All Is Not Forgotten: The bestselling gripping thriller you’ll never forget. Wendy Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ his agony painted upon his flesh. Charlotte’s, after the brief loss of composure, was determined. Parsons called it a stiff upper lip. He said he felt uncomfortable observing them in this intimate moment, though he did not look away. He said he was taken aback by Tom’s weakness and Charlotte’s strength, though anyone with a less simplistic understanding of human emotion would understand that it was actually quite the opposite. It requires far more strength to experience emotion than to suppress it.

      Dr. Baird stood behind them, checking a chart that hung on a metal clip at the end of Jenny’s bed.

      Why don’t we speak in the family lounge? he suggested.

      Tom nodded, wiped his tears. He leaned down and kissed the top of his daughter’s head, and this brought on a series of deep sobs. Charlotte brushed a stray hair from Jenny’s face, then stroked her cheek with the back of her hand. Sweet angel … sweet, sweet angel, she whispered.

      They followed Baird and Detective Parsons down the hall to a set of locked doors. Through the doors was another hallway and then a small lounge with some furniture and a TV. Baird offered to arrange for coffee or food, but the Kramers declined. Baird closed the door. Parsons sat down next to the doctor and across from the Kramers.

      This is Charlotte’s account of what happened next:

      They beat around the bush, asking us about Jenny’s friends, did we know about the party, did she have any troubles with any boys, did she mention anyone bothering her at school or in town or on her social media? Tom was answering them like he was in some sort of fog, like he couldn’t see we were all just avoiding what needed to be discussed. I’m not saying that those weren’t legitimate questions or that we shouldn’t have answered them at some point. But I had had it, you know? I wanted someone to tell me something. I try really hard to let Tom “be the man” because I know I can be controlling. No one complains when the house is in perfect order and the fridge has everything they all need and their clothes are washed and ironed and put away where they belong. Anyway … I do try because I know it’s important in a marriage for the man to be the man. But I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t!

       So I interrupted all of them, all of the men, and I said, “One of you needs to tell us what happened to our daughter.” Dr. Baird and the detective looked at each other like neither of them wanted to go first. The doctor drew the short end of the stick. And then he told us. He told us how she had been raped. It was not what I had hoped—that it was some boy she liked and he got carried away. Oh God I know how bad that sounds. The feminists would have my head, wouldn’t they? I’m not saying that that kind of rape isn’t really rape or shouldn’t be punished. Believe me—when Lucas is older, I’m going to make damn sure he knows the kind of trouble he could be in if he isn’t absolutely sure he has consent. I do believe that men have a responsibility, that they need to realize that when it comes to sex, we are not on equal footing. And not just because of the physiology. It’s the psychology as well—the fact that girls still feel pressure to do things they don’t want and boys, men, have very little understanding about what girls go through. Anyway, it was not what I had hoped. And actually, it was what I had feared most. Detective Parsons filled in this part. He wore a mask. He forced her to the ground on her face. He … I’m sorry. This is hard to say out loud. I can hear the words in my mind, but saying them is another thing altogether.

      Charlotte stopped to gather herself. She had a particular method, which she used without deviation. It was a long inhale, eyes closed, quick shake of the head, then a slow exhale. She looked down first after opening her eyes, then nodded in confirmation of the control she had wrangled.

       I’ll just say it, all of it, quickly and then be done. She was raped from behind, vaginally, anally, back and forth apparently, for an hour. Okay. I said it. It’s done. They did the rape kit. They found traces of spermicide and latex. This … this creature wore a condom. They didn’t find one hair either, and the forensic people who were brought in from Cranston later that night said he probably shaved himself. Can you imagine? He prepared for this rape like an Olympic swimmer. Well, he didn’t get his gold medal, did he? Every physical wound healed beautifully. She won’t ever feel any different from any other woman. And emotionally, well …

      She paused again, this time more to take stock than regain her composure. Then she continued in a voice that was irreverent.

       I remember thinking, thank God for the treatment. Everything he did to my little girl, we undid. So, I’m sorry for the bad language, but I thought—fuck him. He doesn’t exist anymore.

Chapter Three

      Charlotte and Tom Kramer did not agree on the decision to give Jenny the treatment. Charlotte won that fight.

      The medical community is still learning about the formation and retention of memory. Studies have been on the rise, and new research surfaces regularly. Our brains have long-term memory, short-term memory, the process for storing memories and of locating and retrieving memories from the places where they are stored, which scientists now believe to be vast. Consider that for decades, neuroscientists believed that memories were stored in the synapses that connect our brain cells and not in the brain cells (or neurons) themselves. Now they have disproved this and believe it’s the neurons that hold our history. We have also discovered that memories are not static. In fact, they change every single time we pull them from storage.

      The treatment used to induce limited anterograde amnesia of traumatic events was found through a series of trials on both animals and humans over many years and in many variations. It starts with morphine. As early as the 1950s, doctors noticed a reduction in PTSD from the early administration of morphine in high doses. The findings were inadvertent—the morphine had been administered to children who were victims of burning following a fire, purely for the intention of pain relief. Those who received the higher doses immediately after the fire had noticeably reduced symptoms of PTSD than the children who received less or no morphine. In 2010, a formal paper was written confirming the benefits of morphine for children suffering from burns. Morphine, along with other drugs, has been used for years to treat soldiers in the field, and researchers correlating records of trauma, morphine, and PTSD have found that high doses administered immediately after a trauma can significantly reduce PTSD in wounded men and women.

      This is why: Every waking moment, we have experiences. We see, feel, and hear. Our brains process this information and store it in our memories. This is called memory consolidation. Each factual event also carries some emotional counterpart, and that triggers chemicals in the brain and those chemicals then place the events into the appropriate file cabinet, if you will. Things that capture our emotions are filed in the locked metal cabinets. They are not replaced by subsequent events and can be easily recalled. Other less provocative events, what we made for dinner last Thursday, might go into a manila folder somewhere. As time passes, these will get buried under other manila folders and at some point become impossible to find. They may even get sent to the shredder. Some researchers believe that morphine reduces the emotional reaction to an event by blocking norepinephrine so a “metal cabinet” event may get reduced to a “manila folder” event. This is the first component of the treatment.

      Now, because the filing of any event requires the interaction of chemicals in the brain, you can see how interfering with those chemicals while they are trying to do their filing could interrupt the process. This is why a night of binge drinking results in a “blackout.” It’s also why drugs like Rohypnol (the date rape drug) enable a person to function “normally” but not remember anything that happened while the drug was in the system. The brain’s filing staff is on a break. Nothing gets filed, and the events are presumably lost, as if they never happened. But this is during the short-term-memory СКАЧАТЬ