by Barbara Hall
“But sometimes, with more complicated cases. Well, you know.”
“I do.”
“Let’s see. You’re a therapist? Analyst?”
“Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and some other goodies,” she says.
“NLP?”
“Neurolinguistic Programming.”
“Yes, I’m somewhat familiar.”
“It’s a useful tool.”
“Hypnotherapy?”
“Some. It’s not appropriate for everyone. So did I get the job yet?”
He looks up. She laughs. Her laugh is infectious. It sounds more like celebration than relief.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I don’t mean for it to feel like an interview. I just have to get some things straight for my record.”
“I thought we were going to talk about Sarah.”
“Yes. Ms. Lange. I am getting to that.”
“Let me know when you’re there.”
“All right,” he says, pushing his computer aside for a moment. “Tell me how she came to you.”
“Her yoga teacher referred her.”
“I’m sorry. Her what?”
“Yoga teacher, Leslie.”
“Leslie is also your yoga teacher, I assume?”
“God, no, I hate yoga. Leslie and I are friends from the Program.”
“By which you mean AA?”
“That’s correct.”
He wants to write this down but knows that it will not come across well.
“And so Leslie…” He already feels at sea from the lack of surnames. But he doesn’t want to go down the yoga road anyway so he changes his approach.
“Let me ask you this,” he says, regrouping. “Do you know if Ms. Lange had any proper medical treatment before coming to you? Any official diagnosis? Any contact with someone like me?”
“What’s someone like you?”
“A psychiatrist.”
“No, not a psychiatrist. Some social workers at the hospital, she said. After the incident.”
“The accident?”
“The rape.”
He looks up, surprised.
“Are you referring to an incident of molestation in her childhood? By a family doctor?”
“No. I don’t know anything about that.”
“So when did this rape occur? Two years ago?”
Heather shifts in her chair and looks uncomfortable. “Something like that.”
“Sarah refers to it as an accident.”
“That probably helps her to create some distance.”
“There was no record of it on her admittance form. Nothing official. Are you the person who treated her for it?”
She says, “If she hasn’t told you about the rape, I feel uncomfortable going into it.”
“Ms. Lange signed a release form saying we could talk to you. I assume the hospital emailed that information?”
“Yes. I received a form that seemed to be signed by her.”
“Ms. Lange checked herself into Oceanside and can leave at any time. I assure you, nothing was coerced.”
“I’m not saying that. I just have some questions about her mental state. If she understood what she was signing. I haven’t seen her in months.”
“She seems to understand what’s happening to her. And obviously she wants to get better. I’m trying to help but I need more history.”
Heather considers this and there’s no shift in her appearance when she lets go of her defenses.
“She was raped a little over two years ago. A year, I think, before she came to me.”
“Someone she knew?”
“No. Home invasion.”
He takes a chance on writing some of this down and Heather watches him, her face gone neutral and moving toward tense.
“So did she seek specialized counseling?” he asks. “I mean, directly following the event.”
“She did go to the Rape Treatment Center for a few weeks. She found the counseling helpful.”
“Was she ever on any medication?”
“She doesn’t like medication. Surely she’s told you that.”
“We’ve only had one interview.”
“Sarah won’t take medication.”
“All right. But I guess what I’m getting at is whether or not she was ever officially diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
“I don’t know. Who makes that diagnosis officially?”
“Well, a psychiatrist would. Or another kind of doctor. A therapist even, but usually…”
“One more qualified than I?” she asks with a twinkle rather than an edge.
“One with some expertise in that area.”
“She didn’t come to me for that.”
“For what?”
“PTSD. She came to me for something else.”
“What?”
“A guy, initially. A bad break-up. But after a few weeks, she told me what was really going on.”
“Which was?”
“I’d really rather she told you.”
David sighs and fights back a sudden feeling of rage. No, not sudden. It has been lingering in the pit of his stomach since he walked in. He can feel his face turning red and he stares at his lap and begins to count until the feeling simmers down to anger and finally to a dull pulse of impatience.
When he looks up, ready to face her, he finds that she’s not looking at him at all. She is staring at a spot on the wall just above his head. He’s about to turn and look when she speaks again.
“Sarah died, Dr. Sutton, during that attack in her apartment. She was choked to death. A neighbor heard the commotion and called the cops. She had no pulse when the paramedics found her. She was revived forty-some minutes after her heart stopped. That’s not in your files?”
“No.”
“I can’t imagine why not.”
“The file is just an admit form. There’s nothing in it except what Ms. Lange has volunteered to tell the staff at Oceanside.”
“And she left that out. Interesting.”
“Forty minutes? That’s medically impossible,” he says.
“It wasn’t forty consecutive minutes. She came and went, from what I understand.”
He makes a note. He’s glad she doesn’t challenge him on the medical impossibility. They are still operating in the realm of normal.
“So what about that experience did she want to discuss?” he asks.
“Anything and everything. I can’t go into it. I realize that Sarah signed a release form but I can’t be sure she knows what she’s agreeing to and I can’t go into privileged information. I’m afraid that will have to be that. Doctor.”
“Is that when she started hearing from spirit guides?” he asks.
Heather’s eyes narrow. Somewhere in her steely expression resides a desire to laugh. He doesn’t know what that laugh is about. Does she consider him stupid or lacking in imagination? Is he deprived of her understanding of another dimension?
Heather stares at the spot on the wall again, interlacing her fingers.
Finally she says, “It’s safe to say that after the incident, Sarah’s intuition was heightened. And it created problems for her.”
“Please elaborate.”
“She’s energy sensitive. By nature. You do believe in energy, Doctor? Scientifically speaking. In a quantum sense.”
“Of course. But that doesn’t mean I think people are sensitive to it or can read it.”
“She’s an artist. Quite a good one. Did she tell you that?”
“No, it hasn’t come up. I deduced from her files that she has some kind of artistic leaning.”
“She doesn’t make her living that way. Early in her life someone got to her and convinced her that all artists are crazy, and she didn’t want to be that. But it’s in her and I happen to believe that her denial of that is part of what’s making her, for lack of a better word, crazy. You will allow that artists are often very sensitive people?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Height
ened sense of awareness and all that.”
“Certainly.”
“And might you also grant that when people have a particular calling—excuse me, talent—and they don’t allow themselves to express that talent, it can create inner conflict?”
“Yes. And I would happily get into that if it were all we were dealing with. But this woman is the victim of a violent crime, not that long ago. And before we get into trapped callings and hypersensitivity and even energy, I’d like to explore the more immediate concern of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
“Then you should definitely go back to your patient and do that. As we’ve more than adequately established, that’s not my area of expertise.”
She sits forward in her chair, indicating that she wants it to end here.
“Out of curiosity, what is your area of expertise?” he asks.
“Excavating the Authentic Self.”
Now David wants to laugh but she beats him to it.
“I thought you might enjoy that,” she says, then stands.
David is too caught off balance to do anything but follow her lead. “I’d really like to discuss this further.”
“What’s the point?”
“It might help me understand her.”
“If you’re interested in understanding her, try understanding her.”
He considers pushing the matter but decides against it. Ms. Lange’s near-death experience will be a useful starting point when he sees her again but he has no desire to listen to Heather Hensen’s New Age interpretation of what happened in those forty minutes while his patient was dead. The rage creeps into his temple again and he thinks about all the offices and halls and avenues and nooks and crannies of unqualified self-proclaimed healers in this city, and how they send damaged people off into whole landscapes of magical thinking and superstition and, in fact, deeper and more resistant forms of their diseases. It is hard to bring people back from the angels.
He breathes and counts again and the moment passes and he closes his computer and stands. Heather Hensen has the door open already. She is equally ready to be rid of him. It is all that either of them can do to shake hands and mumble goodbye.
Since he is in the neighborhood of St. John’s, David meets a colleague for lunch near the hospital. Dr. Grant Zwick is a short, dark, and handsome neurologist who got all the women in medical school. David enjoyed his company because Grant acted as bait and David wasn’t a complete letdown to the runners-up. In fact, some of them later told him they’d been having trouble deciding between the two. David never quite believed them but it was believable. He was Grant’s doppelganger. Blond to his dark, green eyed to his brown, and sensitive analysis of the psyche to Grant’s cold, intellectual approach to the wiring of the brain.
Grant is waiting at the corner table at Drago, his favorite Italian restaurant, already working on a glass of wine and staring at his iPhone. David takes a moment to adjust to the gray taking over Grant’s hair because he still remembers him as a twenty-year-old. He’s certain that Grant has to adjust to David’s general diminishing youth (mostly hair). Because they see each other rarely, the process is more jarring. He’s not sure why they see each other rarely. They would both claim to be busy but that is not entirely it.
Grant lifts his chin and smiles and rises to give David a man hug with backslaps.
“How have you been, you bastard?” Grant says.
“Fine.” David nods at the wine as he sits down. “Surgery after lunch?”
“Yes, a little glioblastoma. I like to relax before.”
They laugh, physician humor.
“No, I just have lectures today. I’m not on call,” Grant says, as if he doesn’t trust David to understand his sarcasm. Which makes David not trust Grant’s sarcasm.
He reminds himself not to analyze his friends. It’s an ongoing battle.
They talk about Grant’s wife, a stylist, and their recalcitrant four-year-old son Willem (probably recalcitrant because his name is Willem, David thinks, and his mother is a stylist—Korean and twenty years younger than Grant) who has been kicked out of two nursery schools. His wife is at her wit’s end but Grant has a hard time taking nursery school seriously and thinks the boy is having an appropriate reaction to being indoors too much and being forced into dramatic play.
