“I just…” I rubbed my face. “Now that he’s gone and I’m thinking about things and you guys are all like, don’t be dumb, take a chance, I’m wondering if I fucked up and if I’ll get another chance. But then I think about taking that chance and it scares me shitless. I have serious abandonment issues, you know? Like hardcore. There’s just never been a male in my life that I’ve ever trusted. Not one, ever. How do you go about reversing thirty-nine years’ worth of not ever trusting men, ever, for any reason? How do you…how do you overcome the trauma of being gang-raped? Sure it was a long fucking time ago, but still. I can say with frankness that I don’t think I’m healed from it.”
“Didn’t you hint to Autumn that you did talk to someone?” Teddy asked.
“That was…about something else.” I swallowed hard. “I can’t get into that. I have seen a therapist, but I kept those conversations narrowed to one particular issue.”
“Laurel…” Lizzy murmured. “It’s us.”
I shook my head. “Not now. Please. It’s been too much of a day. I’m nice and pleasantly drunk and I’m feeling good with you guys and I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Okay, honey.” Lizzy hugged me, and then I was being buried under an avalanche of best friends, all hugging me and smothering me with their love. “Another time, then.”
Late afternoon, at home, a few days later. I was doing laundry and listening to a podcast on recovering from unhealed trauma, when my doorbell rang.
I finished folding the skirt in my hands and headed for the front door, replacing the earbuds in their case. I opened the door to find a short woman on the far side of middle age, her graying brown hair in a cute bob, dressed casually in jeans and a white blouse; she carried a large purse, the open top revealing a clipboard with a yellow legal pad clipped to it. She wore thick-framed glasses, and her smile was friendly.
“Hi, Laurel McGillis?”
She seemed official, or something. Nerves shot through me. “Yes. How can I help you?”
She broadened her smile, perhaps sensing my nerves. “My name is Dr. Katherine Hines, I’m a psychologist specializing in sexual trauma.”
I swallowed hard. “I see.” I frowned. “One of my friends sent you, I’m guessing?”
“Actually, not the friend you’re probably thinking.” She reached into her purse and withdrew a torn slip of paper with writing scrawled on it, handed it to me.
Laurel,
Dr. Hines is the most highly regarded specialist in the country for this particular issue. I know this is not my place. I get that you may be pissed off at me for making this huge assumption. But I’m willing to piss you off if it will help you, because I guess I figure what else do I have to lose. Please understand where I’m coming from. Just talk to her.
TB
I swallowed hard, chewed back my inclination to shut down, to resort to anger. “What did Titus tell you?”
She shook her head. “Nothing at all. He paid in advance for me to come here and spend a couple hours with you. He only told me that you’re his friend, he cares about you, and that he felt like you may need help with some past issues that you’ve been…avoiding, perhaps, in my area of expertise.”
I bit back a laugh. “Titus Bright paid you, a licensed therapist, to come to my house. I didn’t think you guys did house calls.”
She chuckled. “I don’t. This is the first time for me.”
“But here you are.”
“Here I am. It’s my calling to help people, and he hinted that you may be resistant to seeking the help you need. I want to help you.” Another chuckle. “And it doesn’t hurt that he was very…generous…in compensating me for the unusual request.”
I sighed. “Well, you’re here. Come on in.”
We sat down in my living room, and she settled in with her notepad and pen. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself. Just…to break the ice a little.”
Hesitantly, at first, I told her my background. She asked subtle questions, I noticed, which got me to keep opening up. And if I attempted to gloss over something, she always caught it. By the time an hour had gone by, I’d explained most of the messy garbage from my childhood with my parents and the parties they hosted.
“So, that’s a lot,” she said, at the end of ninety minutes of me gorging on old pain. “I think it would best serve you if I came back next week and we carried on from there.” She handed me a business card. “I am willing to come back here, if it’s easiest for you. But my office is also rather close to you. Less than half an hour from here.”
“We didn’t even get to the good stuff, Dr. Hines,” I said. “The real reason you’re here in the first place.”
She nodded. “I know. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? I think it would overload you to get into all that right now. We’re just establishing a baseline today, okay?”
I nodded. Considered. “I can come to you. And I can pay you myself.”
She just smiled. “Mr. Bright has covered my time for at least another session, especially if you come to my office. We can discuss options beyond that.” She put her clipboard and pen in her purse. “Laurel, you’re doing the best thing possible for yourself, by addressing this stuff. I know it can be hard, when it’s something you’ve kept repressed for a long time. But if you want to have a healthy future, you need to heal. And with this stuff, with severe sexual trauma as Titus hinted we’re dealing with, it can take a long time and a lot of therapy to help you heal from it. Don’t expect overnight miracles. But if you trust me, and you’re honest with me, and you do the work, I promise, it’ll be worth it.”
“Thank you for coming, Dr. Hines.” I did feel…a sense of relief; and I did know therapy could help.
“Mr. Bright…” She smiled at me. “He cares about you. It takes courage to do what he did, sending me here.”
I nodded, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “Yeah, it does. Anyway, thank you, again.” I led her to the door. “So next week?”
She glanced at me on the way down the steps from my front porch. “Yes, I’ll contact you tomorrow with a day and time, once I have my schedule in front of me.”
“Sounds good. Bye, Dr. Hines.”
“Bye, Laurel. See you next week.”
She drove away, then, and I stood on my porch with my front door wide open, trying to fathom how I was supposed to feel about Titus, now.
Complicated, that was how.
He’d sent a therapist to my house. Clearly, he felt I needed to address the issue in my past. How presumptuous of him. But…he wasn’t wrong. Stubborn me, I’d refused for years. Refused to talk about it, pretended my fucked-up way of dealing with it was just fine. It wasn’t fine.
I mean, clearly I had issues with trust and intimacy. Look at what I’d turned things into with him, the other day.
I owed him a conversation, didn’t I?
If only I had any clue how to find him, how to get ahold of him.
“So, Laurel.” Dr. Hines gave me that kind, professional smile. “Now that we’ve had a few sessions to really dig into what happened to you, let’s spend this week discussing its effects on you.”