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The Divine Right of Kings	By : vinsmouse Category: G through L > Hardy Boys Series Views: 5915 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own the Hardy Boys, not making any money, just cheap thrills.

Chapter List
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Chapter 30

“Hello Joe,” Diane Saylor greeted her newest patient. Dressed in jeans and a nice blouse Diane settled into her seat, one leg curled up under her in a naturally casual pose. The majority of her patients were the victims of sexual assault and/or young and she had found most responded better to a casual atmosphere rather than a more formal one. The truth was she did as well. When first beginning her practice she had dressed both herself and her office formally; she hadn’t been comfortable and neither had her patients.

Today her office reflected her true personality, the room was painted in soft hues and while one wall held a bookshelf covered in a variety of small toys and knick knacks along with a few books, another wall was taken up by a large aquarium filled with colorful fish. The remaining walls held desk and chairs while a few pictures adorned the walls. Diane with her casual dress and long red hair kept in a loose pony tail fit perfectly into this office. More relaxed herself she found it easier to put her patients at ease.

“Hello,” came the mumbled response.

“I’d like to begin with a question I ask all of my patients. Why do you think you’re here?” Many times Diane had found that, when dealing with teens, their perception of the situation differed greatly from that of their parents.

Joe shrugged. A few days after the bus crash Joe had finally started going outside again, only the yard but it was a start. He was trying to deal with everything that had happened but it wasn’t easy. Alex had actually helped him a lot, not that anybody else knew about it. His friends had tried to be supportive but they just couldn’t understand the way he felt and they quickly grew impatient with him. His family was better but even they had trouble understanding why he barely wanted to go outside. He dreaded school starting in a couple of weeks.

“You must have some idea,” Diane encouraged.

“I guess they want me to act like I used to,” Joe listlessly responded.

“Your family?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t want that?” It was important for her to understand the boy’s thought processes. Diane understood, of course, that he would never be the same as he was before the day of the attack. An event like that was life changing whether the victim wanted it to be or not.

“I do but…” Joe looked down, playing with the edge of his shirt.

Diane waited for him to continue. There was a fine line to be walked here.

“I don’t know how to be that kid anymore,” he miserably completed the thought.

“I think your family understands that.”

Joe’s head shot up. “Then why do they keep trying to make me leave the house or talk to my friends?”

“You know I’ve spoken to your parents?” Receiving a nod from her patient Diane continued. “From what they’ve told me they don’t expect you to become who you were before the assault. Yes they want you to get back into life, which includes speaking more to your friends as well as leaving the house. They don’t want to see you hiding yourself away, immersing yourself in depression.”

“I have a right to be depressed,” Joe snapped.

“You do,” Diane calmly agreed. “Nobody is blaming you for your feelings Joe.”

“They just want to tell me how to feel.”

“Do you really want to feel like this for the rest of your life? Do you want to spend your life hiding in a dark room and letting the men who hurt you win?” Diane knew that for many victims thinking of the battle to move past the effects of their trauma as a contest between them and their attacker could give them the boost of determination needed to recover.

“Alex tried to protect me,” Joe protested.

Diane quickly made note of that. Joe’s father had told her he saw one of the men as his protector. Obviously it was too soon to address that issue directly. “What about the other man, Gary Wyndham?”

Joe shuddered. “He hurt me.”

“What did he do?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Then why don’t we talk about how you feel about his actions,” Diane suggested.

“How do you think it made me feel?” Joe glared at this new therapist. Why couldn’t they all just leave him alone and let him deal with it on his own?

“If I knew the answer to that Joe I’d be a mind reader.” Diane was careful to keep her voice light and calm.

For several minutes Joe stared at Dr. Saylor in sullen silence. He considered not answering; after all it had worked with the last therapist. There was something different about this doctor, and he felt like she honestly wanted to know. Maybe she even cared. “I feel dirty. There must be something about me that made him want to do those things.”

Diane wasn’t surprised by the feelings. She noticed that Joe was speaking in the present tense and made a note of that in her files. “So you believe that you somehow caused the assault?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“I just want to be sure I understand you Joe. We won’t get very far if you say one thing and I hear another or vice versa. Do you think your family blames you?”

