How Not To Fall by Emily Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

interpersonal violence, and this is not an otherwise at-risk group. I think a reasonable potential cause for the differences are different reptilian vagal responses that are characteristic of trauma survivors. You look troubled by this.”
    â€œUm, yes, because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œReptilian vagus. Trauma. Look it up.”
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    I do. I go to class on Friday, and then I go to the library. I spend Saturday at the library too. Then I spend Sunday at the lab. So the next time Charles sees me, it’s Monday morning. He finds me in the ducklings’ office, fast asleep on the couch, with my face pasted to the pages of The Polyvagal Theory . He wakes me with a hand on my shoulder and a soft, “Annie.”
    As I rise to consciousness and he hands me a mug of shitty lab coffee, I tell him, “Dude, I fucking hate you.”
    â€œFinding it hard going?” he says, sitting at the far end of the couch. He takes a sip of his coffee.
    â€œIt’s not just that it’s hard to understand—which it is! It’s hard, man. I’m not dumb, and this is hard . But the part that really sucks is—” I’m suddenly choked by the tears that have been chasing me through the weekend, that forced me out of the library, out of the apartment, into the lab, where I could be alone.
    Charles sits calmly and blows on his coffee, waiting.
    I start again. “The part that really sucks is reading the stories from the women, you know?” I sniff and gasp through my tears. “And I don’t have a clue what my research subjects brought into the room with them in their central nervous systems; we didn’t even ask . For all I know they could have been hit by cars or sexually assaulted or experienced birth trauma or been targets of violence—I mean, is this what the world is like? Are people walking around with these scars on their nervous systems, and we can’t even see them?”
    â€œYes,” he says.
    â€œI mean, have you read this?!” I brandish my book at him.
    â€œYes,” he says.
    â€œI mean, listen to this.” I flip the book to the page that knocked me out of the library on Saturday, and hold up one finger while I read. “ ‘For example, following the rape, sexual encounters, even with a desired partner, may elicit a vagal syncope. Or the raped women may become anxious about sexual encounters and physiologically mobilized via sympathetic excitation to escape.’ I mean . . . both of those are terrible .” I look up and stare at him, my jaw dangling in horror.
    He nods, and a corner of his bottom lip tugs downward, like an apology. “I know.”
    â€œYou know what I loved?” I yell, like it’s his fault, though I know it isn’t. “I loved my cadaver dissection lab! I loved seeing how all the parts of the machine work, what they look like on the inside! It never bothered me—it’s how I knew for sure I should be a doctor! But you know what grosses me out? Nauseates me? The way living humans treat each other!”
    I’m choked again, and I just sit there and let myself cry.
    We sit together, silent apart from my tears, which fade at last into a couple of noisy sighs.
    Then Charles gets up and walks to the door. He stands there, his hand on the doorknob.
    â€œGoing to med school then, young Coffey?” he asks gently.
    I nod and sniff.
    â€œGood,” he says. “Want the door open or closed?”
    â€œClosed,” I say.
    And he closes it behind him as he goes.
    As I sit, staring at the closed door, I remember that for the whole first year, I could hardly make eye contact with him, much less cry in front of him. I couldn’t even say his name. I called him Dr. Douglas. In return, he called me Miss Coffey. Until one day, I was in a shitty mood because it was raining—I love the rain, honestly I do, but there’s just some days, you know? Anyway, I was