Sleeping Beauty (41 page)

“
Because you know you won’t remember and that’s why you do this. Otherwise, you never would, not to your brother–or to me.”

I’m not sure what he means. Still, shame settles on me until I’m wearing it like a coat. “What if I do?” I say. “What if I do remember?”

He leans over and kisses me on the lips. “Then you’ll get to find out what it’s like to hurt two people you love. It’s a real party.”

“
Davin…”

He fishes his car keys from his shorts pocket. “Yeah, I love you too, Claire. Don’t say it though. Makes it even worse every single time, trust me.”

I feel confused, like I’ve been blindfolded and spun around for a game, but once I stop turning I’m so dizzy that I can’t remember the game I’m supposed to be playing.

I backtrack over everything he’s said in the last sixty seconds, patching together the key words: “I can’t do this anymore”…I’m the asshole who always gets to remember”…“It always does”…“You’re even
more
to blame”…“Makes it worse every single time”…

My head jolts backwards on my shoulders. I push my hands against the sides of my head, against the feeling that my cranium is going to explode.“‘Every single time?’” I whisper. “Do you mean we’ve done this before? During my other episodes?”

He snorts. “I tell you about it. I tell you about it every time you come on to me during an episode, just like I did this time. And you get all weepy and sorry, and then we go at it again. Like I said, it’d be great to share the load, so let me know if this one sticks.”

I shake my head forcefully, back in real-time, back in Davin’s hospital room. I’m standing up now, the chair I was sitting in on its side a few feet away.

“Claire? You okay?” says Davin.

I pick up the chair, my hands shaking so badly that I can barely set it right. “I’m fine.”

“Come here,” he says, holding out his hand.

I let him pull me down, too numb to say anything. He gives me a kiss, a gentle, chaste kiss on my cheek. Then he inhales a slow, easy breath, his lips parting to speak. “I didn’t mean to be a jerk,” he says. “It’s the drugs talking. You know that I love–”

“‘Don’t say it though,’” I say, reciting from my gauzy, ephemeral flashback. “‘Makes it worse every single time, trust me.’”

He pulls away slowly, unbelieving. “This one stuck,” he says finally. He covers his face with one hand and groans. “Listen, you would have long stretches of clarity, even before the drug cocktails on round four! Remember I told you about the time we played Monopoly for, like, two days straight?”

“This wasn’t Monopoly though, was it?”

“The first time it happened, you didn’t remember it when you woke up for good, and I was so relieved. I swore it would never happen again.

I can’t even see Davin anymore, my eyes are so filled with water.

“I loved West,” he says, his voice hoarse from the effort. “I felt like a real asshole about it, but I didn’t know how to tell him. Then you had your second episode and it happened again, but that time you told me that you loved me. And I realized I loved you too. And then you didn’t remember
again
, and I was still a coward. There’s no excuse, I know, but I didn’t know how the hell to get us out of the mess! If I’d told you, I knew you would hate yourself for doing that to your brother, and I would’ve never seen you again. If I’d told West, he would’ve killed me, and he still would’ve hated you–he would’ve thought it was your fault.”

I cross my arms on the bed and drop my head onto them, sobbing and sobbing until I think I’m going to vomit again.

“That’s why I broke up with West after the last time it happened with us,” he says. “I was going to tell you when you woke up from your episode, I swear I was. But then you met Brendan at the beach before I got a chance to do that, and I was pissed, but I figured it was for the best. No one had to know anything. That’s why I stayed away from you.”

I lift my head. “I’m four and half months pregnant,” I say, wiping tears and snot away with the back of my hand. “I guess that’s why you wanted to know so bad, right? So it looks like it’s Brendan’s baby and you’re off the hook.” My head falls on my arms again, and I cry and cry, and wonder if the rest of my life will involve stumbling from one emotional breakdown to the next.

Through it all I feel the gentle touch of his fingers on my hair and his voice, the words repeated again and again. “I’m so sorry, Claire-Bo. I wish I knew what else to say.”

