Medical Kidnap Files 1-6, page 114
But LaRae stayed to watch her and to make sure that she didn’t get away, so Hannah had to stay there. She slumped in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position. But she was so tense, anticipating the upcoming workout, that her body was already throbbing with pain. There was no comfortable position and, even if she had been at home in bed, she would have curled up in a ball and tossed and turned, unable to find some relief.
After some waiting, a nurse came out to the waiting room and approached Hannah.
“You must be Hannah,” she said brightly.
Hannah hadn’t seen her before. She usually saw the same staff each time she came. She knew the regulars. But this nurse was unknown to her.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“I’m Nurse Everest, and I’m going to take you to your appointment today.”
Hannah looked at Nurse Everest and then looked at LaRae, uncertain. Nurse Everest had said ‘appointment’ instead of ‘therapy.’ Did that mean she was doing something different from usual? Maybe seeing the fabled Dr. Corner instead of having to go through the usual racking therapy session? Getting a check-up or evaluation? Maybe she would get the chance to tell him that the therapy wasn’t working and he was just making things worse.
“What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously.
“We’ll discuss all of that. Come with me.”
Hannah got slowly to her feet. She looked at LaRae again, but she didn’t give anything away. If she knew what was going on, she didn’t let on.
Hannah moved slowly, and the nurse was impatient. She would walk ahead a few steps, then realize that Hannah wasn’t keeping up, would wait a few seconds for Hannah to get closer, and then step forward again, leaving her behind. She acted as if she thought Hannah was being deliberately slow and would catch on and pick up her pace if shown the way. Hannah didn’t try to go faster. Faster hurt and she already had to face therapy, if that was what she was doing.
“Am I doing something different today?”
Nurse Everest didn’t say anything at first but, in a few minutes, when they walked past the therapy rooms where Hannah normally did her treatment, she apparently decided that she’d better fill Hannah in on what was going on. It was evident that they were doing something different from what Hannah had come to expect.
“Yes, we have a different kind of therapy planned today,” she said evasively.
What? Swimming? Ice bath? Something that Hannah would hate and that would make her hurt worse than ever?
“What kind of therapy?” Hannah asked when Nurse Everest didn’t offer anything else, and Hannah couldn’t figure it out from reading the labels on the doors that they were walking past.
“It’s called ECT,” Everest finally offered.
Hannah puzzled through this. “Like, etcetera?” she ventured after a bit. Maybe this was ‘everything else.’ Like she did her exercise and massage therapy, and she did everything else. ETC.
“No, ECT,” the nurse corrected, but still didn’t tell her what that meant.
“Is this something Dr. Corner made up?”
She was suspicious of anything that was his idea. The man clearly enjoyed hurting people.
“Oh, no,” the nurse assured Hannah. “ECT has been around for a long time. Decades. It’s been used to help with all kinds of neurological issues.”
“Does it work?” Maybe Corner had finally realized that people needed something other than just exercise and an increased pain threshold. Maybe some of them actually needed treatment. “Is it a drug?”
“You’ll see what it is in a few minutes,” Everest assured her. She raised her brows and let out a little sigh, as if mentally adding ‘if you can finally hurry up and get your butt in there.’
Hannah did her best to keep up, but she had learned that it was best not to push herself too hard. Despite what Dr. Corner said, she thought it helped her more if she went slowly and took things easy than if she tried to push herself to do too much.
“Okay,” Nurse Everest said with relief. “Here we are!” She motioned to a door with the label “ECT room.”
She opened the door, and Hannah entered ahead of her. Hannah didn’t know what she had been expecting to see, but it wasn’t a room that was practically empty, except for a chair in the middle. There were some tables and equipment around it, like at the dentist’s office. A few other medical staff waited there for her.
“Come on over and have a seat,” one of the men invited, gesturing to the chair.
Hannah’s heart thumped hard. She didn’t know what they were planning, but she didn’t like the dentist and she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like what was going to happen in that chair.
Everybody waited for her. Hannah looked around.
“I… need to go to the bathroom,” she said. She didn’t want to sit down in that chair and, even though going to the bathroom was only going to give her a temporary reprieve, she wanted to put it off for as long as she possibly could. She turned around, planning to go back out the door she had come in through.
“Come sit down,” the man told her again. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Hannah hesitated, but Nurse Everest made a motion herding her forward.
“Just have a seat and we’ll explain everything to you.”
Hannah shook her head slightly. “I don’t need my teeth done. You don’t think teeth are what is causing my pain, do you?”
“This isn’t a dentist’s chair,” the man chuckled.
Hannah didn’t have any choice but to sit on the lonely white chair. She slowly climbed in. Just like at the dentist’s office, someone used a foot control to raise the chair and tilt her back.
“Great,” the doctor who seemed to be in charge praised. “Now, just rest your hands on the armrests here…”
Hannah let him guide her arms into position. They worked around her, one putting a blood pressure cuff on her right arm and starting to pump it, squeezing her arm painfully, and another wiping the back of her hand with a cold wipe and preparing to insert an IV needle.
