Читать книгу A Thin Place - Jack Peterson - Страница 27

June 17, 1992

San Francisco, California

Elena sat alone in her office, mindlessly looking out her office window on the sixteenth floor of Embarcadero IV. She was motionless, watching below as the Sausalito ferry finished docking across the street at the Ferry Building. She was concerned that her days as a practicing attorney could fast be coming to an end. What she knew for sure was that ending her two-year leave of absence in November had been a mistake. Despite her best efforts, trying of do in three days what her associates had a week to accomplish wasn’t working, and it was wearing her patience thin. Her life was deteriorating, both personally and professionally. She and Terry were coping with life with an autistic child, but leaving her son with a nanny for much of the time was taking a toll on her conscience. Their family’s financial challenges, even with a dual income, had become enormous. The mounting expenses for doctors, clinics, and special-education schools for her son were putting a huge dent in their budget and a cloud of unpredictability over their future. How families less fortunate than hers could financially survive was beyond her imagination. While others may not have yet noticed, she knew her job performance was beginning to deteriorate and her confidence was frayed. She had no solutions and not a ray of hope was on the horizon. She would stay the course. It was anybody’s guess for how long.

Watching the passengers disembark from the ferry, Elena could see a small boy playfully skipping while holding his mother’s hand. It made her think of happier days. It was nearly six months to the day that their Margarita came to her complaining that Scott was becoming difficult to manage. She remembered dismissing her complaint as just a bad day but, a few weeks later, she finally saw it first hand when she walked into her son’s room and saw Scott standing in the center of his room, spinning like a top. Just a few days before that, he started crying violently every time she left the room. Within weeks, he eventually became detached, suddenly ignoring her, treating her more as an object, like a chair or a tool, and ceased showing any emotion when she entered or left his room. He had become impersonal, obsessed with objects rather than people. His own shoes or, in some cases, a small statue of Jesus, had become his primary interests. He would sit and stare at them for hours at a time. If she tried to persuade him to play with his toys or go outside, he reacted violently with even louder screams and tantrums. When Children’s Hospital in San Francisco ordered physical and psychological tests for Scott, Elena even found them extremely frustrating. While the therapists were polite and professional, they rarely offered words of encouragement or anything that could be mistaken as positive. They were impersonal, employees simply adhering to clinic and hospital protocol. They were doing their jobs and little else.

Elena turned back from the window. She felt guilty, repeatedly rehashing her pregnancy, wondering if somehow she had done something wrong that could have contributed to Scott’s autism. She had questions with too few answers. Just getting through each day had become an ordeal, let alone trying to set aside sufficient time to research autism. For now, she could only assume that the doctors and specialists knew best. Her father taught her as a child to challenge anything she did not understand, to study it until she understood before making any arbitrary conclusions or decisions. She understood the importance of accurate thinking, but without the proper information it was impossible. She was grasping for information that wasn’t there. Even when Scott was officially diagnosed as PDD-NOS, she had to look the term up because nobody voluntarily offered an explanation. The words Pervasive Development Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified were cold and insensitive, the official scientific description his disorder. Officially, they explained that Scott had ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder. Until that dreadful day, for her the word autism was just another word in the dictionary.

Terry made love to her that night for the first time since Scott had been diagnosed. For Elena, it was an unfamiliar chance to escape reality but, despite her multiple orgasms, their intimacies had only freed her mind temporarily. Autism was always with her, even during sex. It was hard for her to admit it, but she was at loss for how to care for her own child. She felt alone, helpless, and guilty. She and Terry were sailing an uncharted ocean and the odds for survival were not bright. They were not alone. There were others, many others.