When She Was Bad

4

After driving hundreds of miles, when as far as he could remember he’d never driven a car before, navigating via the onboard GPS, and solving a zillion other quotidian mysteries along the way-the self-serve gas pump, the coin-operated vending machine, the hot-air restroom hand-dryer-Lyssy was not about to be deterred by the misgivings of one stubborn psychiatrist.

“Just fix her.”

“And if I refuse?” she asked stiffly.

She was all but daring him to frighten her into cooperating. Same as Mama Rose. He remembered the knife on the bed, the terrifying flashback-and suddenly he realized something he must have known all along, deep down: to frighten somebody else, you first have to frighten yourself. You have to plumb the depth of your own fear and haul up the worst horror lurking down there. “Then you get what everybody gets when they cross me,” he said, as harshly as he could manage.

“And what would that be, Lyssy?”

“Kinched. You get Kinched.”

Lyssy was half-right, anyway. In the end, it wasn’t his threat, but rather the fear she read in his eyes that persuaded Irene. He looked like a little kid who’d just dropped the F-bomb on his parents-proud and apprehensive in equal measure. Look what a big boy I am; please don’t punish me.

Irene also knew enough about Maxwell et al., however much the system had evolved (or was it devolved?) over the last few years, to understand that it was to her advantage, and Lily’s as well, to do all she could to reinforce Maxwell’s relatively benign original personality.

Besides, the psychiatrist didn’t really believe what she’d said about not doing Lily a favor by bringing her back to consciousness. Irene had seen this unnamed autistic alter only once before, when Lily was first brought to her for a consult by a pediatric psychiatrist who was sharp enough to recognize that autism didn’t just pop up full-blown at the age of four, however textbook the symptoms.

It hadn’t taken Irene long to diagnose dissociative identity disorder, especially as Lily’s parents had recently been convicted of child abuse in its ugliest form-the standard marker for this particular dissociative disorder. And happily, the symptoms of autism had disappeared, along with the unnamed alter, as soon as Irene put the girl under hypnosis.

But now Lily was once again in her own little world. True, it was a world without fear or pain, but also without joy or understanding or volition, and Irene could no more have left her there than she could have lobotomized her.

Still, hypnotizing an autie was a tricky proposition. Irene turned to Lyssy. “Help me bring her downstairs to my office.”

Gone like magic was the pasted-on scowl. “Great, great, thanks. C’mon there, honey, let’s take another little walk.” He wrested the coin sorter from the girl’s grasp and lured her out of the bedroom as though she were a donkey, and the toy a carrot.

Irene preceded them into the office and quickly cleared her desktop, on which she placed a small wooden metronome from her drawer. “Pull that chair over to the desk,” she told Lyssy. “Now sit her down…good, good.”

“I just want to tell you, I’m sorry about, you know, threatening you before, I just-”

Irene cut him off. “Never mind that now-let’s focus on the job at hand, shall we? I want you to take the coin sorter away from her now…. It’s okay, dear, it’s okay, look here, look what Dr. Irene has for you.” She turned on the metronome, set it to the highest speed-tick tick tick tick. The girl ceased her squirming and mewling and leaned forward, focusing her attention, her very being, on this new and fascinating object. She wasn’t just watching it, she was becoming it. Breathing rapidly, eyeballs following the rapid motion, pulse racing, tick tick tick tick.

Irene waited a full minute, then slowly began lowering the metronome’s speed, one setting at a time, and with it the girl’s breathing. And as her breath rate slowed, her heart rate slowed…and slowed…and slowed….

“Lily?” whispered Irene. “It’s all right, dear, everything’s okay, you’re safe now, it’s safe to open your-There you go, that’s my girl. Hello, Lily.”