The First Cut

30 Kirsten

Come in, Kirsten. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

Dr. Henderson’s office was on the second floor of an old house, and the window, which was open about six inches, looked out over the River Avon toward the massive abbey. The last of the great medieval churches to be built in England, it was still very much in use.

Instead of a couch, Kirsten found a padded swivel chair opposite the doctor, who sat at the other side of her untidy desk with her back to the window. Filing cabinets stood to Kirsten’s right, and glass-enclosed bookcases to her left, many of them filled with journals. From one shelf, a yellowed skull stared out. It seemed to be grinning at her. Behind her was the door, and beside that, an old hat stand.

Dr. Henderson leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands on her lap. Of course it had to be a woman, Kirsten realized; they wouldn’t have sent her to a male psychiatrist after what happened. But she hadn’t expected such a young woman. Dr. Henderson looked hardly older than Kirsten herself, though she must surely have been at least thirty. She had short, black hair, neatly trimmed so as not to be a nuisance, which complemented the angles of her face and emphasized her high cheekbones. She had dark blue eyes, kind but glinting with an edge of mischievous humor. Her voice was soft, husky and deep, with just a trace of a Geordie accent, and her lips were turned up slightly at the corners, as if always on the verge of a smile. A smattering of freckles covered her small nose and the tight skin over her cheekbones.

Kirsten made herself comfortable in the swivel chair, and after glancing around nervously at the office she turned to face the doctor, who smiled.

“Well, Kirsten, how do you feel?”

“All right, I suppose.”

Dr. Henderson opened a file on her desk and pretended to read. Kirsten could tell she knew the contents already and was just doing it for effect. “Dr. Craven has passed on the full medical details, but they’re not what interest me. Why don’t you tell me what happened in your own words?” Then she leaned back and clasped her hands again. The springs in her chair creaked as she moved.

Kirsten felt her mouth turn dry. “What do you mean? What details?”

Dr. Henderson shrugged. “Perhaps you could start with the attack itself.”

“I was just walking home and somebody grabbed me, then everything went black. That’s all.”

“Hmm.” The doctor started playing with a rubber band, stretching it between her fingers like the silence she was stretching in the room. Kirsten shifted in her seat. Outside on the River Avon a young couple rowed by. Kirsten could hear them laugh as their oars splashed water.

“Well?” Kirsten said, when she could bear the tension no longer.

Dr. Henderson widened her eyes. “Well what?”

“I’ve told you what happened. What do you think? What advice have you got for me?”

“Now hold on a minute, Kirsten.” Dr. Henderson put the rubber band down and spoke softly. “That’s not what I’m here for. If anybody has given you to believe that you’re coming to me for some kind of magic formula and-hey presto!-everything’s back to normal again, then they’ve seriously misled you.”

“What are you here for then?”

“The best way to look at the situation is that you are here, and that’s what’s important. You’re here because you’ve got problems you can’t deal with alone. I’m here to help you, of course I am, but you’re the one who’ll have to do all the work. Your description of what happened, for example-a bit thin, wasn’t it?”

“I can’t help it, can I? I mean, I can only tell you what I remember.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“How do you think I feel?”

“You tell me. Your description sounded curiously flat and unemotional.”

Kirsten shrugged. “Well, I suppose that’s how I feel.”

“How are you getting along with your parents?”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”

“Have you told them about your feelings?”

“I told you, I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything. Of course I haven’t told them. Do you think I…?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Kirsten, have you ever been able to talk to your parents about your feelings?”

“Of course I have.”

“When?”

“What do you mean?”

“Give me an example of something you’ve discussed with them.”

“I…I…well, I can’t think of anything offhand. You’re making me flustered.”

“All right.” Dr. Henderson sat up straight. “Let’s take it easy then, shall we?” And she smiled again. Kirsten found herself relaxing almost against her wishes. The doctor took out a packet of ten Embassy Regals from her desk drawer. “Mind if I smoke?”

Kirsten shook her head. She was shocked to find a real doctor smoking-especially, for some reason, a young female doctor-but she didn’t mind. Dr. Henderson turned in her chair and opened the window a little further.

“Can I have one?” Kirsten asked.

“Of course.” The doctor pushed the packet toward her. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

Kirsten almost said, “I don’t,” but she managed to stop herself. “Sometimes,” she said, then lit up. Though the first few drags hurt a bit, she didn’t make a fool of herself and start coughing and spluttering and crying. She had smoked once or twice before, just to see what it was like. The smoke made her feel a little dizzy and sick at first, but her system seemed to adapt quickly.

“And my first name’s Laura,” the doctor said. “I want us to be friends.” She poured two cups of coffee from a Thermos on the desk and pushed one toward Kirsten. “Milk? Sugar?”

Kirsten shook her head.

“Black, then. So, I take it you haven’t really been able to talk to anyone about what happened to you?”

“No. I can’t remember, you see, I really can’t. It’s like there’s a heavy black cloud inside my head where it’s all stored, and I can’t see inside it.”

“I don’t mean the event itself so much as your feelings about it now,” Laura said.

“I don’t think I feel anything.”

“Why did you take all those pills? Was it because of this cloud?”

“Partly, I suppose. But it’s mostly because I don’t feel I’m really living. I mean, I don’t enjoy things like before. Reading…company…and I don’t sleep well. I have bad dreams, over and over again. I thought it might just be better if I…”

“I see.” Dr. Henderson made a note in the file. “How important are sex and children in your life, Kirsten?”

