Truth Out Of Darkness
Chapter 33
A couple of hours later...
John was reading the business section of the newspaper when he heard the front door slam.
Brady stomped into the living room.
"Feel better?" John inquired sarcastically.
Brady glared at him. "You know, you could have told me that they left the country." he said wryly.
"That's funny. I don't recall you giving me a chance." John countered.
"Well, Chloe will be relieved to know Phillip's gone. She can focus on getting better." Brady said thoughtfully.
"Speaking of which, I believe she's in her session with Marlena right now. I wonder how it's going?"
"Probably not very well, if I know Chloe. She's not the most open person, especially about her past." Brady remarked.
And indeed it wasn't going well.
Chloe sat on Marlena's office couch, legs crossed, arms crossed and a look that screamed I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!
Marlena resisted the urge to groan. They hadn't even started yet and she already knew that this wouldn't be easy. {They never are.} she reminded herself.
She had spent the entire morning preparing for the session, even canceling appointments to do so. There was too much at stake here; she couldn't afford to make a mistake.
Most of Marlena's patients get counseling for behavioral or personality disorders. They function fine day-to-day, but usually have a few issues like low self esteem or feelings of inadequacy that they want to resolve.
It had been a long time since Marlena had a case like Chloe. Her first job as a psychiatrist had been at a mental facility for troubled young girls. Marlena noted that most of the girls had suffered childhood sexual abuse. In preparation for Chloe's session, she had reviewed her notes from the facility over and over. She also reviewed all her research on sexual traumas and repressed memories.
Marlena replayed last night's events in her mind. Chloe's whispered words, the information Brady had shared with them. Unfortunately, Chloe's past was still pretty much a mystery, and until she got the information from the orphanage, she would have to get her answers from Chloe.
She flashed Chloe a reassuring smile and kicked into therapist mode. She kept her voice calm and even, speaking softly. She adopted a relaxed, non- threatening posture and addressed Chloe.
"I know that this is very difficult for you. You're a very private, independant person. It is hard for you to depend on others, because you pretty much had to raise yourself. Am I right?"
Chloe gave a slight nod.
"But, it is different now. You have friends and family here who love you and care about you. You will not go through this alone. We are all here for you."
Despite herself, Chloe found herself relaxing. {Hmph, I am getting soft. Or maybe I'm just tired of hiding.}
"Ok. What do you want to know?" Chloe asked simply.
Marlena began the session with a few simple starter questions designed to relax Chloe and get her talking. She asked about her dreams and her love of music. Chloe recalled her happy childhood before her adoptive parents died; how there was always beautiful music in the house, the first time she saw opera performed.
Chloe's eyes sparkled, her face smiling as she told stories of her younger years. "It was those memories that got me through the tough times. My love of music was all I had to hold onto - all I had left of my father. When times got rough, I would kind of escape in my mind and go back to when I was little, sitting in my father's lap, seeing Carmen for the first time. Those memories just became my place of refuge."
Marlena nodded sympathetically. {'Tough times' Now, I have a place to start from.} "Tell me about the orphanage."
Marlena sensed Chloe tense, and her earlier carefree manner was replaced by the typical Chloe attitude. But this did not faze Marlena. She recognized Chloe's attitude as a defense mechanism, a means of keeping people away.
Marlena waited for a response. "Chloe?" she prompted gently.
Chloe shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "Oh, it was just your basic 'Lord of the Flies' experiment gone horribly wrong." she said dryly.
"How so?"
"Well, you know how at Salem High, there are the popular kids like Jan and Jason. They pretty much run the school and make life miserable for anyone they don't like. Which is pretty much everybody. Well, imagine living at the school, 24-7. And the Jans and Jasons are much worse because at least the real Jan has a family. They may not be great, but she has parents. The kids at the orphanage don't. Most of them grew up there and had long ago given up hope for adoption. In fact, after a certain point they push away people who try to care about them."
"Like you do with Nancy." Marlena interjected thoughtfully.
"Yeah." she said quietly.
"Why do you think that is?" Marlena asked. She of course, already knew the answer. She had done a great deal of study on the psychological make-up of orphans. Orphans have a hard time loving and accepting love from others. There is always the fear that they will be abandoned again. So they use anger and bitterness to push people away.
Chloe thought for a long time and then spoke slowly. "By the time I was ten, I had already been abandoned twice. I wound up going through ten foster homes in the next four years. Everytime I began to hope that maybe this time, I'd find a family who wanted me, who could love me - they'd send me back to the orphanage. It was always the same story - We're looking for a child who's younger, loving, more outgoing, normal."
