“Grandson.”
He smiled. She always called him that when she was with her friends and couldn’t really talk.
“Grandmother. You going to be free later?”
“Sure am. Want to come by for dinner?”
“Yes.”
“See you then,” she said, hanging up the phone.
Sitting in his truck, the afternoon sunlight was brighter in winter than summer. He watched the people coming and going. Some of them easier to read than others. They all had their stories and worries. Things that drove them to be here for whomever they were visiting.
He added his. Fern had given her hazy memories, but now that he had learned of the connection he wanted to see if she had more details on the dark van. The men…he felt pushing her for a more concise description wasn’t going to work. He couldonly guess, but he thought those men would be a source of fear for her.
His phone pinged, and he looked down to see that Fern had agreed to talk to him after her session as long as Ava was in the room. He sent back a thumbs-up and then went into the hospital to the cafeteria and got some lunch.
Using his smartphone he remotely logged into the database that held all missing persons. Camille had been twenty-two and Fern was twenty-five. Using their age range, he narrowed down the list. It was larger than he wished it was.
There was more than a handful of Navajo women on there as well. He downloaded the list to his desktop remotely. He would go through it when he got back to his office. There had to be more of a connection than just age. His neck tingled and he looked around the cafeteria.
Since it was after lunch, it wasn’t that busy. He didn’t notice anyone looking at him. Shrugging, he finished his lunch and went to meet Ava and Fern.
Ava was trying cognitive behavioral therapy today with Fern. It was clear to her that Fern wasn’t ready to delve into the past, but she’d expressed the fact that she’d been keeping her mind foggy so she wouldn’t have to.
She was on pretty intense pain meds, which helped her to disassociate. Once Fern had come out of the coma, she had refused to take any further pain meds. She’d been unconscious when Ryan found her, possibly from smoke inhalation. Ava understood that Fern was a recovering alcoholic and feared being drugged again. But Ava knew that wouldn’t last for long.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Truth?”
“Always.”
“Better. My leg will heal. Not sure it will ever be one hundred percent. I was worried about having to do a lot of physical therapy and maybe never walking properly again,” Fern said.
“That would mean a big lifestyle change, wouldn’t it?” Ava asked her.
Fern shrugged.
“Do you miss your daily life?” Ava asked.
Fern looked down at her bed and started to make little triangles out of the blanket, pulling it up until she had a neat row of them. The fidgeting was concise and the other woman was using the pattern to soothe herself.
“So, no.” Ava said.
“I mean, I don’t know really. It was just the same thing day in and day out…then everything changed and now I feel… I’m back here and everyone keeps telling me I’m safe. But I don’t feel it. I’m a solitary woman.
“Then I had a new routine, wake up, have those thugs who kidnapped me would come in and try to feed me and drug me again. That was the cycle of my life. I was just dazed and confused and the days blended together. When I woke up and they were there…I was scared, Ava. Why wouldn’t I be scared? They were my captors and I hated them. Even if I still can’t remember their faces.”
Ava wanted to hug the other woman, but as a professional she couldn’t. “Because they were keeping you alive. You knew that for you to survive, they had to come and feed you. You were bound and left alone in a dangerous situation. Your fear was perfectly natural. It’s okay that you hoped they’d come back.”
Fern chewed her lower lip and looked away. “I didn’t exactly want that, either.”
“Makes sense. You wanted to be back home.”
“I did. But now that I’m here…I feel odd. Like I’ve changed but the rest of the world hasn’t. I don’t want to tell anyonebecause then…well, you’re nice and everything, but I really don’t want to have to do this for the rest of my life.”
Ava smiled gently at the younger woman. “I get that. We all have trauma, and our brains and body deal with it in different ways. Right now, your strongest routine and ‘life’ memory is the cabin. Given how traumatic your rescue was, that is going to take time to fade in your mind.”
