"Delay is the deadliest form of denial." - C. Northcote Parkinson
The minutes and hours following a sexual assault are the most crucial. Survivors will want to shower, to wash away the filth, but it is important not to do so. It is absolutely imperative that a survivor not bathe or change clothing. Doing so will eliminate all important evidence that can be used to put the perpetrator behind bars. The best thing for a survivor to do is to go to the emergency room as soon as possible. A rape kit can be performed within 72 hours of the attack; most evidence will be gone after that time has passed.
Unfortunately, many survivors delay telling anyone about their attack. Many keep their attacks to themselves for a variety of reasons: they've been threatened, they're scared, and most commonly, they don't want to relive their attack.
A "Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit" is a highly invasive process, and it can last four to six hours. The last thing a survivor wants is for a stranger to pick and pry at their private parts after they've been attacked.
To make the whole situation more discouraging, there are hundreds of thousands unprocessed rape kits in the United States today. Many crime labs set these rape kits aside because "they're too expensive" or "they're not a priority." Actress and advocate, Mariska Hargitay, is standing up to change that. She, along with the Joyful Heart Foundation, are working to raise funds to end the rape kit backlog.
"When you don't test a rape kit, it sends the message that's it's not a serious crime, and I'm beyond outraged," said Mariska Hargitay.
And she has every right to be outraged. The entire nation should be outraged. It takes courage for a survivor to report her attack, to come forward, and to tell her story. There are numerous myths about sexual assault that have been constrained by society today. Many believe that women often lie about being raped or will falsely accuse someone. However, false rape reports make up only 2 percent or less of rape reports. Actually, 1 in 10 rapes will never be reported to the police.
Sexual assault survivors go through a similar experience to those who experience the loss of a loved one. We're all familiar with the five stages of grief.
The first step: denial.
"It can't happen to me."
"It wasn't that bad."
"It wasn't rape."
"I'm fine."
These are all statements sexual assault victims tell themselves for comfort. Like death, violence comes as a shock. It's not anticipated, and you can't prepare for it. Many feel as if they've lost part of themselves. Something was taken from them. They feel empty and their sense of safety is absent.
Many have the illusion that denial protects us, keeps us safe from the truth. Eventually, though, denial can destroy us…
Pain surged through every last limb in Meredith Grey's body. One thing was for sure, she knew she wasn't dying. She already knew what death felt like, because she'd already died once. Death was painless, peaceful. The body can only endure so much pain before it becomes too much to handle. The question becomes: how much pain can your body handle?
Sometimes Meredith wondered when her body would say enough is enough. She couldn't cry anymore. She lie motionless on the stairway, staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, everything was a complete blur. For a moment, she had forgotten exactly how she had gotten there; the horrible assault that had just occurred ceased to exist. She was just lying there, alone, in a stairway at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital. How she had gotten there no longer was important. In fact, nothing bore importance at that moment.
Her head spun. She felt like a child on the merry-go-round at the park. She twirled until she heard a voice call her name. "Meredith!" Meredith blinked a number of times, and soon Miranda Bailey's face came into focus. "What the hell happened! Are you all right, Grey?"
"I-I'm fine," Meredith stammered, getting on her knees and shifting her weight to her hands, and she stood stood up. A gush of blood rushed to her head, and her temples throbbed. "I just fell down the stairs, I guess."
"You just fell down the stairs?" Dr. Miranda Bailey placed her hands on her hips and studied Meredith from head to toe. "The question is why did you fall down the stairs? Were you feeling dizzy? Did you black out?"
"I was just in a hurry and running late. It's really nothing, Bailey," Meredith insisted. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have patients I need to see."
Meredith tried to walk around Miranda, but Dr. Bailey was quick to stand in front of her. Dr. Bailey's eyes widened, and she stuck her nose up. "You're not seeing patients looking like that. For starters, you've got a huge gash in your head that needs to be stitched."
Meredith ran her hand over her forehead. Her hand was soon covered in blood.
"It's really not as bad as it looks," Meredith proceeded to insist. "Really, it's nothing I can't stitch myself. I'm a gifted surgeon, and I'm not your resident anymore, Bailey. I'm no longer your responsibility. Let me go. Now!"
"I can't and won't do that," Dr. Bailey sternly responded, folding her arms together. "You're coming with me to an exam room, and I'm ordering a head CT. You could have a concussion, and I'm not buying that you just fell, Meredith."
"Fine," Meredith spat, and she followed Dr. Bailey to the nearest exam room. "But you're not paging Derek for a consult. He can't know about this. Page anyone else in neuro."
"You want me to page the moron?" Bailey gave her a strange look.
"Yes, page the moron!" snapped Meredith, desperate not to have Derek see her like this. Derek had paged her, but her phone and pager were missing. She had no way to respond to him, and she knew that he would worry. Her iPad was in the Attendings' lounge, and she hadn't had a chance to clock in yet. Derek would see that and come searching for her.
Meredith's stomach tied into knots as she took a seat on the exam table. She'd been a patient in this hospital four times since she'd become a doctor. One of which she'd flatlined and died, then miraculously came back to life. Dr. Bailey had operated on her three times; her appendix, the time she flatlined and died, and when she donated part of her liver to her alcoholic, no-good father. Needless to say, Dr. Bailey had seen the parts of her that weren't so pretty.
