Chapter 87

I

It seemed like to Miri that the entirety of the Misty Lake, New York police and fire departments were at Kelly’s grandfather’s house.

Krysta had called 911 to report a shooting, and they were there in what seemed like seconds.

An ambulance came to take Kathryn to the hospital. She had regained consciousness and was wondering why she was at her father’s house. “How did I get here?” she asked anyone within earshot.

A paramedic, noticing the vitals that Miri had written on the pant leg of Kathryn’s jeans, asked who took the measurements.

“I did,” Miri said; “Mr. Hope and Ms. Banks had the necessary equipment, so I took the vitals down.”

“Are you a trained nurse?” the paramedic said, not believing the teenage girl who stood before him had enough first aid to do that.

“I’m 16, so no, I’m not,” Miri said; “but there are medical professionals in my family, and they taught me to at least check for vital signs.”

“Is one of these medical professionals a doctor?”

“Yes,” said Miri, wondering who pissed in the paramedic’s cornflakes that morning; “When you get to the hospital, look up Dr. Jasmine Donovan on a search engine. She’s based in Chicago.”

“I know who she is, young lady,” the medic said tersely, “what I want to know is how you know of  her.”

“She’s my aunt.”

He just looked at the tall and very caucasian girl and thought to himself, yeah right, and I’m related to Thomas Jefferson, too. He then asked her for her name.

“Mirielle Grace Summers,” Miri said.

“Now you’re going to tell me you’re related to Julia Summers?” he asked.

“I am,” Miri said. “She’s my mother.”

Miri then walked away. She honestly didn’t care if he believed her or not. Kelly’s well being was more important to Miri at that moment.

Kelly was still in shock over what had happened. Eric was getting checked out by another paramedic when he complained about feeling dizzy. Krysta was talking to a couple of police officers.

Miri went over to Kelly and put her arm around her, asking, “You going to be okay, Kel?”

“Mir, what just happened here? I feel like I just came out of a nightmare!” Kelly exclaimed.

“You mean besides Kathryn and her alter arguing with each other, your grandfather about to give in to shoot her at her request, and you screaming at him for shooting her?” asked Miri.

“Is Grandfather going to jail, Mir?” Kelly asked.

“I don’t think so,” Miri said; “The police are talking to Krysta, so they probably know that Kathryn was not in her own mind.”

“I can’t stand this, Mir!” Kelly cried, letting tears fall for the first time; “When I suggested you come home with me on Fall Break, it wasn’t for you to see the dark side of my family tree.”

“Kel, all families have secrets,” Miri said: “God knows mine does. I mean, my grandfather was Morbus the Sickness for God sake!”

“Nothing like this, Miri!”

“I swear, if the story of my family were ever written down, there would be some really dark and creepy secrets unleashed on the world, Kel,” Miri said; “It’s just part of who I am. Now come on, let’s see if your grandfather needs anything.”

“Mir?”

“Yes, Kel?”

“This isn’t going to change how you see me, is it?” Kelly asked.

Miri looked at her and said, “No, Kel, of course not. We probably know more about each other’s families than any roommates alive. You’re always gonna be my Sister From Another Mister, no matter what.”

The two of them walked toward where Eric, Krysta, a paramedic and two police officers were gathered. As they approached, they heard Eric say,

“Someone has to call Kathryn’s companion and tell him where she is. I’m just not up to it at the moment.”

“I’ll do it,” Miri heard herself say; “Unless it would sound better coming from Kelly.”

“I don’t think I’m up to it either, Mir,” Kelly said; “Christian is a nice man, and he’s no doubt concerned about Kathryn. I didn’t want you to have to meet him and my half sisters under these conditions, either.”

“We’ll roll with it, Kel,” Miri said. “We always do.”

Soon, Eric was taken to the hospital for observation and Krysta accompanied him. No charges were going to be filed against him, citing the shooting as an “accident”. Kelly and Miri were going to be at the house alone.

“Let’s call Christian,” Kelly said, “and at least let him go see Kathryn. I hope that after all this, Chastity is really and truly gone.”

Miri didn’t say it aloud, but she was sure that Chastity would never bother Kathryn and her family again.

===

II

The phone rang and rang, and Christian couldn’t get there fast enough. Please, he thought, let this be the call that tells me that Kathryn’s okay.