Kirsten swallowed, shocked by the sudden change of direction. Her mouth turned dry again and the bitter coffee made it worse. She turned away. “Never thought about them. I don’t suppose one does till…till…”

“Till they’re gone?”

“Yes.”

“Had you ever considered having children?”

Kirsten shook her head. “One day. I imagined I’d have some one day. But not for a long time.”

“What about sex? Were you sleeping with your boyfriend regularly?”

In spite of herself, Kirsten blushed as she told Dr. Henderson about Galen and about how she was now trying to cut him out of her life. The doctor listened, then made more notes in her file.

“As far as I understand it,” she said, “Dr. Masterson told you that sexual intercourse would be painful, if not impossible. Am I right?”

Kirsten nodded.

“But that’s not all there is to sex, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean,” said the doctor, “is that perhaps you should start thinking about the pleasurable things you can do, rather than the ones you can’t. I’m not going to embarrass you by explaining them, but there are manuals available. What I’m saying is that you have to accept the loss of your full sexuality, yes, but that you mustn’t think that means the end of your entire sensual and erotic life. It’s important to know that you can still have those feelings and can still satisfy them in some ways-you can still touch and you can still feel.”

Kirsten stared down at the floor. She hadn’t thought about this, had tried not to think about sex at all since leaving the hospital, and she didn’t know what to say. It was probably best to let it go by for the time being.

“Just think about what I’ve said, anyway,” the doctor said. “It might be a long haul, Kirsten, but if you stick with it we’ll get you there. And if at any time you feel the need to talk to someone, please call me. Any time. Do you understand?”

Kirsten nodded.

“What about dreams? You said you’ve been having bad dreams about what happened?”

Kirsten told her about the black and white figures slashing and slicing at her in the recurring dream.

“Are you talking about nightmares?” Laura asked. “Do you wake up screaming?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“How do you react, then?”

“I don’t really. It’s all very ordinary. A bit frightening, I suppose, but there’s no pain. It’s like I’m detached from it all, just watching.”

“Why do you think you keep having that dream?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s some version of what happened. But I didn’t see anything, so it can’t be real.”

“Why are there two figures, a black one and a white one?”

“They’re both doing the same thing.”

“Yes, but why two?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, it can’t be anything to do with what happened. I didn’t see anything.”

The doctor stubbed out her cigarette and drank some more coffee. “The mind’s a curious thing,” she said. “It remembers things that happen even when you’re asleep or unconscious. Obviously, if your eyes are closed you can’t see, but you can hear and smell, for example. Some of those things that happen come up in dreams. What the imagination does is translate them into pictures, based on what the sensations were and what you feel about them. I’m not a Freudian, but I do think dreams can tell us a lot. These two figures cutting you, who do you think they are?”

“I suppose one of them-the black one-must be the man, the one who…you know. Or maybe they both are.”

“White and black?”

“Yes. But if what you say is true, and I remember things even when I’m unconscious, then maybe the white one’s the doctor. They operated on me for a long time, cutting in the same way I suppose. White and black. One for good, one for evil.” She felt pleased with herself, as if she had finally cracked a particularly obscure code, but Laura didn’t seem impressed. “Perhaps,” she said. “Now what’s in this cloud, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Everything.”

“Everything?”

“What happened that night.”

“Do you believe that you were conscious for part of the time? That you saw the man and struggled, and that you’ve repressed the memory?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I must have, mustn’t I? Otherwise why would I feel there’s something in me I can’t get at?”

“Do you want to get at it?”

Kirsten crossed her arms and drew in on herself. “I don’t know.”

“It might be necessary. If you’re to make any progress.”

“I don’t know.”

The doctor made some more notes in the file, then closed it and put it in an overflowing tray-whether it was “In,” “Out” or “Pending,” Kirsten couldn’t tell. She suspected that Laura Henderson had no such efficient system for dealing with paperwork.

“Well,” said Laura, “I don’t suppose it matters for the moment. You’ll come again?”

“I have a choice?”

“Yes. You must come of your own free will.”

“All right.”

“Good.” Laura stood up and Kirsten noticed how slim and healthy her figure looked, even under the loose white coat. It made her feel unattractive herself. In the hospital, her skin had acquired that yellowish gray pallor that sick people get, and the stodgy food had done her figure no good at all. Later, when she had lost her appetite, she had lost weight again, and now her skin felt wrinkly and loose. Her face was spotty, too, as it hadn’t been since she was fourteen, and even her hair seemed to hang lifeless and dry.

They walked over to the door, which Laura opened for her. “And Kirsten,” she said finally, “remember this: it’s all right to feel things, even bad things. It’s all right to feel hatred and anger toward whoever did this to you. In fact, if you want to get better, you must. The feelings are there, in you, and you have to admit them to yourself.”

Kirsten nodded and left. She felt, even as she walked out and crossed Pulteney Bridge to Grand Parade, that the doctor’s words had planted the seeds of a recovery in her. As she watched the daring canoeists go through their paces in the wild water down by the city weir, she reminded herself of the doctor’s last words: “It’s all right to hate him, it’s all right to hate him.” And she did. Something inside her began hardening into a cold enduring hatred for the man who had shattered her future and crippled her sex. Below, the canoeists maneuvered deftly, tracing crazy patterns on the water. Kirsten joined the crowd and watched them for a while longer. For some reason, they reminded her of Yeats’s lines: “Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.” It was an image she found strangely comforting.