What No One Else Can Hear (17 page)

“I’m sorry, all right?” I started pacing. “I just didn’t know what else to do. I’m so lost here, Drew. I don’t get why this is happening, don’t understand what to do, don’t know how to help Stevie, or Dottie, or anyone else, let alone myself.” My whole body started shaking. “I’m just so done, Drew. I’m done.”

He came and wrapped me in a warm hug and softened his voice. “Ah, Jess, I know. I know it’s been hard. On everyone, but especially you, of course. But you screwed the pooch here, man. Kyle is a good lawyer. He had a strategy. You blew it.”

I hadn’t stopped shaking just because he held me, and now I started crying. I hadn’t broken down throughout this whole thing until now. He just held me tighter and let me cry. It felt like hours. I had no idea how much time had really passed. But he stood there, holding me, rubbing my back, kissing my hair, until I finally calmed down.

“I’m sorry.” That was all I could think of saying.

He squeezed gently and said, “Kyle’s a good lawyer. He’ll figure out a new strategy. It’ll be okay.”

But I could tell he wasn’t really as sure as he was trying to sound. I had just wanted to
do
something… anything. But the thought that I had made it worse? I couldn’t bear that. I needed to make it better. I needed to make it go away. I needed to be able to be with Stevie again.

Drew seemed to follow my thoughts. “On the plus side, though, Stevie saw you too. He sat in front of the TV and touched the screen the whole time you were on. When the clip was over, he leaned into it until his forehead touched where yours had been. He stayed that way for probably half an hour. We couldn’t convince him you weren’t coming back on.”

I looked up at him. “How is that a plus side? It’s ripping my heart out to think of Stevie like that.”

“He came out of his room, man. He interacted with something. He was ‘back’ for a short while.”

“That’s not anything close to what he can do. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know that. In general, that’s not the best he can do—hasn’t been since you arrived. But it’s the best he’s been doing lately. And before you got here, those kinds of things were the small achievements we held on to. It showed improvement—even if it was just a small one.”

“God, Drew. Is he really back to where he was before I got here?”

Drew touched my face and made sure I was looking at him. “No, not quite that bad. But much more withdrawn than we’ve seen him in a long while.” He must have noticed that I was becoming upset again because he touched his forehead to mine and added quietly, “We’ll make it through this, Jess. We all will, Stevie included. He’s fighting, man. He’s trying. He’s a strong-willed kiddo and he will be okay in the long run. He’s just having a tough time right now. We all are.”

I hugged him and laid my head on his shoulder. I didn’t want to think about Stevie regressing. He had come so far. He still hadn’t been the boy I knew from the forest, but he had been getting closer. He’d been learning to build his walls so the thoughts and emotions of everyone around him didn’t overwhelm him. That had been the first step.

I still had high hopes for him despite the regression. I didn’t want him to simply be proficient at walling everyone out and ignoring them. I wanted him to be able to tap into his empathy. I wanted him to be able to use that for good. I wasn’t sure yet how it could be used, or how to teach him to use it, or even if it could be used at all. Lilly had barely survived hers. The other two close accounts I’d found had completely walled off their empathy and worked around it. Nothing in my research said these “gifts” could be anything but endured.

I didn’t want that for Steve. I wanted better.

But right now he was back to just suffering through it all… alone. And that was killing me.

A
S
WE
moved toward the court date, Stevie was becoming more and more unglued and needed to be sedated to be able to sleep at all. Either he’d put himself into a trance, trying to get to me in the forest, or he’d be so worked up he wouldn’t have been able to sleep otherwise. He couldn’t make it to the forest when he was sedated, and that just made him more agitated and more likely to try to reach me whenever he had half a chance.

On my end, I attempted to calm myself enough to get to sleep and stay asleep so he could reach me if he called, but that didn’t always work and I often woke up every hour or so.

We were both becoming frustrated at the lack of efficiency in what I had thought would be our ace in the hole. But we were occasionally able to meet in the forest, and that was better than nothing.

Apparently Stevie was even more frustrated with the whole hit-and-miss status of his only communication option than I had thought.

