Abstract
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
—Maya Angelou
D
“We been through this before, Dr. Rousseau. I ain't takin' no pain medicine.”
“But Debra—”
“Dr. Rousseau, please stop askin' me. We been goin' through this for a year now. I ain't takin' any pain pills. I told you before, I can deal with the pain.”
Debra's chart was filled with the word “noncompliant,” including one seminal note that had sealed her reputation: ‘Noncompliant, leaving against medical advice.’ From that point on, she was medically marginalized—everyone had become tired of trying to help. Even her room was at the end of the hall.
“Have you taken anything at all for the pain? Tylenol? Advil? Morphine?”
“No.”
“Then I'm confused, Debra. Why did you let them admit you if you didn't want your pain treated?”
“Gladys called the ambulance and said I had to come to the hospital.”
“That's right, doctor. Her pain was so bad, she was crying and moaning. I could hear her through the walls.”
“Okay, I can understand that you came because of Gladys, but why won't you let us treat your pain? You'd feel so much better. Are you afraid of becoming addicted?”
She turned her head to the window.
I waited a minute and asked again, but she remained silent, staring out the window.
Gladys asked if she could speak with me outside the room. I told Debra we would be right back, and stepped into the hallway.
“Doctor, I don't know if I should be saying this, but there are some things I think you need to know that I've wanted to tell you for a long time.”
She paused for a few seconds, then wiped a tear from her eye.
“Doctor, Debra was raped by her daddy when she was maybe 6 or 7. She tried to tell her momma, but her momma just told her to hush. Then she was raped again when she was 14, by one of the high school football players. Debra had a child, a little boy, when she was 15, but gave him up for adoption, and has not seen him since.”
She paused and gathered her thoughts.
“And that girl, she blames herself for everything. She told me everything was her fault—even the rapes.”
Gladys leaned over and grabbed my arm. “Doctor, forgive me. I just had to tell someone. I couldn't keep it inside anymore. But please don't tell Debra I told you. I promised her I wouldn't.”
No wonder Debra didn't want to speak to me, or to any of her physicians—we were all men. It didn't matter that we were physicians—we were still men—just like her father, just like the football player.
Things started to make sense, or at least they seemed to make sense. Gladys said Debra was raped when she was 14—counting the months from the time of the rape to her son's birth, it was likely he was conceived during the rape. Gladys's statement that Debra blamed herself for everything was also revealing. Debra likely felt such blame for the rapes and the pregnancy, and such guilt for giving up her son, that suffering was her only way to penitence. And perhaps she also felt that uterine cancer, a cancer of the womb, the very organ involved in the rapes and pregnancy, was further punishment for her self-perceived sins. I wasn't sure, but it all sounded plausible.
We went back into the room, and I told Debra I'd see her in the morning, as I felt it would be best to try and unravel her story after a night's rest. But I never saw her again. She died late that night, with Gladys sitting bedside, holding her hand and reading from the Bible.
As I look back some 20 years later, I still think of Debra. Her untold story was one of such despair and unhappiness, my grief remains unsettled. I wonder how we—Debra's parents, her physicians, the hospital, and society—could have let this young woman linger in such an endless netherworld of guilt and loneliness that her life became a collection of unbearable memories that could not be wiped away. Yet I'm not certain Debra would have allowed anyone to hear her story, for the one person she tried to tell, the one person she trusted most—her mother—refused to listen.