“As he cut my belly open, separating my muscles and fascia until he got to my uterus, and severed the connection between me and my baby, with no care as to how I would survive such a massive amount of blood loss, I wailed! It was deep, guttural, and that was the moment that I realized it wasn’t ever the plan for me to make it out alive.”

Nicki was having her tenth therapy session. She had on a pale blue dress with very dainty yellow flowers strewn across the bottom. It was a beautiful flowy piece which added to the frailness of her frame. It was six months after the attack and yet she still looked gaunt. Her face was pale, almost to the point of malnourishment.

She was sitting on a couch that seemed to swallow her, across the room from her therapist. This was the third therapist she’d tried thus far. She gave up on the last two because they focused too much on how she was coping after such a brutal attack in her own home. In contrast, all she wanted to talk about was the kidnapping. It wasn’t even technically a kidnapping. She knew who did it and it happened in her own home. She just wasn’t allowed to leave on her own free will, so the media dubbed it a kidnapping.

“How is motherhood?” her current therapist asked.

“It’s hard. I miss Joey a lot.” she replied, tears streaming down her cheeks.

She looked very angelic with her pale skin and the tears glistening against them.

“Do you talk to his parents?” her therapist asked.

“Yes, I do. This is as hard on them as it is on me. I also want Caleb to have a relationship with them. To hear loving memories of his father, not just the media narrative of a surgeon who had a psychotic breakdown.”