Charleigh Wallace
____________________________
Anna Blair’s
Visitors
Based on a true story.
Copyright © 2011
All rights reserved.
…continued
Sixteen
Even though Anna again stated clearly that she could at any time refuse to bring the damn journal, she decided it was best if she brought it today, her next appointment with Dr. Romania Man. Anna didn’t think he liked his new name.
It did take her some time to relinquish it, but finally she did.
While Anna sat anxiously, hating the silence, he read of the kissing of Russell Crowe.
He cleared his throat. “Do you feel that Russell Crowe was really there with you…kissing you?”
She could tell he was really worried, but not as much as he would be if he knew Russell Crowe had kissed her back.
Anna smiled, turning a light shade of pink. “Sometimes.”
He read on, and suddenly became alarmed. “Did Cezar really rape you?! Did you call the police?”
Anna was alarmed by his reaction. “No, I didn’t call the god damn police! Jesus!”
“You need to get to the hospital right now! You need to be examined.” He stared at her angry face. “Well, will you go?”
“Okay, okay!”
“Your cab driver! I’ll call and tell him to take you to the hospital, okay?”
“Yeah, yes, okay!”
He did wonder if Cezar had really been there, but this was the only way to be sure.
“Okay.” He breathed in and out heavily. It only took a few minutes to place the call to Lawton Cab. While they waited, he continued to read, glancing up at her on occasion. “And this woman in your dreams. Is she your mother?”
“It wasn’t a dream.” Anna glared at him, her left eye twitching slightly. “My eyes were open!” Anna held them wide open with her fingertips for emphasis. “And yes, it was her.”
Dr. Romania Man studied Anna for a long moment. Then he read another entry:
Dear Diary,
My memories of my childhood are as evasive as the past ten years, since I divorced Cezar. My life is more a collection of torn photographs that whip through my mind at strange times: going to the bathroom, vomiting up dinner, shaving my legs. Pictures I can maybe make sense of if in a photo album, with little white labels describing the scenes, giving the dates. But scattered around my mind the way they are, it is impossible for me to gather them, to make much sense of them. All I know at this point is that I have lived a life; I’m just not really sure who’s.
Hey, Romania Man, isn’t the icy rain neat?
He smiled.
“I like the weather here, too. It snows just enough to make it seem festive, don’t you agree?”
“Whatever.” Anna rolled her eyes.
His eyes jumped to the section of the journal about the UPS man.
“Anna, you kissed a total stranger? The UPS man?”
“So!” She stuck out her tongue at him. When the cab arrived, Dr. Romania Man walked with Anna downstairs, Craig wondering what had happened to end the session early.
The doctor leaned in the front of the cab as Anna got in the back seat. “Please take her to the hospital right away, emergency room. I’ll call ahead.”
Craig whipped around to look at Anna, wondering if she was all right. Then he nodded quickly at the doctor, started the engine, and pulled out into traffic, maneuvering like a NASCAR driver.
“Jesus! What’s the urgency?” Anna yelled to the front seat.
“He said it was an emergency so I’m getting you there fast.”
“Oh, it’s probably nothing. I was raped the other day and …”
The cab came to a screeching halt at the side of the road, Craig whipping around in the front seat.
“What the fuck!”
Wow, Anna thought, he really is upset about this. And his eyes, Lord, his eyes; they are on fire. She straightened out her coat across her lap.
“I said he thinks I was raped.”
“Well, it’s either something you are or aren’t.” Craig was going to lose his mind if he didn’t first find out who the son of a bitch was who did this to her, and then kill him.
When he saw her fidget and look outside on the street turning dark with storm clouds, he knew he’d said too much.
“Okay, listen, let me get you to the hospital, okay? They can help you.” And in the meantime, I’m going hunting, he thought.
So he pulled out onto the street and got her to the hospital in five minutes flat, a new record for him.
He jumped out and opened her door. “Do you need me to come in, ‘cause I will.”
Anna shook her head ‘no’ and went through the sliding glass doors into the busy emergency room, leaving him standing by the open car door.
