Teenage groupie 25

After that day at the police station, I had had to undergo a 2-week stay at the hospital. When I came to I found myself lying in a hospital bed, dizzy and queasy with several images dancing around me. The faces, the images and the nightmares were still unrelenting in the hospital.

I couldn’t get over the total shock of that week. Everything had come crashing in just one breath, one false move and it was all over for me. It had all started from the tumultuous break-up with AJ, (catching him in the bathroom with Vikki was not a pleasant image to set off the week) then the chance meeting with Lance, to the series of horrendous nightmares, to the altercation with Vikki, to lying to Lance, then going back to AJ, and having uncertain feelings for Lance, and then being unjustly found in Nick’s arms by Lance. Then, the worst blow of all arose from the admission by the police that they had arrested my mother for brutally murdering my father.

No matter how hard I could try to forget the other images I just couldn’t forget my mother’s helpless body standing over my father’s bludgeoned one with a baseball bat in her hand. It seemed too horrid to be too quickly erased.

It had taken three weeks of heavy sedation, loads of drugs and anti-depressants and intense therapy sessions to make me yield to any kind of physical or social interaction with the world.

Here I am now two months after that day narrating my problems to a Psychiatrist (shrink). I suddenly feel like I have been let out of a darkened tunnel into a place where there is so much illumination, and the sense of relief is breathtakingly exhilarating almost like newness, or a passage of some kind.

The therapy was actually an order from the guys. Their legal advisers had felt that it would be “better” if I sought some mental recovery for the traumatic ordeals I had undergone, the sexual harassment episodes and of course, the excessive alcohol. To me, it felt like a gag order re-termed, a means of keeping me quiet so that I wouldn’t rattle on their socially upright boys for indulging in statutory rape. They had kept me at ransom with this unless I wouldn’t be allowed to see my mother, declaring that I was unfit to confront any person from my past.

I stopped traveling with the guys. Nick had settled me into his old apartment close to his family home in Florida, his love shack as he termed it. He introduced me to his mother and made her promise to keep a vigilant eye on me. I had enrolled in high school and had become one of the smartest, hardworking students in my class. I had nothing else to do except concentrate on my work and visit the therapist 4 times a week.

Nick’s mother was heavenly, a vision of a perfect mother: beautiful, caring and concerned, knowing when to lay emphasis and when to give room. Now I knew where Nick got all his charms, it was too contagious not to be hereditary. After several children who had grown to become men of their own, you would think she wouldn’t treat you like a baby, but she mothered me all too much, and also gave me leeway to consult with my thoughts. I fell in love with her like she was my own.

The therapist, Dr. Harrow was friendly and welcoming, a much older man with gray hair and a chubby tummy that I constantly compared to Nick’s healthy gut. He made me feel very much at home with myself. It is a good experience airing out your problems, holding nothing back; it is the best feeling ever.

Naturally, he had a lot to say about my behavior. He said I had lacked love inside me, so it had caused me to shut down the nerve senses inside, hating everyone around. I couldn’t trust and I couldn’t share my life. These are facts I already knew but I just let him talk about them---I wasn’t the one paying his fees so why did I care. He also said I should look forward to a happy life and to helping other victims of abuse. That I agreed to because I wanted to help others as well. After three irksome months of therapy I was to be released today.

I walked in that last day taking my usual seat on the love seat facing the window and the plants. Dr. Harrow had so many plants in his office, and of every species available. He had encouraged me to take one home and nurse it to full growth. He felt the idea of caring and nurturing something else would be therapeutic for me.

I crossed my legs and waited for him to say a word. He took his notepad and crossed off the last date, checking off my arrival time on his time slot.

“So are you excited about your birthday?” He asked, looking at me, underneath his tiny glasses.

“A little,” I answered, unenthused. “The guys want me to come up to New York to spend it with them.”

“You don’t wanna go?”

“I do…I’m just not very good company right now.” I fixed my gaze on the chrysanthemum plant sitting on the windowsill. It looked like it needed water. The leaves were all shriveled and lifeless, with no color in them.

“What about graduation…the prom? Excited about that?”

“A little…but I don’t have a date though…guess some things never change.”