“Hey!” Hannah pulled back, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. She couldn’t get up and it hurt too much to fight. “What are you doing?”
“We’re just prepping you for the ECT,” the doctor assured her. “You don’t have anything to be afraid of. We’re going to take good care of you here. You know that we care about you and we want to help you with your pain, don’t you? You know that we only have your welfare in mind.”
Hannah jerked her hand when the nurse attempted to insert the needle, unable to help herself. “Please, let me go. I don’t know what’s going on here. Where’s LaRae? My foster mom? You’re not supposed to be doing this. You’re just supposed to be doing the usual therapy. I think I should go back and someone should check the schedule.”
“Just relax, Hannah. You don’t have anything to be worried about. This will be over very quickly, and hopefully, it will make a big difference to your level of pain. You would like that, wouldn’t you? If we can reset your brain so that you can go back to a normal life?”
“Yes—but you can’t do that. I keep hearing about how there isn’t anything you can give me, and I just have to keep working hard at this—this—” she borrowed one of Filbert’s curses “—this frickin’ therapy so that it will retrain my nerves not to feel so much pain.”
“You’ve been working very hard at your exercise and other therapy,” the man said, his voice soothing. “You have done very well. And this is just one more thing that we hope will help you.”
“What is it?”
“That’s a girl. We’re going to attach some sticky pads here and here,” he indicated a couple of spots on her head. “And maybe a few more. We’re going to give you a mouthpiece to bite down on. Just like the ones that football players wear when they play, to keep them from accidentally biting down on their tongues. Have you seen those?”
Hannah nodded, though she was frowning, trying to figure it all out.
“And then when everyone is ready, we’re going to pass some electricity through the leads. That’s all. In a few minutes, it will be over, and you will go to a recovery room.”
Hannah stared at him, then looked around at the others gathered around. “And that helps to reset my brain?”
“Exactly. No one knows why it works, precisely, but it can make a big difference to your treatment. You’d like your brain to go back to the way it was before, right? Before you started getting these attacks.”
Hannah nodded. She looked around at them, studying all of their faces.
“Will it hurt?”
“Just a prick putting the needle in. A little pinch. Then you’ll be asleep and you won’t even remember the ECT. You’ll come to in the recovery room, and you’ll say, ‘when are you going to start?’ because you won’t remember that we already did it and you’re all finished.” He smiled, showing a row of white, even teeth.
Hannah had a bad feeling in her stomach. The treatment was going to hurt worse than anything, and it would be too late for her to object.
But it was already too late for her to object. She was already trapped in the big chair and there was no way out. She wasn’t going to turn into the Incredible Hulk and burst her way out of there.
“Okay, we’re going to start now,” the doctor said.
Hannah held still while the nurse inserted the IV.
“That’s a girl.” The medical staff murmured to each other as they found the places they wanted to attach the sticky leads and marked them with little X’s in black marker. Hannah listened hard to their quiet conversation, but couldn’t understand most of what they were saying.
After marking everything, they started attaching sticky pads to the places they had marked and, in a few minutes, Hannah had wires sprouting away from her head. She felt like Frankenstein’s monster.
“It’s not going to hurt, is it?” she asked again.
“Hannah, you’ve had to put up with a lot of pain over the last few months, haven’t you?” one of the medical staff asked. Hannah didn’t know whether he was a doctor or a nurse. Or someone they had just brought around to talk to her and keep her calm and reassured. She wouldn’t know if he were just the janitor.
“Yeah.”
“This is not going to be anything like that. You can stop worrying about how much it’s going to hurt, okay? The brain cannot actually feel pain. It can only feel through the neurons that run through the rest of your body. It can’t feel pain itself. If we opened up your skull and I poked my finger into your brain, you wouldn’t even feel it.”
“Oh.”
“So you don’t need to worry about that. Let’s just get this done, and then you’ll see how it isn’t anything you need to be scared of. It won’t hurt, and it might help a lot.”
Hannah was quiet while they continued to prepare for the treatment.
“Okay,” the doctor said, commanding everyone’s attention. “We’re ready to begin.”
He showed Hannah the mouthguard, and she opened her mouth and let him put it in.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Hannah woke up. She looked around her, trying to remember where she was and what had happened. She appeared to be in the hospital. But her mother wasn’t there. No one she knew was there. The space beside her was empty.
“How are you feeling?” a nurse asked.
Hannah looked back at her, not sure what to say. How was she feeling? She felt distant and not connected to her body. The nurse checked her pulse and wrote it down on the clipboard at the foot of Hannah’s bed, and moved on. Maybe she had a lot of people to see.
She was more awake and alert the next time the nurse came around. She still felt somewhat distant, but she could remember some of what the doctor had told her.
“Are you ready to get out of here?” the nurse asked, checking Hannah’s pulse once more.