His anxiousness was something all three of his daughters picked up on.

Christian got to the phone before the answering service picked up and said, “Christian DeWitt.”

“Mr. DeWitt, I’m Mirielle Summers. Kelly Hope is my roommate at Northwestern,” Miri said; “I have news about Kathryn I’ve been asked to pass on to you.”

“Is Kelly not available to tell me?”

“We witnessed what happened to Kathryn, and  Kelly’s really not up to it right now, so I offered to do it,” Miri said. She then proceeded to tell Christian what had happened that afternoon. After getting the explanation and asking questions, he then said,

“She’s all right, then, correct?”

“Her injuries are minor, she has no memory of how she got to her father’s house, and she’s going to have a psych evaluation by her usual therapist, probably tomorrow.”

“Oh, no,” Christian said; “that’s not going to happen. I don’t want Cameron Chang anywhere near Kathryn.”

Miri gave Christian the number for the hospital Kathryn was in, then he ended the call. He then called the hospital to request that Cameron not be allowed near Kathryn, and to have another therapist see her instead. He was told he’d have to make the request in person.

“I’m getting my daughters and leaving as soon as we hang up,” Christian said angrily. He hung up and called to the girls, briefly explaining what happened to their mother, and that they were going to the hospital where she was.

“Right now, Dad?” asked Helene.

“Yes, right now,” her father said; “you and your sisters grab your coats and get in the car.”

“What about school, Daddy?” asked Lili.

“I’ll call you out of school tomorrow if I have to,” Christian said; “I think we should all go see Mommy, okay?”

All three girls nodded, fetched their coats, and got in the car. Within five minutes, they were on the road. By the time Christian reached the highway, Lili had fallen asleep, and the older girls weren’t that far behind her.

===

Kathryn woke up and saw she was in the hospital. She still didn’t know what happened or how she got to her father’s house. She vaguely remembered seeing Kelly and another girl there. Kathryn struggled to remember that Kelly was bringing her roommate from school home with her for Fall Break.

I wonder where everyone is, she thought. Do Christian and the girls know I’m even here? And, where is here?

All she could do is stare at the ceiling, as there wasn’t much to look at in her room. It was like many of the hospital rooms she’d been in, usually after Chastity has wreaked havoc on her life.

I wonder what Chastity did this time? Kathryn asked herself. What if Christian isn’t coming to see me?

“God, I hope he hasn’t given up on me,” she whispered aloud.

She felt like she was going to cry. All she wanted was to go home to her family.

That is, if Christian would allow her to come home.

===

III

Christian and the girls made it to the hospital, only to be told to wait.

“Why can’t we go see Mommy?” Lili asked, still groggy from sleeping in the car. “I want to see my mommy!”

“Lili, that isn’t going to make them let us see her,” Helene said; “Besides, Dad has to do other things first before we can see her.”

“Like what?”

Helene slumped in her chair. She honestly didn’t know what to tell her baby sister.

“I don’t know, Lili,” she said; “I really don’t know.”

Erin was drawing something on some discarded paper with a pencil she found in her school bag. She really wasn’t paying attention to her sisters conversation. Erin tended to escape into her own world when she was drawing.

Christian, meanwhile, was filling out paperwork for Kathryn’s stay in the hospital. He sighed to himself with the realization that he’d filled out far too many of these forms for Kathryn. He just wanted Kathryn to come home, where he and the girls would remind her that she was loved and cherished and missed.

“I don’t like it here,” Lili said now. “It’s creepy.”

“Creepy, how?” asked Erin, who had looked up from her drawing.

“I don’t know,” said Lili; “I just don’t like it here.”

“That’s not an answer, Lili,” Helene said.

“I just want Mommy to come home and not be in places like this,” Lili said.

“We all want that,” Helene said. Erin nodded in agreement, then went back to her drawing.

Christian turned to his daughters and said, “I have to go talk to someone about Mom, so stay here. Lili, don’t wander off.”

He then disappeared down a corridor with a nurse.


*


“Mr. DeWitt,” the head psychiatric doctor, Dr. Espy, said; “I understand that you do not want your wife’s regular therapist to conduct the exam to determine her fitness to live outside a hospital setting, am I correct?”

