Was it possible to go through withdrawal from a person? I couldn’t believe I just said that. Not only because it was cheesy, but because it wasn’t fair to the people going through actual withdrawal. The recovering addicts here looked equally like they were going to die and kill anyone watching them die. So, I shouldn’t have said I was going through withdrawal. Because, technically, I didn’t feel like I was dying.
I just wanted to die.
Maybe I had more in common with the addicts than I gave myself credit for. I was in pain all over, and I had tried to kill someone—no offense to the nonviolent junkies. Maybe I’d been going through withdrawal since May. Maybe this was how my body responded to the absence of Jake.
I flexed and extended my feet in my seat in group to keep the cramping at bay. Then I tucked my foot under the opposite thigh, letting my foot swing like a pendulum, ticking away the seconds I had to be stuck here listening to other people’s problems.
It was no surprise I wasn’t a fan of group processing, except for the kindergarten elements like the play dough and caramel apple pops. The first time our peppy Jamaican therapist, Mae, added those lollipops to the candy box, I slipped two up each sleeve and then worked them down into the abdomen pocket of Cash’s hoodie while my recovering addict friend, Sam, was processing. I paid extra special attention to what she said in case I got caught. I still remember she talked about how her mother claimed to be emotionally triggered by Sam’s Seroquel-induced weight gain. What a bitch. And moms wondered why their daughters ended up in places like this. Not my mom, of course. I was dead for all she knew.
Five of us sat in that circle with our shared therapist for an hour every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Emotional check-in was mandatory. We passed around a laminated Feelings Wheel with synonyms for angry, scared, joyful, and a few dozen others spinning out from the center of the circle like a pinwheel of DSM symptoms. Then we decided if we wanted to process. After we all checked in, we volunteered to talk one at a time.
My check-in always went something like this: “I feel tired,” the most benign emotion on the wheel, “and I do not want to process.” Then I got to suck on my caramel apple pop, testing the sour and sweet on different parts of my tongue. I couldn’t tell the difference between the tip, which supposedly tasted sweet, and the sides that were allegedly sensitive to salty and sour. I was pretty sure that diagram they showed us in grade school was crap.
But this Tuesday, I stared at the feelings wheel when Sam handed it to me. I blurted out, “I feel lonely. And confused. And like drinking and lying in bed all day. I don’t see that on the wheel.” I turned the paper circle around. “That really should be on the wheel. Anyway, I should probably process.” I popped the sucker back in my mouth and passed the wheel left. There was a pause as everyone’s gaze lingered on me.
April made me think about Jake. No, made me crave him. Made me ache and feel so hollow in his absence I thought I’d cave in. Collapse. Total structural failure. Maybe that was what I hungered for now. Feeling nothing so I couldn’t feel him gone.
Everyone was quiet after the last patient checked-in, apparently waiting for me to start. They did this usually when someone who never talked finally grew a pair. It was my turn to lose Talk Chicken. I didn’t have some planned fragment to process so I just started talking about Jake, listing off memories as if they could be conjured up and relived, as if talking about him could bring him back.
I signaled I was done talking by unwrapping a second caramel apple sucker and popping it in my mouth. This one I unabashedly pulled from Cash’s sweatshirt pocket. The strength sufficient to hide my klepto tendencies escaped me today.
“He sounds like a great guy,” Sam said.
“What happened to him? Are you guys still together?” a newer addition to our circle chimed in. Her name was Elisa, or maybe Alicia. She had only been here two weeks.
I felt my skin flush from scalp to the soles of my feet. My eyes burned, and my throat was so full I could hardly speak. I whispered to keep my voice from breaking. “Could I use the bathroom?” I asked Mae like a seven-year-old in school.
“Of course.” She smiled sympathetically.
I dashed out the door, down one long hall to the next, feeling the tears fall past my cheeks to Cash’s sweatshirt as I raced to my room. I still ached as I crawled in bed. Burying my face under the thin covers, I wept.