Chapter Thirty-One

November 20
^th

Ben McCarthy rises to his feet, buttoning his suit jacket as he approaches the witness box. Brendan looks amazing in a dark gray suit with a blue shirt and a necktie with alternating dark blue and black stripes.

My hands are sweating. I pull my left hand from Rev’s and try to wipe it dry on my pants.

“Don’t do that,” Rev whispers to me without turning his head or moving his lips. He’s like a master ventriloquist that way. “If one of the jurors sees it, they’ll think you’re worried.”

“I
am
worried!” I hiss back at him. I leave off swiping my hand and start twisting the engagement ring on my left hand. “Are you and Ben sure about this?”

“No,” says Rev. “We’re not sure about anything at this point.”

In the last twenty-four hours, Ben and Rev had come to a consensus: Despite the fact that Ben had methodically and painstakingly picked the bones clean from every one of the prosecution witnesses’ testimonies, the sleep lab footage–which Lucinda Gaelic had cleverly held back until just before the state had rested its case–had been the
pièce de résistance
, the tantalizing “picture worth a thousand words.” In fifteen minutes, it had erased any headway Ben had made in the last three days. The innuendo regarding the missing medications suddenly took on new weight.

Both Ben and Rev agreed that Lucinda Gaelic wouldn’t call me as a witness since she wasn’t exactly sure what I would say. Despite her best efforts at snooping, conjecturing, and threatening, she still hadn’t discovered if I was receiving prenatal care. Billy Brady had been very careful about seeing me late at night or on the weekend, more often than not at his house, where he and Brendan had surreptitiously moved an ultrasound machine.

As a result, Lucinda Gaelic still doesn’t know how pregnant I am, or whether or not I’m even pregnant at all. She eyeballs my abdomen every time I see her, but I’ve purposely worn the maxi dresses, peasant blouses and loose, empire waist blouses that every third woman in the fashionable world is wearing right now, so she’s still unable to see my growing (albeit still not as large as the Physician Outlaw would like to see it) baby bump. As Rev had predicted, without knowing for certain what my pregnant/not pregnant status was or the date I conceived, she wasn’t willing to take the risk of having my testimony implode her whole case.

And it was obviously making her sweat. Because what she couldn’t figure out was why, now that the state had rested its case,
Ben
hadn’t called me as a witness. What she couldn’t know was that although I was on the witness list for the defense, Brendan was still adamant about not allowing me to testify, and was threatening to plea bargain if Ben even thought about trying it. “I’m not having her humiliated on the stand,” he’d said, after I’d confided in him about what had happened between me and Davin during my last episode. “She’ll be asked about things she doesn’t remember doing, and it’s not her fault.”

So here I sit in the spectator box behind the defense table, the one person who knows more than anyone about all of the pieces of the puzzle I’d been waiting for. Only once I’d found all the pieces, I had to be content with my presence speaking the volumes I wouldn’t be permitted to speak aloud.

Since Brendan was adamant about me not testifying, and since Davin–the only other person who could answer the unbearable questions that would be asked–was too frail to leave the hospital, Ben and Rev had been left with two choices: either ask for the trial to be postponed until a later date when Davin would be well enough to take the stand, or have Brendan take the stand in his own defense. This was a gamble, because it allowed Lucinda to cross-examine him, but it was the only trick left in the bag.

“Dr. Charmant,” says Ben, “when did you suspect that Ms. Beau suffered from Klein-Levin Syndrome?”

“I suspected it during the first office visit,” says Brendan.

“And did you tell her at that time?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t certain. Her previous physician had diagnosed her with cataplexy–”

“Those are the fainting attacks she suffered from?”

“Yes, and she was on a treatment plan for that. Without more proof, without at least observing an episode myself, I wasn’t confident enough to make a definitive KLS diagnosis.”

“‘KLS?’ You mean Klein-Levin Syndrome?”

“Yes, sorry. ‘KLS’ is the abbreviated form of ‘Klein-Levin Syndrome.’”