Christian didn’t like his tone, saying, “I do not want Cameron Chang anywhere near Kathryn. It’s her treatment of Kathryn that got her into this mess.”

“I see,” Dr. Espy said.

“And I WILL be taking Kathryn home with me,” Christian stated emphatically; “She is not going to be incarcerated in some sterile hospital setting away from her children. She’s been struggling with this disassociative identity shit for far too long. I will find someone to treat her as an outpatient, and not leave her here with people like you who want to lock her up and throw away the keys.”

“You think she can live a quote-unquote normal life without hospitalization?”

“She’s been doing it since January, and several times before that,” Christian said, barely keeping his anger under control; “I don’t want you conducting the exam either, because you will skew it to make sure she never goes home. Someone from outside this hospital should do it. Someone, I might add, who has no financial stake in Kathryn being an inpatient.”

“You want someone impartial, then. Am I correct?” asked Dr. Espy.

“I’ll find someone if you can’t or won’t do as I request,” Christian said. “There are three little girls out in your lobby who want their mother to come home. Period. End of story. If you cannot accommodate me, Dr. Espy, I’ll find someone who will.”

Espy sighed. Never in a million years did he ever think he’d be in a contest of wills with Christian DeWitt. Espy knew he was playing with fire, and he didn’t want to get burned. He would acquiesce to DeWitt’s request. His hospital might need the man’s help one day.

“Mr. DeWitt,” he said now, “I know the perfect person for your wife’s case, and no, it’s not me. She comes highly recommended, since Kathryn’s been able to live outside the medical setting. She’ll have to travel from Boston, but she’s the best there is with disassociative identity disorders. Her name is Rayne Devereaux.”

“Dr. Devereaux is someone I’ve heard of in passing,” Christian said. “How soon can she be here, and will I have a chance to speak with her before Monday?”

“I’ll call her now,” Espy said; “then we’ll see about getting your wife home.”

“That’s fine,” Christian said. “By the way, Kathryn and I are not married. She’s my companion, not my wife. Not yet, anyway.”

“My mistake,” Espy said; “Some women don’t change their names upon marriage.”

Espy then made his call to Boston.

===

Later that evening, Krysta returned alone to the lake house, to find Kelly and Miri asleep at opposite ends of the sofa.

She decided to let them sleep.

Eric had been admitted to the hospital for observation, and if all checked out, he could return home the next day.

Eric had implored Krysta to go home. She agreed that she’d go home, then return for him in the morning if he received a clean bill of health. Now, she was regretting it.

She walked down the hall to hers and Eric’s bedroom, got undressed for bed, and got under the covers. She then realized it was the first time she had slept in that bed alone since she moved in with Eric nearly a year before.

Dammit, Chastity, Krysta thought, why do you have to ruin everything by showing up at the most inopportune times? To think I once loved you! That I would have done anything for you! Now you disgust me. I hope you’re dead and gone and leave Kathryn and her family alone!

She then pulled the comforter over her head and began to cry.

She missed Eric laying next to her.

Please, if there’s really a God, please let Eric be okay and our lives return to normal, she prayed.

Krysta decided then and there that if Eric wanted to marry her, she’d say yes. Being without him was torture.

===

IV

It was late in the evening, but Dr. Lorrayne Devereaux was used to getting phone calls at all hours.

“Rayne Devereaux,” she said when she answered the phone.

“Rayne, it’s Aaron Espy at Tri-County Hospital,” Espy said, knowing he’d just woke the woman up.

“What can I do for you at this late hour, Aaron?” she asked.

“I need your expertise in disassociative identity disorders, Rayne. I have a patient here who showed up at her father’s house without any memory of how she got there. She has at least one alter, and her family reports that the patient and her alter were arguing. Patient begged her father to kill her; alter mocked the father into doing so. He shot her, but bullet grazed her arm and is otherwise uninjured. Patient’s companion does not want her regular therapist to conduct psych exam, as he blames the therapist for the condition patient is in,” Espy explained.

“Give me stats, Aaron,” Devereaux said.

“Five-seven to five-eight in height; approximately 130 to 140 pounds; thirty-one years of age,” Espy read off Kathryn’s chart; “Vitals are more or less normal.”

“Her regular therapist is who?”

“Cameron Chang,” Espy said.

