OUR RESCUE MADE news all over the country and all around the world. The human fascination with horror is as strong as the human desire for a so-called happy ending to the horror, and I suppose that is what powered all that news coverage.

We were certainly the biggest story in all of the Midwest that night, just as we were the biggest, most blaring headline in all the papers the next morning. I didn’t see much of the news coverage at the time—I was too out of it. But our rescue continued to make news for a long, long time as the media “followed up” on the story six months later and again on the first-year anniversary of our rescue, and again and again over the years. We’re not the only survivors of abduction and imprisonment to have their lives recorded in this way; you often see reports on what has become of people who suffered as we did, reports about how we’re doing and how well we are getting on with our lives—or not. And certainly whenever a similar abduction is reported, our story and similar past stories are brought up again as background.

But if you watch on YouTube the local TV broadcasts of that night—May 6, 2013—you can see the shock and excitement of the day all over again. It feels like all of Cleveland was tuned in to the television newscasts, and clearly the local newscasters—every one of them—were beside themselves. All were shocked by the horror of what had happened to the three of us. All reported triumphantly on the rescue and endlessly replayed Amanda’s phone call to the 911 operator, who seemed confused and couldn’t quite get what Amanda was saying. But the saving grace of the story, the heartwarming “ending” everyone wanted to see, was in the reports by newscasters stationed at the emergency room entrance of the big public hospital, MetroHealth Center, where the ambulance had taken us. You could hear the happy relief and the thrill in the news reporters’ voices as they told how “the three girls” had been reunited with the families who had never given up hope, families who had held annual candlelight vigils for their missing daughters, sisters, nieces, cousins—families who at that moment were lavishing “loving attention” on the beloved children who had been rescued and returned to them.

Not my family. After all, they had never lavished loving attention on me when I lived at home as a child; there was pretty much no reason for them to start now. As far as I could tell, my family had barely noticed I was gone, and there were no family members in the hospital waiting room, at least not on that night.

Not that I would have noticed if they had been there. Like I said, I was pretty out of it. I don’t know to this day what was flowing into me intravenously—“powerful antibiotics” was all I heard. I would later learn that I weighed in at just about eighty-four pounds when I arrived at the hospital. Eleven years of confinement, of being restrained by chains, of torture and beatings and squalor had done their work. I was very, very weak and very, very sick.

Anybody who has ever been in a hospital knows there’s always a light on somewhere, so it’s never totally dark at night, and there’s always some sort of noise, so it’s never totally quiet. You’re left with a kind of low-level buzz of activity. The buzz can sometimes help lull you to sleep in a way, sort of releasing you from having to look or listen or think too hard. All your senses more or less relax, whether you want them to or not. That first night out of Castro’s house, that hospital buzz was going strong. Drugs of one sort or another were pouring into me. I wasn’t entirely sure what the doctors were thinking or doing, and I had absolutely no idea what was next for me. I barely knew what time it was or whether it was day or night. But still, through the haze of all the lights, through the clacking sound of footsteps up and down the corridor outside my hospital room, through the beeping sounds of monitors, through the dim recognition of a nurse holding my wrist and taking my pulse, I was totally aware of one thing above all: I was free. I knew the way I know my own flesh that I had been rescued. I sensed that Castro would now pay for his unspeakable crimes, and if I could have shouted, I would have—to tell the world that I had survived the darkness.

The next day I learned that Amanda and Gina had been released from the hospital and had gone home. I was on my own.

It felt right. I had survived the darkness, and out there in the light, a life was waiting for me. It was up to me to get better and strong so I could get out there and grab it.

Yet at the moment, as I would not learn until much later, I was closer to death than I realized. My fever wasn’t coming down, my digestive tract was a disaster, and I was in so much pain that I would wake up certain I was being stabbed. The doctors actually thought I might die. I disagreed. I am not going to die today, I told myself, and I am not going to die tomorrow. I figured there had to be a reason I had been freed from that house, and I needed to live so I could fulfill whatever purpose had kept me alive.

