Memoirs for Ghosts of Women
By: Rachael Hope
Tags: Rape, Society, Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, Feminism

Photo by Daan Stevens on Unsplash

It is 3:58 am on a Sunday morning, 11 pm on a Friday, 5:30 am on a Tuesday when I get the call from the Emergency Room. I rush to get ready. Binder, wallet, keys. I try to remember to grab something to eat on the way out the door, because I could be there for up to four hours. When I was pregnant, I would add crackers and water to my tote bag.

Some nights, the wind whips around me and I shiver, not only from the cold but from the lonely whistling sound it makes. Coyotes howl, longing and desolate sounding. With a name on a piece of paper, I drive.

The road is dark, and there is no sign of summer’s warmth. I feel nervous, but determined. I can never listen to the radio as I make this drive, I turn the knob all the way down and I pray.

Give me strength and intuition. Let me help. Please keep her safe, and help her remember her value. Guide me with instinct to know how to be the best support. Help me to change this person’s experience for the better, even if it’s only a tiny fraction of good in an otherwise awful event.

I am meeting someone on quite possibly the worst night of their entire life. My heart pounds as I announce myself to the nurse at the desk. She buzzes me in, and I walk through the ER alone, reading room numbers. Sometimes I don’t have to read the numbers, I can tell which room it is by the police officer outside the door.

It’s surreal being in the emergency room, in these wee hours of morning it is most often very quiet. Tonight there is an open door and a child is vomiting repeatedly, four or five years old. I feel a moment of a different type of sadness for him. Whispered conversations float through the halls, sprinkled with words like diabetes and miscarriage.

I take a deep breath and steady myself before placing my hand on the doorknob. There’s no way to know what I’ll find. Sometimes, I get some back story from a nurse or a police officer before I go in, sometimes I just get a name and room number.

Tonight, she has not decided if she wants to report her assault, so no Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner has been called in. There is usually one on duty, but she is sick tonight. The SANE’s usually keep the door closed, but tonight it’s open.

Tonight the room is dark. I enter quietly and find her asleep on the bed. She looks small in this one-size bed, and I don’t want to wake her. The first few times, I was surprised because they were not as visibly broken as I expected.

Tonight the room is too bright, the florescent light makes us squint as she tries not to cry. The bedsheets on the wheeled gurneys in the ER never fit right. They look soft, like t-shirt fabric, but the edges always hang loose like extra skin on someone who lost a lot of weight. The white blankets always look so thin, and I wonder if she is warm enough.

Tonight when I enter they are already measuring bruises and I look away as the camera flashes, once, twice, again.

Tonight she asks what is next, and we can’t find the call button. We’ve been waiting for someone. Eventually, I find it on the floor, hanging from it’s cord on the wall. It must have gotten knocked down when she got her X-rays. After an hour, I leave her alone to find someone and get information about what is next.

She is alone.

She is not alone.

Her friend holds her hand as the nurse explains what the rape kit entails.

Her sister hands her a cup of water to wash down the cocktail of antibiotics and emergency contraception.

Her daughter stands beside her as the officer explains what will happen next.

Her friend says he is going to have a cigarette, and never comes back.

She doesn’t always know who I am or why I’ve come, but she tells me things, speaks words to me that she hasn’t spoken aloud.

She tells me she is heartsick.

She tells me there are children at home. I try to imagine being raped and then having to find a babysitter.

She tells me she has learned her lesson, that she will never call the police again. I believe her, and my heart shatters.

She tells me that she should have known. I tell her with all the conviction I can muster that it is not her fault.

These rooms are thick with helplessness, betrayal, and fear. The hardest thoughts and feelings, the dark tendrils of self blame, stupidity, fault, and deservedness make me shudder in anguish.

They taught us in training to always believe the assault survivors, no matter their story. It’s not a hard thing to do. As soon as I see their faces, I find a moment in their shoes, and I want to take away their pain. I know it’s impossible, so I do what I can.

I was surprised at first that the domestic violence calls were more difficult than the sexual assault calls for me. The emotions have been closer to the surface, the devastation more apparent.

I leave her with information, a phone number, a brochure, and hopefully some glimmer of support and understanding. It’s hard to tell, but I usually think I’ve made a difference, even if it was very, very small.

After 45 minutes, 2 hours, 4 hours, 15 minutes, I approach my car in the cool morning air. I come into myself suddenly and realize that my body is fighting between bursting into tears and vomiting. In the end, I do neither and drive home in silence. Words echo, and now it is I who feels heartsick.

Dawn is breaking and it’s in that early time when the world is illuminating, but not quite awake. I drive and I think about them. Days, weeks, months, years later I am surprised by the things that stick with me, these unexpected memories.

Beautiful, luscious, wavy brown hair.

Mascara, coating lashes, thick like molasses, streaking down her cheeks in dark trails.

Restraints hanging from the bottom of the bed, and her perfect awareness of them.

A shock of fuchsia hair.

A tattered pink bracelet.

The youth in her posture.

The smile as she went to get dressed.

The look on her son’s face, 12 or 13 years old, telling her that she didn’t deserve to get treated this way.

It is never the bruises or the violence or the pain that stick with me. It’s not the stories.

It is the women.

Passing empty sidewalks and houses just waking, I wonder how I will be able to sleep again. Clouds are becoming visible as the sun’s glow precedes it on the horizon. A new day is dawning, and I thank God for all of my blessings.

*Details are not not specific to any date or situation or person, but composites of memories I have from my time as a Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault advocate.