
“I don’t know much about you because what’s in your file are thoughts, notes, and observations, nothing more. It’s not you, the person.”
Mitch wrung his hands together nervously. This was not an ordinary therapy session for him. He was being an open book with a patient, and for sure there was some ethical line he had crossed, but a deal was a deal—he’d have to give something to get it. Eve didn’t budge, meaning he hadn’t given enough.
“I sometimes wonder if I’d be a better doctor without depression, or maybe I’m good at what I do because of it,” Mitch continued on. “Maybe I connect with my patients better because I’m intimately familiar with mental illness.” He shrugged, his expression one of uncertainty. “All I know for sure is that having this disease makes it easier for me to blame myself when things don’t work out.”
This got Eve’s full attention.
“What hasn’t worked out?” she asked, sounding like the therapist in a role reversal.
“You next. That was our deal.”
Eve eyed him nastily. “Everyone has mental problems, some are just better at hiding it than others. I expected more from you.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, thought Mitch.
“What hasn’t worked is that my son Adam—he’s a bit older than you—is addicted to heroin. I keep asking myself: Did my illness prevent me from seeing what was happening right under my nose?”
“And what was happening?”
Mitch offered up an ill-prepared answer that came straight from the heart.
“Adam was experimentin
g with drugs on his own—booze, then pot, then pills—until he got to the really hard stuff. He did it and he hid it, and as much as I’d like to blame my depression, sometimes … well, make that most of the time … blame doesn’t do anybody any good.”
“Where is he now?”
“In a rehab facility. I can’t see him for a few days. That’s how they do it there. He needs to focus on his recovery, not on what his parents think or feel.”
“Oh. So you’re married?”
“Divorced,” Mitch said, not sure when his secret revealing would stop; hoping it would be soon.
“Single?”
She smiled like a woman might at a bar, with a sparkle in her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Hmmm…” she cooed. “Do you like my mother? Do you think she’s pretty, Doctor?”
“I don’t think that’s why we’re here.”
Eve bit her bottom lip in an alluring way. “She was married, too, you know.”
“Yes, to your father.”
“He’s dead.” She said it curtly, but sadly, wistfully even, without a hint of venom.
“Yes, I know. And I’m sorry for that. You’re Eve, right?”
“I’m Eve. The one and only.” She made a flourishing gesture with her hands, like she was the grand reveal of a magic trick.
Score one for the doc! Now that Mitch had her, he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity talking about his own life. “Let me ask you, Eve: Do you know a girl named Penny?”
She nodded tentatively, as if wary of where the question might lead.
“Can you talk to her?”
Another long pause.
“That’s not such an easy answer. It’s … all a bit confusing.”
“Try. I really want to know.”
Eve sighed aloud. “Sometimes … sometimes I hear her voice, like it’s in my head, like a really loud thought, but then it goes away. I usually just ignore it.”
“And you think it’s … Penny?”
She nodded. “I hear them all.”
If it weren’t for therapy, Mitch highly doubted Eve would know anything about the others in her head. In cases of DID the primary identity not only carried the given name, but they were most often passive, dependent, guilty, and depressed, which matched Penny’s personality, but in here Eve was the dominant one, and for good reason. People with DID could develop awareness of the mind’s inside chattering at any time, at any age, and that was a key milestone on the path to integration.
Nowhere in Dr. Palumbo’s reports did Eve ever confess to hearing the voices of her various personalities. The prospect of getting through Eve to connect with all Penny’s alters no longer seemed so daunting, but Mitch realized there was another intriguing possibility. What if he could help Penny tap into the darkest places of her mind and gain access to the traumatic memory that preceded the splintering of her self?
Either way, for Eve to speak to him this candidly was a massive step forward.
“Can you name those voices you hear?” Mitch asked.
“Well there’s Penny, and a girl named Chloe, and Ruby, and of course there’s me.”
No admission or even a hint at any hidden alter, Mitch noted.
He wasn’t about to reveal that Penny was the host—the primary self—and that Eve was one of the alters. That would be too much for one session.
“And they all sound like loud thoughts in your head?”
“Sometimes, when I hear them, yeah,” Eve said. “So, doesn’t hearing voices mean I’m schizophrenic?” She sounded tentative for once, and her unexpected vulnerability felt to Mitch like another small victory.
“No, it doesn’t, not at all. It’s a common misconception actually. Schizophrenia is really a split between rationality and emotion, but what you have is different. It’s a split within the personality. In both conditions a person may hear voices, but I do believe you have a grasp on reality. I’d like to know though if Penny—or anybody else speaking those loud thoughts—knows you’re in Edgewater State Hospital?”
To demonstrate that different alters held different perceptions of reality would be helpful in court.
“I don’t know,” Eve said. “Hasn’t really come up.”