“Dr. Charmant, did you know that KLS patients often exhibited signs of hypersexuality?”

“Yes, I did know that.”

“And did you ask Ms. Beau at her initial office visit if she had ever exhibited this type of behavior before or during her previous KLS episodes?”

“I—” He stops, inhales, and starts again. “I did start to ask her at her initial office visit.”

“And why was it that you decided not to ask her at that time?”

“I could tell she was reluctant to talk about it. Hypersexual behaviors often cause patients great embarrassment. Typically, they only know about their behavior second-hand; they don’t usually remember it themselves. It’s difficult for them to recount their hypersexual experiences, even with a doctor, and especially with a male doctor.”

“Did Dr. Pickering ask Ms. Beau if she had ever exhibited any signs of hypersexuality before or during her other episodes?”

“She did not.”

“Did you discuss your suspicion with Dr. Pickering after Ms. Beau’s appointment?”

“I did. She agreed that it would probably be easier for Claire to talk to a woman about it. It was Dr. Pickering’s intention to bring it up with Claire at the next visit.”

“Why?”

“Pardon me?”

He waves his fingers towards Brendan, as if he’s shooing away a fly. “You were saying the two of you decided that Dr. Pickering would discuss the hypersexuality with Claire at her next visit.” He shrugs. “Why? Why was it so important to know?”

“It would have been another symptom to catalog in search for a diagnosis. It has also been useful in offering a prognosis.”

“In what way?”

“Any other reason?”

“Well, it would be good to know so that that we could help her family and caretakers prepare themselves for this type of event.”

“Prepare them? In what way?”

“Hypersexual displays are similar to the other obsessive compulsive behaviors seen in most KLS patients, such as binge eating.”

“Remind us again about this type of obsessive compulsive behavior,” says Ben. “How does it manifest itself with binge eating, for example?”

“During a disturbed eating situation, a KLS patient who’s normally a moderate eater will suddenly demand an enormous amount of food. They exhibit lack of judgment or preference about the foods they’ll eat.”

“Can you give us an example of this lack of judgment or preference?”

“Well, a person who is normally disgusted by apples will suddenly eat as many apples as they can get their hands on. And it wouldn’t matter where they were; they would still attempt to eat as much food as they could, whether it was at the grocery store with strangers around them, or in their kitchen.”

“Taking that comparison and applying it to the hypersexuality displays,” says Ben, “you’re saying that a KLS patient who otherwise was a very typical individual would suddenly and inappropriately demand sex or make sexual advances on others repeatedly?”

“That’s correct.”

“So for example, a young man who was a normally functioning heterosexual might, during a hypersexual display, make sexual advances on an extremely elderly woman”–here he smiles –“‘old enough to be his grandmother’ I believe was the quote we found for one case in the literature?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“What about his own sister? Or mother?”

“Yes, there are cases of that as well.”

“Might he exhibit hypersexual behaviors towards another man?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Charmant, you said that knowing that a KLS patient who exhibited hypersexuality symptoms would help you in preparing the families. So it’s a matter of education about behaviors that they might see?”

“Education about behaviors, but more importantly how to avoid injuries.”

“And in what way might a person be injured during a hypersexual display?”

“Hypersexual behaviors can often be very sudden, and very forceful. If you are the, uh, unprepared target of this type of sudden attention from a KLS patient, you could be physically injured. Likewise, the patient might be injured.”

“How do these injuries normally occur?”

“Well, the family member or caretaker might strike the patient in an effort to fend off the advances, especially if they are caught by surprise, or if they are unaware that such a thing was common before or during a KLS episode.”

“In what way might the caretaker or family member be injured?”

“KLS patients can become extremely aggressive when they feel threatened, or if they feel that you are denying them whatever it is they think they need. During hypersexual displays, the patient can become extremely agitated if someone tries to deter their sexual advances.”

“When you say ‘agitated,’ what do you mean? What might a patient do if they felt that they were being prevented from successfully making a sexual advance?”