One evening, a little more than a week before the trial, he was able to contact me and we had a nice talk. I could hold him in the forest, and rock him, and assure him everything would be okay. He didn’t have a whole lot to say beyond the fact that he wanted me to come back. We talked about how the judge needed to decide that. I left out the whole idea that the restraining order was doing the most harm and that it might or might not end anytime soon. He seemed to understand what I was saying but didn’t know why any of it was happening. But then, I wasn’t sure exactly why either. Anyway, I thought the visit was productive and had done both of us some good.

Until I got the frantic call from Drew the next morning.

He had gone in at seven to wake Stevie up but found him lying on his bed with his eyes open, save for an occasional blink. Thank God for the blink reflex, even during a trance. Drew was having a hard time rousing him. He kept trying periodically for the better part of an hour, thinking maybe I had gone back to sleep after he left instead of staying up like I normally did, and he hoped that Stevie was talking to me in the forest. As it passed eight o’clock, Drew had to admit something was wrong. He called, just to make sure I was awake, and of course I was. I had never gone back to sleep though, and Stevie wasn’t waking up. I wasn’t sure he was still in the forest, but it was a pretty good bet.

I tried to get back to sleep so I could talk to him, but I wasn’t at all sleepy, and as my worry about Stevie mounted, all chances of getting to sleep anytime soon vanished. Drew kept me posted, but there was no change throughout the day. By lunchtime, five hours after Drew’s first unsuccessful attempt to wake Stevie, I decided to follow Dottie’s suggestion of taking sleeping pills. I was pretty sure the sedative wouldn’t affect my ability to get to the forest, since, as far as I could tell, I didn’t actually do anything to get there in the first place. I simply responded to Stevie.

I was wrong. Either Stevie wasn’t in the forest, or the sedative did affect my ability to get there, because I didn’t go to the forest. I stayed asleep for four hours and didn’t remember dreaming at all. Maybe that was the problem. I knew my visits to the forest weren’t actually dreams, but they took place when I was in a dream state, so maybe the sedative had done something to prevent me from getting to the proper state.

Whatever the reason, I had wasted four hours. Four more hours that Stevie lay in a trance in his bedroom two and a half miles away. He had passed his own record for his longest trance, and everyone was getting worried. The doctor had long since set up an IV, as dehydration was the most immediate concern.

I was so frustrated. I knew from experience that all I’d need to do to wake him up was to take his hand and tell him to come back, but here I sat, useless. I called Drew back and asked him to hold the phone to Stevie’s ear. I tried calling to him with Drew holding his hand, but it didn’t work.

Less than ten minutes away, and I couldn’t help.

I stayed awake and paced for the next four hours. By eight that evening, I decided to try again to get to sleep. I didn’t succeed until after ten. By then Stevie had been in a trance for nearly twenty-four hours, counting from the approximate time he’d called me to the forest the night before.

When I finally got to the forest, and saw Stevie sitting there, with a gigantic grin now I’d finally arrived. I didn’t know whether to hug him or throttle him. It was a close call, but I decided on the former.

Stevie didn’t have any idea of the concern he had caused. He was feeling fine in the forest. He never got hungry or had to go to the bathroom. He didn’t hear anyone’s mumbled thoughts or feel their emotions. As far as I could tell, even normal passage of time was suspended, so he didn’t get bored. And at ten years old, he hadn’t thought about what might be happening to his physical body.

I tried to get him to leave the forest right away to let everyone know he was okay, but he was afraid I’d wake up too and we wouldn’t be able to meet again for a long while. I couldn’t update anyone without waking up, and I was reluctant to leave Stevie now that I had found him, even if I could wake up at will.

They’d just have to wait a little while longer.

I had an extended talk with Stevie and explained why this was so dangerous, and after a long debate, I finally extracted a promise that he would never stay in the forest without me. If I didn’t show up almost right away, chances were that I wasn’t asleep and wasn’t coming. I told him he was to immediately leave the forest and try again later, but he was not to stay without me. He reluctantly agreed but let me know he was not pleased.

