The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

provided for her enjoyment. Though focus student’s violent intent is mainly focused on objects, it is sometimes directed at other family members, most frequently at the adoptive mother, resulting in occasional minor injuries to herself and her adoptive mother.

Home setup: Focus student’s home is a two-story house on a one-acre lot on a quiet residential street. Because focus student exhibits a fear of stairs coupled with a lack of appropriate fear of heights, the ground-floor dining room has been repurposed as the focus student’s bedroom. Focus student’s adoptive father, who works as a contractor, has installed fire-rated steel doors that lock from the outside as well as steel bars over both windows following multiple escape attempts and incidents involving broken doors and glass. Focus student currently sleeps in a bare room on a mattress on the floor.

Precipitating event or events (if applicable): Focus student ran away from adoptive mother during a large public gathering, attracting local media attention.

The room at the Holiday Inn in Evergreen, Colorado, had one big bed for both of them. It was good in the room, quiet and dim,and Mirela had Jane all to herself. Mirela zonked out under the covers in front of the TV, before her usual bedtime.

They woke up in the deep dark, cold and wet. Jane flipped on the bedside lamp, called the front desk for new sheets, strippedthe bed, peeled Mirela’s pajamas off. She soaked the pajamas in the bathroom sink and filled the tub with warm, sudsy water.Mirela didn’t fight the bath, although she did fight the towel, the rubbing of it, as if her skin could peel off with thewater.

“Air-dry, all right, Mirela, whatever works,” Jane said. She felt a purposefulness that edged into happiness. She felt satedby what she’d accomplished. The two of them understood each other.

There was a knock on the door. Jane went to answer it, and a lethal wail went up behind her.

“Mirela, my love, it’s the new sheets, that’s all,” Jane said. “This nice helper is bringing us clean sheets for the bed.”

“Are you all right in there?” came the voice on the other side of the door.

“We’re fine, hang on a sec—just a tantrum situation with my kiddo—” Jane said over Mirela’s noise. Jane wanted to get thedoor open to get the new sheets. Mirela wanted it shut to keep out the light and sound and people. The door slammed into Jane’shand—the fingers, between the big and middle knuckles—and Jane cried out, and Mirela was all of a sudden calmer. Now theywere both in pain. Fair enough. Mirela curled up in front of the shut door.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the voice asked, and Mirela pounded her fists against the door to drown out the talking with amore righteous noise.

“Yes—please, just—I don’t mean to be rude, but it would be best if you would leave,” Jane said. “Thank you, good night.” Shecrawled past Mirela to the bathroom and stuck her hurt hand in the sink, with the soaking pajamas.

“Usually you love meeting new people,” Jane said from where she was kneeling next to the sink. “I wonder what’s differenttonight.”

“I want nobody,” Mirela said from the carpet.

“Honey, do you want a blanket?”

“I want nobody!” Mirela yelled. She was naked and shivering. Jane wondered if shivering was even better than rocking, more precise and efficient in its calming effects, like a cat’s purr, a velvety real thing burring in her throat, curled inside her rib cage buzzing. Jane’s hand throbbed through her whole body, a rhythm in search of a discordant music. Her throbbing hand and Mirela’s shivering limbs in syncopation.

“We have an early start tomorrow,” Jane said, taking her dripping hand from the sink. “It’s going to be a big day, Mirela.The people at Arden will help us get better.”

She considered attempting to open the hotel room door and decided against it. With her hand that wasn’t hurt, Jane took thetop bedcover off the floor, gave it a quick whiff to make sure it wasn’t soaked with pee. A shiny-satiny sheath of green.Jane laid it down a couple of feet away from Mirela. Mirela inched close enough to the blanket to kick it away.

“I want nobody,” Mirela said.

“You won’t always feel that way, sweetie,” Jane said, sitting down next to the heap of blanket. “The people at Arden willhelp you feel a different way. Don’t you want to get better?”

Mirela said something that Jane couldn’t hear.

“You look cold—are you sure you don’t want the blanket?” Jane asked.

Mirela said the same thing again that Jane couldn’t hear.

“What did you say, honey?”

“I want you.”

The cumulus cover of the pain had started to clear, and Jane could think a bit about this. This was, on the one hand, thetype of “nice” thing Mirela would say when she thought she was in trouble. On the other hand, here they were, on the sameside of the slamming door. Ordinarily, Mirela would be alone behind it. This was progress.

Mirela crawled over to the blanket and pulled it over herself. She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her forehead onthe floor.

Jane got up, lay down on her side on the bare mattress, and watched the quivering little heap on the floor.

“Do you want to come back into bed with me, Mirela?” she asked. “We could share the blanket.”

Mirela lifted the blanket to watch Jane with one eye. They watched each other to the beat of Jane’s throbbing fingers andMirela’s waves of shivering.

“What are we doing here, Mirela?” Jane asked her.

Mirela lowered the blanket.

“Are we sure we want to do this, Mirela?” Jane asked.

Mirela didn’t answer.

With her good hand, Jane switched off the bedside light with a theatrical crispness, a gesture to extinguish all doubt.

Session 1 — Rapport-Building

MODULE: Establish relationship with therapist through directed small talk, enforced eye contact, question completion, and holdingtherapy.

Notes from session: Focus student appeared happy and engaged with conversation about favorite foods and activities. Focus student maintained poor or