Chapter Four: The First Interview [Prague, 2006]
The best. The framed plaques on the wall surely boasted it. They reflected Dr. Domenic Vains as he sat staring at the wall, waiting on his next consultation. Thirty years ago he got this first one from the University of Coimbra in Portugal, his hometown. He bounced from Portugal to India to South Africa to Italy, where he met Dr. Eleanora Saavedra at a little cafe and spent the next sixteen years traveling with her through South America and watching her work. She understood people in a way that no one else could and he never understood how. There was a rap on the door and an emaciated shadow appeared on the illuminated degrees next to him. Harriet. She was his first patient on his own, a forty-year-old that was perpetually thirteen.
“The Parkers are here, Papai,” she said in broken English.
“Send them in darling. Have you eaten yet?”
Harriet didn’t answer. “There are cookies in the pantry you can have. The blue tin. You should be able to reach them.”
“Okay, Papai.”
Her shadow bobbed and she closed the door. He leaned and lugged the large black binder with patient files onto his desk. Harriet was first. Birth name Jessia Xaveira, born in Lisbon. She was born a few years after Dr. Veins’ youngest sister and reminded him of her. His eyes drifted down the catalog of scribbles over the years. Medications he tried, new people he met, the times she would black out and lunge at him with anything she could find when he mentioned the garden, the numerous times he’d had to watch her suck her thumb and crawl when she fell back into an infantile state out of nowhere. Another rap on his door reminded him of his task. He blinked away a haze of memories and flipped to the back.
“Come in.”
A somber-looking couple came in. Dr. Vains gestured for them to take a seat. The father pulled the chair out for his wife and then sat down. Dr. Vains noted their appearance as Dr. Saavedra had instructed him. The woman was well-dressed and smelled of clean linen though there was a vacancy in her eyes. The man was picking at his arm hair.
“Where is the patient?” Dr. Vains asked.
“We can’t bring her yet,” the father said so quickly that Dr. Vains barely caught it. “She’s in the hospital right now. They’re releasing her in a few days and they’ve cleared her for travel.”
“The hospital?”
“She had a little incident,” Mr. Parker said. He was picking at his arm more fervently. “But it’s rare. She doesn’t usually have those outbursts.”
“Never,” his wife added. “She was always a sweet girl.”
“Where are you guys from?”
“France, but we moved to Spain when Eloise was little,” the father said. Dr. Vains wrote down on his notepad that she moved at a young age. “It was for work. We didn’t have a choice.”
“How old is Eloise?”
“She’ll be sixteen in June,” her father said. “June 8th, if you need the date.”
Dr. Vains scribbled. “What happened in this outburst?”
“Well, we have a son, Lucas. And Eloise and him always fight. Sibling stuff. We had gone out to get dinner and left her in charge of her little siblings and I guess Lucas was teasing her and-- well--”
A tear fell down the mother’s cheek and she quickly wiped it away. “She didn’t mean to hurt him. My little girl isn’t like that.”
“How many siblings?” Dr. Vains asked, noting the parents’ demeanor.
“Five. She’s the second oldest but Vincent is in school so he’s not really around.”
“Ages?”
“Vincent is eighteen, Eloise is fifteen, Lucas and Lucy are the twins. Twelve. Hannah is ten, and Riley is four.” Mr Parker chuckled. “She was a surprise.”
“Surprises," Dr. Vains said with a little chuckle. "What does your daughter do that makes you think she needs me?”
“Well, she calls herself Harley right now. She was Nia before that--”
“We thought she was just being silly,” Mr. Parker interjected. “Kids do those things.”
Mrs. Parker spoke as if her husband never interrupted her. “She just wasn’t like Vincent, you know? And once we had the twins, we noticed how we had to watch her. The tantrums and the just-- hours of her laying next to a wall and crying. She would just get so irrationally upset and those damn night terrors.” Dr. Vains noticed how Mrs. Parker was fiddling with her watch. “I mean I would have to hold her all night. I took he rot different specialist and they said all these different diagnoses and had her on all this medicine--”
“How old was she when you moved?”
“She was seven. I was pregnant with-- Well, I was pregnant and we had to move for work.”
Dr. Vains slid the tissues across his desk. Mr. Parker took one and blew his nose. “How many names has she gone by?”
“Let’s see, Maya was first. That was when Eloise was three but she started crying one day and said that Maya was dead. Then she was Mattie--” Mrs. Parker trailed off and put her head down.
Mr. Parker chimed in. “There was Nia. Harley’s the girl now. There was a Jess when she was twelve. Jess was a treat. Bobbie I think was when she was nine. She was always fighting then. Must’ve gotten a hundred slips from her school.”
Dr. Vains was writing quickly as Mr. Parker spoke. He paused to look at his watch. Dr. Saavedra had gotten him into the habit of it. He wrote a bit more.
“So, Maya died when she was three. There was a Mattie. Nia was next. There was a Bobbie that was violent--”
“Eloise isn’t violent,” Mrs. Parker said in a sharp tone. “It was normal children playing. She’d never hurt anyone.”
“Ma’am, I’m not blaming your daughter for anything. That wasn’t your daughter.”
“What do you mean?”
Dr. Vains picked up the prism on the edge of his desk. Dr. Saavedra had presented it to him during their first lunch break after she’d hired him. You know, white light gets fragmented into different colors, right? He nodded, slurping down a little gelato. Dr. Saavedra let the light hit it, sending fragments of light into his face. He laughed. That’s what your patients are like. They all appear one way, but they’re made up of all these different parts. And you never know how many colours there are. Could be three, could be thirty. Even if it looks like six, it could be sixty. You just have to get acquainted with them and listen to what they say.
Mr. Parker sneezed. Dr. Vains shook away the memory and set the prism down. “I mean it’s like there are thirty people inside her. She just has to take control and learn how to take care of them. When will she be released?”
“On the fifteenth,” Mr. Parker said. “We have her stuff packed already.”
Dr. Vains coughed to keep from reacting and nodded. “Well, I will send you an email with instructions about her. Did you fill out the chart?”
“Yes, we handed it to Karissa on the way in.”
“Good. I will review her chart and let you know about the full plan.”
“You’ll take her as a patient?”
“Yes. Now, what she is struggling with will need a lot of attention. You will always be able to see her as long as she wants to see you and I will send you frequent updates. When you head out, Karissa can talk to you about billing.”
Mrs. Parker pressed tissues to her eyes. Mr. Parker smiled and shook his hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Of course. It was nice to meet you both. Please close the door on your way out.”
Once the pair left, he grabbed a little black recorder with a purple smiley face on it and murmured some notes in Portuguese. He hadn’t taken in a patient without meeting them in years. The last time, was, well-- He hesitated to mutter the boy’s name. It had been years since he thought of Muntasher. Things wouldn’t end like that again. He stopped the recording and labeled it Eloise-0001. He slipped it into a shoebox full of tapes in his desk drawer and stood. His eyes were dewy. He checked his watch. Eighteen hours. Impressive, he heard Dr. Saavedra's sly chuckle and the sound of their coffee machine. You know you help people best when you're at your best.
"I know," he caught himself murmuring. Instinctively, he cleared his throat to stifle the words and went to lock the door. Settling on his back recliner, he set an alarm on his watch and without thinking whispered, "I'll try to sleep, darling. I promise."
-----
Previous Chapters:
Prologue: https://theprose.com/post/420725/prologue
Chapter 1: https://theprose.com/post/421017/chapter-one-eloise-s-perspective
Chapter 2: https://theprose.com/post/427386/nia-s-perspective
Chapter 3: https://theprose.com/post/429289/chapter-three-the-world-outside