Mostly I believed the purpose was my son, Joey. He was the reason I had stayed alive, and he was the reason I needed to get better. When I finally felt like I would make sense if I talked, the first thing that came out of my mouth was to ask the nurse if there was somebody that could find my son. “I need to let my son know I’m alive,” I said. The nurse called in a police officer who was outside my room, and the officer asked me Joey’s name and date of birth and some other questions and said he would turn the matter over to a detective. Then I fell back half-asleep.

The police were not the only people in and out of my hospital room. The FBI was there too. Ariel Castro had been arrested, and FBI investigators were starting to build the case against him. The problem for me was that the lesson of my childhood had been that “telling” was worse than keeping silent. Children should be seen and not heard was what I was told over and over again in our household. I had heard it so many times that it was almost carved into my brain. I hadn’t just heard the words; they had been demonstrated to me: every time I had reached out for help as a child by trying to talk to someone in authority, I had been punished one way or another. Hours after being freed from Castro’s hell, I was both afraid to speak and afraid not to.

And I was being asked to speak a lot. Over those first days in the hospital a steady stream of cops and various officials and doctors were asking me question after question—often the same question in different ways. After a while I just wanted to scream. I was exhausted and needed peace and quiet if I was going to be able to hear anything. I just wanted to be left alone. At the same time I was terrified that Castro would somehow go free. I desperately wanted to find out where Joey was. And, of course, I wanted to get well. So I answered as best I could.

The doctors were doing a lot more than asking questions. They were running tests, but the fact that I couldn’t bear for any male to touch me or even to come near me didn’t make the job easy for them. So a whole bunch of women doctors and nurses were the ones to stick needles into my arms, push and poke various parts of my body, order me to sit or bend or look up or look down. There were X-rays, blood tests, CT scans, eye tests, hearing tests, and more. I no longer remember the number or names of the diagnostic tests I was given, just that they seemed to go on forever. One blessed benefit was that on day two in the hospital I took a long, hot shower. My first real shower in a decade. I remember standing under the water in that clean, steamy bathroom, knowing I could stand there as long as I wanted—it felt just wonderful. But the scrubbing also revealed a lot more bruises all over my body.

The tests revealed a lot too. They showed there was serious injury to my jaw. It’s the reason a lot of people thought I talked funny: when someone punches you repeatedly in the face or socks your jaw with a barbell, it can really mess up your ability to form some words. Also, being chained at the ankle, wrist, stomach, or around the neck almost daily for eleven years and being thrown down stairs and across rooms resulted in serious numbness and sciatic nerve damage from my back through my hips to my knees and ankles. My toes were broken numerous times and never really healed. One hand was also damaged; the doctors thought the thumb had been fractured and had mended wrong. To this day it’s hard to feel with that hand, and I need to be careful picking up a phone or holding my coffee cup so I don’t drop it.

My eyes were never great, but being kept mostly in the dark for eleven years made them worse. There is nerve damage under the lenses of the eyes, so I am extremely sensitive to light. My hearing in one ear was nearly shot; it’s my left ear, which was the side of my head that received so many blows, including with the barbell. I still sometimes have to lean to one side to hear better, and people think I’m ignoring them or not listening. But it’s just the opposite: I’m leaning that way because I am trying hard to listen. The worst problem was my digestion, and all during those first four days in the hospital, despite a whole bunch of different doctors taking different tests, they still couldn’t figure out precisely what was wrong.

There was also a parade of people coming into the room bringing things—bouquets of flowers, balloons, and various gifts. I was amazed by all of it, and I was moved beyond belief by the thought of so many people wanting to reach out with such kindness, so many people wanting to tell me they noticed me and cared about me. For someone who had never been noticed or cared for, those first days of freedom were overwhelming.

I also learned that people were donating money to the three of us and that a fund was being established to manage all the donations. “Get a lawyer,” someone told me, and some of the FBI and hospital personnel quickly helped me choose one. “Help me find my son,” I begged a female FBI agent, and she said she would try.

