Unfiltered & Unraveled

by Payge Galvin

  “I never thought about it,” he said. “It was always just there. I never questioned that I should get exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it. I thought that was the way it worked. I didn’t see how it made me different from other people, or how it twisted the person I’d become – shallow and stupid and selfish. I didn’t think about how my actions affected other people. I didn’t care. Why would I? I was never around to see the consequences. And my parents were always there to sweep up the mess if I did anything too serious. As long as I looked the part of the perfect son, they were happy with me.” He continued, jamming his hands in his jeans pockets. “Eight years ago, we were attending some stupid fundraising thing for Senator Cunningham, because we were Wentworths and Wentworths always supported the right candidate for the right office. My younger brother, Justin, and I drank because we were bored and pissed at our parents for making us attend. There was a pretty lax attitude towards alcohol in our family, from Mom’s triple-strength Bloody Mary in the morning to Dad’s ‘nightcaps’ that started at five-thirty. Drinking was just something we did to pass the time. But I really tied one on at the party, just to show my parents what I thought of this fundraiser bullshit. Justin tried to get me to slow down, but he was pretty drunk himself.”

  My heart got heavier with every sentence he spoke. I was pretty sure I saw where this story was going, and I didn’t like it.

  “I poured us into my car the minute we fulfilled our obligation.”

  He was quiet again, and our crunching footsteps were the only noise I could hear. Cam’s face was tense and sad, his lips pressed together in a grim line. I slipped my hand down his arm to thread my fingers through his. He gave me a crooked little half-smile and told him, “I’m listening.”

  “We were only a mile and a half from home, and I swerved off of the road, and we rolled into an arroyo. Justin died on impact.”

  I stopped, squeezing his hand. He had killed his brother. Not directly or intentionally, but his brother was dead as a result of his actions. I expected to feel disappointed or horrified, but mostly, I just felt sorry for Cam. What had it been like to live with that kind of guilt? I thought my parents were hard on me, but how did Cam’s parents react when they lost a child because of his choices? Was that why he was still here, working for New Beginnings? And suddenly, that comment I’d made about him hiding away in a substance-free Disneyland made me want to throw my hands over my face and never make eye contact with him again. I can’t believe I’d said that.

  I was the worst person in the world.

  And when I did look up to make eye contact, I realized Cam was staring at me. Was he worried that I would judge him? Reject him? Run away screaming because I’d let him touch me? I squeezed his hand and gave him a long, soft kiss. “I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded and pulled me along the trail with him.

  “Is that where you got the…” I raised my hand and waved at my chest.

  “I broke my leg in three places, and had some pretty serious cuts from the glass,” he said, absent-mindedly rubbing a hand over his shirt, over the scars. “But other than that, I was physically fine.”

  I guessed, “And then you got sober?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I kept on drinking for about three months. Senator Cunningham arranged for me to enroll in New Beginnings rather than serving time in jail. I woke up in the middle of my intervention in the rec room.”

  “Wow. Somehow, my intervention seems tame by comparison.”

  He snorted. “Well, it didn’t go well. It took me thirty days just to stop being a dick to everybody around me. I started attending the meetings just because I was bored. And eventually, what they were saying made sense. I recognized that I had a problem and I needed help. Once I surrendered to the process, everything got easier. Not easy, but I stopped wanting to bash everybody’s head in with a fire poker. Eventually, everything seemed to fall into place. I left rehab, re-enrolled in college, made amends to the professors whose classes I’d slept through or thrown up in. I got my degrees in psychology and social work. And I came back here to take a job.”