Mitch reached into his jacket pocket and took out his portable recorder. “Do you mind if I record our conversation? It will help me to remember it.”
“Whatever,” Eve said.
“What about the reason you’re here? Do these other voices—your alters—do they have different views on that?”
Eve straightened, putting distance between them, and Mitch sensed he was losing her.
“Do they ever talk about what happened?”
She eyed Mitch darkly.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Mitch asked.
Eve said nothing.
I’m going to trigger her … she may snap … or clam up.
“Do you know where you are, Eve?”
“Your questions are annoying me … Doctor,” she said with contempt.
“You think you’re ready to tell me your secret?”
A twisted grin graced her lips.
“Fair enough,” Eve said. “A deal is a deal.” She clapped her hands together and made a sound.
“So, let me tell you about the first time I took a life.”
CHAPTER 18
LOOKING BACK, I SHOULD have been more alarmed about what was going on with you. I suppose that goes for us all. I mean, we all met Ruby—charming Ruby, lovely British Ruby—but nobody thought anything of it. We thought she was a character of yours, someone from the world of Harry Potter. We figured Ruby was you, just pretending, playing a silly, harmless game that would come and go.
But what nobody knew was that by then, I’d already met Eve.
You’d been living with us for a year and a half, so that would have made you six, and I’d have been eight. Ryan and I were still sharing the same bedroom, which Mom had painted a manly shade of gray, something we covered with posters of sports stars and superheroes.
I liked having you around from the minute you came to live with us. There wasn’t a big adjustment period, not that I recall anyway. One minute you weren’t living in our house, and the next it was as if you’d always been there. I mean, there were small things. At first you were all “thank you,” and “please,” and “may I,” but little by little, as you got comfortable with us, and we with you, away went a “thank you,” then a “please,” then a “may I,” until after some time you were just like me and Ryan: asking, taking, demanding, while Mom and Dad did what they could to keep us in line.
We’d gone from being two kids to three, and that was fine with us—better than fine. It was great. Honestly, the early years of you becoming a Francone would have made for a terribly boring movie. Nothing happened, it was all perfectly normal. There were school days, and you had homework to do, activities like softball, piano, and karate, TV, messing around, bike riding, basketball on the driveway with that hoop we held up with sandbags, and weekends spent doing whatever. The days all kind of blended into a great whirling blur of family life. Yes, you were shy in a crowd, shy at school, always were, but with us you could be your boisterous, laughing, fun-loving self, and we loved you for it.
Most mornings we ate breakfast together, more often than dinner, because of the restaurant. You loved Apple Jacks the best, which Mom never bought before you came. Once she found out you favored them, well, suddenly the pantry was never without a box.
In no time at all you became our little princess, though you weren’t very princess-like when you showed up to the restaurant to “help out.” All you wanted to do at Big Frank’s was play with balls of dough, and Dad was more than happy to oblige you. Your giggles while you made pizza creatures, the delight in your eyes when Dad baked them into something you could eat—those are really sweet memories of a really sweet little sister.
At first I didn’t know what it meant to have a little sister, but I became your protective big brother in no time
. It was important to me that you were safe. After the hide-and-seek debacle, I was always checking up on you. That gave us a good taste of what it would be like if we ever lost you for real. For Mom, it was a great relief, because I was a second set of eyes, which came in especially handy during the weekend getaways down on the Cape, at that hotel with the indoor water park.
You’d never seen a water park before, and this one was tiny in comparison to most, but to you it was the greatest place ever. The chlorine was so strong it turned our eyes red just standing on the tiled edge of the pool. You didn’t know how to swim, you’d never had a lesson in your life, but you didn’t have one bit of fear either, not one. You jumped right in with your floaties latched around your arms, and it was my job (and Mom’s, who hovered over you back then before those JCC lessons finally paid off) to make sure you stayed above the water line. Your lack of skill and experience didn’t stop you from going down the slide—I remember that clearly.
I also remember waking up in the middle of the night to see you standing next to my bed holding Wally the Walrus in one hand, a big pair of scissors in the other.
Earlier that evening, Ryan had changed the TV channel from a show you were watching to one he wanted to watch. You got quite upset at him, didn’t you? But he was bigger, older by four years, and you didn’t get your way even when you pleaded with Mom. She thought you’d had enough TV for the day and asked you to do something else.
You were mad as I’d ever seen you, and you stayed mad when you went to bed in a huff, and you were still angry when you took Wally out of our bedroom closet. Ryan was ten, so he hadn’t fully abandoned all his stuffed animals back then, and you knew poor Wally was his favorite, even though he stayed mostly in that closet.
I woke up because I heard a rustling sound and saw you in the moonlight, your eyes aglow like those of a panther. You put your finger to your lips—“Quiet,” you mouthed to me—and then with considerable effort, you stabbed one of Wally’s fins with those scissors (sharp ones Mom would never have let you use).