Dr. Bailey always tried to act tough and controlling. That's why they'd nicknamed her the Nazi during her intern year. In reality, though, Dr. Bailey was no nazi. She used her powers for good, and she cared more than she would ever admit. Meredith knew that she and her fellow interns had given Bailey hell throughout the years, yet Bailey still watched over them. Bailey had raised them, and although they were no longer her babies, she still hovered over them to make sure they were all right.
As Bailey reached her hand over Meredith's forehead to begin stitching, Meredith flinched away. She closed her eyes. He gripped tightly onto her ankles and pulled her across the floor, bashing her head into the wall and she blacked out.
"Why're you so jumpy?" Dr. Bailey asked, suspiciously. She rose an eyebrow. "You look like you thought I was about to take a punch at you. Grey, you've done your share of driving me crazy over the years, but if I haven't hit you yet, I'm surely not gonna start now."
"I know," Meredith mouthed, not knowing how to explain her jumpiness. She knew that she couldn't tell Bailey the truth. There's nothing to tell, she told herself. Nothing happened. She'd just fallen down the stairs. People do that all the time.
"Okay, then," Dr. Bailey murmured, and proceeded to stitch Meredith's forehead wound. As she finished up, the door swung open and her stomach dropped. She glared furiously at Dr. Bailey.
"You paged me for a neuro consult, Bailey?" Derek looked at Bailey, then his mouth dropped when he saw Meredith sitting on the patient's exam table. "Oh, my God. What happened, Meredith?" He quickly rushed over to her and stroked his hand over the gash on Meredith's forehead.
"She claims that she just fell down the stairs," Dr. Bailey insisted, wryly.
"I told you not to page him," Meredith hissed dryly at Bailey. "Are you incapable of following instructions?"
"I can follow instructions just fine, but I wasn't about to page and entrust a moronic wannabe neurosurgeon to do your CT. Really, you should take it as a compliment, Grey. Because if I didn't like you, I would've paged him without hesitation," Dr. Bailey said. She turned to Derek, "You better hope she doesn't have a tumor or a brain bleed, because you can't operate."
"He can't operate anyway on me!" Meredith cried. "I'm his wife. We don't operate on family members, and besides, I told you, I. Am. Fine."
"You don't look fine," Dr. Bailey pointed out.
"She's right, Meredith, you don't," Derek noted. "Where have you been? I've been paging you for the last hour. There's a neuro patient who I had a consult with this morning who is experiencing sharp pains in her stomach. I'm thinking it may be appendicitis, so I needed a general consult."
"That's gotta suck," Meredith mumbled. Derek and Miranda gave her confused looks. Meredith widened her eyes. "Why are you looking at me like that? You can't say it wouldn't suck to have appendicitis on top of a tumor."
"Yes, yes, it would suck," Derek agreed, nodding his head. "That still doesn't answer why you never answered my pages, texts or calls, Meredith."
"I seem to have misplaced my phone and pager," Meredith sighed. "I don't know where they are."
Derek froze and straightened his back. His eyes filled with concern as he watched Meredith. "Meredith, you're attached at the hip to both."
"I had them this morning, and then they were gone," Meredith shrugged. "It happens. People lose things all the time. I'm sure they'll turn up."
"Did you ever find a general consult?" Dr. Bailey asked, looking at Derek.
"I did not," Derek said. "I was going to page you, Dr. Bailey, right before you paged me."
"I'm on my way," Dr. Bailey said, leaving the room.
Derek tried to place his hands on Meredith's shoulder, but Meredith him pushed away. "Don't touch me!" she demanded, furiously. "Let's get this damn CT over so you can clear me to go back to work, okay?"
"Meredith," Derek said, and she could see the worry in his eyes. He crossed his arms together and stared at her. "You apparently fell down the stairs, and you're claiming you've lost your pager and cell phone. You never clocked in this morning; I checked. I know this is difficult for you to digest, but I'm a neurosurgeon, and I've seen several cases like this before…"
"Oh, you're the almighty neurosurgeon, aren't you?" Meredith snapped, rolling her eyes. "You see cases like this all the time, right? So, I'm a case, huh? Is that what you call every person who misplaces her cell phone and falls down the stairs? No, Derek. You're neuro-obsessed. You think that every person who does something the least bit crazy has a tumor!"
"Meredith," Derek shook his head slowly. "You're being completely unreasonable, and it's just...after your mother… Meredith, it was you who picked up on Adele right away…"
"You think I have Alzheimer's?" Meredith's mouth dropped wide open. "No, Derek. I would know if I had Alzheimer's. I'm fine, really. You know what, forget the CT. Just go."
"I'm not going anywhere," Derek stated in a matter-of-fact tone. "Meredith, you're the one who's always insisting you have early-onset Alzheimer's every time you misplace your keys. Most patients who actually have the disease deny it. Can you see my concern now?"
The door swung open, and Alex Karev entered the room.
"Whoa, what happened, Mer?" were the first words out of Alex's head.
"She fell down the stairs," Derek answered for her. "What do you need, Karev?"
"Oh, Bailey said I could find Meredith in here. I found your phone and pager, Meredith. Thought you'd like them back," Alex said as he handed them to her.
"Thank you, Alex," Meredith smiled weakly. "Where did you find them?"
"Actually, they were in an on-call room," Alex said and snickered, looking at Derek. There was no humor in Derek's face, though. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he shot an anxious, confused look at his wife.