THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, BUSINESSES, PLACES, EVENTS, LOCALES AND INCIDENTS ARE THE PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, OR ACTUAL EVENTS IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
chapter 4 : PROPITIOUS
“Hello Evelyn, how are you doing? Have you been sleeping well?” Evelyn was at her second therapy session with Avery. This time Carter didn’t have to force her, she came on her own.
“Yes, Doctor. I have been feeling better and sleeping well too.”
“Good to know. Please call me Avery.” Avery smiles politely.
“In our last meeting, you said you were certain of Mia being alive. If it’s okay, could we discuss more about that?”
Evelyn bit her lips. Was Avery branding her as delusional? Evelyn shouldn’t have said that about Mia, she regretted her confession, now she would be marked as mental in her psychiatrist’s files. Did therapists judge their patients, she wondered.
“Is that the reason you didn’t attend Mia’s funeral?” Avery continued.
A teardrop descended Evelyn’s cheeks. She didn’t wipe it. She let it fall on her hand.
“They never found Mia’s body. The investigation was closed stating that the search was complete. Some wild animals must have eaten her tiny body was the consolation statement issued by the Police department. Carter accepted their verdict. Mia’s torn clothes were found on the lake’s bed. The funeral casket was empty. The funeral was against my wishes. I had repeatedly insisted that my Mia wasn’t dead. A mother always knows. I could feel it in my bones, my daughter was very much alive. I was branded a paranoid soon after. My parents didn’t support me either. I had hoped Carter to believe me, he had loved our daughter much more than I had. But maybe I forgot that Carter believed in moving on. He didn’t appreciate dwelling in the state of denial. He had made amends with the fact that Mia was no more. She couldn’t have been alive given the severity of our accident.”
Evelyn took a break, sighed, had a sip of water and continued.
“I thought I knew what love was. I am a believer in true love. I was convinced that real love didn’t come hand-in-hand with longing as everyone said. I found the definition of love with Carter. I was happy, I was content. I hadn’t wanted anything other than his company. I had accepted the fact that I could never love another person like I loved Carter. I also knew he loved me just the same. I assumed I had safeguarded love after we were married. My belief changed when I became a parent. With Ethan initially, there was some struggle for acceptance as I was a first time parent. I wasn’t ready to be a mother when I had him. However, after I came out of my depression, I had realized that the word “love” and the definition of it was completely misplaced from what I had known before I had him. Love was what a mother felt for her child. Love was the feeling that motherhood encompassed. Love was holding your kid in your arms and knowing they were yours forever. Love was holding them close to your heart and hearing their heartbeat. Love was what I felt for Ethan and later for Mia. With Mia, the feelings, the emotions, the happiness, everything came naturally to me. The longing for Ethan abated after I had Mia. Nevertheless, after I lost her, I experienced profound longing and pain yet once again. They were back with a vengeance. The pain and emptiness haunted me even worse than it had after I had lost Ethan. With Ethan I was sure of his demise; with Mia, I was convinced of the contrary. Knowing that my little girl was alive, waiting for me to rescue her, made things even worse. The thought of how our life would have turned out with both my children in my arms keeps reverberating in my mind.”
Saying so, Evelyn holds her face inside her palms and breaks down into tears.
Avery gives her time to recollect her emotions, hands a napkin and offers a glass of water.
After a brief pause, Avery says “Are you doing anything to find her?”
Evelyn was lost deep in thoughts. She looked thoughtful as if trying to think or remember something.
She replied after a while “I can’t say I didn’t try at all. I did try my best. I went to our accident spot quite a few times. I tried looking for clues around the lake but found nothing. I also went to the houses on the lakeside, just in case if they had found a baby in the lake or on the shore, seen or heard anything, but no luck there as well. Then I started having the nightmares where I would dream of Mia caught inside a hole or strangled in something, struggling to reach me, calling out to me but unable to scream due to the water around her.”
“Evelyn, I believe you when you say that there is a possibility that Mia is alive. I understand as a mother how difficult it is to accept the fact especially because your baby’s body was never found. If you could have held her body, you might have found closure, but as that never happened, your brain is trying to create an illusion of a parallel possibility and making you lose your mind. My job at these sessions is to help you embrace the truth, whatever be it. I am going to help you live with the fact you choose regarding Mia. Once you reach a state of surety, this confusion would clear out automatically. It would help you live a better, more productive, peaceful life. Am I clear?”
Evelyn nodded her head in compliance.
“I am going to hypnotize you once again to make you relive that incident. There’s a reason behind this which I can tell you once I achieve the required result. But not to worry, hypnosis is a painless and stress-free way to make a person recall an unpleasant experience of their life.”