“Ah hell, I’m going in no matter what she says. I ain’t leaving her alone.” So Craig parked the cab in a “no parking” zone, and ran inside. Anna was sitting in a padded peach-colored chair while a nurse with high gray hair and a turned up nose took her vital statistics. A thermometer was in her mouth that he noticed she was biting down on hard, the nurse’s fat fingers trying to pull it from gritting teeth.
“Please, ma’am. It’s procedure.” As the nurse struggled, Craig came over.
“Anna, give the nurse the thermometer.” Anna turned her head slowly, like the damn exorcist girl, Craig thought, sending a shiver down his back. “Please?” Craig pleaded.
Anna let go. “What are you doing here? You only belong in the cab.”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
The nurse’s razor thin lips pursed together. “Ma’am, is this man bothering you because I can have him thrown out if you like.”
Craig looked at Anna pleadingly and scowled at the nurse.
“I guess you can stay.” To the nurse, Anna replied, “He’s my ride home anyway.”
“Okay, well, if you’re sure,” the nurse said, focusing her softening shit-brown eyes on Craig’s crotch. Craig, with hands on his lean hips, glared back.
Anna was pushed by wheel chair to an available bed while Craig was kept in the waiting room. He paced like a man ready to become a father.
Anna was examined by Dr. Kyle Montgomery, a tall thin man with tall thin hair. He asked her a few times, “You say you were raped, ma’am?” But Anna lay there, silent, her legs in stir ups, feeling undignified, and humiliated.
“How long ago?” he asked gently.
“Sixteen years ago.” And Anna started crying. A young nurse in a cartoon shirt-and-pants-set uniform moved up next to her, rubbing her shoulder, being as much comfort as Anna would allow.
The doctor gently took her feet out of the metal stirrups, covered her naked body with a cool white sheet, patted her knee, and silently walked out.
The nurse got her dressed carefully, slowly, watching Anna’s face stare at the sand-colored curtains with pale pink thin stripes. She was unmoved, staring past curtains at nothing, even with all the commotion of a man being rushed past her room on a gurney, with a bullet in his belly from a gang fight.
The nurse walked Anna slowly out to the waiting room, searching for anyone who knew her. Craig stopped pacing suddenly when he saw Anna. He rushed over. “Is she okay,” he asked the nurse.
“Are you her husband, sir?”
Craig kept his anxious, worried eyes on Anna’s. “No ma’am, just her cab driver.”
“Sorry, sir, I can’t tell you how she is then. She is okay to be taken home, though.”
Craig nodded, took Anna’s unwilling arm and led her out to the waiting cab that now had three tickets on the windshield. “Fuck you,” Craig muttered as he grabbed them off the windshield and thrust them in his pocket. He opened her door, and helped her in. And in silence, he drove her home.
Once she was safely inside, he called Dr. A’s office. Craig told him what had transpired. The doctor said he had already called the emergency room. He thanked Craig for being concerned but again told him there was nothing that could be relayed unless he was family.
“Well, Jesus, what do I have to do? Marry her so I can find out if she’s okay? Christ!”
And at that moment, Dr. A knew this man cared for Anna, and he was glad she trusted him, even if for nothing more than as her driver.
Trust. He thought about it for a moment. Trust is huge. The fact that Anna trusts anyone is huge. Amidst the bad was good.
But the bad was pretty bad. So, she hadn’t been raped, which brought more concerns. Was it just her period that caused the blood? She claimed she had bruises but the doctor reported none. How far will these delusions take her? Far away? Too far?
He sat back in his chair, drank a sip of his now cold coffee, made a face, tossed the cold coffee in his trash can, and tapped his pencil on his metal desk.
His last patient left at 8:00 pm., a woman bent on destruction by way of broken glass. He sat at his computer in the dark, sipping a fresh cup of coffee, thinking of Anna. Would Anna ever commit suicide? He didn’t really feel it was in her make up to do so. She had so much to live for: her children, her new life with new memories. And yet he wondered.
And what about her children? They most assuredly needed help, too. He made a note to schedule them an appointment.
