“Sleep is a healing force in our lives,” I tell him. “Our brains rest, skills set, our cells heal and regenerate.”
“It’s a dark doorway,” he says.
He has deep brown pools for eyes, a thin line of a mouth. Lately, under my suggestion and with the encouragement of his uncle, he’s discovered exercise. He was emaciated when we first started speaking. His body has grown toned; he’s gained weight. His aunt thinks there might be a girl he likes; he’s asked her to his senior prom. All promising things.
“Nightmares still?”
He nods, looks out the window. I follow his gaze and my eyes fall on the car.
What does she want now?
When I look back, Patrick’s watching me with a frown.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Sorry.”
He reaches for his portfolio and hands it to me. I open it.
The images are, as always, disturbing. A woman’s face without eyes, an open screaming mouth. A boy cowers at the end of a long, shrinking hallway, just visible as a drooling monster sets upon him. A severed head. A pile of gore. Thick charcoal lines of black and shades of bloodred. He and I have talked about them in depth. Who is this woman? Why does she not have eyes?
“These are just the images from my dreams,” he has explained. “I don’t know what they mean.”
No wonder the kid doesn’t want to sleep. He’s admitted to feeling angry at his mother. Even after his father beat them, she always forgave him. She turned away from things that were happening to Patrick, made excuses to doctors, to teachers. It’s like she couldn’t see what he was. Like she was blind or wanted to be.
I explained to him that people who accept abuse in adulthood often come from abuse in childhood. That if it forms them, they might forever equate violence with love.
He asked me early in our work together: Am I him? Will I hurt the people I love?
It’s a good question. What makes us who we are? Is it nature or nurture, or more likely some impossibly complicated helix of both of those things? I’ve been working with some of the most traumatized, the most broken among us, for a while now. I don’t have the answers. No one does. Some of them are in prison. Some of them overcome and go on to lead healthy lives. Others languish in a misery maze—unable to love or be loved—that seems to have no exit.
I think we make choices, or can. I think the fact that you’re even asking the question means that you can be a better man than your father was.
Which is just a shrink way of saying, I have no idea, kid.
“Walk through that doorway, frightening as it is,” I tell him. But I’m distracted. Why has the young FBI agent returned? “There’s no other way out. Face down those dream demons. And we want to avoid sleep deprivation.”
After Kreskey, the nightmares were the worst thing. Yes, a dark doorway. I scribble the phrase on my notebook; it’s a good one, accurate to a fault.
“Never get too hungry, too angry, too lonely, too tired,” says Patrick. He has a slow way of talking, draws out his words. He’s repeating something I’ve said to him many times.
“That’s right.” It’s an AA thing but I think it’s a good rule of thumb for pretty much everyone.
“If you have nightmares and wake up, continue to journal or draw,” I remind him. “Bring your work to me and we’ll discuss it next week.”
At the bottom of the stack of drawings, there’s the portrait of a girl. She has lavish copper curls and sea-glass-blue eyes, a smattering of freckles. Color, light coming in from a window. She lays a hand on a tabletop.
“Who’s this?”
“Amanda,” he says.
“Your prom date?”
He blushes and smiles, a rare thing. It’s the first drawing I’ve seen from him that isn’t unsettling. I’ll take this as another promising sign.
“This Saturday, right?” I say. “Bring pictures next week. Have fun and be safe.”
Then he’s gone. I watch from the window as he leaves the building, climbs into his aunt’s waiting car.
Brenda, my receptionist, would have left after she greeted Patrick. She leaves at three to pick up her daughter at school, except on Wednesdays when we see the late patients. I watch as the redheaded FBI agent and her partner leave the car and enter the building. A few minutes later, there’s a knock on my outer office