Madeline came to see me on January 2, 2019. For all the trauma she has been through, Madeline was very vivacious and cheerful.
I was very happy to see Madeline. As a matter of fact, my medical practice has been looking for her for almost two years, because she needed to come in for her medical checkup, but she is nowhere to be found. Our phone calls went to voice mail, which were never returned. We wrote her letters of appointment and reminder of need for medical services, and those too elicited no response. I was wondering what has happened to Madeline — until that morning.
Madeline was the older child in a family of four: she has a brother who is two years younger. Madeline’s parents were born again Christians and were very active in their local church. Both parents had good jobs and doted on their children. All the members of the family were registered patients of my medical practice, and you can see the joy radiating from them.
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That was about 19 years ago. Everything was fine for about six years after they enrolled in my medical practice, and then the bottom seemed to fall out. Esther, Madeline’s mom, came to the office on a fateful afternoon, and in a grim tone informed me that she had filed for divorce from her husband. I almost fell from my seat. “You have filed for what?” I asked incredulously. “Yes, divorce”, came the sad reply. “I have thrown Andrew out of the house.”
Madeline, then fifteen years old, was a straight A extremely cheerful student. Then she started beIng moody; became angry easily and started using foul language, Esther knew something was wrong. Then she didn’t want to do her homework from school, didn’t want to attend school, which was very unusual for her, and her grades became bad. We suspected that something was wrong, but we were all shocked when Madeline revealed to her Counselor that her father had been sexually abusing her for a while. Esther felt a deep sense of betrayal, and vowed never to talk to Andrew again. Esther could not stop crying and I felt really sorry for her.
About a year after the incident, Madeline came back to the practice. She was doing much better with counseling. But Esther and her son did not come back to us. I saw that Esther had a deep sense of shame, and great embarrassment about what has happened to her family. She took it very hard. Sometime ago, a friend told me that she had run into Esther on the New York Subway train in Manhattan, and they had a conversation. Esther, knowing the person was a Nigerian, had mentioned casually that her Doctor is a Nigerian. She was surprised that the fella knew me very well, and asked the friend to greet me, which she did. I have not seen Esther since that time.
Madeline came to the office periodically over the years, either for her annual physical, or for the occasional flareup of her asthma. As the years went by, you could notice that she was getting better and putting the problems behind her. She said the mom was doing fine, and the dad was in prison for a while, after pleading guilty to the assault on her.
Madeline was her usual ebullient self that January morning. It reminded me of her when she was about twelve, thirteen years of age and was always very cheerful and full of life. Madeline did an Associate Degree in Mass Communications, but she does not fancy life as a journalist, so she has enrolled in a University in Upstate New York to study Education. She now wants to be a teacher. She explained that the mom and the brother are doing fine.
I was almost afraid to ask about the dad, but my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know what happened to him. “Are you hearing from your dad? How is he doing?”I finally asked her. “Yes, I am hearing from him. My dad has been sick. He is still in hospital. His aorta blew up and was rupturing. He felt numb in the right side of his body. He had to have an extensive operation to repair his aorta. He could not eat for a long time because they had to shift his intestines, but they are allowing him to take some fluids now”. Wow! I exclaimed.
I wanted to know Esther’s reaction to Andrew’s illness, whether seeing him on the verge of death had prompted her to forgive him. “Did your mom visit Andrew in the hospital?”, I asked Madeline. “Nope,” came the sad reply. “She came to the hospital to support my brother and I, and she talked to the nurses, but refused to see him.” Whoa, it appears that Esther’s wounds still run very deep. Madeline seems to have done remarkably well.
I asked her whether she still loves her dad despite what he did to her. “Yes, I love my dad very much”, came the spontaneous reply. “Did your dad apologize to you for his bad conduct towards you?” “Yes,” she replied, “he apologized to my brother and I, and to my grandmom”. I don’t know which grandmom she was referring to, but I noticed that she left Esther out of her list.
Madeline however, said that her mum and Andrew had a brief interaction during her graduation for her Associate Degree, and that was all. Esther has vowed never to talk to Andrew again, and it appears that she has stuck to her guns, even when Andrew was a whisker away from death. When Fathers mess up!
Emmanuel O. Fashakin, M.D.,FMCS(Nig), FWACS, FRCS(Ed), FAAFP, Esq.
Attorney at Law & Medical Director,
Abbydek Family Medical Practice, P.C.
web address: http://www.abbydek.com
Cell phone: +1-347-217-6175