Chloe paused and inhaled deeply before continuing. "So years of this go by and out of the blue, my mother, my birth mother, the same birth mother who abandoned me in the first place, shows up to take me home so we can be a real family. Excuse me while I vomit. That's what I want to do everytime she's all over me with her i love you's. True, it's not so bad now. I'm kind of used to her, and I even - love her. But I still can't forget that 17 years ago, she threw me away because it wasn't convenient for her to raise me. I guess there's still a part of me that wonders if she'll do it again.
I've always lived like I had one foot out the door - always ready to move on to the next place. Coming here was the same. Salem was just a stopping point on the way to something better. I didn't expect to find friends and family. I certainly didn't expect to find love." Chloe fell silent, pondering how far she'd come in such a short time.
"So, getting back to the kids at the orphanage. In a word, they were screwed up. And when you're that screwed up, the only way to make yourself feel better is to make someone else feel worse. So all kinds of wonderful tormenting took place, not so much to me, but it happened. And the boys - they were the worst."
Marlena waited quietly for Chloe to continue.
"It's amazing the things we take for granted. Like being able to take a bath whenever you want for as long as you want without having to worry about 'accidents'."
"Accidents?"
"You know, you're getting out of the tub and 'Oops, I'm so sorry, I didn't know there was anyone in here.' the teenage boy says who is taking his sweet time in turning around to leave as he leers at my body. I'm not blind. I see the way men look at me. I've been dealing with it for a long time. When I wore dark, heavy clothes, it wasn't because I was shy, or because I thought I was ugly. I was trying to hide. And it worked at the orphanage. The boys left me alone, and it even created a mystique about me. I was the weird girl, who listens to weird music while I practice the dark arts. It even followed me here. Ghoul girl. Like that bothers me? These are the same geniuses who came up with Gigantor and Shy girl. The only thing worse than being picked on in the first place is being picked on by morons. Those punks wouldn't last a day in an orphanage."
Chloe laughed at the thought.
"I guess the Last Blast must have brought back painful memories for you."
"Seeing my naked body displayed in front of the entire school? Yeah. At the orphanage, I soon learned to take my showers at 3 am, when no one else was up. And even then, I was in and out. Three minutes flat. I had it down to a science."
"Three A.M.? Wasn't it hard to get up then?"
"No, I was already up. I had insomnia. Still do, actually, just not as bad. I'm kind of used to functioning without sleep."
Marlena mulled over this new bit of information. Insomnia was often an indication of sexual trauma. The victims are too afraid to sleep soundly, always alert for a possible attack. Of course the reasons for the insomnia are usually buried in the victim's subconscious, so they are unaware of it.
"Tell me about the foster homes."
"Well, like I said there were a lot of them. I don't think I stayed anywhere more than four months. Most of them were okay, some were not." Chloe trailed off.
"What do you mean." Marlena asked gently.
Chloe inhaled a shaky breath. This was the one topic she had been avoiding. But she had already revealed so much, she knew she had to keep going. "Let's just say that Wednesday night wasn't the first time I've ever been hit. It didn't happen too often because I learned how to avoid it. I learned to just agree with them and do whatever they said. I was thirteen by this time and my will was just broken by everything that had happened previously. I just couldn't fight anymore.
I remember the first time it happened. My adoptive parents never hit me; they never spanked me. It just wasn't how they chose to punish. They preferred to talk with me and take away toys and privileges. So when suddenly my drunk foster father is yelling at me for some reason I can't even remember now, and hitting me with his fist, I thought that I must have done something really bad to deserve it. That's why I let them hurt me, and I never told anyone. I never thought that it might be something wrong with them. I thought it was me.
I know better now, of course. And like I said, it didn't happen too often. Whenever the beatings got really bad, then a social worker would pull me out, and I'd move on to the next home."
Marlena knew that Chloe was downplaying the abuse. She decided not to call her on it. There was no point in opening old wounds, when these aren't the wounds she's looking for. They could always deal with the physical abuse later.
Marlena took a sip of coffee and tried to form a time line of events in her mind. "So, help get this straight. Your mom, Nancy, gives you up at birth. Shortly after you are adopted by the people you came to know as your parents. They died when you were ten. Did you stay at the orphanage first, or go into foster care?"
"I stayed at the orphanage for a few weeks, but then I went into foster care. It was pretty much back to back foster homes, with a few exceptions where I was at the orphanage for awhile. Then, when I was fifteen, I went to stay at the orphanage permanently. Well, for the next few months until Nancy came for me. No, wait. Before the orphanage there was the hospital."
