Chapter 11

Warning: This chapter contains some sensitive subjects and a storyline that some may consider disturbing. Please consider skipping this chapter if the general subject of rape stresses you. I try to treat this serious subject with as much care and respect as possible.

While Catherine stormed up the stairs she felt the walls close in on her - trying to retain her - and the world began to spin in her head. Solely driven by the feeling of an oncoming panic attack she ran to her bedroom, slammed the door shut and sagged against it with trembling knees. Her heart was racing and threatened to jump out of her chest. An icy chill slowly crept up her body and paralyzed her useless limbs. Trembling all over she pressed one chalk white hand against the other. Catherine tried to control her shallow breathing with the power of despair in a vain attempt to master this forcefully nascenting panic attack.
But what always sounded so simple and logical in her therapy session, seemed impossible in real life practice. As always when the horror of that fateful day in a dark parking garage threatened to catch up on her.

The reality around her came to a halt, moved to another level of other-worldly existence. She saw nothing, only discerned the sough in her ears, the impotent fear and an all-consuming coldness from deep inside her bones.

And with the panic came the memories. Memories of a hazy day in fall. As clear as if it had only been yesterday. The events of that fateful day had lined up like a string of pearls. A chain of smaller and larger causalities - cause and effect in it's purest form.

Their day had begun at a hectic pace as they had overslept. Nobody had been able to tell who had forgotten to activate their alarm clock but this failure had irrevocably set a chain reaction in motion. Like the first domino that none of them could stop and that had lead her into an unguarded, dark parking garage in the city center at 9:07 AM.

The hectic hustle and bustle of the morning, four whiny children, her insufferable husband who had decided not to accompany her and Charlie to their pediatrician's appointment due to a short-term deadline at work. The kids had been late for school and kindergarten, Henry for work.
Maybe Catherine would have made it in time to the doctor if she would have arrived a few seconds earlier so that that woman in a blue SUV would not have been able to snatch away the last free parking lot right outside the medical center. But that hasn't been the case so she had to drive around the block several times in annoyance and eventually frequented a cheap, slightly dilapidated parking garage in a back street as not to lose more time. With little Charlie in her arms she had rushed to the practice.

After the check-up she had run some errands and returned to her car. Catherine had strapped Charlie into his car seat and stowed the purchases in the trunk when she had suddenly noticed that she had not yet paid her parking ticket at the pay machine. She had shortly considered unfastening her son and taking him along as not to leave him alone in the car but in the end she had glanced at his small, almost sleeping form and had decided against it. She had rather wanted to leave him in the car for five minutes than disturb him again.
How would things have gone if she had taken her youngest with her to the pay machine?

On the way to the machine she had noticed the two men for the first time. They had leaned against a wall besides an old van on the other side of the garage and had leered at her in an unsettling, provocative way.
She had quickened her steps and tried to radiate self-confidence. Ignoring the men, she had paid for her parking ticket and impatiently shifted her weight from one leg to another, waiting for the machine to spit out her change.

"Olà chica bonita."
With these words, fate had taken its course. She could still remember that the way the smaller of the two men, a Latino, had stared at her, had unnerved her. But at that time she had not yet seen what horror was lying ahead of her. For though rape was terrible and despicable, but it only happened to other women. Not her.

She had found herself in a shady corner between a concrete wall and a massive body not even three minutes later. Her ears were still ringing when she thought about their sardonic, boisterous laughter while she struggled in a futile attempt to fend off their greedy hands. At first their laughter had made her angry. Angry and ready to fight. But when the taller one - a pale guy with foul teeth and horrible body odor - had thrust his fist remorselessly into her face with a stone-cold, dangerous stare, her resistance had died away.

The two men had taken advantage of her disorientation and had wrestled her to the ground. The things that had followed, happened in a blurry fog of pain and shock.
Hands that first tugged at her clothes, then at her body and her hair. They had pinched, groped and beat her, then spread her legs and abused her numb body. And when the pale creep was finally finished, when she had thought she was over the hump, the Latino had dragged her by her hair, painfully pressed her face down on the cold cement floor and had brutally taken her from behind.

Half an eternity later these animals had let go of her and left their victim on the floor of the parking garage - bleeding and whimpering in pain. With her last strength she had dragged herself to her car where she had barricaded herself in and called Henry drowned in tears.

"Dear Lord," Catherine sobbed and clasped her trembling hands over her mouth. These horrible memories had catapulted her right back into this very garage. She could even smell the exhaust fumes. The sour sweat of one and the cheap aftershave of the other man.
With shaky fingers she exerted pressure on her temples but the images in her mind's eye wouldn't stop.
She could even feel their dirty hands on her body.

