10

SEATTLE

VANESSA HAD THE PHONE to her ear and was about to make a well-rehearsed call to Senator Walter Patterson when Pete Aldrich walked into her office carrying a chart. Pete sat on the corner of her desk, wearing his usual frown beneath the mop of red hair, and Vanessa put the receiver back in its cradle to give him her attention.

“There’s a kid in the clinic I’d like you to take a look at, if you’ve got a second,” Pete said. “Her school counselor referred her to the AMC program, but I can’t get anything out of her except that she doesn’t want to be here.” Opening the chart, he peered at the notes inside. “Physical exam is unremarkable, except for a bunch of self-induced cigarette burns on her arms. Sexually active, but doesn’t want to talk about it. No alcohol or drugs, so she says.”

Vanessa took the folder from him. “And does ‘the kid’ have a name?”

“Uh, yeah.” He rose from the desk, pointing toward the chart, and she looked down at the label.

“Jennifer Lieber,” she read.

“Right.”

“Fine. Thank you.” She waited for him to leave her office and then followed him down the hall to the clinic.

The girl was waiting for her inside the first examining room. She was strikingly beautiful, willowy, with long, golden hair. She sat on the table wearing the flimsy hospital gown, her arms turned facedown on her lap, hiding the burns from view.

“Hi, Jennifer.” Vanessa sat down on the stool. “I’m Dr. Gray.”

The girl mumbled something unintelligible.

“Dr. Aldrich said that you’re in good shape physically, except for the burns on your arms.”

Jennifer made a face. “He’s weird.”

“Is he?” Vanessa kept her tone conversational. She didn’t dare allow this patient to know how thoroughly she agreed with her assessment.

“Yeah. He’s like Mister Science Project, or something. I thought maybe he was a robot.”

Vanessa smiled. “I guess he can seem that way sometimes.”

“He reminds me of Mrs. Kirby, asking questions that are none of his business.”

“Mrs. Kirby is your school counselor?” She recalled the name from the referral note in the chart.

“Uh-huh.”

Vanessa crossed her legs, locking her hands around her knee. “Well,” she said, “when Mrs. Kirby referred you to us, she told us that you had worn a short-sleeved shirt to school. In the middle of winter. What that says to me is that you—very wisely—wanted to make this someone else’s business.”

“What do you mean, ‘wisely’?”

“You knew you needed help, and you figured out a surefire way to get it. You might as well have spelled out ‘help me’ with those burns.” She gestured toward Jennifer’s arms.

“I don’t need any help.”

“Mrs. Kirby referred you to the program we have here for teenagers who were abused when they were younger. She must have had a good reason for doing that.”

Jennifer looked away from her. Her cheeks had reddened, and there was the threat of tears in her eyes.

Vanessa stood up and moved in front of her. She took the girl’s wrists in her hands and gently turned her arms until she could see the burns. Eight on her right arm, five on her left. Some of them were deep. They would leave ugly scars. Ugly reminders. Vanessa had a few of those reminders on her thighs.

Jennifer held her breath under Vanessa’s scrutiny.

“Have you ever done anything like this to yourself before?” Vanessa looked into the girl’s cloudy blue eyes.

Jennifer shook her head.

“Why now, Jennifer?”

“I don’t know.” Then, softly, “My boyfriend.”

“Tell me about your boyfriend.”

“He’s not anymore. I mean, he stopped calling.”

“How long had you been seeing him?”

“Six months.”

“That’s a long time.” A lifetime when you were fifteen.

The girl nodded, blond hair glittering in the bright, overhead light.

“What happened?”

Jennifer shrugged, lowering her eyes, and Vanessa took a step away from her. She didn’t want to crowd her.

“I don’t know,” Jennifer said quietly. “Something weird’s been happening to me, and he couldn’t take it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, suddenly I’m remembering these horrible things that I never knew happened to me.”

Vanessa nodded. She would have to be careful. She was not one of those who questioned the existence of repressed memories; she’d seen too many examples of grotesque, credibility straining, long hidden memories that were later confirmed with proof of some sort. Yet the possibility of an overactive imagination couldn’t be ruled out. First and foremost, though, Jennifer Lieber needed to know she’d be taken seriously here.

“Sometimes,” Vanessa said, “when things are too painful for us to remember, we block them out.” She’d always thought, actually, that repression was a wonderful trick of the psyche. She wished she’d had a little of it herself. “Did something happen that made you start remembering?”

Jennifer chewed on her lower lip. “Well, I had…almost had sex with my boyfriend.”

“Would that have been your first time?”

The girl nodded. “Only I couldn’t do it, ‘cause when he tried, I remembered…something about my uncle.” Jennifer turned her head away again, and Vanessa opted not to push her for details. There would be time later.

“Your uncle hurt you,” she said simply.

“Yes, but I’d completely forgotten. Is that possible?” The words came out in a sudden rush.

