My daddy has a black heart but yours is big and red.
She giggled as her small pudgy finger pointed to my chest where my stethoscope was resting. A huge smile beamed across my face for the first time since this interview began. Her mystical presence appeared to have x-ray vision that could penetrate our adult souls and I was honored that the intuition of a child sensed mine was big and red. Could she discern my heart was also bleeding red from the daggers of her words? Her giddiness told me that neither my pain nor hers was of immediate concern.
Please God, let this be make-believe; the imagination of a child. This can not be her reality. I wanted to scream or punch a wall or just shed the tears I was hiding. Instead, I continued to listen to the horrendous tales.
Sighing apologetically at her mother who had also been sitting in disbelief at the stories my six-year-old patient had been so openly sharing, she expressed another secret but not in a whisper. Her loud, sage voice emphatically proclaimed,
My Mommy’s heart is half black and half red.
She seemed truly concerned for her mother as her wise little eyes confirmed what I had been suspecting as soon as I saw the complaint of sexual assault. This momma had known he was an unfit monster. She had most likely even protected and excused his alcohol, drug, and physical abuse of herself and their only child together for years. She had finally stepped outside her own dark shadow when her daughter started wetting the bed and told her about the touching.
The red fierce protector and mother that she had never known were unleashed despite the fears of not being believed, or worse, being held responsible for being neglectful. The police did not trust her motives. She was disheveled, scattered, and anxious; maybe on drugs herself. She was definitely hiding something. But then I bet they never bothered to just question the child. Getting little help or sympathy from the police and then being accused of filing a report out of vengeance or to get custody left her with only one place to turn in her mind, the emergency department.
He likes to drink beer then come into my bed at night while Mommy is asleep and touch me down there.
The story never changed despite the different ways I asked. And the more comfortable she got with me, the more she shared. Besides groping her anus and vagina, she let me know early on that her father was an alcoholic and a drug addict. When her mother protested these allegations she casually questioned, “What do you call it when daddies sniff white powder up their noses and then drink so much beer that they have to hide the bottles in the car trunk so mommies don’t find it and get mad?”
She spoke as if this was a normal life for all children her age. The two homeless men that daddy called “buddies” and let in after mommy went to work did seem to scare her, however. She didn’t like it when they threw rocks at her or pulled out their guns. She said one almost shot her in the head when he lost his aim at the empty beer bottle. When she cried, her daddy would use curse words and spank her with a belt, sometimes two.
But she had learned how to run fast and hide in the woods despite her small size, especially when they all got drunk and tried to touch her down there. She had a friend in the forest that would keep her safe. He was a pretty ferocious pig that actually attacked her daddy when he found her hiding spot. But eventually, the pig became target practice as well and was killed by her father. This made her sad. But luckily there was also a goat out in the woods that liked to spit in her daddy’s face.
You know it is not appropriate to use curse words and yell even if you are a Daddy.
I had never met a first grader with so much insight and vocabulary. She switched gears to school and the little boy that picked on her and called her fat. She always told the teacher but nothing was ever done. She noticed he liked to try and make her feel bad so he could feel good.
You know it’s wrong to hurt others. Kindness is how we make the world better.
When I asked her how she got to be so smart at such a young age she nonchalantly explained how much reading had helped her as she began spelling words I had to think twice about. And then I asked her if she understood why she was even in the emergency department. She really didn’t and was tired and wanted to go home after she raised her hand and asked me to explain what DNA meant.
When I told her that it was my job as her Doctor to make sure she was completely safe and that she would have to talk to the police and a few more people before she could leave, she looked puzzled.
But you haven’t listened to my heart. If you are a Doctor, you have to hear my heart first.
Placing my stethoscope over her big red heart I listened but didn’t really hear hers beat until now.
You see I left that ER defeated. When my shift ended I handed over this case not knowing the outcome. I had wanted to take her home, steal her from the tragedy of her young life. Tears poured as soon as I shut my car door and didn’t stop until I finally fell asleep. I was angry at this world and at God.
Who lets this kind of shit happen to children? And why do I have to be the one to see it? I have a breaking point too and abuse of children was my straw. What was the point of this case? Why on earth did I have to be her doctor? Why did I have to be the one to demand that the police do their job and protect this child? What was my lesson because it was not clear like all the others?
But there was always a message from my patients. They have always been my teachers. I just didn’t see it until I sat down to write to try to heal this hole in my center.
It wasn’t until the end of the story that I remembered this small, brilliant soul’s words to listen to her heart. That is when I could let the gratitude in for the gift of being in her powerful presence. I could feel the pain but let go of the suffering.
I have a big red heart that will bleed when it feels pain.
And that is the ugly beauty of this case. Despite the horror, I can listen and feel compassion and pain. Or I can shut it out and drown it in anger and fear. But then my heart becomes black like her daddy’s.
I don’t want to be black. I want to be red.
I want to hear another’s heart, no matter how painful, and remain red with love and compassion.
Image: Pixabay.com