Catherine crossed her bedroom on wobbly legs and entered the adjoining bathroom. Trembling violently she stripped off her clothes and got into the shower stall.
Burning hot water pelted down on her and although she was trying hard to rinse away the phantom marks of her tormentors, neither water nor soap were able to convey a sense of getting clean again. Her legs gave way and she sank down in a weak bunch of misery.

Catherine didn't know how long she stayed in that position. She just knew that her entire body was red and burning all over. Her limbs hurt.
In the meantime the water had cooled down significantly but was still hammering down on her at full tilt. Goose bumps had rosen on her entire body.

With shaky fingers she turned down the tap. A quiver gripped her, followed by a cold shiver that went down her spine. With chattering teeth Catherine stepped out of the stall, wrapped her trembling body in a fluffy, white towel and sat down on the toilet seat. Lost in thought, she toweled off her hair. Only later did she feel strong enough to get up and trust her legs again to support her weight.

She did not know what time it was or how much time had passed. She just knew that she was tired. Bone tired and exhausted. So she put on her satin pajamas and collapsed right into her bed. Neither her wet hair nor the light or the fact that she had not even brushed her teeth could keep her from lying down at this very moment. All she longed for was the sweet nothingness of a dreamless sleep, where to she slipped very quickly thanks to her exhaustion.

But she was not granted with an unstisturbed rest this evening. Soon pictures of torment danced in front of her fluttering eyelids as if they were trying to taunt her. Countless faceless men approached her. They looked threatening and yet she could not move a single muscle to escape. More and more of them surrounded her, silently, menacingly, they came closer and closer, eagerly reaching out for her. Then she noticed that two of the blurry faces slowly started to sharpen. One of them was cheesy and long with devious beady eyes, the other had distinctive features and a dark complexion. And suddenly she was surrounded by her tormentors. All men wore the same two faces and mercilessly grabbed for her.
"Olà chica bonita."

Panting heavily, Catherine jolted awake. Her heart was pounding wildly and she had a thin film of sweat on her damp skin. She sat up breathing hard, trying to suppress the images of her nightmare that had been both surreal but so frighteningly real at the same time. She know that sleep was out of question now. At least not without some medical aid.
Feeling dizzy and lightheaded, she opened the drawer of her nightstand and reached for the small box that contained the strongest sedative she had ever been prescribed.

Holding the pillbox tightly in her hand, Catherine went barefoot down the stairs and into the kitchen. She took a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water, her hands shaking violently. Her breathing was still labored. She fumbled with the lid of the box. Catherine finally succeeded and took out two small pills. With her right hand she reached for the water, but her fingers were shaking so heavily that the glass slipped from her grip and shattered on the hard granite floor. A sea of water and glass fragments spread out at her feet while Catherine sank to her knees with a choked sob and tears welling up in her eyes.

Henry, while lying on his bed and watching TV due to his sleeplessness, sat up in alarm when he heard a loud clangor noise coming from the lower floor. He rose slowly, opened his door and peered outside. Just then Claude stuck out her head as well.
"Dad?" She mumbled sleepily. "What was that? A burglar?" Henry stepped out into the hallway and noticed that the door to his wife's bedroom was ajar and the light was on.
"Certainly not, child. Go back to sleep. I'll go downstairs and check on your mum." With gentle pressure he guided his daughter back into her room and ran down the stairs light-footed. The lower floor of the house was dipped in darkness. So he stopped in the hall and listened for a moment. There was no noise whatsoever and he briefly wondered if he had just imagined the clangor but then he heard a soft sobbing.
Henry silently approached the kitchen. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. He stopped in the doorway of the kitchen and listened again. And there it was again, a suppressed sobbing noise.

Henry briefly asked himself how to react to a crying Catherine. Everything in him urged him to turn on the light to see what was going on. Still, he hesitated. But when he reminded himself that she must have broken something and that he was barefoot, common sense prevailed.
"Catherine?" He asked softly to alert her to his presence and switched on the light.

What he saw shocked him. His wife sat huddled and completely distraughted in front of their kitchen island, splinters of glass and spilled water around her motionless form. He knew that look on her face, though he had not seen it for years. Catherine was trapped in her own world full of fear, panic and despair.

When his wife spotted him, she visibly flinched and frantically started to rise. Henry raised his hands in a placate gesture. Catherine was barefoot just like him and he wanted to keep her from stepping into the shards in her panic.
"Be careful with the shards," he said, forcing himself to stay calm. In the meantime he had also discovered the pillbox on the counter. What the hell was going on?

