Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder

Butcher, Amy

ISBN 10: 1481521802 ISBN 13: 9781481521802

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing, 2015

Synopsis

[Read by Emily Woo Zeller]

Four weeks before their college graduation, Kevin Schaeffer walked Amy Butcher to her home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hours later, he fatally stabbed his exgirlfriend. While he awaited trial, psychiatrists concluded that he had suffered an acute psychotic break. Amy was severely affected by Kevin's crime but remained devoted to him as a friend. Over time she became obsessed - determined to discover the truth behind what Kevin had done. Seeking answers, she drove across the country back to Gettysburg to sift through hundreds of pages of public records - mental health evaluations, detectives' notes, testimonies, even Kevin's confession. This is her deeply personal account of the consequences of failing her friend when he needed one most - and a testament to the strength of the human spirit.

About this title

About the Author

Amy Butcher is a graduate of the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program and Gettysburg College. She is the recipient of the 2014 Iowa Review Award for literary nonfiction, and her work has appeared in the Rumpus, Kenyon Review, and North American Review and online at Tin House, Salon, and the Paris Review. She is the editor of Defunct and an assistant professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

My friend, the facts proved, had lost it, and I feared I was losing it, as well. I felt sick, confused by a world that seemed antithetical to the one I’d always known. My whole life, I’d believed the universe depended upon everything fitting together—a quilt of the most careful squares—but there was no fitting in what Kevin had done. There was no place for his behavior.

It seemed chaos, plain and simple.

Every now and then, it crossed my mind to look up my own symptoms: my fear, my agitation, my nightmares and obsessive thoughts. How I spent whole hours imagining Kevin’s face, or the only recollections I had of Emily, or the moments—however few—when I could recall them alone together. The way I felt when it was night. Or when I was in close proximity to a tub. Or with a man, or with a stranger, or with someone I did not trust.

All these symptoms, both big and small, I wished were less a part of me than they were.

Later, I’d undress and stand in the shower until the hot water ran cold. I liked to feel it rush over me, imagine what was wrong as something that could be scrubbed away, like dirt. My fear, panic, all that confusion—I imagined it diluting and draining downwards, spiraling, traveling through a complex network of pipes and into rivers. I saw it float down the Mississippi. I saw it in the surf on a beach in Mexico. I lathered my body slowly, always conscious of my feet: my toenails, red and shining, against the clean, white, empty tub.

About this edition

• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1481521802
• ISBN 13: 9781481521802
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 1