My mind could barely make sense of the fact that the horror was over. Managing all the other things that were suddenly going on—my medical situation, the outpouring of care from people whose names I didn’t know, the presence of cops and FBI agents and officials and lawyers—was all a bit too much. I couldn’t get my head around it. For eleven years I had measured my days by the abuse being done to me. The routine was brutal, but it was simple, and I expected it. Not knowing what to expect was a shock to my system.

The second day in the hospital, after Amanda and Gina were released, one of my brothers came to see me. I hadn’t seen him since he was a little boy, and now he was a grown man. I was glad to see him; we hugged and cried at being together again. He told me he hadn’t even known I was missing. My mother had told him I had left. My aunt had told him I had probably run away. He did not know where Joey was, and he had no idea that I would never have willingly left my son. Never. He just knew that no one had ever bothered to look for either of us; their lives just kept going. Kind of like: easy come, easy go. Your sister or daughter and her little boy stop showing up one day—no big deal, move on.

My brother shared with me various pieces of “news” about this or that member of our family, and I soon began to feel anxious, which was the last thing I needed given how ill I already was. Just about everything he told me brought up really bad memories and fired up all the old questions about my family life. It was all just too much too soon. I was sick enough, I decided, without being reminded of a distressing childhood. “I’m sorry,” I told my brother. “You have to leave. It’s not your fault, but I need time. I need to think, and I need to take care of myself.” The moment I said that, I realized how true it was: I really did need to take care of myself.

I felt bad about sending him away. I did not know that he too was going through a very tough time just then. He had no place to go. He had let himself follow a dark road to try to get away from the pain he had also suffered in our childhood. To this day I do not know where my brother is or how he is coping.

I had barely settled down from my brother’s visit when my aunt showed up. I didn’t want to see her. She was another reminder of the awful childhood I wanted to forget. But I finally agreed to let her in, and she told me that my mother had moved to Florida, that the cousin I had lived with when I was kidnapped was now in New York, that other family members had dispersed, that the place we all had lived in when I was a kid had been torn down and replaced by condos. Good riddance, I thought. That was not a house worth preserving. And now everyone in it had moved on as if I had never existed. Fine. There could be no room for them in my new life. “No more,” I told my aunt. “No more disrespect, no more hurting one another. When you’re ready to deal with me on those terms, call me.”

These “family visits” had been totally nerve wracking, not exactly the kind of medicine or therapy you’d prescribe for a sick person who has just escaped a nightmare. I told one of the nurses—my favorite, Marie, who was amazingly kind and sweet—that I had had it with my family. “Hon,” I said to her, “I don’t want to deal with this. I need time to cope. Please don’t let any more of them in here.” She promised, and she was as good as her word.

Between the officials and the family and the doctors, I was glad for some time alone. I sensed I needed it. My head was cloudy with terrible memories and awful new realities—no word of Joey, no family, no real home, my body broken, no one to trust.

But later that day or the next I felt a presence in my hospital room. “Is it okay if I sit with you?” a gentle female voice asked. I opened my eyes to see a woman a decade or two older than me; she told me she was there as an advocate for abducted children. Her name was Miss Pointer, and, as I found out later, she had come to this advocacy work for the terrible reason that her own daughter had been abducted and murdered; in fact, just a few days before, on the very day I was freed, she had learned that her daughter’s murderer had at long last been apprehended and was in custody. But that day she gave no hint of this as she came in and sat beside me. She simply said she didn’t see any family surrounding me and wanted to keep me company, if I would like, and then she just began to sing—in a rich and beautiful voice.

“Do you know the song ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’?” I asked her. I knew that it was considered a kind of African American anthem, and Miss Pointer is African American, so I thought she might know it. And she did. She began to sing, and I sang with her. I’m not sure our rejoicing rose “high as the listening skies,” as the song says, but I do know that for the length of the song, my hospital room rang “with the harmonies of liberty.” Miss Pointer entered my life that day with great grace, and she has never left. I am, she says, her “sister from another mister”—we are soul mates.