  “It’s still rough. I’ve never – It’s not a question of forgiving myself. I understand that I made a stupid choice with an inebriated brain, a brain that hadn’t quite finished forming all of the parts that might have kept me from making such a stupid choice in the first place. We could have just as easily made it home and thrown up on the lawn that night. I stopped being angry with myself over it a long time ago. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s no way for me to take it back. I did something I can never fix. I can never apologize enough, never make up for it. The only thing that makes me feel like I’m remotely close to restoring the balance is working here and keeping other people from making the same bad choices.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “My parents were devastated by my brother’s death. But they weren’t angry with me. They were angry with the bartender for serving me. They were angry at the club for having a loose ID policy. Anything to avoid accepting that I’d caused my brother’s death, and that their parenting might have contributed to it. They didn’t see any reason for me to be in rehab in the first place. They only attended the intervention because they wanted me to avoid jail, and they thought it would look bad otherwise. They definitely don’t understand why I’m still working here, when I could have done ‘so much more’ with my life.”

  “Wow,” I winced. “Do you still see them?”

  “I haven’t, for a long time,” he said. “At first, it was because I was angry with them, for how quickly they forgave me. I said some things. They still call and write, but I just – I can’t go back to how it was before I said the things I said, and did what I did.”

  We topped the last hill and New Beginnings came into view. Cam dropped my hand and reality came barreling up to smack me in the face. I was not on an emotionally intimate walk with my boyfriend. I wasn’t even on a walk with a casual date. I was walking back to a recovery center with a staff member, who was paid to make sure I was mentally healthy enough to be re-launched on society. All of those healthy, confident “sex is awesome” feelings fizzled away, and I was left feeling weird and a little sticky.

  “Thank you for telling me about your brother.” I crossed my arms over my chest, because it would feel strange to let my hands hang loose and brush against his as we walked.

  “Thank you for …” he paused for an inappropriately long time to search for the right word.

  If he said, “Thank you for letting me touch your lady bits,” I was running back to New Beginnings. Then again, if he didn’t say thank you for letting him touch my lady bits, that would be a little rude.

  “Listening,” he finished. “Thank you for listening. I hope that when you’re comfortable, you’ll tell me about whatever it was that brought you here.”

  I pressed my lips together. No. I was glad Cam had shared his deep dark secret with me, and I would eventually figure out how I felt about what happened in the tack room. But I was not willing to tell Cam that I’d overheard a murder and helped illegally dispose of a body before taking a share of cocaine money. He’d committed a young, stupid mistake, which resulted in something horrible. I’d made easy choices, which resulted in a big fat bank account.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  I so wasn’t going to think about it.

  We walked up the stairs to the entrance of New Beginnings and this strange bubble of space grew between us. Before Cam could yank open the heavy wooden door, he asked, “Are we going to talk about what happened in the tack room or are we going to pretend it never happened?”

  “Pretend it never happened,” I told him, smirking.

  He shook his head while ushering me into the lobby. “Yeah, cause that always works.”

  Chapter 11

  Cam felt weird.

  Not weird in a guilty, self-flagellating “major ethical line crossed” sort of way, but lighter, as if a huge weight had been wiggle
d loose from his shoulders. He felt something like “happy” for the first time in a long time. He’d been peaceful and grateful and all of the colors of recovery rainbow, but it had been years since he’d woken up with a feeling of anticipation, of looking forward to what the day brought him. He knew it was because of Violet, because she surprised him in ways that no one had for years. She never reacted the way he expected her to. He’d shared the absolute worst part of himself and she hadn’t blinked. He’d dragged her into the tack room like a caveman and she …

  This was not a line of thinking to indulge in in during a staff meeting, but Dr. Mueller was in the middle of an update about Violet. While the therapy team wasn’t allowed to discuss the specifics of patients’ sessions, they were allowed to discuss generalized issues that might come up as the patients interacted with the staff – triggers, touch phobias, that sort of thing. The problem was that Cam’s mind kept wandering every time Dr. Mueller said Violet’s name.

  “I am very proud of the progress Violet has been making. She has stopped actively resisting therapy and is participating in the group sessions voluntarily. She is actually making helpful observations in discussions with the other patients.”