After that Evelyn had no inkling with the present. Her mind floated back to the same night that tragedy took place.
She was in the car beside Mia. Together they were all singing “Rain Rain Go Away”.
It was raining lightly. They weren’t over speeding. All of a sudden, a gush of water threw their car off balance. Evelyn couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Carter was screaming “Oh my God, we are going to drown.”
“Now I want you to slow down the events frame by frame and then narrate them to me.” Evelyn hears Avery’s voice as if it was drifting from some far away land.
The scenes decelerate as if someone has reduced the speed of the video. The car turns over two times before it hits the lake surface. Evelyn’s hands are stretched towards Mia. Mia is screaming at the top of her lungs. “Mommyyyyyy” she cries. Carter is trying his best to get out his phone, maybe to call for help. The car starts sinking. Carter passes out first. Evelyn’s head is heavy, she sees blood, she doesn’t know whose. Her head, hands, back are aching due to the impact. She wants to unbuckle her seat, reach for Mia, detach her car seat belt, but she is depleted of energy. Her eyes start closing, there is water in her lungs, their car has hit the bottom of the lake, Mia has stopped screaming, her eyes are closed. Evelyn closes her eyes, she isn’t in her senses anymore, the voice inside her head keeps urging her to gather strength, rescue Mia. Even though she wants to, she isn’t able to. The injuries and the water are making it impossible for her to come back to senses. Is she dying? She asks herself. Mia won’t survive under the water for so long, her inner voice whispers urgently. Her eyes open, just an inch. She sees a silhouette, someone is coming to rescue them, she sees a pair of hands grab Mia, she is relieved, senseless again. That’s all she remembers from that night.
Avery is at her desk, going through the patient’s recordings. She pauses Evelyn’s hypnosis, rewinds, and plays, scribbles something in her notepad, fidgets the number buttons on her phone, unable to decide whether to make the call or not, but calls in the end.
“Hello Mr. Carter, this is Avery here, Evelyn’s therapist. Is it a good time to talk?”
“Yeah sure. Please tell me.”
“Today was Evelyn’s second session with me. As you had requested to help her with closure, I did give it a try. However, something astonishing has come out of it. I wanted to discuss that with you.”
“Um Hmm. I’m listening, please go ahead.”
“Today during the hypnosis, Evelyn mentioned someone rescuing Mia after the accident. She said she saw a pair of hands, a silhouette, to be precise. The purpose of my hypnosis was to help her come to terms with the fact that Mia was no more but this was something I was completely unprepared for. I was surprised to hear that. She had forgotten about it as she had passed into a coma soon after, but hypnosis helps in recovering such memories which are embedded deep into your brain cells.”
Carter was silent at the other side.
“Mr. Carter are you there?”
“Yes, I am right here. Don’t you think she is making this up just to corroborate her belief that Mia is still alive? I mean she has had hallucinations before. After our son Ethan died, she often said she could hear a splash and scream from the swimming pool in our backyard. So, is this vision a figment of her imagination as well?”
“Patients usually speak the truth when they are hypnotized. There isn’t any scope of lying or stitching tales at the spur of the moment as one doesn’t have complete control over their minds. Anyways the reason behind this call was to let you know and give you a heads up that as our session has scratched this memory cell in her mind, she is going to be a little disturbed right now. Please do provide her all the support you can and take care of her. I have given her some medicines which shall help her recover from the shock and sleep well.”
“Thanks a lot, Doctor for the concern and the heads up as well. I am grateful to you for this gesture of yours.”
((To be continued………))
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Great chapter! I was not expecting the twist!!! Can’t wait to see what happens!!
Twist! Interesting story so far! x
Sophie
Thanks a lot for reading and commenting. It means a lot to me 🙂
Keep these wonderful stories coming 🙂
Thank you so much Ryan for reading and commenting. A positive feedback means a lot!
Twists and Turns. And I can’t wait for the next part. Hoping soon I’m gonna read the next part. Nice piece dear…
Thanks a lot for reading and commenting! It means a lot to me. Yes, I shall be publishing the next post very soon.
Looking forward to the next part!
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yes, it will be out soon 🙂
Brilliant ! And how successfully you create excitement among readers about “what happens next”! Also, you bind the writers with words & events. Great storytelling ! I thoroughly enjoyed it & excited for the next one. 💕😊
Thanks a lot for reading and commenting. Its the feedback that keeps me going. The next post will be out soon!
Aah haaa !! Twist in the tale ? Suspense all over.. eagerly waiting for the next one
Thank you for taking out time to read and commenting. The next post will be up soon! Keep reading.