My daughter has a severe medical condition where she cannot twitch

My daughter has a severe medical condition where she cannot twitch. She is quite literally physically incapable of twitching. Those who stumble into my life are, at first, shocked at her inability to react to stimuli that would surely cause violent spasms in any other person. I’ve gotten used to the looks when I accidentally drop a towel too close to her ear, and the subsequent silences when they are left speechless. Sometime after her fifth birthday, my daughter lost the ability to feel pain, and it was three years later that her assailant took her ability to cry. The two were always close, and, although her assailant is not in our lives today, I can’t help but remember the first time that my daughter was injured. When I was a kid, I knew what it was like to be injured—I was always starved. After my parents died, I was left to fight for scraps. Sometimes, I came out on top; most nights saw me bleeding from my teeth and my gums. What’s worse, is when a child is injured. I don’t know how my daughter endured what she did. But she did, and, even if it’s only been six years, it feels like an eternity since I laid eyes on her assailant. I only wish I had been there to protect her from the very beginning. You see, her name is Faith, and I’m quite literally the only person she’s ever known. She’s always been afraid of strangers. But there was one in particular, a man with a shaved head and blue eyes, who could melt the coldest of hearts. This is the story of my daughter, her assailant, and me. My wife died when I was only 24. She suffered from schizophrenia, which rapidly deteriorated her health and sanity. She couldn’t bear living with it any longer, and she took her own life. When she died, I felt as though a part of me had been cut away. It took me quite awhile to get over the pain, but I knew that I couldn’t live the rest of my life alone. I met my wife, Sarah, at a local bar. She was beautiful, blonde and blue-eyed. But she was different, different from all other women I’d ever met. She was older than I, and she carried herself in a regal way I’d never seen before. We were married a year later, and, six months after that, Sarah told me she was pregnant. I was late to work that day, and I remember counts of the seconds between when I called my boss and hung up the phone. We celebrated that night, and we talked about our future as parents. And it was good, for awhile. When our daughter was just a few years old, Sarah was diagnosed with a terminal illness. She died when Faith was only four. I was alone again, and I was left to raise Faith by myself. And I thought I had been prepared. But when your baby screams all night, and you can’t figure out why, you question yourself. You question your sanity, and your ability to be a good father. And when you’re left alone to raise a child, you’re left alone to deal with all of the consequences. It was my own fault, though, for not recognizing the signs. It took months of screaming, tantrums, and emergencies for me to realize that Faith was sick. Deeply sick. It took months of screaming, tantrums and emergencies for the doctors to diagnose her properly. She has tay-sachs disease. She would never be able to walk or talk, and she would be in pain for the rest of her life. She needed a vent, and a feeding tube, and she would always be susceptible to infection. Imagining your baby like that… imagine your baby, raised with all the hopes your parents raised you with, before you two grew up together and became best friends… imagine taking those hopes away, all of them, and leaving them to suffer. Imagine the guilt of knowing that it was *your* fault that your child never knew what a best friend was. It’s a terrible thing, and, admittedly, I contemplated ending it for her. Just to save her, to make it better, because we all know that babies aren’t supposed to suffer. But that, of course, was only a contemplation. It was just a sick, sad thought. Nobody in their right mind would really do it. And I will admit, I was not in my right mind. Nobody who has watched their entire family grow and die counts as *right in the head*. But I was aware enough, and whole enough, to understand that it wasn’t my place to choose Faith’s fate, no matter how shitty it was. But I kept trying. I kept trying, and I kept trying, and I kept trying until I felt like I was going insane. And I’m not sure if I ever was. Maybe I’m just dreaming of this life, maybe none of it is real. Maybe I’m just in a padded room somewhere, counts of the seconds ticking away in my mind. Until… Until two weeks ago, when Faith was ten, her assailant showed up. For the first time in my entire life, I got lucky. Maybe I *was* going insane. I don’t know. As I said before, Faith is afraid of strangers. She’s afraid of anything that isn’t me. And there are only a few things she’s afraid of *more* than strangers. One thing is the sound of the ocean. I took her to the ocean when she was two months old. I remember she was fussy, and I thought that the sound of the waves would help calm her down. I laid her on a blanket at the water’s edge, only a few feet from the water. A large wave came, and got her wet. As soon as the water touched her, she began screaming, and, over the sound of her wails, I heard a voice whisper *say goodbye to her, she’s going to be mine soon.* I looked around, but I couldn’t find anyone nearby. Shrugging it off as madness, I took Faith back home. A few days later, her condition rapidly deteriorated. She was in immense pain, and it was obvious that she was suffering. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, they only knew that she was going to die. Then, when Faith was three, she lost all feeling in her arms and legs. They were dead. She couldn’t even move them. It took almost a year for her to grow strong enough to roll from side to side. Then she lost all feeling in her face, and then her torso. It took years for the pain to go away, and for her to be able to move again. And it was around then that the spasms started. Twitches and tics, things that no person could control. I don’t know, maybe she was going insane. Maybe it was just in my head. Maybe it was *me* twitching. But when they got worse, when she could only move a few inches before she would contort into something inhumane, I knew I had to take her to the emergency room. Why? I don’t know, maybe it was in my head. They were shocked, and they didn’t know what to do. They took her away, and I didn’t hear anything from them for almost a day. And when they finally told me she was going to be okay, I almost didn’t believe them. Because she wasn’t okay. When I walked into the room, she was different. She didn’t react to me. I went to hug her, and she just stared forward. They told me they had put her on a new medicine which was supposed to heal her, but it wasn’t working. She was stable, and she would live, but she was changed. The doctors were flabbergasted. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, and why the medicine hadn’t worked. When they told me they couldn’t explain it, I believed them. They called it a hallucination, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew that her assailant had broken in, and taken her ability to cry out from her as well. And he was still out there, watching, waiting for her to be alone so that he could take her away from me forever. That’s what counts of the seconds are for. So that he doesn’t have too good of a chance to wait. And, well, I am writing this right now. Around 8 months ago, I got the call that Faith had fallen. I immediately left work, and went to the hospital. I didn’t stop worrying, not only about Faith, but myself, in case it was *me* who was counts of the seconds. But it wasn’t. When I got to the hospital… It was one of the worst injuries I’d ever seen. Faith had broken her hip and arm, and she was bleeding badly. I only stayed in the room with her long enough to see her before they wheeled her away. And when they did, I… I saw two witches pull a third witch out into the hallway. I don’t know what happened to them. When Faith was ready to go home, I took in a deep breath and prepared myself to see her counts of the seconds in person. But it was nothing. After the witches… I don’t know, maybe the hospital had hired a new cleaner. Maybe I was going insane. Maybe it was *me* who needed to be counts of the seconds. But none of that mattered. I had to protect Faith, and make sure that she was alright. When counts of the seconds happens, I know that someone

My daughter has a severe medical condition where she cannot twitch

Comments (0) 0 👁️