Being in Love: Saving Grace

She was sitting in front of me. A girl with dark shadows under her eyes and cheeks sunken beyond normalcy. She looked as if she’d die the next day from starvation. She was continuously fidgeting. A typical Heroin addict. She was dressed like any other teenager in jeans and an over sized pullover, but the small band around her wrist, bearing her name and room number, marked her as a patient at the Rehabilitation Centre. 

“Name?” I asked politely holding a clip-board and pen in my hand, ready to take notes. I already knew her name. I had spent hours studying her case file but as we were taught in med-school, asking the patient’s name was the first step in establishing a patient-doctor relationship.

She remained quiet, keeping her eyes glued to my clipboard and pen.

“Is something wrong? Do you need anything?”

She shook her head which was a sign of progress, I guess.

“Since you don’t wanna talk and I have some work piling over, why don’t you take my clip board and pen and write something out for me. Maybe even your name.” I pushed the clipboard and pen towards her and pretended to read another file, eyeing her occasionally.  After a few minutes she picked up the pen with shaky hands and started scribbling something on the paper. I tried to see what it was but she blocked my view by placing her hand on the paper.

Our first session was over before any further interaction occurred when her nurse knocked on my door to take her away. She left the clipboard and the pen on my table and left my office. I finally had the chance to see what she had scribbled so I eagerly picked up the clipboard only to find nothing but a stick-man drawn with shaky strokes signed with a single alphabet, her initial, ‘g’. She didn’t tell me her name but she managed to convey that she trusted me. Only a little. I unclipped the sheet from the clipboard and put it in her file.

On her next appointment with me, I had blank sheets and crayons set out for her on the table. Although she just drew a stickman the last time, I had reasons to believe that art was the way in which she could communicate and express herself. She was surprised to see the crayons and blank sheets but I swear she smiled for a second. Once she started drawing, she used up most of the sheets. She drew a skeleton with two broken ribs. Structurally, it was almost perfect. I assumed that it had a connection with a memory of her being physically abused by her father which once, as I recalled, had led to a few broken ribs and her first visit to an ER when she was just eleven years old. From her file, I knew that her biological mother was in jail and her father was a frustrated and unsuccessful vermin who started beating his seven years old daughter when he couldn’t get lucky at poker. It started with a bruised cheek and some black eyes but the torture increased to whip lashes, burnt marks and scars across her back. The situation got worse when she grew older and started fighting back. He was smart enough to not hurt her where it showed and he was more than happy to break her ribs when he caught her trying to contact the child services.

I pitied her. She was young and damaged. Her father’s torture had scarred her forever and she found her safe-haven in drugs. It started with small experiments with weed at parties and led to full fledged addiction of Heroin.  She was caught by a social worker lying in a dark alley, wasted. The social worker was nice women and insisted on sending the girl to rehabilitation. So here she was, drawing on blank sheets in my office when she could’ve been out there graduating high school and going to college only if her father hadn’t been such a bastard.

She drew some other stuff too. They weren’t only stick figures now. They were slightly more creative art pieces. I was surprised to see puppies and flowers in some of her drawing signifying her optimism. Her last drawing before the session was over was a small girl with dark hair. There was an arrow connecting the girl’s head with a single word, ‘Grace’. That’s when she finally told me her name.

 

Grace’s doctors told me that she had progressed ever since I started her ‘art therapy’. They believed that drawing was helping her let go of the pain she was hiding inside her. Session after session, her drawing was improving more and more and so was her guarded nature. After a few more sessions of drawing and staring, she came around and started talking to me. It started when I asked her about one of her drawings I couldn’t connect.

It was a girl’s face with a $5000 written on her forehead. I wasn’t expecting her to answer my question since she never ever talked to me. I mostly asked questions and tried to look for an answer in her body language and expressions. I was planning on doing the same this time but she surprised me.

“When I was seventeen, he (her father) owed someone a lot of money and to cover this debt, he decided to trade me for $5000 to a man who ran a prostitution racket. The day I found out about his deal, I ran away. I was too high to get far so I landed up in the dark alley. Thats where that lady found me.” She explained.

