The Baltic War(40)

She paused briefly, gathering her own thoughts. "What seems to happen with PTSD is that the traumatic memories get stored in the limbic part of the brain, instead of the parts where they would normally get stored. We don't know why it happens, really. Or rather, why it happens to some people and not to others. But once it does happen, the problem is that the memories are now locked into a part of the brain that doesn't think rationally and doesn't respond to reason. That's why traditional talk therapy doesn't usually work all that well, with PTSD. In fact, a lot of specialists—Maureen Grady, who set up and runs this department, being one of them—think talk therapy by itself is more likely to be harmful than helpful. They think all it does is keep stirring up the traumatic memories without doing anything to alleviate them."



Thorsten tried to sort through what she was telling him. Relieved, finally, to have something interesting to think about other than Caroline Platzer herself. That would help him . . . he though the American expression was "keep his cool."



It was interesting, too, even fascinating. It had never occurred to him to think of the brain as something with different parts that did different things.



"So—perhaps I do not understand something—what you are saying is that there is not much that can be done for me. Yes?"



"No, not exactly. There are some techniques for dealing with PTSD that seem to be successful much of the time, or at least helpful. Using mental imagery as a way of soothing your limbic system before you engage in talk therapy often helps. There's even"—here she chuckled softly, and shook her head a little—"don't ask me how it works, because it's always seemed like magic to me. Maureen could explain it to you. It's a peculiar method of getting a person's eyes to move rapidly back and forth while they're undergoing therapy—a lot of times the therapist just has them follow their finger—which seems to decouple the limbic responses. Like I said, it seems like magic. But, however it works, it does seem to work a lot of the time."



She leaned back in her seat and half-turned, glancing first at a clock on the back wall and then at one of the doors behind her. "Maureen's seeing a client right now, but she should be free, in a moment. I'll talk to her about giving you the finger therapy. It's also useful even for people just suffering from temporary symptoms."



She turned back to face him, lacing her fingers together. Caroline was the sort of person who gestured a lot when speaking, so her fingers had been fluttering about. Now, for the first time, all of them were still and visible. He'd been almost certain already but now he could definitely see that while she was wearing three rings, not one of them fit the description of an up-time wedding band. And none of the three rings was on the finger that, if he remembered correctly, was supposed to hold the wedding band.



He could only hope that that legend was true, at least. Any number of the others had already fallen like pigs at slaughtering time.



"But the main thing," she continued, "is simply that it's much too soon to determine if you have PTSD in the first place. You may very well not be suffering from it at all, Thorsten."



The door behind her opened, and a middle-aged woman emerged, followed by another. From various subtleties of dress and manner—mostly the latter—Thorsten knew that the second woman was the up-timer.



His assessment was confirmed an instant later.



"Thank you, Maureen," said the first woman. "I shall see you next week, then."



"Yes—but at noon, not the usual time, Cleopha."



While the German woman passed through the outer room, nodding in a friendly way to Caroline and a polite way to Thorsten, Maureen held her door open. Once Cleopha had left, she glanced at Thorsten and then looked at Caroline.



"Can I speak to you for a moment, Maureen?"



"Of course, Caroline. Come in."



Once Thorsten was alone in the room, he was finally able to relax a bit. "Relax," at least, in the way that a twenty-six year old man will relax while his mind seems to have dozens of ideas ricocheting about at random—all of them involving a plot or scheme or ploy or maneuver to figure out how he could possibly manage to see this woman again, each and every one of which he is almost certain is completely harebrained.





After Caroline finished her quick summary of the Engler case, Maureen Grady shook her head. "God, that accident was horrible. Dennis got there toward the end, you know. There were still pieces of people lying all over. One corpse he saw hadn't even been decapitated. The head was simply disintegrated. Dennis almost vomited."