That grabbed Marlena's interest. "What were you doing at a hospital?" she asked calmly.
"I don't remember."
{Bingo!} "Tell me what you remember." She prompted gently. Marlena instinctively felt that this was important.
"Basically, one day I'm at the orphanage, getting ready to go to another foster home, and then I wake up in the hospital 7 months later, and I can't remember a thing in between. Mrs. Spenser, the counselor at the orphanage told me that I had had some kind of accident and gone into a coma. But I don't know if that really happened."
"Why do you don't you believe her?"
"Everyone, the doctors and the social workers and Mrs Spenser, were very secretive about the whole thing. I felt like there was something important that they weren't telling me. But I soon forgot about it until Belle's coma. Maybe, as a member of the hospital staff you could help me with something?"
"What is it?"
"When Belle was in her coma, she had a regular room in the critical care unit and she was hooked up to all kinds of machines, even though she had been out for a while. Is that standard procedure for a coma patient?"
"Yes. I can't be 100 % positive, but I can't imagine any circumstance where we wouldn't follow that procedure. Why?"
"When I came out of my 'coma'. There were no instruments of any kind around. No doctors or nurses. In fact, the first person I talked to was a psychiatrist. You see, I was in the mental ward."
Marlena froze and looked at her. Chloe continued.
"I saw all kinds of therapists. They kept asking me what I remembered. They seemed to be shocked that I couldn't remember the last 7 months. It wasn't until much later that they told me the coma story. They kept so much from me, at times it felt like a massive conspiracy. No matter what Chloe can't know what happened while she was in her 'coma'. I remember I got a lot more attention from the adults at the orphanage. I was placed in a separate room, near the counselors' wing. And shortly after that, Nancy came. Is it just me, or does that seem odd?"
"And you still don't remember anything about those months?"
"No. You don't think I was in a coma, do you?"
"Do you?"
"No."
"I don't either. We've covered a great deal today, and I don't want to wear you out. I want you to enjoy the rest of the day, okay? Go out, have fun, and get plenty of rest tonight. We'll start again tomorrow."
"Thanks, Dr. Evans." Chloe said sheepishly and left the office leaving Marlena deep in thought.
{I need to find out more about this coma. I need the Chloe's file from the orphanage.}
Chapter 33
A couple of hours later...
John was reading the business section of the newspaper when he heard the front door slam.
Brady stomped into the living room.
"Feel better?" John inquired sarcastically.
Brady glared at him. "You know, you could have told me that they left the country." he said wryly.
"That's funny. I don't recall you giving me a chance." John countered.
"Well, Chloe will be relieved to know Phillip's gone. She can focus on getting better." Brady said thoughtfully.
"Speaking of which, I believe she's in her session with Marlena right now. I wonder how it's going?"
"Probably not very well, if I know Chloe. She's not the most open person, especially about her past." Brady remarked.
And indeed it wasn't going well.
Chloe sat on Marlena's office couch, legs crossed, arms crossed and a look that screamed I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!
Marlena resisted the urge to groan. They hadn't even started yet and she already knew that this wouldn't be easy. {They never are.} she reminded herself.
She had spent the entire morning preparing for the session, even canceling appointments to do so. There was too much at stake here; she couldn't afford to make a mistake.
Most of Marlena's patients get counseling for behavioral or personality disorders. They function fine day-to-day, but usually have a few issues like low self esteem or feelings of inadequacy that they want to resolve.
It had been a long time since Marlena had a case like Chloe. Her first job as a psychiatrist had been at a mental facility for troubled young girls. Marlena noted that most of the girls had suffered childhood sexual abuse. In preparation for Chloe's session, she had reviewed her notes from the facility over and over. She also reviewed all her research on sexual traumas and repressed memories.
Marlena replayed last night's events in her mind. Chloe's whispered words, the information Brady had shared with them. Unfortunately, Chloe's past was still pretty much a mystery, and until she got the information from the orphanage, she would have to get her answers from Chloe.
She flashed Chloe a reassuring smile and kicked into therapist mode. She kept her voice calm and even, speaking softly. She adopted a relaxed, non- threatening posture and addressed Chloe.
"I know that this is very difficult for you. You're a very private, independant person. It is hard for you to depend on others, because you pretty much had to raise yourself. Am I right?"
Chloe gave a slight nod.
"But, it is different now. You have friends and family here who love you and care about you. You will not go through this alone. We are all here for you."
