When she walks through the office door, she is pushing an IV pole on wheels, a tube feeding medication into her arm. Her face is pale, eyes dark. Her head is shaved, revealing a jagged scar on her skull. Stitches track from the corner of her mouth. Fixed in my memory is me removing a hanging picture on the wall of my office so she can suspend the IV bag on a hook.
When she walks through the office door, she is pushing an IV pole on wheels, a tube feeding medication into her arm. Her face is pale, eyes dark. Her head is shaved, revealing a jagged scar on her skull. Stitches track from the corner of her mouth. Fixed in my memory is me removing a hanging picture on the wall of my office so she can suspend the IV bag on a hook.
Thus begins our work together.
She has crossed the random path of evil. She meets him on a dating site. One week of dates. No particular fireworks, but no particular red flags, either. Well, not until the end of the week, when suddenly she experiences the creepy intrusion of the man looking over her shoulder, trying to observe her phone screen. She stops seeing him.
Two months later, he breaks into her garage, having failed to break into her house. Who knows how long he stood there in the low light of her closed garage. He has come to kill her.
Multiple stab wounds. Her head beat against the concrete of her driveway. He is not merely an evil human being, but also an incompetent murderer. He leaves her for dead. I cannot explain why she is alive. But here she sits before me.
While she fights for her life in a hospital bed, her assailant travels to Arizona. His murdering skills now honed, he ends the life of an ex-girlfriend. Later, in custody, he will confess to both my patient’s assault and the murder, as well as his plan to kill an ex-wife, the ex-wife’s lover, and a former employer.
Her presenting issue is, surprisingly, not that she is the victim of assault. She wants to know if her friends are right. Her friends are worried that she is in denial. That she is putting on a brave face. Her friends worry about her optimism, her bright smile, now radiating out to me from behind her tired, worn countenance. She wants to know if, at some point, she will have a post-traumatic breakdown.
I tell her to trust herself. If she is in denial, it’s because she needs to be in denial. If a time should come in the days ahead when she is reduced to hysteria, wrapped in a fetal ball of agony, wailing on her bedroom carpet, then so be it. But, just as likely, I say, is that she has an authentic core of optimism, resilience and enduring depth. I tell her that already the strengths of her selfhood might be serving her well.
Her next issue is still not the assault. She is struggling with the response of those who love her. Over the next few sessions, we notice together that, in some ironic way, her assault has been more traumatic for those who love her. Friends have become unwittingly overbearing, intensely protective, and in some cases parental and controlling.
Together, we give these friends every benefit of the doubt. They love her deeply. And, because they are ordinary human beings, they need so badly to regain control of their worldview. We strategize how to gently help these friends distinguish between their own fears and the needs of my patient.
And, finally, we observe the mystery of life together. We find an answer to the questions “Why did this happen to me?” and “Why am I alive?” The answers? Because it did happen. Because she didn’t die.
The prosecutor asks her to prepare testimony for the sentencing. She is terrified to be in the same room as her assailant. But, again, her enduring spirit prevails.
She hammers out drafts of her story. She walks into the courtroom, standing strong. The evil man will die in prison, either as an old man, or because Arizona decides to end his absurdity via lethal injection.
One year later, she has rendered her would-be killer irrelevant.
Along the way, she has found a selfhood so clear, so powerful, that later we joke about sending Butthead a “thank you” note. Her laughter is a shooting star.
She wants to tell her story. She is getting calls from television producers. She wants to write a book. Her working title is “Why Not Me?”
I tell her I love the title. What I haven’t told her is what I tell her now, here, in this column.
It has been an unspeakable honor to walk with you through this darkness into light. I am humbled. I am lifted. I am lucky to know you at all. You make me proud to be a human being.
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry.