by DM Sharp
Gillian comes running and hugs me. “We were so worried about you. But they all said that you guys would be fine. How’s your knee?”
Aaron pats me on the head as I sip my water. “Where have you guys been? Where did you stay? Are you still sick? We were so worried.”
So many questions that I don’t know where to start. Then out of the corner of my eye, someone waves to me and I jump up. “Miguel?”
He comes running over. “I’m so sorry, Olivia. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t run away you would never have become sick and had to stay out in the bush for all these days.”
My eyes widen incredulously. These guys actually care about me.
“Miguel, my story’s so boring, but you know I want to hear all about yours,” I say, knowing how he likes to take center stage. Besides, my attention is taken up with wondering what the trouble is between the doctors Carmichael.
Miguel swaggers before launching into his story to impress me. “I got caught flagging down a freight train about 30 miles northwest of Cedar City, Utah.”
“Wow!”
The funny thing is that Aaron, Gillian and I are all looking at each other and burst into laughter, as does Miguel. For the first time in my life I have friends.
I waited all evening and through the night, but Gabriel didn’t show.
*
The next day we gear up for a ropes course. It’s lousy weather for anything. The searing sun makes the helmets unbearable, and it’s so windy that the ropes and poles shake. Aaron and Gillian are the first to go up. They climb up a 40-foot pole and then cross shaky parallel bars with nothing but each other to lean on as they make their way to the other side. Gabriel, who is both my supervisor and the assigned therapist, is walking everyone through it, making every step they take into a metaphor. A stupid fucking metaphor like climb a ladder and heal your soul.
I don’t know what I’ve done wrong because he’s avoiding any eye contact with me. It must be because of what I told him.
Aaron and Gillian complete the first leg when, for no reason whatsoever, Gillian sits down on the platform, curls her arms and legs around the post.
“I’m not moving,” she says.
They were about to embark on the second of three legs, the one you can’t do alone. One person has to hold onto the post and support the other, who walks out on a wire, with nothing to grab but a hand, and then leaps for a rope, which takes the person over to the other side. Without Gillian, it would be almost impossible for Aaron to do.
But Gillian shuts down, so I get myself out on the wire, She could turn around and climb down pretty easily. That’s what everyone is expecting her to do, but she stays rooted.
Gabriel calls up, “What are you going to do now, Olivia?”
Are you kidding me? It’s the first time he has spoken to me all day. I feel so vulnerable and stupid for telling him my secrets. Fuck him. He’s just like everyone else.
“I’m gonna fucking jump is what I’m gonna fucking do!”
“Why can’t you do it alone, Olivia? Nice language by the way.”
“Fuck you!”
“I mean it. Look at him. He gave up on you. He wasn’t there for you. So what are you going to do?”
My heart lurches painfully right down into my ankles. Tears prick at my eyes. Is he talking about my dad or Lucien or just about everyone?
I rain down another stream of curses at Gabriel, who stands with his hands on his hips, blue eyes squinting into the sun.
“You gave everything you had, Olivia, and now you’re alone. But you’re not falling, you’re standing straight and tall. What’s next?”
I just start wailing. It hurts so much. Everyone stands riveted, waiting, not quite understanding what’s going on.
“Fuck you, Gabriel! I know where you’re going, and it’s not going to work! You’re just like everyone else.”
“I didn’t ask who you thought I was, I asked what you were going to do. He left you, and you didn’t fall. Do you want to give up, or do you want to keep going and see if you can make it on your own?”
I look sharply at Miguel who eggs me on with his head movement and shout, “I’m going to fucking keep going.”
We barely breathe as I shake and sway in the wind 40 feet above the earth, and then I finally start to take baby steps on the rope, cursing the entire time. No one can see my face, thank God, or the tears that stream down it. My body moves and shakes against the gray sky. Minutes pass. And then, without notice, I jump for the other side.
I made it.
Down on the ground everyone starts clapping. Gabriel, out of character, yells at them to shut the fuck up.
He calls up, “So now, before you swing down, I’ve got one more thing to add, okay?”
“What now, asshole?”
“If there’s anything you want to leave up there, if there’s anything you don’t want to take with you, you can leave it. Okay?”
“Fuck you, Gabriel.” But there’s a tight, tight pain in my chest.
I take a deep breath and jump. Everyone runs towards me, but all I can see is Dr. Gabriel Carmichael’s blue eyes and I run straight for him, into his arms. He holds me for a long, long time.
And then we pick up our packs and head back for the canyons in silence, single file.
That night by the fire, after rice and beans, after making ash cakes from flour, after telling stories, I stop everyone just before we’re about about to say goodnight. “Wait. I want to tell you guys something.”
Miguel feeds the fire. Aaron stops whittling his bow drill. Miguel just looks away.
I whisper, not to them, but to the flames in the center of the circle. “I just want you to know, I left him up there.”