Finally I explained that everyone had been so worried about him all day and we shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer. So he left.

I woke up almost immediately to find Dottie sitting by my bedside, waiting for any news. She had been on the phone with Drew pretty much the whole time and was trying to see if she could tell if I had actually gone to the forest so she could pass that information along. All she had been able to tell was that I was apparently dreaming. All any of them could do was hope that I had been spending that time with Stevie.

Drew’s triumphant cheer was audible through the phone, and I knew the moment that Stevie “woke up.” Drew told me later that the first thing Stevie did was ask for mashed potatoes. From somewhere, a large helping of instant mashed potatoes soon appeared with a bottle of ketchup. Which of the staff managed to make Stevie’s favorite meal so quickly, Drew never discovered. Stacy and Hank were the only day-shift staff still present besides Drew, but it could easily have been one of the night-shift staff as well. Everyone at the center had long since fallen in love with Stevie.

F
INALLY
THE
court date arrived. The place was packed with reporters and the general public as well as supporters for our side. Sara and Dottie were sitting immediately behind me. Drew had to work, but every staff member not working that day was in court, showing their support. So many showed up that some had to sit on the side behind Liston. Everyone from the center had been trying to avoid that side, but that only made it look like the press and the general public were on his side, since that’s the only place they could sit. Truthfully, most of the press were on his side, but more and more were coming around to my camp.

Somehow
a copy of the entire tape showing the block crisis had been leaked and put on the Internet. Sara and Kyle had honestly disavowed any knowledge of how that had happened. Drew and Dottie were staying conspicuously silent on the subject. I decided I didn’t really want to know and stopped asking questions. Even if Drew and Dottie thought I shouldn’t have said anything to the press, I wouldn’t put it past them to take it a step further to try for damage control. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guessed. I wasn’t going to ask them if they did it, let alone what their motivation might have been. In any case, it seemed to work at least partially as intended.

Also on the Internet were numerous blogs and tweets and Facebook entries about the whole thing, stating facts that could only have come from staff members, even videos of our psychologist interviewed by Kyle, telling him exactly how Stevie had been before I arrived, and how he was with me around.

Kyle admitted to making the video so he could use it in case Dr. Lowe wasn’t able to testify in person, but he said he didn’t release it. I have yet to figure that one out, and again, I’m not sure I want to know. Technically, most of that was a breach of confidentiality and could get whoever did it in a lot of trouble. The tape too, for that matter, unless they had Liston’s okay—and I’m sure they didn’t.

Videos of Stevie and Ryan playing with blocks and laughing, along with written commentary within the tape about how the boys had been before I came, were being shown on YouTube. A letter and a copy of the block videos had been sent to Ryan’s parents, the Merrills, and they were both in the courtroom. Before the trial started, they approached me and told me how grateful they were for my part in the drastic improvement they had seen in their son in those tapes. They had shown the video to all their friends and family, having previously had very little in the way of “home video” footage of their son to share. They had been amazed when they saw him joking with Stevie. They were parents who had tried to stay involved but didn’t actually visit that often. As soon as they received the video, they had rushed right over to visit Ryan, only to be crushed when they observed him sitting silently in Stevie’s room, refusing to come out, even to see them.

The trial began, and the prosecution presented what the DA now knew to be incomplete video footage. Reportedly the DA had desperately tried to convince Mr. Liston to turn the case into a civil suit instead, citing that he wasn’t sure there was enough evidence to convict. In fact he was pretty sure there wasn’t. Mr. Liston had threatened to publicly claim the DA himself was obstructing justice as well as aiding and abetting a criminal. As it was an election year and the current DA wanted to continue being DA, he had capitulated. Losing a trial would do him much less damage than being seen as someone who would knowingly let a child molester walk just because he didn’t want to chance losing a case. So they trotted out their best stuff, all of which Kyle easily refuted. They put Chuck on the stand. He perjured himself, saying he had nothing to do with getting the evidence to Mr. Liston. William Liston himself followed suit and lied about how frequently he had visited Stevie and how involved he had been in his life for the last six years.