Despite herself, Chloe found herself relaxing. {Hmph, I am getting soft. Or maybe I'm just tired of hiding.}
"Ok. What do you want to know?" Chloe asked simply.
Marlena began the session with a few simple starter questions designed to relax Chloe and get her talking. She asked about her dreams and her love of music. Chloe recalled her happy childhood before her adoptive parents died; how there was always beautiful music in the house, the first time she saw opera performed.
Chloe's eyes sparkled, her face smiling as she told stories of her younger years. "It was those memories that got me through the tough times. My love of music was all I had to hold onto - all I had left of my father. When times got rough, I would kind of escape in my mind and go back to when I was little, sitting in my father's lap, seeing Carmen for the first time. Those memories just became my place of refuge."
Marlena nodded sympathetically. {'Tough times' Now, I have a place to start from.} "Tell me about the orphanage."
Marlena sensed Chloe tense, and her earlier carefree manner was replaced by the typical Chloe attitude. But this did not faze Marlena. She recognized Chloe's attitude as a defense mechanism, a means of keeping people away.
Marlena waited for a response. "Chloe?" she prompted gently.
Chloe shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "Oh, it was just your basic 'Lord of the Flies' experiment gone horribly wrong." she said dryly.
"How so?"
"Well, you know how at Salem High, there are the popular kids like Jan and Jason. They pretty much run the school and make life miserable for anyone they don't like. Which is pretty much everybody. Well, imagine living at the school, 24-7. And the Jans and Jasons are much worse because at least the real Jan has a family. They may not be great, but she has parents. The kids at the orphanage don't. Most of them grew up there and had long ago given up hope for adoption. In fact, after a certain point they push away people who try to care about them."
"Like you do with Nancy." Marlena interjected thoughtfully.
"Yeah." she said quietly.
"Why do you think that is?" Marlena asked. She of course, already knew the answer. She had done a great deal of study on the psychological make-up of orphans. Orphans have a hard time loving and accepting love from others. There is always the fear that they will be abandoned again. So they use anger and bitterness to push people away.
Chloe thought for a long time and then spoke slowly. "By the time I was ten, I had already been abandoned twice. I wound up going through ten foster homes in the next four years. Everytime I began to hope that maybe this time, I'd find a family who wanted me, who could love me - they'd send me back to the orphanage. It was always the same story - We're looking for a child who's younger, loving, more outgoing, normal."
Chloe paused and inhaled deeply before continuing. "So years of this go by and out of the blue, my mother, my birth mother, the same birth mother who abandoned me in the first place, shows up to take me home so we can be a real family. Excuse me while I vomit. That's what I want to do everytime she's all over me with her i love you's. True, it's not so bad now. I'm kind of used to her, and I even - love her. But I still can't forget that 17 years ago, she threw me away because it wasn't convenient for her to raise me. I guess there's still a part of me that wonders if she'll do it again.
I've always lived like I had one foot out the door - always ready to move on to the next place. Coming here was the same. Salem was just a stopping point on the way to something better. I didn't expect to find friends and family. I certainly didn't expect to find love." Chloe fell silent, pondering how far she'd come in such a short time.
"So, getting back to the kids at the orphanage. In a word, they were screwed up. And when you're that screwed up, the only way to make yourself feel better is to make someone else feel worse. So all kinds of wonderful tormenting took place, not so much to me, but it happened. And the boys - they were the worst."
Marlena waited quietly for Chloe to continue.
"It's amazing the things we take for granted. Like being able to take a bath whenever you want for as long as you want without having to worry about 'accidents'."
"Accidents?"
"You know, you're getting out of the tub and 'Oops, I'm so sorry, I didn't know there was anyone in here.' the teenage boy says who is taking his sweet time in turning around to leave as he leers at my body. I'm not blind. I see the way men look at me. I've been dealing with it for a long time. When I wore dark, heavy clothes, it wasn't because I was shy, or because I thought I was ugly. I was trying to hide. And it worked at the orphanage. The boys left me alone, and it even created a mystique about me. I was the weird girl, who listens to weird music while I practice the dark arts. It even followed me here. Ghoul girl. Like that bothers me? These are the same geniuses who came up with Gigantor and Shy girl. The only thing worse than being picked on in the first place is being picked on by morons. Those punks wouldn't last a day in an orphanage."
Chloe laughed at the thought.
"I guess the Last Blast must have brought back painful memories for you."
"Seeing my naked body displayed in front of the entire school? Yeah. At the orphanage, I soon learned to take my showers at 3 am, when no one else was up. And even then, I was in and out. Three minutes flat. I had it down to a science."