I stayed in bed for the next three days, getting up only to use the bathroom, grab the occasional bland bite, or get a new book to read. I ditched therapy, group and individual, and class. I had a “cold.” Cough, cough. See, you don’t want this. I better stay in bed. You know how fast germs spread in a hospital.
Friday arrived as it always did, and with it came Cash. I only knew it was Friday because I heard a knock on my open door when I was curled under the covers. “Come in,” I groaned. Okay, I still didn’t realize it was Friday until I felt the mattress dip under me and that familiar hand in my matted hair.
“You know I’m not supposed to be in here.” I could hear a smile in Cash’s words. I rolled over to look at him. “I hear you’re ‘sick.’” He put air quotes around sick. Jerk.
“I am sick.”
“Didn’t you once tell me that you were immune to all the diseases in North America from working in a strip club?
“What am I? An epidemiologist?”
“And didn’t you also say if you ever did get an infection, you fought it with alcohol, the ultimate germ killer?”
“Well, there’s no hooch here. So I got sick.”
He shot me a doubtful look.
“I don’t need to prove anything to you.” I rolled back over.
“Come on. Let’s get you some fresh air.” He rested his hand palm up on my hip.
I rolled my eyes and put my hand in his.
After days inside the unnecessarily frigid hospital, the grey air felt thick, muggy. I shed my long sleeves and sat on the bench with Cash, my head on his shoulder and his arm behind me. He ran his fingertips up and down my arm.
“You want to talk about it?”
I shook my head and relaxed against him. I was safe with him, safe enough to tell him more in the last four months than I had ever told Jake, safe enough to be in pain, safe enough to just be silent. I’d grown too used to that security. Maybe that was why I didn’t see the threat walking toward me.
“Hey, Sawyer?” Cash nudged me on the bench in the hospital courtyard. “Do you know those people?”
I glanced up to see a man and a woman walking straight toward us. As they closed in, it was clear they weren’t hospital staff. They were dressed more professionally than the therapists and psychiatrists. The man was wearing a tie. No one wore a tie in a psych hospital. That was just asking for trouble. I shook my head.
But my skin crawled with that feeling of being found when I wanted to be lost.
The female of that out-of-place pair walking toward Cash and me in the courtyard introduced herself. “Sawyer de la Cruz?” she asked as she pulled a bronze badge from her blazer.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m Agent Holt,” she announced with her badge and ID bifold extended toward my face. “This is Agent Espinoza,” she gestured toward the swarthy guy next to her, “with the FBI.”
“Yeah, I’m Sawyer.” What’d I do this time?
“We need to speak with you in private.” When Cash stood with me, she repeated, “In private.” I took Cash’s hand and shook my head. “Okay, but you can change your mind at—”
“I won’t.”
Cash took my hand as we followed the agents into an empty therapy room a nurse unlocked for us. “Have a seat, Sawyer,” Holt said and pointed to the couch. I sat down, still holding Cash’s hand. “You were arrested in December for assaulting Congressman Allen Buchanan, correct?”
“Well,” my forehead crinkled, “yeah, but I’m doing my time right now.” Were they trying to get me on prostitution charges, too? Busting a first-offense hooker seemed like awfully small potatoes for the FBI.
“Did you tell your lawyer that Buchanan attempted to rape you because he recognized you from child pornography?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“What name did he call you?”
“Delilah.”
Holt nodded and opened a briefcase. She pulled out a folder and spread three glossy photographs on the coffee table between us.
“Sawyer…” Holt’s voice was gentle when she asked, “Are you the girl in these photos?”
All but the faces had been blurred, like a fog had rolled through my Third Street nightmare. The first was just me, naked, scared, but pretending not to be. The second was Jeff and me. The third was Jeff, Simone, and me. Jeff’s face was conveniently cropped out. Son of a bitch.
Jeremy had sent Simone and me a video, just the one. But never photographs. I hadn’t seen these. I had no idea how many more there were, what they were of, or who had seen them. Or who would.
I nodded and swallowed over the lump in my throat. Cash squeezed my hand.