After my initial shock of hearing her voice for the first time wore off I realized that this information was nowhere in her file which meant that she had not yet disclosed it to anyone but me. I felt happy that she trusted me enough but thinking of her father selling her made me angry in ways I could not understand. My hatred for that man was higher than ever.

Sometimes I couldn’t understand Grace. I couldn’t understand how she survived so many years with her abusive father and still came out strong and alive.

We talked more and more over the months and even became friends. By this time she had been sober for more than three months and as to what her doctor told me, she was improving. She had a good chance of being released by the end of the year and although I was happy for her, something about this new revelation made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t get Grace out of my mind. If I wasn’t reading her case file all over again, I was probably looking at her drawings at home. Her story was really getting to me at this point.

 “Grace, why did you start taking drugs?” I asked her one day. It was understandable why physically abused children take drugs. It’s mostly their way of releasing their anger but Grace was better than that. She was stronger and smarter.

She just stared at me for a few minutes and when I had given up, she started to speak, “I was sixteen when I went to this party and experimented with weed. It was just an experiment and I wasn’t going to make a habit of it but it made me feel invincible. Even though just for a short period of time, I felt as if no one could hurt me but when I went home and the drug wore off and that sick bastard beat me again, I felt small again. So I moved over to Heroin as it was a stronger drug. When I got home after injecting myself with Heroin, he would still beat me but I wouldn’t feel the pain. I was so numb and high that I wouldn’t feel anything at all. I would see scars and bruises the next day and it would hurt then but I didn’t have to hold on to the memories of his face while he hit me. I would not have to remember his whip-lashes striking against my back.”

After that she started crying. She wouldn’t sob but silent tears oozed out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks falling into her hands that were folded on her lap. I went over and wrapped my arms around her. It was highly inappropriate and she awkwardly struggled in my grip. That’s when I realized that my actions had made her feel uncomfortable. When I let her go she ran out of my office. The next day I apologized to her. She didn’t say anything but her shoulder dropped and her posture relaxed. That day she drew some more and I sat down thinking. I realized that I loved Grace. I didn’t love her like a man loves his wife or his girlfriend but I loved her in ways I couldn’t understand. I didn’t want to lose her but I wanted her to have a life for real. A life without her sick father and the addiction that she was battling against. She was seventeen and a minor and I was twenty seven. We had no future together and I wasn’t even sure if I loved her enough to go into a relationship with her or marry her. I just wanted her to be happy and safe.

After three more months of Grace being sober, I was asked about my opinion of letting her go by her medical team which consisted of her doctors, nutritionist, social worker and me, her physiatrist. I voted a ‘yes’. She deserved a life.

On her last day at Rehabilitation centre, she came to my office and placed a sheet in front of me. Apparently she had snuck a few crayons to draw something for me. It was girl standing next to a tall man, holding his hand. Above the girl’s head she had scribbled Grace in her neat handwriting and above the man’s head she had scribbled Xavier, my name. On the back of the paper, she had written a single sentence, ‘Thank you for saving me’. I still have that drawing in my drawer, even now.

It has been four years since that day and I still hear from Grace sometimes. She is an artist now and completely sober. I visit her exhibitions now and then with my wife who I married a year ago. I don’t love Grace anymore. At least not in the way I used to but I still care about her a lot. I want only the best for her.

I don’t know if this story qualifies as a love story for you, but it does for me. My wife, who knows everything about Grace, always says that I saved her with my art therapies and patience. But what I feel is that Grace saved me in more ways than I can imagine. She went through hell with a straight face and her bravery makes me grow stronger each day. She taught me that no matter how much you screw up, there’s always some hope for everyone. Heroin addict Grace is now a wonderful sober artist. A girl I’m proud of. Whenever something bad happens in my life, I think of her and derive strength from her brave and determined heart. Even with those scars still on her back, she is beautiful inside out. Strong, independent and brave. Grace is someone I look up to. She was one hell of a good thing in my life. She is my saving grace.