Hannah blinked and nodded.
“Let’s take you back to your mom, then.”
Hannah swung her feet over the edge of the bed and got to her feet. She looked down at her clothes and body. Everything seemed to be as it should, but she felt strange, like she had been undressed or her limbs had been removed and put back on. She wiggled her feet and her fingers and couldn’t find anything wrong.
“Come on,” the nurse encouraged, waiting for her to step down to the floor.
“Are you sure?” Hannah asked.
“Am I sure about what?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Come on; you’ll feel better once you’re on your feet.”
Hannah obeyed and slid off of the bed to her feet. She just stood there for a moment, the nurse holding her hand out to grab her if she started to fall. But the floor seemed to be where it was supposed to be, and she could feel it beneath her feet.
“This is really weird,” Hannah murmured.
“Some people feel a little disoriented after. It will pass.”
“Okay.”
She walked with the nurse through the rabbit’s warren of hallways, out to the familiar waiting room where she had come in, and LaRae was waiting for her.
“Did you go?” Hannah asked, “Or stay here?”
“I stayed this time,” LaRae said, studying Hannah curiously. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s a little unsure of herself yet,” the nurse explained. “Just take things slowly and let her get acclimatized.” She motioned toward the doors and the parking lot. “Don’t let her get run over out there,” she said, giving a smile.
“All right. Let’s go, kiddo.”
LaRae walked with her back out to the car and helped her get in and do her seatbelt up. “At least you can walk this time,” she pointed out.
Hannah rested her head against the door of the car. “I think I’m tired.”
“Okay. You can have a sleep on the way home if you want. Or wait until you get home.”
“I think now.”
“Okay.”
Gabriel waited to call Judge Dee-Dee until Renata was away, scouting out the neighborhood for them.
While Judge Dee-Dee had helped them a couple of times in the past, and was sympathetic about their situation, Renata was understandably anxious about talking to her, and Gabriel didn’t want to make things more stressful by mentioning that he wanted to talk to her.
Judge Dee-Dee would help them when she felt it was justified, but she also was very strict about obeying the law. That was natural for a judge, he supposed. She wouldn’t have made it to the position she was in without a strong sense of what was right and wrong and a desire to enforce the law.
She was the one who had sent Elena to prison, even though she believed that Elena loved Renata and only wanted to protect her. Elena had still broken the law by assaulting the police when they entered her house to take Renata. No matter how wrong the police had been, Elena was still wrong to attack them.
Once Gabriel used the phone to call Judge Dee-Dee, he would have to get rid of it and use a new one, because Judge Dee-Dee had the means to have the phone traced, and could even have her own lines bugged in case he or Renata called. If there were a warrant for their arrest, Judge Dee-Dee would enforce it and help to direct law enforcement to them.
Gabriel took a few deep breaths before calling. He sat on Elena’s couch with one of the blankets over him, feeling both good, because he was warm and safe for the time being, and guilty, because he should be stronger and be able to be out with Renata scouting out the neighborhood, and he should not be calling Judge Dee-Dee without Renata’s knowledge or say-so. But he couldn’t worry her about it. He would tell her later.
The phone rang a few times. He had hoped that Judge Dee-Dee would not be in her courtroom, but he hadn’t had control over what time Renata decided to go out. He might have to leave a message. And then what? Switch phones right away and burn a second one when he tried to call her again? Hang up and hope that no one was checking every number that called?
“Hello?”
He recognized her dry voice. “Uh, Judge Dee-Dee?”
“Who is this?” she asked.
“It’s Gabriel.”
“I thought that might be you, Gabriel. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I just wanted… to talk to you about a case.”
“That probably isn’t a good idea. I can’t talk to you about anything confidential, and you don’t want to tell me anything that you might be planning.”
“We’re not planning anything,” Gabriel lied. “I just saw a case in the paper, and I was talking to someone in the network about it, and I wondered what your thoughts were.”
“Is it one of my cases?”
“No.”
“Well, then…” She considered it for a moment. “I suppose if you want to ask me what my thoughts are, you can. Though I may not actually know anything about the case.”
“Do you know about Hannah Glover? And then about her brother, Trevon? And now they’re talking about the other girls too, and about terminating her mom’s rights permanently.”
“Ah.” Gabriel could see Judge Dee-Dee’s nod in his mind’s eye. “Yes, a very sad case.”
“What do you think about it? They can’t sever her parental rights just because she tested at a lower IQ, can they? I mean, she’s raised those kids up until now, so it doesn’t make any sense to say that she doesn’t have the intelligence required to care for them now.”
“Things do change over time,” Judge Dee-Dee said. “Raising teenagers is not the same as raising younger children. And raising children with specialized medical needs is not the same as raising those who are… well. You may not remember much about all your mother had to learn in order to take care of your issues, but there is a significant amount of knowledge that she needed to acquire to be able to provide for you. Knowledge that the mother of another child in your school class would have no need for.”