  Cam smiled. He was happy to hear Violet was finally “drinking the Kool-Aid” now that she was more than half-way through her stay at New Beginnings. Across the table, he caught Sarah’s eye, and she gave him a slightly scary “Stage Five Clinger” smile. Apparently, she thought his smile was about her.

  This was not good.

  Sarah had been hinting for months now that she thought they were a good match, and that they should take their relationship to the next level. Cam cursed his bad instincts with women. When Sarah first arrived last year, he’d been so far out of practice that he hadn’t recognized her initial “friendly gestures” for what they were. She seemed to think his lack of rejection was some sort of welcome and kept pushing. Recently, she’d gone beyond pushing, treating him as if they were already dating. She came into his office – without knocking – and started talking about plans she’d made for dinner or movies without even asking him if he was interested. She touched his arm and made little jokes in front of patients, as if they shared some intimate connection. She was always there, at his heels. And if she wasn’t with Cam, Sarah was watching Violet, dogging her every step as if she hoped to catch her in some sort of mistake.

  Frankly, Sarah was coming off as a little unhinged. But he didn’t know how to complain about it without sounding like an unprofessional doofus – “Nurse Sarah keeps planning dinners for me and touching my arm! And she’s very closely supervising a patient!” He had no clue how to gently push her away without making their work situation super-awkward. He figured that if he just stayed friendly and blithely ignored her hints, Sarah would eventually give up. But between the none-too-subtle hostilities toward Violet and the Clinger smile, he could see that his naiveté was coming back to bite him on the ass.

  The meeting ended and the staff dispersed to drink coffee or discuss particularly challenging patients amongst themselves. Cam stood at the window and watched Violet doing yoga on the lawn with the Origins group. Violet was bent gracefully into downward dog with no trouble… until Cynda stretched her right leg over to Violet’s mat and nudged her hip. Violet went toppling over and landed on her side, laughing hysterically. She grabbed her sports bottle and squeezed it, shooting a jet of water into Cynda’s face. Fortunately, Sid, the yoga instructor, didn’t take himself too seriously and would probably see this outburst as an expression of joyful exuberance.

  “She’s not your patient, you know.”

  He turned to find Sarah staring out of the window with a look of distaste at Cynda and Violet’s water fight.

  “Trust me, I’m aware of that,” Cam told her curtly, folding his patient files under his arm and walking down the hall toward his office.

  But Sarah, ever tenacious and unable to take a hint, sped after him. “All I’m saying is that you seem to spend a lot of time with a patient that’s not even on your caseload. I would think you could come up with more relaxing uses of your downtime.”

  A cold sense of unease wound its way around Cam’s chest. He did not like where this conversation was headed. He knew exactly how Sarah would like him to spend that free time.

  “Spending time with patients is part of the therapy process, Sarah. And I think Violet is interesting. She has a quirky sense of humor. And she’s survived rooming with Cynda for more than two weeks. That alone should qualify her for some sort of psychological study for mental endurance.”

  Sarah sniffed. “All I’m saying is that it’s a slippery slope from ‘spending time together’ to getting fired for having an inappropriate relationship with one of the patients. I would hate to see that happen to you, Cam, I really would. I believe it would be better if you put some distance between the two of you.”

  Cam’s eyes narrowed. Was she threatening him? He was sure if Sarah had seen the two of them together, she would be pressing him harder. But he didn’t trust the look in Sarah’s eyes, all angry resentment and disappointment.

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Sarah, thank you.”

  She smiled, too bright and too sweet to be trusted. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Without another word to her, Cam stalked into his office and threw his files onto his desk. He flopped into his chair. He was unraveling, throwing good choices after bad, and he didn’t even want to stop. Whatever this was building with Violet, it made him feel too good to give up.

  And what really sucked was that Sarah wasn’t wrong. Cam’s interest in Violet was inappropriate, even if she wasn’t his patient. Though she didn’t have a drinking problem, she obviously had some issues to work through, and as much as he wanted her, he didn’t want to take advantage of her fragile emotional state. And that wasn’t even taking her age into account.

