handle that guy, I’m sure you’re going to do a much better job. I can’t believe Rachel even wasted our time assigning him to someone so incompetent.” Julie, always looking for someone to tell her she isn’t incompetent. She is huddling next to me like we’re girlfriends of twenty years, holding my arm and whispering her hot-coffee whisper into my hair.
“I just think it’s stupid to have these meetings at the ass crack of dawn when everyone is still hungover and can’t even read yet,” I say, trying to lose her.
“You’re hungover?”
“It’s a figure of speech, Julie. I am not literally hungover.” Lies. Lies. Lies. I would be much better off wrapped around a toilet right now, but Julie will offer me no solace.
“Oh—I know—I guess I just thought maybe you went out last night again. When are we going to go out together? Are you doing anything tonight?”
Julie likes me and wants to be my friend, but I find it impossible to like her. As much as I appreciate her for being an idiot who can’t get over high school, I still can’t tolerate listening to her inane musings and cotton-candy problems with her debutante friends and country-club life. David walks past us and gives me a knowing smile and chuckle.
“I never make plans this early in the day. I will let you know, though; we should definitely grab a drink sometime.” I smile broadly and disengage from her grasp as we are getting close to my office. I juggle my coffee and my case files to try to get the keys out of my pocket when I see that my door was left open anyway.
Nothing is amiss. I must have just left it unlocked. Maybe I’m still drunk. My iPod is still sitting tangled in the headphones on top of a stack of books on my desk. That wouldn’t be there if anyone had come into my office. My sneakers are in the corner where I leave them every morning. A couple of months ago, Shirley left her door open during one of her group sessions and the batteries got stolen out of all her electronics.
My initial meeting with Richard is already happening today, and I have been fixing my desk and my hair and my face and my office for the past hour to prepare for it. I am afraid of him, and I haven’t had this feeling since I started on my first psych unit nearly fifteen years ago. I was barely twenty-two. I never feel like this anymore. I’ve sat across from lunatics and psychopaths, diplomats and dignitaries; it’s all the same to me now. I haven’t been scared like this in ages.
My office is configured the way it’s supposed to be, with the desk chair closer to the front door than the patient’s chair. This is done just in case the patient gets violent and the therapist needs to escape, but we say it’s done so the clinician can obtain emergency services more quickly should the patient need it. I’ve never had a patient get violent in my office; it usually happens out in common areas. I realize I have the scissors closer to the patient’s chair and I move them to the drawer. Sometimes I sit on my desk so I can gaze out the window and pretend I have a different life.
The door knock is so loud and jarring that my already frazzled nerves just explode and lodge themselves in my throat, making it hard to speak. I have to appear calm no matter how scared I am.
“Hi, Richard. Come on in, have a seat.” I remain standing, holding the door open for him. I’m waiting for him to sit, then I close the door and begin to get dizzy. He sits in my patient chair and places a large stack of newspapers at the corner of my desk. “I am going to be your counselor. I wanted to set up this initial meeting so we could get to know each other a little bit, and maybe get started on some of the clinical documentation we need to do.” I sit down as I say this.
Richard doesn’t say anything in response. Instead, he lifts the top paper from the pile and makes a show of opening it up and finding his intended section. He slips off his hat. It’s a brown herringbone newsboy cap. He places it gently on top of the newspapers. As he turns his neck, I notice two small, round scars under his collar.
I rustle the papers of his blank file and begin again. “Why don’t we start with the family history section? This way you can tell me about your family, and we don’t have to dive right into talking about you personally.”
He turns away from me, folds his paper in his lap and focuses his attention on the men climbing the scaffold across the street.
“Okay, no family history. What about goals for treatment? Would you be willing to talk about what you’d like to achieve while you’re here at Typhlos?”
He raises his eyebrows, releases a breath and adjusts his seat to get a better view of the construction workers.
“Okay, that’s a pretty obvious no. How about telling me a little bit about yourself, informally, and I will gather whatever information I need. How’s that?”
Richard glares disapprovingly. “You want me to sit here and tell you all about me? Like a job interview?”
“If that’s how you want to look at it, yes. A job interview would be great.”
“No.” Blunt. Decisive.
I’m barely making more progress than Gary did. It looks like I’m going to have to work on this guy a bit more than I’d anticipated. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.
I sigh an enormous, frustrated sigh, and I intentionally blow it in Richard’s direction. I hope it stinks of booze and vomit and coffee so he knows how much his resistance is pissing me off.
I’m on the train, watching the people in front of me arguing. It’s packed, and it’s cold outside, but the body heat from the rest of the riders is making me sweat into my scarf. The sways and jolts of the train are lulling me into a trance, and all I can hear is the woman in front of me telling her boyfriend that she has had enough.
I am currently seeing someone. I don’t know why that is the terminology we use—“seeing” someone; usually, I say “seeing someone” in reference to a therapist, but this is how I describe my relationship because I don’t want to say “relationship.” We have been involved for a while.
His name is Lucas. On paper, he is the type of guy you’re supposed to marry. He does something in finance, and he calls it “finance,” which makes me want to punch him. He knows the difference between Cabernet and merlot and wants me to taste the tannins. He has a King Charles spaniel named Maverick, which of course just makes him wildly out of my league. He went to Cornell, and he actively parts his hair. In the morning, he uses a fine-tooth comb and creates a straight line down the left side of his head, and he tucks stray hairs behind the line. I am anal, but he is crazy. He wears shoes that he keeps shoe trees in. He finds it very important that when he gets home from work and he takes off his shoes he immediately puts the shoe trees into the shoes because they are warm from wear and more susceptible to morphing into an undesirable shape. I care less about shoes than he does. He has dirty-blond hair, is tall and wears suits with pocket squares that he has to have folded just so. He’s prettier than I am.
He talks to me about getting married. I find this completely ridiculous. I am not the girl you marry. The only reason I have stayed with him for such a long time is because I am trying to rescue him. This is a well-known pattern in my life, and I have only recently become aware of it and okay with the fact that this is what I do.
He has all the things that girls are looking for: the stability, the money, the good looks, the education. But underneath it all lies a very damaged, very insecure little man, and that is who I am dating.
I do not want this picture of perfection; I do not want this combed, shoe-treed, elitist, country-club gentleman. I want the broken-down little puppy inside of him who is desperately trying to play pretend. I want to find that puppy, I want to rub his belly and give him a good home, and then, when he’s better, I will