He rises and follows me as I step onto a mat that triggers the automatic doors, and we enter the ER. Only one other person—a middle-aged man sitting in a plastic bucket seat, staring at his phone—is in the waiting area.
As I lead Cameron toward a sofa, I think about how I’m going to manage this temporary setback. A meek man with an oppressive, manipulative ex is a toxic mix.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told her I started dating someone.” Cameron collapses onto the couch.
“Let’s take a step back. You’re still helping Skylar out financially, right?”
“Yes, I’m paying half the mortgage until the house sells. And sometimes I go by if she needs help with stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Yeah, like if something goes wrong around the house. I told her to call me instead of dealing with it herself because once she got up on a chair to open this window that was stuck and she fell. She only got a few bruises, but it could have been worse.”
Convenient, I refrain from saying.
“Maybe it was all too abrupt.” Cameron’s lower lip trembles.
“That’s exactly what Skylar wants you to believe. She didn’t intend to kill herself.”
Cameron flinches. “How do you know that?”
“Look, if Skylar really wanted to die, she wouldn’t have phoned you.” While a suicide attempt is usually a cry for help, in Skylar’s case I can say with near certainty it’s an attempt to regain some control over Cameron.
Right now, my former client is more of a danger to himself than Skylar is to herself, and I need to shock him straight. “So, what do you think the solution is, Cameron? Give up your new life and move back in with Skylar?”
Exhilaration courses through my veins; casting aside the filters that constrained me when I was a therapist is so deliciously freeing.
I lean in closer to him. I’m fond of Cameron; he has as tender and pure a heart as anyone I’ve ever met. “There will always be something with her. And if you give in now, in another few months, you’ll be right back where you were before.”
I’m reaching him; I can see it in his slower breathing and in his increased eye contact. “What should I do?”
A traditional therapist would gently help Cameron find his own solution, even if it took years. Even if it was the wrong one.
“You need to tell Skylar you’re sorry she’s hurting, but it isn’t going to change anything.”
“I-I want to, but…”
“The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be.” Cameron’s ex-wife is a powerful force in his life; I need to be stronger. I stand up and stretch out my hand. “Let’s go. You’re not doing this alone.”
He hesitates, then rises and follows me to the security guard manning the desk. I tell the guard we’re here to see Skylar Sullivan, and we present our driver’s licenses and sign in. A nurse appears a few moments later and leads us to Skylar, who lies on a gurney with curtain walls separating her from the patients on either side. Her dark hair is spread out over the white pillowcase, and I notice she’s wearing an awful lot of makeup.
“Skylar,” Cameron says softly.
Her eyelids flutter open. “Cameron,” she whispers. “I knew you’d come.”
She stretches out a hand, leaving her manicured fingers dangling midair, until he moves closer and takes them. She doesn’t notice me; her sole focus is on Cameron.
I pick up the chart at the foot of Skylar’s bed and scan the notes. She swallowed twenty milligrams of Lunesta, a sedative. Not enough to kill her. She didn’t even need to have her stomach pumped. Just enough to give her ex a bad scare.
“You know I hate hospitals.” Skylar’s voice trembles. “Will they let you take me home?”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to leave tonight.”
Her face falls. “But when I do, you’ll be there, right? You’ll stay with me.”
This is it, the moment when my ten sessions will collide with his ex-wife’s force of will.
“No.” Cameron swallows hard and releases her hand. “I have my own apartment now.”
She inhales sharply. “But I’m not well! I need you!”
As I put down the chart, Skylar’s head swivels toward me. I see recognition come into her eyes.
“What is she doing here?” Skylar’s eyes narrow. “Get out or I’m calling the cops again!”
A machine beeps shrilly, and by the time the same nurse who led Cameron and me to Skylar opens the curtain, I’m already backing out of the makeshift room.
“You feeling okay, Skylar?” The nurse checks the machine’s screen. “Your blood pressure and pulse just shot up.”
I hope Skylar will be kept here for another day or two. In the meantime, I’ll email Cameron another snippet of the video clip I’ve created, the one that features a zoom-in on Skylar’s furious, pinched face as she berates him with vicious words.
I showed Cameron that video during our fourth session together, the one I’ve titled Revelation. Seeing and hearing his wife disparage him, as he cowered on the couch, unshackled something in Cameron. It saved him.
Sometimes, we need to look at our lives from a different angle to recognize the dysfunction and damage certain relationships are causing. When Cameron saw—truly saw, for the first time—how abusive Skylar was to him, he began to gather the courage to move out.
That video also cost me my license. I’d snuck into Cameron and Skylar’s house in D.C. to record it; neither of them knew I was hiding in a closet, filming the argument I’d instructed Cameron to stoke. When Skylar found out by hacking into Cameron’s emails, she reported me. Luckily, Cameron told the police he’d given me permission to enter his home and film him, which means the criminal charges didn’t stick. Only the professional repercussions did.
So in a way, that video freed me, too.
Back in the hospital’s waiting room, I pause at the watercooler by the guard’s desk. A night of tequila and sex has left me parched, and the dry hospital air isn’t helping. I pull a plastic cup out of the dispenser sleeve and fill it, gulping it down without pause. Then I fill it again.
When I toss the cup into the trash bin, it lands atop a pile of others—including one that someone crushed. I stare at it for a moment, remembering Matthew’s hand closing tightly around the cup I gave him, then I head back outside.
My BMW is right where I left it in the parking lot, beneath a tall, bright lamp, but I still glance into my back seat before unlocking my door. It’s one of my newer habits, along with requesting a picture ID from prospective clients and making sure they match the photos before I let them into my house.
Skylar isn’t my only enemy.
It takes a minute for the heat to come on, and I’m already driving toward Matthew and Marissa’s house by the time the blowing air has chased the chill from my body.
Clients reveal only so much when they come to see me. I want to get a fuller picture of the Bishops, and I’m wide-awake, so I might as well start now.
They live in Chevy Chase, just over the D.C. line in Maryland, an area where even a small plot of undeveloped land can go for seven figures. Their home is exactly as I expected: grand and sprawling with a beautifully maintained lawn, enclosed by a tall wrought-iron fence and gate. It’s easy to imagine Marissa clipping flowers from the garden in a wide-brimmed hat while Matthew tosses a baseball to his son, and to picture them on their graceful front porch, sipping cocktails as the sun dips lower into the sky.