Gabriel stands up and puts an arm around me so that I can bury my head in his shoulder and let the tears flow again.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Gabriel Carmichael
I have never been sexually attracted to a patient. It’s like an automatic boundary is up already and you never cross it, unless you are a sociopath. We all know that it’s a huge abuse of trust and, moreover, can be incredibly harming to the patient.
I have never been incredibly emotionally and psychologically attracted to a patient. During the therapeutic process you get to know a patient so deeply that many connections arise. It is undeniable that as much as you try to be professional, you develop a genuine caring for specific patients. Sexual attraction at first appearance is superficial, but once you get to know someone’s personality, the more or less attractive they become.
I guess in a twisted sense, perception of attractiveness in a therapeutic setting is no different than in any other social venue, except I have the advantage of inherent trust and knowing them at a deeper level in a facilitated time frame. Plus, it is a game of probability. I have seen thousands of patients in my career, which increases the chances of attraction and connectedness.
But yes, it is difficult to deal with feelings of attraction towards a patient, especially when you are trying so hard to fight and deny them and remain professional. It compounds the difficulty when there is a connection with the patient, if they are mutually attracted, too. They idolize you, your work, or how you have helped them and they are fulfilling natural human ego needs in me. You have to remind yourself of your role, that their attraction/seduction may be part of a destructive or manipulative pattern of their behavior, and try to remain as benign and bland as possible to allow the therapeutic process to take effect.
Another great motivator in dealing with those feelings is the knowledge that if I act on the feelings I may lose my credibility, my family, my practice, and my license to practice. Fear is always a great motivator.
I have slept with my fair share of attractive partners, so human aesthetics do not blow me away. Being aware of your issues is key to combating this. I neither want to be physically attractive or overly charming in the eyes of my patients. I would rather be viewed as competent and someone who is a vehicle to them, le
ading to a better quality of existence. I also don’t want to portray myself as attainable and intentionally deceive my patients. Part of my effectiveness is in the mystery of who I am and what I am really about, that the less in-depth knowledge they have, the less they have to connect or attach to.
There is no denying that I am well out of my comfort zone with this one. Do I go to Dad? Is this a good time for me to move on and get back to surgery in the city?
I can’t even allow the thought that Olivia Carter and I could exist together in another lifetime. It’s a far stronger connection than I have ever felt for someone, but it is and must be unacted upon. I acknowledge that the roles our relationship began under—therapist and patient—did play a role in our perceptions of each other and have allowed us to easily identify the needs we could fulfill in each other.
But there is something so right about this. Something happened up there in the Navajo Nation between us. I can’t explain it and I’ve guided Olivia through an incredible developmental process. She admires me and represents all in the world that is good and pure. She has given me hope and allowed me to believe again. We knew each other as who we were, who we are, and who we wanted to be while simultaneously having the utmost respect for each other and the utmost trust that we had each other’s best interests in our hearts.
I cannot decipher if the complexity or taboo of our therapeutic relationship had made our experience what it was, or maybe it was as simple as two people with the right connection just happened to be a therapist and a patient. Whatever. It can’t happen and I have to leave this place before it all gets out of hand.
Shit, I’m way behind on my paperwork and need to catch up. It’s the ideal distraction for me.
I pick up the silver fountain pen that my dad gave me for graduation, rolling it around in my fingers, my chest clenching at the thought of disappointing him in any way. I start reading the reports in front of me.
Aaron Schlesinger
Aaron Schlesinger is an honors student who took all advanced placement classes at his Texas high school and was the lead-off hitter on the 5A varsity baseball team his freshman year.
“Then he hooked up with a kid who was into some other things.” I picture his father drawling, “And all of a sudden he’s ditching practice, his grades went from the high 90s to the 50s. Down here, you’re allowed to have nine unexcused absences. His junior year he had 148.”
Aaron’s first other thing was weed, but he quickly got hooked on cocaine. He became addicted to gambling, too.
Gillian Kennedy
Gillian Kennedy started experimenting with drugs and alcohol toward the end of her eighth grade year at middle school. She began with weed but quickly branched out into ecstasy and cocaine. She also started cutting herself, and when a school counselor noticed the deep incisions Gillian had made in her arm with a razor blade, she contacted Gillian’s parents. They sent her to Centennial Peaks, a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed with clinical depression and placed on Lexapro and Abilify. But as Gillian bounced from counselor to counselor her freshman year at Broomfield High School, the cutting continued, as did other forms of acting out. By the time she was fifteen, she reluctantly admits, she’d had more than ten sexual partners.
Then Gillian got two matching tattoos of guns on her hip bones, and her mother, Elyce, took it as a sign.
I rifle through more papers and focus on a letter in huge childish scrawl.
Miguel Delgado
My life started to turn upside-down when my dad died. I was five and my brother was eight years old at the time. We then moved to my mum and step-dad’s one-bedroom flat. That’s when our problems really began.