Devereaux leaned back against the pillows on the bed. Why did I know he was going to say it was Cameron? she thought.

“Chang only has one patient with the condition you described,” Devereaux said; “and that patient has some pretty powerful contacts. We might want to tread lightly.”

“Can you come out and do the eval so I can get the patient’s companion off my back?” Espy asked.

“I can be there tomorrow afternoon about one, Aaron,” Devereaux said; “tell him that I will be happy to do the eval. I want to talk to him beforehand, however.”

“That’s good, because he wants to talk to you, too,” Espy said. “He intends to take her home.”

“So what man wouldn’t want to take the woman he loves back home?” Devereaux said; My God, Aaron, are you that stupid? she thought.

“You’ll be here at one?” Espy asked.

“I’ll be there before one if I can manage it,” Devereaux said; “Please inform the patient’s companion that she’ll have to remain overnight after I do the eval, then he can take her home if she’s not showing signs of stress.”

“Will do,” Espy said. “And thanks, Rayne.”

“Aaron,” Devereaux said, “one day, you’ll be a grown up shrink and not have to call me for every little thing. You read me, Doctor?”

She heard Espy sigh on the other end of the line before he said, “Loud and clear, Doctor; loud and clear.”

===

After hanging up with the annoyingly inept Aaron Espy, Rayne tried to go back to sleep. Sleep this night was not forthcoming.

She got out of bed and made a reservation to fly to Buffalo, then to rent a car to take the ninety minute drive to Tri-City. After that was done, she went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. That usually helped her sleep better.

Rayne couldn’t get over how two people who were supposed to help people could be so clueless. First, Cameron Chang calls me, wondering what to do about her patient with the split personality, fearing that the woman’s alter was trying to make herself known again, Rayne thought; now Espy has a run in with Christian DeWitt and wilts under pressure.

“I told Cameron years ago that Kathryn Hope was a special case that she couldn’t handle alone,” Rayne said aloud to the cat who had just walked into the kitchen; “but did she listen? Fuck no! Now if she doesn’t get sued by DeWitt, she’ll be pretty damn lucky to still have a job.”

All her cat did was meow as if to say, you gonna come back to bed, or what?

I’ll let Christian DeWitt take her home, she thought; they have children together. Maybe that’s what’s keeping Kathryn grounded; that her children need her.

She sighed and took her tea back to her bedroom. The cat followed. She sipped at her tea and hoped that Kathryn Hope isn’t worse off than she was before, or she may never come back.

I hate having to clean up other people’s screw ups, she thought.

What Kathryn would show her would be something even an experienced psychiatrist wouldn’t expect; that being grazed by a bullet killed her alter.

===

After settling the girls in their hotel room, Christian sat up for several hours, thinking about his life with Kathryn.

I’m going to marry her as soon as all this drama dies down, he thought; it’s time. It’s time I do the right thing by her... and by the girls.

He thought about the ring he had purchased for her years before, when they last thought about getting married right after Erin was born. He remembered leaning over Erin’s bassinet in the hospital and promised his hours old baby girl that he’d marry her mommy.

Then Chastity ruined those plans.

I hope Chastity is gone for good, or someone figures out a way to re-integrate her back into Kathryn’s personality, he thought. Maybe this Dr. Devereaux can figure all this out.

Christian got up and looked out the window of the hotel room. He didn’t see the fall foliage or the snow on the nearby mountains. All he saw was a strange town. All he wanted was to take his family home. All of them.

He started to weep. He was glad the girls were sleeping so they didn’t have to see him break down like this. All I want, he thought, is for my family to be together. All of us. I couldn’t go on if I lost Kathryn forever.

“Oh, Kathryn,” he said; “I need you more than you need me...”

And unknown to him, his oldest daughter was listening.

And Helene felt her heart break for her father.

That’s what I want someday, she thought as she went back to her bed in the two bedroom suite; someone who loves me like my parents love each other.

She thought about the dance she witnessed between them less than a year before. It still made her tear up. She wanted that beautiful, perfect love for herself. With someone who loved her with everything he had.

In less than four years, she’d meet that man. But she wouldn’t know it. Not right away.

Neither would he.

For now, she just wanted her mother to get out of that stupid hospital so that they can all go home.

To be a family again.

===