Page 132 of Gunner

Amber wouldn’t find that judgment here, though. Not after what I had done less than a week ago.

“Do you feel bad?”

Now she turned her cold eyes on me.

“Should I? He was a bastard who was raping his daughter. Did he deserve to live? Should I have just run away, and hope he never found me again?”

“Amber, there is no judgment here. Let me ask you those same questions? Do you think you should feel guilty?

“No.”

“Then why do you?”

“Because I should. I should feel guilty for taking a life. Violence isn’t the answer to the bad things in life.”

“Amber, look at me.”

I waited a few minutes before she finally focused on me.

“Tell me what happened.”

She sniffed, and I stood, gathering a box of tissues I kept on the counter and set them down next to her on the couch. I didn’t hand them to her. I didn’t want her to feel like she was expected to cry. But I wanted her to know it was ok if she did.

Sitting back in my chair, my hands clasped together in my lap, I waited for her to begin.

“It was my sixteenth birthday. I didn’t have any friends. I think the kids at school knew what was happening, because none of them made an effort once I started pulling away after the first time. So, it was just my father and me. He said he had something special planned for my birthday. After dinner, he gave me a present and sent me to my room to put it on. It was lingerie. He bought me things to wear on occasion, so I didn’t think much of it. But when I went back downstairs, a couple of his friends had arrived.”

I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear more but knowing she had to get it out.

“He had planned something special alright. But it wasn’t for me. He and his friends took turns at first. They took care not to hurt me. But they were drinking, and the more they drank, the rougher they got. Until they decided they no longer needed to take turns. Their reasoning was‘she’s got three holes and there’s three of us.’It was morning by the time they’d had enough.”

Amber didn’t cry. She stared out the window, her voice almost robotic as she went into detail of what her father and his friends had forced her to endure.

I had worked with sexual abuse survivors since I started my internship, and never had I encountered someone that had been through what Amber had been through.

Most of my patients had been rape survivors. Date rape or stranger rape. Incestuous rape was so much worse. And so much harder to overcome.

“Would you like to talk about what you did to get away?” I asked, knowing there was a reason she wanted to talk about this now.

“His friends left, and I took a shower. While I washed those men off me, something switched on inside of me. I’ve read the statistics. I know about Stockholm Syndrome. I think that’s what I was suffering from. He was my dad. I didn’t know anything different. He had conditioned me to believe he loved me in a way no one else would. I believed him. Until then.”

Amber stood and walked around the room. Her steps were stuttered and anxious. She turned and looked at me.

“Are you going to report me?”

“No, Amber. I am bound by therapist/patient confidentiality,” I assured her.

“Even if I tell you I committed a crime?” She snorted a small laugh. “I should have asked that before I told you I killed my father.”

“As long as you don’t tell me you are going to commit a crime in the future. That, I would be mandated to report. For your safety and the safety of the other person.”

She nodded, then walked around the room for a few more minutes before settling back on the couch. I stayed quiet and let her work out how much she wanted to share.

“I waited until dinnertime. I acted as though everything was normal. Never letting on that what he had done had crossed the line for me.” She scoffed. “As if he hadn’t already crossed the line.”

She pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and laying her chin on her knees.

“Would you like a blanket?”

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