Silence
The Lady Elizabeth
It's the silent rape victims that give me the most trouble.
Olivia has always been my blessing here at this job. She has no problem treating each case and each person on a very private and intimate level, except for the few cases in which the victim has also been an abuser. So, while I stumble around and fumble over words that ought to come as a second nature to me when a victim's voice struggles then fails, Olivia is always there to step in with kind, soothing words that ease the victim's alarm. My words find something lacking and I'm usually struggling along with the victim as to what exactly I ought to say.
It's the victim's eyes, too, that make me nervous when her voice leaves her. They grow wide as saucers and heavy with wet tears waiting to be shed. Tears that, I've learned over the years, can take weeks, even months before they are first shed. Really shed that is. Not the tears shed from shock or denial or just purely from the exhaustion of what happens to a woman after the rape. No, the tears that I see when the mouth padlocks itself closed that first time we find her are the tears of fear and humiliation, knowing that she has just been dealt something that can crumble even the strongest foundation.
Her mouth is like a trap door, that same rusty old deadbolt holding everything sick and evil inside of her because she can't force it from her, and when I arrive, everyone, even the paramedics, seem to think that I have some magical key with which I can unlock her mouth and let the poison come spilling out. Well, sometimes I do have that magical key. Sometimes, the victim just responds to my silence and begins a flood, a torrential rain, of pain and suffering that I am almost staggered by the blast.
I hate when I'm the only someone that her dully colored, pained eyes can turn to.
God, it sounds so bad to say this, but sometimes I wish that all my victims were loud, screaming, and hysterical. I know how to make that better. I really do. I know how to press her trembling, shaking-apart body to mine and wait until her tears are spent from fighting and sheer exhaustion and I know how to ease her back down onto the gurney or hospital bed again, watching in relief as she slips into a dreamless sleep.
But when there are no tears and when there is no voice…
A little piece of my own soul shrivels from the pain of too sharp sympathy.
The silent rape victims.