Between Darkness and Dawn

20.

That night, Carmen went to the doctor’s office in town, with Peter, Harmony and Fritz accompanying her, to be examined to prove that she didn’t have Stockholm Syndrome. For three hours, she was asked extremely personal questions, told to talk freely of her feelings for Cody, and ran over the same information over and over again for Doctor Wallace. It was infuriating and bothersome but it had to be done and she had finally begun to realise that. “Can you tell me when you first discovered you had feelings for Mister Tarasova?” Doctor Wallace pushed the glasses further up his nose and sat back in his seat, with a relatively small notepad on his lap, allowing Carmen to sit in her comfortable armchair and talk to her hearts content. He had already asked her to judge what was important, what she wished to reveal and what she didn’t and that she could at as much length, or as briefly about any subject as she wished. To Carmen’s surprise, she enjoyed basking in each memory.

“I guess it was quite early on after we first met each other. We were still on the trek to his first base camp and we were talking about…nothing really. It just came out of the blue. He told me that he loved me, so absolutely sure of what he felt that it frightened me a little. He said it was okay that I didn’t understand yet, but that one day I would and he wouldn’t hold it against me. Then he kissed me.” Carmen found herself smiling as she said the words, recalling that moment with much more glee than she had felt at the time. She had been so confused back then, so unsure of what to think or feel, so caught up in believing that she should love Darick, not Cody, but unable to do so. All this she confessed to Doctor Wallace and more, until after a lengthy silence, in which she did nothing but smile to herself, he asked if she had responded to his kiss at the time. “Yes I did.”

“Tell me of the night you first had intimate relations?” The question changed the subject so abruptly that Carmen frowned for a moment. She didn’t mean to sound insulted or angry with him, but found that she did, anyway, when she finally spoke up about her confusion.

“I’m not sure what you mean Doctor Wallace. Do you mean the first night Cody and shared a sleeping space and knew that it would become a regular thing, or do you mean the night we first made love?” She wondered, finding his comment, of choosing whatever was the most significant to her, to be particularly baffling. But then, she had never been to a therapist before and talking about her feelings had been completely new to her when Cody had convinced her to do so. “They’re both quite important, I suppose. When we first spent the night next to each other, Cody had just told Darick to stay away from me, because I belonged to him. The night we first made love, he proved it.” Carmen was entirely unaware of the little giggle that she let slip with the words, lost in the memory of every special, significant moment she had spent with Cody. To her surprise, and yet she knew she should have known better, there were a considerable number of those moments to recall.

“And that knowledge makes you smile.” Doctor Wallace commented, with a smile of his own, before scribbling something into his notepad. Again he confused Carmen, who wondered if he was asking a question or making an observation. He was such a cryptic man, of few words that she barely knew what to think of the things he said. “Whichever you prefer.”

It wasn’t until the end of the session, when he told her he had everything he needed for his testimony, that Carmen felt brave enough to ask what he thought of her and her feelings for Cody. Was she crazy and had she been brainwashed by a criminal genius, or did she love Cody as much as he loved her? “Well, what’s the verdict?” She asked, aching to know what he would tell the judge in just three days when he was to sit before the judge and the prosecutor and her parents, and tell them what he had discovered whilst delving into the private, hidden thoughts of a young girl.

“Miss Beaufort, I am pleased to tell you that since you have never been a victim, I cannot consider you one. You have expressed yourself honestly, and in detail, admitting to your own faults and those of others. You analysed each situation according to your upbringing and eventually had to decide to make your own choices.” Doctor Wallace offered her an encouraging smile as he rose from his seat and patted her shoulder. Carmen was beginning to like him and think it a shame that they would probably never see each other again.