Oh Ms Believer

69. Doc

I was going through some files and recent admissions to the psychiatric unit. My receptionist called in to tell me that the Josephs were cancelling Samantha's session this week due to illness. I had gotten close to the Josephs since taking Samantha on as a patient four years ago.

When I'd started seeing her, she was a tiny, terrified 13-year-old who'd just run away from her abusive father only to land in the back yard of a local celebrity, oddly enough. A complete coincidence. But the Josephs had taken Samantha in, had become her foster parents initially under an emergency placement, then formal and then, when Samantha's father's rights were terminated, petitioned to adopt her.

I liked Samantha. She was a challenging patient with all the things she'd been dealing with since coming to live with Tyler and Jenna. Well, her whole life, it seems, was a set of challenges, one after the other.

I was feeling reflective. And it was a quiet Monday. I would call Tyler or Jenna later and see what was happening with Samantha. They usually only cancelled for illness and Samantha had seen her share.

Samantha had been a little resistant to therapy at first, according to Tyler. And at her first session, she had silently insisted that Tyler accompany her into her session. I allowed it because I want the kids I treat to have positive experiences with therapy. It can be scary to deal with things you've never spoken to anyone about before. And Samantha had secrets.

She hadn't spoken much initially during that first appointment. And that was okay. I knew how to handle kids who were resistant or scared. It hadn't taken long and Samantha had started telling me things that she'd been dealing with. Starting with the death of her biological mother, who had, it turned out, been killed by her own husband, Samantha's father and a well-known, well-respected business and contract lawyer. 

Word had gotten out and Stanley Deitz, Samantha's biological father was disbarred, arrested, and imprisoned. He'd been found guilty of murder, child endangerment, failure to provide the necessities of life and child abuse. His parental rights had been stripped, which allowed the Josephs to adopt Samantha.

But he'd escaped prison on the way to a pre-trial hearing, had managed to orchestrate kidnapping his daughter from school with the help of an accomplice, and had held her for a week in their old house, where he'd tortured his daughter, caused her blood sugars to rise to a dangerous level and very nearly killed the girl. Which was his intention. She'd been saved, ironically, by the very man who had taken her from school in the first place. He'd had an attack of conscience, I suppose, and had, in fact, rescued Samantha. He had also killed Samantha's father when Stanley had threatened to kill her by shooting her as he'd planned the night Samantha's mother was killed.

Samantha recovered slowly from that ordeal. She'd been hospitalized to treat her wounds and her out of control blood sugars and, when released, wouldn't speak. She was more terrified then than she'd been when she had first started with me. I'd had to have her sessions with her at her home and usually in the presence of one of her parents.

One thing that Samantha had now that she hadn't had in the years prior to her being my patient, was love. Her biological mother, who she's spoken to me extensively about, was the only person in her life that she could definitely say had loved her before the Josephs. Her father had complained about Samantha being born a girl and had done his best to let her know just how much he despised having a daughter.

He'd terrorized her so much in just that one week that Samantha had retreated into herself. And then, for three weeks or so, wouldn't, or couldn't, utter a word. She followed Jenna everywhere for the first while, terrified to be out of her sight and terrified to be in the presence of any men, including Tyler.