Joe shook his head so rapidly it was a wonder he didn’t give himself whiplash. “They should but they don’t.”

“Would you blame your mother or brother if they had been the one Wyndham wanted?” she reasonably asked.

“I’m not stupid you know.”

“I wasn’t aware I had accused you of stupidity.”

“You expect me to say no and then realize it’s stupid to blame myself.”

Diane chuckled. “Busted,” there was no point in denying the accusation and in fact it would be detrimental to the process.

Joe stared at the woman. He hadn’t expected that.

“Do think maybe that’s what Wyndham wanted you to think?”

He hadn’t thought of that before. Could he want him blaming himself? Was he watching him from beyond and laughing at him. “I don’t know,” he finally replied.

“I’m going to give you some pamphlets to read Joe,” Diane said as she reached into her desk. “I think,” she continued, handing him a couple of them, “you need to understand some of the dynamics of sexual assault.”

Joe gasped; it was the first time anybody had called it that. His family tiptoed around it, they spoke of Red hurting him but if he even hinted about where it would have led they would change the subject. He had told Frank about it once and his brother had held him, offering comfort; they hadn’t spoken of it since. Did they think that refusing to call it what it was made it less difficult to deal with? “But he didn’t rrape me,” he stuttered a protest. Would she back off and start tiptoeing like his family or would she insist it was what it was?

“No, but what he did was still a sexual assault, wasn’t it?” Diane needed her young patient to admit, if only to himself, the truth of what had happened. She didn’t know all of the details herself but knowing what she did it was easy to see there had been a sexual aspect to the assault Wyndham had inflicted.

“Yeah, so I don’t need these,” he tried to hand the pamphlets back to her.

“Before I let you out of your homework assignment I want you to tell me why some men sexually assault others.”

“Well that’s pretty obvious isn’t it?”

“Humor me.”

Joe sighed, “Fine. They want sex and there’s something about the person they attack that makes them think that person wants it too or can be forced into it.” He frowned when his attempt to return the pamphlets was rebuffed.

“Actually sex has very little to do with it,” Diane said and as usually happened her patient was clearly surprised by the statement.

“How do you figure that?” Joe was beginning to wonder if maybe his therapist needed therapy.

“You read those pamphlets and any other information you can find if there isn’t enough there,” she nodded at the booklets he held. “When you come back next week we’ll talk about it some more.”

Reluctantly Joe tucked the pamphlets into his back pocket. “That it?”

“For this session but I do have one more homework assignment for you. It won’t be easy Joe but it is necessary.”

Joe glared suspiciously. He really didn’t like the sound of that. “And?”

“I want you to go to one place away from home on at least two occasions in the coming week. You can go alone or ask your brother or a friend to accompany you.”

“I’m not ready for…”

“Joe you’ll never be ready, nobody ever is. You need to learn how to be around people without becoming uncomfortable or worse. I’m not asking you to go to the mall, though that is an option. You can go to a park, a friend’s house, the library, as long as it is a location with other people and you spend at least thirty minutes in the location you choose.”

“What if I don’t?”

“You’ll be hurting yourself mostly. Yes your parents and brother will be upset that you aren’t improving, but you’re the one who won’t be learning how to function in a world that for you has changed.”

Once more Joe was caught by surprise. “Nobody else gets that,” except Alex but he wasn’t here any more. Joe felt a pang of sadness at that thought.

“It isn’t because they don’t care,” Diane quickly assured. Joe needed to understand that above all else. His family might not realize that his world was different, it would forever be colored by the events of a sleepy June day, but that wasn’t due to a lack of caring. While traumatized and affected themselves they had only borne witness to Joe’s trauma a much less life changing trauma.

“I know, but they don’t get it.”

“No,” Diane agreed. “Will you do the assignment Joe?”

“I’ll try.”

Diane knew it was the best she was going to get right now. “Try hard,” she smiled. She made a note to call the school tomorrow. Arrangements would need to be made for Joe to be given frequent breaks from classes if he needed them. A refuge should be arranged, a small office would do, as long as he could be alone whenever he felt the need. If all went well the refuge would no longer be needed by Christmas break, or would only be required infrequently after that.

“I will,” Joe promised.

TBC...

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The Divine Right of Kings