Officer LP filed her report and we went back home to a very quiet house. The calm and solace of a quiet house soon gave way to a blur of activity. Friends and well-meaning family dropped by to help with the funeral arrangements and bring us food. Admittedly it was a welcome distraction from constantly thinking about the pain. Unfortunately, the well-wishers eventually had to return to their homes, we were once again alone with our pain. I believed it was here to stay.
The day before Annie’s funeral, I got a phone call from a curious doctor who had been reviewing the post mortem lab work. After giving his condolences, he told me that he was reading the police report as well as what was in the labs. By combining what was in the two reports, he had come up with a more clinical explanation of what happened to Annie, if I wanted to hear it.
I found myself holding my breath as he reported that Annie had a large amount of the hormone prolactin in her blood. He went on to explain that this raised level was an indicator of a possible seizure. He theorized that Annie was not actually shivering from cold, she was having a seizure. He surmised that the seizure and not the cold was why it took so long for her shaking to stop.
Between bouts of friends and bouts of crying, I pulled Valorie aside to a quiet nook by the laundry room and relayed the information to my wife. I also confessed that I had an uncle and a great grandfather who were both epileptics. My wife didn’t say a word. She just looked at the floor, then turned and walked into our bedroom and shut the door.
Over the weeks that followed, Isabel’s cousins tried to play with her when they came over. But kids don’t know what to say or how to handle a situation like this. So they did their best to take her mind off of Annie’s death. But they said Isabel just didn’t feel like talking, even when they were having afternoon tea, which was her favorite game.
It took a couple of months, but Isabel started coming out of her shell. It wasn’t a large change, but hearing her talk in her room to imaginary friends brought me a sigh of relief. Slowly, I believed I would get my animated little girl back again.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Isabel’s newly styled animation was not a joyous one. On the contrary, her physical flailings became almost like a voodoo priestess conjuring demons to do her bidding. Instead of movements that swung aimlessly and flapped against the sky, these were contrived and determined — as if each physical manifestation was, in itself, conjuring her will. To see a young girl of six years organically control her body in such a determined manner was unsettling, to say the least.
And the focus was so, so wrong.
She didn’t dance with abandon as if to frolic. She danced within a construct of a predetermined set of movements as if to conjure.
It was nothing I had ever seen her do before.