In all, I spent four days in MetroHealth, and it was hard work. I don’t just mean the medical interventions; after all, they’re what started to bring me back from the brink to where I could begin to regain my health and my strength. I mean the psychological toil of trying to adjust—basically overnight—from captivity to freedom, from being tortured to being cared for, from no life to life. I mean the very heavy emotional burden of trying to deal with all of that and trying to find out about my son and trying to cope with my family maneuvering their way back into my life.

One of the hardest things I had to do came toward the end of the four days when I was summoned to my official FBI interview. The interview took place in a special room in the hospital; I was still hooked up to IVs, so I walked slowly down the hospital corridors with my IV pole rolling next to me. Two female FBI agents were asking the questions, and I believe other agents were behind what I guessed was a two-way observation mirror in another room. The interview went on for hours. The notebooks I had kept had been retrieved from Castro’s house, and the agents took me through each of the eleven years, one year at a time. They were patient but painstaking, and they asked a seemingly endless number of questions; it was a little bit like living the whole ordeal all over again. But I was aware that what they learned would help put Castro away forever, so I stuck it out. As it turned out, this was just the first interview—I would be called back to clarify many points. But that first interview was exhausting and emotionally difficult.

On my last day in the MetroHealth Center my mother came to the hospital to visit. I already knew she had traveled back to Ohio from Florida—right into the headlines, in fact, as her arrival sparked a whole new flurry of press stories. Some reporter or other dredged up a Missing Persons report that someone in my family—I still don’t know who—had filed when he or she noticed I wasn’t around some eleven years before. Whoever it was apparently told the cops that I had a mental condition and was frequently confused by my surroundings. This prompted a group of doctors to come into my room to give me tests that would check my intelligence and mental state. “I’m not taking your tests,” I told them. “I don’t have to prove anything to you or anybody else.”

They backed off, but they didn’t get it. They didn’t know what I knew: the tests wouldn’t change their minds. I knew this because I’d been there before; I’d gone through it all my life.

Not anymore. I was done with anyone else making choices for me. And I was as done as I could be with my family.

When the hospital officials told me my mother was here to visit, I refused to see her. This was the first time I had ever said no to my mother. It felt right.

After four days at MetroHealth my overall health had improved, although not much. I was a little bit stronger, and it looked like some of my bruises were beginning to mend, but there was still no clear diagnosis of what was wrong with my digestion, and that was a major worry. The doctors determined that I should be transferred to hospice care and assigned me to an assisted-living facility in Hinckley, Ohio. The place was about an hour’s drive from Cleveland but kind of in the country. I distributed my flowers, balloons, and many of my gifts to the other patients, especially a few who, I had learned, had no visitors at all. When it was time to say goodbye to Marie, she gave me a present: a necklace with a cross that had a heart fixed to it. She put the necklace around my neck, and every day after that, I held the cross, praying I would stay alive, get well, and one day see my son. I still do that every day just before I go to bed—hold the gift she gave me in my hands and pray the prayer. This is what I pray:

As I lay me down to sleep, I pray that my hope never fades and that my faith is never shaken. I pray that the Lord will take my pain and the pain of so many others and that he will shed light on our darkness and guide our hand and heart and allow us to see brighter days. If I should die before I wake, my only prayer is that God keep my son safe. Give him the life that I never had, filled with love, happiness, and serenity. That is what I always wanted for you, my little angel, and I tried everything in my power to give you that. I will always stay strong until the day that I meet you and can fill the space in my heart. My Lord, I ask you for the courage to face my demons and conquer them head-on, to learn from the mistakes I made so I can swallow my fear and live life with my pride and my faith still intact, and to share my life experience so others may know that our past doesn’t define who we are.

The drive to the assisted-living facility was a revelation. My hometown was almost unrecognizable. Whole new neighborhoods had sprung up, with whole new houses and parks and playgrounds. Cleveland’s downtown, with pedestrian malls, glass-covered skyscrapers, and a new look for the city buses, struck me as almost futuristic. I wept as I realized with a shock how much of life I had missed.