“The pendulum has swung too far, David,” he says. “We’ve overcompensated for the girls. I’m sorry for all the years we ignored them in school but do we have to turn the boys into sissies now? My kid spends half his day at a fake stove or playing dress up.”
“Not anymore,” David says, trying to be light. “We don’t have to compensate anymore.”
“No, not anymore and not even then. That’s what he was punished for. He wanted to tackle someone to the ground, not pretend to make a soufflé with Courtney and Kelsey.”
“Is he into sports?”
“Very into sports. Anything with a ball. But these damn schools, they give the kids thirty minutes a day in the playground and even then, no sports, nothing with balls. Balls aren’t allowed on the goddamn playground.”
David chuckles and looks at the menu.
“Don’t you think that’s fucked up?” Grant implores.
“I’m off the clock right now.”
“Not as a shrink. As a friend.”
“As a shrink friend.”
“Come on. Seriously.”
“Seriously. Do you see me asking you about my frontal lobe?”
“Your frontal lobe seems fine. Now, tell me.”
David sighs. “It would probably be helpful for him to see a child psychologist if he is having continued difficulty adjusting to social settings. Or you could supplement his schooling with league sports, give him a lot of room to compete, if it’s in his nature.”
“In his nature. See, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“Did you really need me to tell you this, Grant? You understand the brain pretty well.”
He shakes his head, sipping his wine. “No, to me it’s just a landscape. It’s terrain. I can tell you what’s next to what but it’s the fucking Northwest frontier. We’re Lewis and Clark. We have no idea what’s going on in most of that terrain. It’s wilderness, I’m telling you.”
“My profession isn’t? It’s abstract. It’s conjecture. And except in the extremes, it doesn’t seem to work. Not in any consistent way.”
“I’ve never heard you talk this way before.”
“I’ve never heard you talk this way before.”
“We’re getting old, I guess.”
“Speak for yourself,” David says and their laughter is forced.
The waiter comes over and tells them the specials and Grant says they should have the carpaccio and the sole and David agrees and says he’ll just have water when Grant orders another glass of wine.
“But back to something you said,” Grant insists. “If it’s in his nature. His nature. What is that? We can’t find evidence of one’s nature in the brain but it’s undeniable, isn’t it? I mean, of course it’s not in the brain, it’s in the DNA, the genetic coding, but it’s in there, isn’t it? One’s nature? Such an interesting word. Anachronistic, really. But undeniable.”
“It’s hard to deny talents and proclivities. Hard to explain them as well. Better just to accept them.”
“But a serial killer. Is that his nature?”
“This is an undergraduate discussion, Grant. I’m surprised at you.”
“I feel we might have skated over some salient issues in our rush to becoming experts. Important things. Basic things that beg the question.”
“Yes, we might have done that. Can we talk about the Lakers?”
“Fuck the Lakers. Kobe’s an asshole.”
“Then the Clippers. Anything else.”
“David, you used to be up for a good debate.”
“I was younger. And I knew a lot more then.”
“Isn’t that the truth.”
There is a protracted silence. David feels
guilty for dismissing his friend. Wonders if he’s being an asshole and suspects he probably is. Jen would tell him he’s being obstructive. Obstructive is a word they like in life coaching.
“What?” Grant asks. “You’re smiling.”
“I’m thinking of Jen.”
“How is she? If you’re still smiling when you think of her things must be good.”
“I don’t know about that. They are pretty much where they’ve always been. I was thinking of her profession. It makes me smile on occasion.”
“She’s a therapist, right?”
“No, she’s a life coach.”
“Right. That’s a growing field.”
“She was a professional organizer before she was a life coach. That’s how I met her. She professionally organized my garage.”
“Five years now?”
“Seven.”
“How’s your garage?”
“Disorganized.”
They laugh, less forced.
“But she has a degree in psychology,” David goes on. “Stanford, no less. Undergraduate. She was using her psychology degree to help people organize their lives because, she said, it was hard for people to let go. She coached them into letting go of their things. Clearing out space. She says that clutter is evidence of unmade decisions.”
“That’s pretty good.”
“She also says that you have to make space for opportunity to find you.”
“That’s less good.”
They laugh again.
“She was on that New-Agey spiritual side when I met her. Still is a little, if you count feng shui and smudging and the zodiac. But she works with addicts now, out at Oceanside. And she’s become impatient with spiritualism.”
“Thank God, right?”
David laughs at the pun.
“And she’s much more into goal setting and authentic action.”
“Cause and effect. Physics. Terra firma,” Grant says.
“But the thing is…I don’t know.”
“Go on.”
“She’s meaner.”
Grant practically guffaws. “God, what a word. Why did we ever let go of it? All of these technical terms when really, most of the time, that one will do.”
“I’ve thought so a few times in my practice. I could say Borderline Personality Disorder with Narcissistic Tendencies or I could just say mean as hell.”
They laugh loud enough that people look at them.
