Saving Elijah

too, it's not an act. But even Mary Galligan admits not everyone has had troubles like Sam and I have had and certainly not everyone reaches absolute zero.

    *    *    *

    It had been an ordinary Tuesday, like any other, just a few days after the new year. I had no idea the season was upon me. Who ever knows?
    In the morning I saw patients in my office in the Westport Professional, the two-story stucco building on the Post Road with arched windows and Spanish aspirations where I did my thing. My last patient before lunch was a new referral, Danielle O'Connor. She came into my office, a big attractive blonde in her thirties, wearing sunglasses in the middle of winter. I asked her why she'd come, and she took off the glasses. The bruise, compliments of her husband, was raw and dark.
    She told me the story the way abuse victims often talk—slow, matter-of-fact, almost dazed, like a prisoner of war. Details change but the plot is always basically the same. In this case, her husband had accused her of flirting with one of his business colleagues at a party. He twisted her arm, he backhanded her across the face, he demanded to know how she could humiliate him in front of everyone he worked with.
    "The nurse wanted me to call the police," Danielle said. "She said I should go to the shelter... I told them I fell, I always make up something ... they knew ... the nurse gave me your card ... he says he'll kill me if I tell the police." She hesitated, and tears began to slip silently down her cheeks. "If I don't go to these parties, he says I'm a bitch, and I'd better watch it because a man like him shouldn't be with someone like me anyway. So I go." She took a tissue from the box I keep on the table in front of the sofa. "But then he always accuses me of something ..." She broke off. She was a very long way from realizing that it didn't matter what she did, or didn't do. He was the one with the problem; if he needed to hit her he'd find a reason. The next time it might be for going to the party and not talking to anyone, or for making beef stew for dinner when he wanted pork chops. Wham.
    "Danielle, what did you do when your husband hit you?" I asked her.
    She wiped her nose. "What I always do. Tell him I'm sorry I upset him."
    "So you don't argue with him?"
    "Arguing just makes it worse." Her look was something on the order of trapped, wounded animal. "It gets worse if I cry, too. He hates it when I cry."
    "So what you do is to try to protect yourself from his violence, in a way?" I always try to validate the woman's choices. They have to begin to see themselves as someone who has choices again. "So it doesn't escalate?"
    "I never thought of it that way."
    "Does it work?"
    "Depends on how much he's had to drink. That night was the worst. My daughter heard us, she came downstairs, and he started in with, 'Get over here, Sarah, I want you to see what a whore your mother is.' He calls me these terrible names—my own husband." She put her head in her hands and wept in earnest now.
    Whore. In my experience abuser epithet choice number one.
    Danielle looked up, bewilderment on her face. "There was this man at our club, it was five years ago ... I just needed someone to talk to ..."
    So then. She believed she deserved whatever he dished out. And the poor woman was too terrified, too conditioned by years of abuse, too humiliated to even call the police. No one could know what was going on in her life.
    Shortly into the session, she began to defend him, of course. He'd apologized, sent her flowers, he was just having a hard time at work, things were going to be better now. Classic cycle: tension building, violent incident, honeymoon. In college, I'd slid briefly into a spectacularly abusive relationship myself, complete with all the rationalizations, the "yes, but all he needs is my love to straighten him out's." Almost died because of it.
    I thought I could help Danielle, and wanted to work with her. But first things first. We reviewed her options if and when it happened again, which it would, and worked out a plan for her safety. I spent the rest of the hour getting her family history, which not surprisingly included a verbally abusive father, made an appointment for the following week, an appointment I didn't keep as it turned out, and told her to call if she needed me.
    She thanked me and left. I returned a few calls, did some paperwork at my desk, then left to meet my friend Becky for lunch. It was very cold outside, with a