I carry her suitcases for her, and she follows behind wordlessly.
“Are you hungry?” I ask once I’ve put her suitcases in the guest room and settled her in there. She’s too thin, I think. We’ll have to work on this.
She shakes her head. “No.”
“We’ve talked about this, Amelia; you need to keep your strength up.”
“I don’t have an appetite.”
For now I don’t want to push her. The first time I was called in to be the psychiatrist on her team, she’d been enraged about her failure to end her life. The universe had other plans for her, I told her. If the apartment below hers hadn’t flooded, the super of the building would have never found her in time. He’d gone in to check the leak and seen her in a bathtub full of blood, her arms sliced up to her elbows. It was a very serious suicide attempt. Fortunately, he’d been trained in first aid and was able to stanch the bleeding enough for the paramedics to get her to the hospital alive, where she was put on suicide watch. I saw her every day that first month on the psych unit, and when I was convinced that she was no longer a danger to herself, I signed for her release and she began to see me as an outpatient.
There’s no time to lose, so I steer her into my private office. She looks around and smiles for the first time. “This is nice. Much better than your other office.” I know my hospital office still feels institutional, despite my best efforts to make the space my own, and I hope this new environment will help advance the work we will do.
“I’m glad you like it. Sit wherever you like.”
She chooses an oversize chair with a fleece blanket on it and snuggles underneath it.
“So Amelia, before we begin today, I want you to tell me again some of the things you have to live for.”
She sighs. “My future. The future that I want to make. A good family, with a man nothing like my father. And my photos. I used to love losing myself behind the camera.”
“Good. Good.” A good family and kind husband are things I can provide her with. And she can always take photos of Valentina as a creative outlet. “Okay, let’s work on the memories that have been giving you nightmares. Are you ready?”
She nods and pushes up the sleeve of her sweatshirt. The jagged scars are still red and angry. I prepare the injection, clean her arm, and push the fluid through. Within seconds, she visibly relaxes.
I sit and begin to speak in a quiet voice. “I want you to close your eyes, Amelia. Relax all of your muscles and let them become loose and limp. Now imagine yourself drifting on a calm river, with a gentle breeze wafting across your skin. Smell the air and allow yourself to relax more and more with each breath you take.”
She is breathing deeply now. “It feels so good to relax and let it all go,” I continue. “You are going deeper and deeper now, and you are open to my voice.”
She is very still, in a deep trance. “I want you to picture that day. You’re going to the door and ringing the bell. No one answers. You look inside, but no one is home. You’re not related to anyone in this house. You’re just going to visit your friend, whose name is Amelia. Your name is Cassandra, and your parents died in an automobile accident when you were only twelve. Amelia became your best friend, and you liked to pretend that her house was your house because you got moved around so much. But you’re Cassandra, and you don’t have to remember what happened to Amelia’s family. Go back to the day and knock on the door again. No one answers. Do you see?”
She moans. “No one’s there.”
“That’s right. You read about what happened in the paper. But it wasn’t your family. And you, Cassandra, did nothing wrong. Remind me of your name?”
“Cassandra,” she says.
We continue for another hour, building out her backstory and moments from the past we’re creating for her, before I bring her back.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Better,” she says, looking surprised. “Calmer.”
I walk over and take her hands in mine. “We still have a long way to go, but I’m optimistic.” By the time Valentina returns at the end of the summer, she’ll have a mother again.
??52??
Julian
“Tell me what you remember about our wedding,” I prod.
“It was lovely. Here at the house. We had chocolate cake, and I drank too much champagne.”
Amelia has been at home with me for three weeks now. I work with her for hours every day, much longer than is the norm, but in two months Valentina will be back home, and I need to fully convince Amelia that she’s Cassandra before she returns. I’ve made good progress; she moved into my bedroom three nights ago, and already believes she’s my wife. I’m working on implanting memories of Amelia with Valentina so that she accepts Valentina as her own when she is back. We’re in the middle of another session now. I’ve inserted a port in her arm to avoid having to stick her every day, and attached the IV to it.