“Yes. It’s possible.”

“He’s dead now. He’s been dead for two years, and I’d practically forgotten he ever existed.”

“Did you explain to your boyfriend why you were upset?”

Jennifer nodded. “I was pretty hysterical, I guess, and he didn’t believe me. He said I would never have forgotten something like that, that I must be making it up to get out of having sex. At first I thought maybe he was right, ‘cause the memories were so fuzzy, but then they got clearer and clearer. I couldn’t get them out of my mind.” She pressed her fists to the sides of her head. “Josh and I were so close. I thought I could tell him anything. But when I tried to tell him more about what I was remembering, he said I was crazy and stopped calling me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“After a couple of weeks I couldn’t stand it anymore. Every time I closed my eyes, more memories would come. I was afraid to go to bed at night. So finally, I tried to tell my mother, except I couldn’t possibly say that I started remembering those things while I was having sex, ‘cause she would’ve shit.”

Vanessa smiled her sympathy at the dilemma.

“She got really pissed off when I told her. How could I say something like that about her dead brother, and I’ve been watching Oprah too much. She actually said that, and I’ve never even watched Oprah once in my life. I found a picture I could show her, but—”

“A picture?”

Jennifer nodded. “My uncle’s old room is still pretty much like it was when he was living in our house, and I remembered about a shoe box in his closet. I went in there and found a picture he’d taken of me and him together.” She squeezed her eyes together, her cheeks flaming. “I nearly got sick when I found it.”

Proof. Vanessa felt profound relief. It would make everything easier. No one would doubt this girl now, and she could stop doubting herself.

“Where is the picture now?”

“I put it back, though I think I should have burned it. I can’t show it to my mother. She’d blame me for it. I know it. She hardly talks to me. Just shakes her head at me. And my boyfriend’s gone. After he stopped calling, I went sort of numb.” She held up her scabbed arms. “I did this to see if I could still feel anything, and you know what? I couldn’t. It doesn’t matter, though. Nobody believes me anyway.”

“I believe you,” Vanessa said. “And I’ll listen to you. And there are other people who will listen and believe you, other people here who are trained to know how to help people who are going through what you’re going through. And there’s a group here of girls—and some boys, too—who are your age and who’ve had similar experiences, and they’ll believe you. They’ll let you know you’re not alone and you’re not crazy.”

She told Jennifer a little more about the program and used the examining room phone to make an appointment for her with the social worker. She was about to leave the room when the girl said, “I just couldn’t talk to that other doctor.”

Vanessa stopped, her hand on the doorknob. “Well, at least he knew that. We’ll give him a few brownie points for knowing when to come get me, okay?”

“Okay.”

Vanessa stepped back to the table to give the girl a hug, then left the room and walked down the hall to her office. She understood Jennifer’s fears. She no longer identified with every speck of these kids’ pain; it had happened to her so long ago. Still, she understood.

And she had something to offer Jennifer. Before she’d created the AMC program, she couldn’t have offered much. She dreaded returning to that state of professional helplessness.

Walking back to her office, she remembered the phone call she’d been about to make to Walter Patterson. She had spoken to the key members of the network and they’d decided that she would contact Patterson, while the others would begin to pull together case histories and statistics they could use to make their case for funding. Very sympathetic sounding guy, this Patterson. Terri Roos in Sacramento had heard that he particularly liked innovative programs, programs that helped people who weren’t being reached in any other way. That fit their kids, all right.

Once inside her office, she closed the door, took a moment to collect her thoughts, then dialed Patterson’s number on Capitol Hill. She didn’t even hear a ring before someone answered.

“Walter Patterson’s office.” The voice was male, surprising her.

“This is Dr. Vanessa Gray at Lassiter Children’s Hospital in Seattle, Washington,” she said. “I’d like to speak with Senator Patterson, please.”

“What is this regarding?”

Vanessa sat up straighter in her chair. “I’m director of a program for adolescents who were abused as young children, and I understand he’s the person to speak with about generating support for that type of program.”

“Right. Hold on a second.”

Vanessa heard the man ask someone else in the office, “Is Zed in yet?” and her heart froze.

“Excuse me.” She spoke into the phone, but the man must have had the receiver away from his ear. “Excuse me!” She stood up, as if that could give her voice more power.

“Yes?” The voice was back on the line.

“Did I hear you say ‘Zed’?”

“Oh, right. Walter Patterson. He goes by Zed.”

Vanessa said nothing. She couldn’t have spoken if she wanted to.

“He’s in,” the man said. “If you hold a moment, I’ll see if he’s free to pick up now.”

“No,” Vanessa said quickly. “No. I’ll call back.”

She hung up the phone, staring at it as if it were some futuristic contraption that had carried her into the twilight zone.

Zed Patterson.

Could there be more than one man with that name?