When we first moved, me and my brother became close. We went to a school where we were the only Hispanic people there, including the teachers. We were severely bullied, but started to fight back. Then we moved schools again, but this time made more friends. At the end of each school day we would get changed and go shoplifting from Woolworths. We’d often steal stuff to sell to other kids at school.
As for life at home, there was a twist with my step-dad. Well, what can I say? He is a vicious, wild man who didn’t want us. He started to ‘discipline’ us—he called it this, but anyone else would call it ‘beating.’ When I was about seven or eight he’d beaten me so bad I ended up in the hospital. This, I suppose, was partly what made me and my brother extremely violent, too. Thankfully, Mum soon moved us further away from our step-dad. We moved again ,where I really went off the rails at the age of ten.
The first offense I got caught for was criminal damage to a car—the police gave me a warning for this. Then I started to abuse drugs, which started off with a little spliff but gradually got heavier until I was using drugs every chance I had. By the age of 11 or 12, I was drinking alcohol and taking pills, mushrooms and coke.
I got caught for theft and received another warning. Later, I got caught for carrying out thefts, four burglaries, threats to kill and arson with intent to harm someone else’s life. For the latter, I was arrested for attempted murder, which really scared me.
In one day, I could spend around $200 or more on heroin and even more on crack, as well as drink two pints of vodka and smoke about an eighth of skunk.
I’d started to skip school and spend more time doing my favorite things: shoplifting and doing lots of drugs. Around this time, things were really breaking down at home so I started to run away—I ran away from home about 25 to 30 times in the space of three months.
Eventually, I got kicked out of my home. I also lost my placement at college, quit my job, crashed my moped and had started selling skunk and getting into fights. I managed to get another job—in fact, I got three: two cleaning jobs and one in a juice bar. I got accommodations at a hostel and had to give up the jobs as I was only 16, so I was relying on selling skunk and robbing to get cash. One of my so-called friends introduced me to crack and heroin, which he was selling for somebody else. The problem was he’d smoked off the entire crack supply he had so got sacked. I got offered the job instead, which gave me a nice bit of cash-in-hand at the end of the week. I soon got hooked on heroin and my life went even more downhill.
I was 16 when I was nicked for four counts of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs, one actual supply of diamorphine (heroin), four possessions of cannabis and possession of an offensive weapon. Three other offenses were taken into consideration, including common assault. When I went to court I was told I had carried out a grave crime and that if I was two years older I might’ve received two life sentences for what I did.
Now I’m at some shithole called Camp Cedars and I’m off all the drugs and also trying to stop smoking tobacco (I’ve been smoking since I was seven). The other good news is that I’m going home soon, under intense supervision. I’ll live in a different area from where I was before, and I’ll stay with either my mum or older brother.
I’m also going to settle down with a job. I will return to jail, except this time I won’t be an offender but a drugs worker. I know how helpful my drugs worker was to me in prison, so I want to help other people get through what I went through. I’m also going to write my own book, which has been inspired by my Catholic faith.
I start chuckling to myself. Miguel’s some kid. Always the last word, usually some bullshit. What chance does a kid like him really have though?
I glance at the folder that says Olivia Carter on it but can’t face it. As I blink, the image of her face, laughing with sheer joy at being able to start her own fire today overtakes my senses and I try to swallow past the lump in my throat.
I start writing my report summarising members of the group (1) The Nonconformist: Likely to be chronically angry and resentful. Tends to be passive aggressive but may act out on occasion. Immature and narcissistic, defies convention through dress and behavior. (2) The Party Animal: Often in trouble with parents and other authorities because of stereotypical delinquent behaviors: drug and alcohol abuse, sneaking out at night, early sexual
experimentation. Energetic and highly extroverted. (3) Emotionally Disturbed: The individual feeling the most subjective distress, including feelings of depression and despair, confusion, and dismay. Their behavior tends to be erratic, unpredictable, and highly impulsive. Poor achievement and substance abuse is common.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Olivia Carter
I can’t help it. I can’t help the way I feel. I know it’s totally normal for this sort of thing to happen. I don’t look up to him as an authority or parental figure. I really do have feelings for this man and I feel terrible about it. Every time I see him now, I can’t look into his eyes for too long because my legs turn to jelly. He has such beautiful, intelligent, kind blue eyes. If he was just someone off the street, I would still fancy him. Oh my God, this is too much. I spend all day and night now looking forward to seeing him and hearing his voice. And when he smiles, well … And the worst thing is, I’m scared what will happen when I leave Cedars. What do I do when my therapy is nearly at a close? I’m so gutted. I’m seriously thinking about confessing my feelings for him. I mean, what the hell, it’s not like I’m going to see him again after anyway. But I can’t live with the thought that I might never tell him how I really feel.
The sun is beating down on my face and I feel a new sense of freedom.
“Olivia, penny for your thoughts?”
Someone throws a twinkie bar at me. I open my eyes and see Gillian standing in front of me. She looks paler than normal and her eyes are sort of glazed over.
“Hey, are you okay?” I jump up and look her up and down suspiciously.