  He could stop it now. He could do what was best for Violet, even if it meant letting her go.

  At this point, Sarah only had an inkling of what was happening between Cam and Violet. The idea of Sarah making trouble for Violet at New Beginnings made his stomach clench. He wanted to protect her from whatever shitstorm was brewing in Sarah’s head. He wanted to protect her from what was giving her nightmares. He wanted to protect her from his own bad influence. He wanted her to get healthy and be happy.

  That’s when it occurred to him. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to fall in love with Violet. And then he was going to have to give her up.

  ‡

  You know that feeling where you’ve done something you know is really, really bad, but it felt really, really good; so you sort of bounce between reveling in the memory of your naughtiness and beating yourself up over it? That was pretty much where I lived for the next few days.

  I knew we shouldn’t have done the semi-dirty in the horse barn. But I wasn’t sorry. I knew it was wrong, but I still didn’t care. And in terms of the “I’m a bad person” spectrum, I figured I’d already passed “sexual contact with inadvisable partners” on the scale. So I didn’t have much guilt to spare.

  After “water fight yoga” with Cynda, I spent a particularly exhausting session with Dr. Mueller, where we discussed my weak boundaries. I’d been raised to think that a good daughter was “low maintenance.” I didn’t put up a fuss or make decisions that made other people unhappy, even when those decisions made me miserable. Dr. Mueller’s theory was that my mother’s constant corrections and subtle criticisms had kept me from establishing my own wants and needs and how to keep them separate from those of my parents, my friends, and other assorted relatives. The lines got blurred, and I thought if my parents, friends or relatives were happy, I was happy. And if they were unhappy, I was unsettled and anxious until I could find a way to make them happy.

  “This is a keen, insightful observation, except for the part where I am painted as an easily programmed robot with no spine,” I told Dr. Mueller, making her laugh.

  “You know that’s not what
I mean,” she said.

  “Do I?” I asked, giving her an exaggerated squint. “Do I?”

  “Well, on a closing note, I would like you to think about something.”

  “You always do,” I muttered.

  “Sex.”

  “Beg pardon?” I squeaked, immediately flashing back to Cam’s face as he watched me come apart on his fingers. Did Dr. Mueller know? Was she picking up on some secret psychological cues that impure thoughts about Cam occupied most of my day?

  “I’d like you to think about your sexual relationships and the young men that you date.”

  Maybe she didn’t know.

  “Well, that shouldn’t take very long. I’ve had sex. I’ve had good sex with guys I’ve met at parties. But I don’t really date.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  I chewed on my lip. I’d told myself before that I didn’t have time to date, between working for my parents and school and looking after Allie. I told myself I didn’t want to end up like my friends, who were always crying over boyfriends who didn’t call, didn’t text, didn’t private message them over Facebook, yet somehow managed to track them down to dump them. But honestly, I knew I couldn’t trust myself to be in a relationship with someone. Somewhere, deep down inside, I knew I would lose myself to what that guy wanted. I would be on guard all of the time, watching the guy for any sign of being displeased with me and scrambling for some way to make it up to him. Like a dog, watching her master for approval.

  “OK, our time is up.” She snapped her notebook shut and popped up out of her chair with way more agility than you would expect from a senior citizen. I watched her glide out of the room, shaking my head.

  “The hell?”

  ‡

  Since my therapy requirement had been met for the day, I spent the afternoon lounging by the enormous pool, reading a cheesy romance novel I’d found in the center’s library. I didn’t swim. Allie, helpful soul that she was, remembered to pack my bathing suit. Unfortunately, she packed my skimpy pink “spring break in Cozumel” bikini, which would be inappropriate to wear in a wet t-shirt contest, much less a sober living environment. But it was nice to stretch out on the hammock lounges in my shorts and a tank, drinking carrot juice, soaking up the sun.