His wife stared at him in a way that reminded him of a deer in the headlight. Carefully and slowly as not to startle her he walked over to Catherine and sank down on his knees to meet her stare at eye level and to avoid intimidating her with his size.
"Are you hurt, Kitten?" Henry used her nickname deliberately. Maybe it would help bringing her back to here and now.
He let his eyes unobtrusively glide over her sunk down form. From her outward appearance he could see no injury at least. However he suspected that they were dealing with an invisible enemy. "Catherine?" He insisted when she did not respond.
He felt as if cognizance flickered in her eyes for the fraction of a second, then her eyes glided down her own body as if she actually had to check if she had suffered an injury. Then she barely noticeably shook her head. Finally.

"Okay, that's good. Why don't you hang on while I'll wipe the floor first?" He searched in her eyes for a hint that she understood what he was trying to tell her but she did not respond.
Henry slid back on his seat of pants - never taking his eyes off Catherine. He blindly opened a drawer and took out a handful of dishtowels. Then he slid back in her direction and started carefully wiping the water aside along with a myriad of shards. He probably didn't get all of them but for the time being it was the best he could do.
"I'll get you a new glass of water." He straightened up again as slowly as he had gone to his knees, fetched another glass and poured some water. He inconspicuously checked the inscription of the pillbox while doing that.
If he was not mistaken, this was a sedative. One she regularly took in the first few months after her rape.

He slowly knelt down again and handed Catherine the glass. It took her a moment to react and reach out for it. Only then did he realize that she already held two of the pills in her hand and was about to take both of them.
"One is enough, dear," he said in a calm but definite tone. Henry knew that this special tranquilizer was a strong one and he didn't want Catherine to overdose in her frightened condition. He had no idea what he was going to do in case she decided to swallow both of them.
But to his surprise she followed his instruction and contented herself with only taking one pill. Then she washed it down with a big gulp of water.

"I don't want you to see that," she muttered after half an eternity where they just sat there and stared at each other. "To see me like that," Catherine corrected herself.
And suddenly it began to dawn on Henry that these demons in Catherine, demons he hadn't seen for so many years, still roared and raged deep within her core. It was them preventing his wife from tearing down the wall between them.

He realized what was wrong with Catherine. She had not only pushed him away at that time, she had clearly repressed what had happened to her and - as he now assumed - had never been able to overcome it. And all these years he hadn't even noticed that something was wrong with her.
Apparently the events in the elevator and their dinner had triggered her current condition. It scared him to see his proud and strong Catherine like that.
"It's still haunting you, isn't it? A wife should always be able to entrust her husband with a secret of this magnitude. So I wonder what a terrible excuse of a man and husband I must be, being bind t..." Before Henry could dissolve in self-hate, Catherine interrupted him gently.

"It's not your fault. I'm... broken." At the end of her sentence his wife paused briefly as if searching for the right word.
"There are many words that could describe you. Stubborn, headstrong, clever, strong, argumentative, beautiful, strenuous - I could go on forever. But broken never comes to my mind. I do not know about you, but I'm too old to sit here on the cold floor. Are you coming to the sofa with me?"

He tried to make his suggestion as casual as possible. He also made no attempt to touch her. He had experienced Catherine once or twice during a panic attack and she had always reacted badly to being touched in such a fragile state. So he got up with a soft groan but stayed in the kitchen to see if she was willing and able to rise. At first she seemed to be thinking about his suggestion, then to his relief she got up as well.
"There might still be some splinters here, try to make a big step," he instructed, stepping aside so she would not involuntarily collide with him.

With some distance he followed Catherine into the living room and reached for the blanket to hand it to her. She seemed almost surprised by the gesture, grabbed the blanket and wordlessly curled up into a small ball on their couch. Apparently the pill had already started to work because Catherine seemed less agitated, rather exhausted.
"Does that happen often?" He ventured to ask at some point and involuntarily held his breath.
"No, it... sometimes, Henry." While forming an answer she had obviously decided to tell him the truth instead of a pretty little lie.
"That's why you've resumed your therapy. I'm a complete idiot."
"No, you just did not want to know it and I did not want to let you know."

She was right, the last few years they had just tried to ignore each other and he had failed to pay attention to any sign that would have revealed that something was wrong with his wife. Still. She had banished him from her private life years ago, denied him any insight into the progress of her mental healing and he had never attempted to obtain clarify of the real state of her recovery. He had always assumed that there was nothing a Catherine de' Medici would not be able to cope with. He was wrong.

That was a long, difficult chapter with a difficult context.
I came to the conclusion that Catherine would only be able to really focus on getting better after a breakdown. And I had the feeling that it was time for Henry to find out what's going on with his wife.

Thank you for hanging on and altough I sound like a broken record: I'm never getting tired of thanking you for your reviews and for sticking with me. Thank you!