"Three A.M.? Wasn't it hard to get up then?"
"No, I was already up. I had insomnia. Still do, actually, just not as bad. I'm kind of used to functioning without sleep."
Marlena mulled over this new bit of information. Insomnia was often an indication of sexual trauma. The victims are too afraid to sleep soundly, always alert for a possible attack. Of course the reasons for the insomnia are usually buried in the victim's subconscious, so they are unaware of it.
"Tell me about the foster homes."
"Well, like I said there were a lot of them. I don't think I stayed anywhere more than four months. Most of them were okay, some were not." Chloe trailed off.
"What do you mean." Marlena asked gently.
Chloe inhaled a shaky breath. This was the one topic she had been avoiding. But she had already revealed so much, she knew she had to keep going. "Let's just say that Wednesday night wasn't the first time I've ever been hit. It didn't happen too often because I learned how to avoid it. I learned to just agree with them and do whatever they said. I was thirteen by this time and my will was just broken by everything that had happened previously. I just couldn't fight anymore.
I remember the first time it happened. My adoptive parents never hit me; they never spanked me. It just wasn't how they chose to punish. They preferred to talk with me and take away toys and privileges. So when suddenly my drunk foster father is yelling at me for some reason I can't even remember now, and hitting me with his fist, I thought that I must have done something really bad to deserve it. That's why I let them hurt me, and I never told anyone. I never thought that it might be something wrong with them. I thought it was me.
I know better now, of course. And like I said, it didn't happen too often. Whenever the beatings got really bad, then a social worker would pull me out, and I'd move on to the next home."
Marlena knew that Chloe was downplaying the abuse. She decided not to call her on it. There was no point in opening old wounds, when these aren't the wounds she's looking for. They could always deal with the physical abuse later.
Marlena took a sip of coffee and tried to form a time line of events in her mind. "So, help get this straight. Your mom, Nancy, gives you up at birth. Shortly after you are adopted by the people you came to know as your parents. They died when you were ten. Did you stay at the orphanage first, or go into foster care?"
"I stayed at the orphanage for a few weeks, but then I went into foster care. It was pretty much back to back foster homes, with a few exceptions where I was at the orphanage for awhile. Then, when I was fifteen, I went to stay at the orphanage permanently. Well, for the next few months until Nancy came for me. No, wait. Before the orphanage there was the hospital."
That grabbed Marlena's interest. "What were you doing at a hospital?" she asked calmly.
"I don't remember."
{Bingo!} "Tell me what you remember." She prompted gently. Marlena instinctively felt that this was important.
"Basically, one day I'm at the orphanage, getting ready to go to another foster home, and then I wake up in the hospital 7 months later, and I can't remember a thing in between. Mrs. Spenser, the counselor at the orphanage told me that I had had some kind of accident and gone into a coma. But I don't know if that really happened."
"Why do you don't you believe her?"
"Everyone, the doctors and the social workers and Mrs Spenser, were very secretive about the whole thing. I felt like there was something important that they weren't telling me. But I soon forgot about it until Belle's coma. Maybe, as a member of the hospital staff you could help me with something?"
"What is it?"
"When Belle was in her coma, she had a regular room in the critical care unit and she was hooked up to all kinds of machines, even though she had been out for a while. Is that standard procedure for a coma patient?"
"Yes. I can't be 100 % positive, but I can't imagine any circumstance where we wouldn't follow that procedure. Why?"
"When I came out of my 'coma'. There were no instruments of any kind around. No doctors or nurses. In fact, the first person I talked to was a psychiatrist. You see, I was in the mental ward."
Marlena froze and looked at her. Chloe continued.
"I saw all kinds of therapists. They kept asking me what I remembered. They seemed to be shocked that I couldn't remember the last 7 months. It wasn't until much later that they told me the coma story. They kept so much from me, at times it felt like a massive conspiracy. No matter what Chloe can't know what happened while she was in her 'coma'. I remember I got a lot more attention from the adults at the orphanage. I was placed in a separate room, near the counselors' wing. And shortly after that, Nancy came. Is it just me, or does that seem odd?"
"And you still don't remember anything about those months?"
"No. You don't think I was in a coma, do you?"
"Do you?"
"No."
"I don't either. We've covered a great deal today, and I don't want to wear you out. I want you to enjoy the rest of the day, okay? Go out, have fun, and get plenty of rest tonight. We'll start again tomorrow."
"Thanks, Dr. Evans." Chloe said sheepishly and left the office leaving Marlena deep in thought.
{I need to find out more about this coma. I need the Chloe's file from the orphanage.}