He kept quiet and I could hear him scribbling some notes in his pad.

“You never mentioned Lance…who is he?” Dr. Harrow said from nowhere.

I turned to face him surprised because we had never discussed Lance together in any of my sessions. “Who told you about him?”

“The patterns you drew when we first put you on the antidepressants…you scribbled Lance on it repeatedly drawing cute heart shapes around them.”

“I did that?” I asked embarrassed. I cradled my face for some seconds like a schoolgirl who had just been found out by her teen crush. “I had no idea I did that.”

“I knew you wouldn’t. You were not quite yourself at the time.”

I nodded remembering how I had been in shock for almost two weeks. I went back to admiring the plant. It still looked crooked on that spot, unlike the last time I saw it.

“So you don’t want to talk about him?” He pressed on.

“I thought that maybe since I didn’t talk about him all these months, you would have figured that I didn’t want to,” I remarked, setting Dr. Harrow’s nosy senses at bay.

“Is it touchy for you?” he pulled close in his chair.

“No…it just gets difficult at times. Forgiving everybody and being forgiven. They are not quite the same thing. He‘s one of the few that have never quite completely forgotten.”

I walked up to the flower plant and checked its soil for humidity while Dr. Harrow wrote down some more notes. I dropped the plant and looked out the window, the fresh air hitting my face. “I thought it was dying.” I explained to him my actions. He nodded, and took down some more notes. I stood there wondering what he was writing really.

“I’m scared sometimes,” I began. “ So scared, I can hardly breathe almost or move a limb. It’s like everything I loved either died, or hurt me back. Everything that made sense to me turned round and landed on my lap, destroying me…” I looked down at my hands; they had suddenly started shaking. “Sometimes, I think that if I had said something when Stef was there, when she was in pain, paid attention when she was hurting, maybe it would have all stopped, maybe it wouldn’t have continued with me, maybe we would have still been a family, and maybe Stef and I would be together like normal sisters living life. And I would have still had my peace of mind back.” My voice was shaky from forcing back the tears.

“I’m sure your mother felt the same pain, maybe that’s why she did what she did,” Dr. Harrow chipped in.

I sighed with a hiss; a small tear trickling down. “Mama was ENRAGED. No other way to put it. That’s what gave her the strength to do what she did to him, to do something that heinous and not look back. Rage, that’s what it is.” I went back to my seat.

Dr. Harrow looked on, waiting for something else to be said.

“I will miss you, Dr. Harrow. I wish you could be my date for the prom but...” I forced a smile. He gave a sweet polite smile back. “I am fine now. Did I tell you I’ve started to apply to colleges?”

He nodded. “Any ones in particular you favor?”

“Some are good…I’m leaning towards counseling though but I’m not quite sure which area but I’m taking my time. I have the rest of my life ahead of me…and I have the best friends to help me through it. I’m taking my time.” I said, heaving a sigh of relief.

He nodded comprehensively. “Are you gonna get me anything from New York?” He changed the subject in an effort to put a smile on my face.

“Yeah…what do you want? I could get the guys to sign your daughter’s CD, would that be okay?” I offered, remembering a story he told me a long time ago about his 12-year-old daughter being a huge Backstreet fan.

“You know that would be so great.” His eyes lit up. “I’d be the best father on the block for another month.” He laughed and walked over to his desk to hand me the CD. Dr. Harrow always wanted to be the perfect father to his 5 children, quite unlike mine. He stopped suddenly and gave me a long hard stare squinting his eyes, “Basically, all I really want is for you to bring yourself back…in one peace.”

I got up and gave him a soldier’s salute, “Aye, aye, Skipper.” He let out a crooked laugh. “Hand me the CD too, just in case that doesn’t work out,” I teased. I knew an autographed CD would be more pleasing to his daughter.

He came round the table, and hugged me with his beefy self, his tummy tickling my tiny one. He pecked me on the forehead, a soft gentle peck the way a father would. “Bye, Nichole,” he said with a warm smile. He had refused to call me by my other name Nikki. Some things doctors just disapprove of and that includes nicknames or shortened forms of some names.

Part 26...