Holt asked, “I know this must be difficult for you—”
No shit.
“—but can you tell me about how old you were at the time these were taken?”
“That one,” I pointed to the first photograph, “I was eight.” I remember because it was one of the first he took. I remember because I was a virgin in the photo. I remember because I wasn’t right after. I ignored the rising memories from the other two. “I think I was nine in these.”
She pointed to the second and third photos. “Can you tell us who this man is?”
I nodded. “Jeff Lindley.”
“Okay, thank you, Sawyer.” She scribbled on a pad of paper. “Lindley is spelled?”
“L-I-N-D-L-E-Y. You’ll find him easy. He’s on the sex offenders registry.”
She inclined her head. “And do you recognize this girl?” Holt pointed to the third picture.
Simone’s body was intentionally distorted, but those shattered-glass irises still reflected me when I picked up the photograph. Not the brunette child in the picture, but me, fully grown, staring at the fear in the fragmented blue. I nodded.
“Do you remember her name?” I closed my eyes and took a deep inhale.
“Simone,” I whispered. “Simone Carson. She was in my grade. Jeff picked her up with me after school most days because her parents worked.”
Holt gave another brusque nod. “Thank you, Sawyer. Is there anything you can tell me about her?”
I swallowed back the sour acid in my throat. “Like what?”
“Do you have any idea where she is now?”
Yeah. I did. And my stomach rejected that fact. My eyes darted around the room for a trash can. I spotted one under the desk by the door, flung the office chair out of my way, and vomited into the plastic bag inside.
Cash pulled my hair back at my neck as I heaved mostly nothing into the garbage bin. I hadn’t eaten much in days. “Are y’all about done?” he barked.
“Just about,” Agent Espinoza, that quiet guy with her, finally spoke up.
“She’s dead.” I collapsed to sit on the floor before answering with my voice husky from the bile burns.
“Do you know when—” Holt started.
“Four years ago.”
Holt left it at that and collected the pictures. “They found evidence Buchanan downloaded your images.”
“They did? When? They didn’t have that before my trial. Does that mean I get to get out of here?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t change anything about your plea bargain.” Of course not.
Espinoza chimed in, “You’ll be receiving an official notice of his conviction in the mail, along with notices of all other convictions where the perpetrator downloaded your images.”
“Why? Why would I want to know?”
He cracked a smile. “So you can sue their asses.”
“What would I get out of that?”
“Talk to your lawyer,” Holt said. “By law, you’re eligible for a certain amount of restitution.”
“You mean like money?”
“Yes.” Espinoza shot me a satisfied grin. “Hopefully a lot of money.”
“Yours and Simone’s are the most downloaded child pornography images out there,” Holt added as she snapped the briefcase shut. “We’ve been searching for you for years. So have authorities in England, France, and Australia.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Glad to hear I’m so popular.”
“Thank you for your help, Sawyer.” Holt reached her hand out to shake mine.
I took it. “Fuck him.” Then I reached for Espinoza’s hand. “Please, I mean.”
“That’s the goal,” Espinoza said through that same smile.
“Thank you.”
I started to follow them out when Cash caught my hand. “Hey,” he whispered. “You gonna be okay?”
I turned to him and scoffed. “Yeah, it’s nothing new.”
“Sawyer, you should talk to someone about this.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” I glared before flouncing toward the door.
“Sawyer—”
Spinning on my heel, I barked, “Talk, right? Because that’ll help. That’ll erase all those photos. That’ll stop those men from jacking off to Simone even though she’s been dead for four years.”
He ran his hands up and down my arms. “What can I do?”
I shook my head and sighed. “I think visiting hours are over.”
“We have a few minutes.”
I couldn’t look at him. And I couldn’t stand him looking at me, not after he saw those pictures. “No, we don’t. I’ll see you next week.”
He gave in, his face crestfallen. I closed my eyes to feel his lips against my forehead, but even that didn’t slow the disgust and rage pumping through my arteries.
I was helpless to change anything. And I always would be.