Too Long Among the Dead

Chapter 4: Bedtime Story

Chapter 4: Bedtime Story

Guy picked up Vera Field’s case folder and flipped though the file to her written personal statement. Both Guy and Hal encouraged new patients to put their concerns in writing; this practice proved helpful in treatment for baseline purposes and served as a snapshot of the patient’s current emotional state. Guy saw Vera twice a week in the beginning and was now seeing her once a week.

Intake Questionnaire: Personal Statement of Vera Field

Why am I here? Good question. Mother, Mildred Field—you met her during my first appointment—is convinced I’m not myself. Who would be after months in a coma? According to my doctor, the traumatic event erased my memory for the time just before my accident, and, of course, while I was in the coma. You don’t have much of a memory because nothing is happening to you, right? You must have the answer to that one, Doctor. I can only say I remember nothing except what Mother told me.

My father, Richard Field, is locked away from us now, and society as well. I have no desire to see him ever again. I hate him. I…he was never a loving person. I went to Mother when I needed something growing up. Though she listened to my problems well into my teens, she often had no real solution to offer. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, Vera,” was her usual answer. I guess it’s just not in her make-up to provide any kind of guidance or moral support. She devoted more time to her friends and her weekly bridge game than she did to me, or to my father from what I could tell.

I don’t want to say my father was always a bad person. His attorney said he was mentally ill. At least, that was the main defense. I’d go as far as to say he was definitely crazy. You’d just have to look at those eyes to know. But in the end, the judge didn’t agree and wouldn’t allow an insanity plea on the psychiatrist’s evidence. As a result, he’s in prison for the rest of his life. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know. I’m just happy he’s in there and can’t hurt anyone else.

Okay, here’s what I’ve been told, and I guess it will answer your question of why I’m here for therapy. My mother said when I was ill, she’d sit by my bed and hold my hand while my father read the newspaper to me. She said Dr. Hilliard suggested it. “Talk to your daughter,” he told them. “Let her know you’re there, that life goes on.”

When he wasn’t reading to me, he was working, or home sleeping, and my mother would sit across from me and say the Rosary. She said they had a terrible fight over it. Father wasn’t religious…I mean, isn’t, and he thought all the Hail Marys and Our Fathers wouldn’t help me recover one bit. He said she fussed over me too much, making sure I was warm enough, piling those thin, white, cotton blankets on my bed and tucking me in at night before they left for home.

Instead of all that holy rubbish, Father said he preferred reading the Metro section to me, you know, the part of the newspaper that talks about local crimes and things.

One day, Father began reading aloud to me about a murder investigation. Something about a child’s body being found dismembered in a vacant lot near a quiet street. My parents were both old enough to remember an earlier case in the 1940s called the Black Dahlia. Mother was totally disgusted hearing all the details, but she said my father was obsessed with it. He read me updates every night. He kept telling her if there was a chance to spark some brain activity he was willing to try anything.

Sorry this is so long but you asked me for the reasons, and I have to work up to the big reason in my own way.

One night the police released information about how the child, a small girl, was killed. Since there was no blood found at the scene, they thought she’d been killed somewhere else and carried to the lot. Mother said my father read to me about a possible theory, that this might be a ritual killing, like ancient people sacrificing animals, even humans, in order to change their fates.

Mother noticed something then she hadn’t before: a kind of deadness she said in my father’s eyes, as if the blue in the iris had been drained of color and was replaced with a kind of emptiness. That’s not a color, but you get the idea.

It was maybe a few weeks later, when my father told her that part about the killing being a ritual murder wasn’t in the papers. He said the police would never give out that kind of information to the public especially since it was an important clue to finding the killer.

“I know it,” he said. “And they know it, but they didn’t report it.” He looked at my mother again with those horrible dead eyes, and it was then she knew he’d killed that poor child.

So why I’m here is obvious, isn’t it? How can I go on living knowing that a sweet innocent child, a total stranger with her life yet to be lived, died because of me? Could you? Could anyone?

Guy took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Oddly enough, he considered Vera one of their most stable patients. She’d been through hell, and had returned to an unfamiliar world, certainly not one of her own making. Vera felt responsible for her father’s actions, and he saw this as a normal response given the situation. She was young, and had just entered her third decade. Guy was confident there was much they could do to facilitate her recovery.