The Aftermath: Introduction

It was not love at first sight. Our first meeting was anything but attractive or inspiring. 1

Two bulked-up male nurses carried me in from the drenching rain, kicking and screaming. I managed to slip out of their grasp and race down the corridor as if chased by fire. This was his first vision of me: a wildly psychotic girl with terror and despair haunting hollowed eyes, fiery hair in riotous disarray, and a hospital gown two sizes too large sliding off a body still carrying the marks of death’s scarring embrace. 2

He caught me in his arms, roughly holding me against him as I clawed and kicked and spat for freedom. A nurse brought a syringe full of sedating anti-psychotics and he stabbed the needle into my vein without hesitation or a thought of gentleness.3

The next day we joined in the first of a long succession of counseling sessions. He asked me why I thought I was brought to the psychiatric hospital, why I tried to kill myself, why I was so violently angry. I seethed behind piercing blue eyes, but noticed how his calculating hazel ones shifted over my lean legs and copper curls with a concealed but still evident spark of desire. 4

When they came to the image of my bandaged frail wrists and striped arms, however, his expression changed to one of clinical pity.5

Over the next few meetings, my condition improved, as did my looks, and gradually the awareness of my desirability seeped back into my chemically controlled brain. Depression caved and I began to feel the hunger return.6

He could see it in my eyes, in my svelte movements, in my not-so-subtle comments. He knew I was mildly manic, and nymphomania was only a symptom of an illness he was trying desperately to rescue me from, one whose fatal nature brought me to him. He resisted my seductions while others were not so inclined to honor and restraint.7