Dear Diary
I heard the hush of wind-swept flowers
Murmuring my guilt
I looked abaft, Lamenting
As all fell that I had built
I paused to ponder there
And watched as Scarlet, Jade
Once fair
Turned black and bruised
And perishing
While entrusted in my care
The April sun turned to bluest ice
That reassured no more
The dying dahlias fell hard like me
Upon this barren, thirsty floor
The unmoved earth turned from me
And so I turned from it
And turned it over six hundred times
Resigned…unaccompanied…unfit.
Seventeen
Anna didn’t know yet and wouldn’t for several years that her children, like herself, had wished for death to come quickly, to end the pain and nightmares.
It was on a sunny Saturday in July, one year ago, that Rhona came home from the abandoned playground with broken, bottle-glass cuts up and down her slender arms.
Rhona loved Danny. He lived across the street from them, and had for several years. He was tall, with dark hair and dark eyes, eyes that didn’t let many in. He asked her to go out with him, which really meant hanging out together, and maybe kissing and holding hands. Not long after he had asked, he began ignoring her, treating her as if she had a contagious disease.
He surprised her one day, asking if she wanted to go with him to the school playground. She happily said yes. He broke up with her at the playground, but didn’t just break up with her. He brought a friend with him, and together they laughed at her and made a joke of her feelings. When she came home, she was crying, her cut up arms behind her back, the broken glass left at the playground.
“Why are your hands behind your back, Rhona?” Anna asked.
Rhona shrugged her shoulders.
“Let me see your arms,” Anna pleaded, her voice breaking.
Rhona yelled ‘No!’ and ran up the stairs, crying. Fia stopped Anna from following.
“No, Mom, let her alone. She doesn’t want you around her right now.”
“But why did she do that?” And the tears came, falling like autumn leaves. Fia, Gregor, and Aileana all looked down.
Anna ran to her room, locked the door behind her, and violently pulled out the underwear drawer from the chest. She carefully unwrapped a midnight blue and silver silk scarf, unfolding the long, carved-handled knife she had purchased at a cutlery shop a few years back, her wrists its intended use. She fell to the floor, angrily grasping the wooden handle, hoping that in her fall she would accidentally do what she purposely intended, but the knife fell to the floor beside her.
“It’s because of me,” she cried softly, shaking her head, and raising her face up to the ceiling. “Why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you?” She looked past her white stucco ceiling, and through the thick clouds, staring down the eyes of god. “I hate you! I hate you!” Then she fell to earth, through her ceiling, and back to where she lay, where she passed out from grief.
At 8:00 pm exactly, Anna awakened and opened up her journal:
Dear Diary
That doctor said I hadn’t been raped. I guess I have a really good imagination, huh?
Dear Diary
Rhona cut her arms today. Dear god, where were you?
Eighteen
Ms. Lebel was again due for another visit. Oh joy, oh bliss.
Anna asked for her ID and credentials, something Ms. Lebel would become quite used to, because without them, Anna wouldn’t ever let her bony ass in the door. Mrs. Lebel snottily slipped them through the crack in the door, only Anna’s left eye visible to Ms. Lebel’s two, so close together. Anna couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
After much debate and pleading from the freezing cold social worker, Anna did allow her entry, but she did not offer her any tea or cookies, even though Ms. Lebel said she was parched and hungry.
Tough shit.
Anna kept a close eye on the cat clock; 6:00 pm was all Ms. Lebel got, one hour of their time. This beady-eyed bitch better be gone on the dot.
Ms. Lebel asked how each one was doing. Anna seriously considered the possibility that Ms. Lebel might have been a member of the KGB. Then she just started laughing, until tears were falling down her face. Ms. Lebel smiled, unsure of the joke, which made Anna laugh even harder.
Anna hurried her out the door at 6:03 pm, three goddamn minutes past the time she was supposed to leave.
“Mom, why did you laugh at her?” Aileana asked, embarrassed.
“I thought she was with the KGB.” And Anna laughed again. Then they all laughed, and went about getting dinner, glad they wouldn’t have to see her again for another month.
to be continued…
Charleigh Wallace 