All Is Not Forgotten(61)

Sean was light. I was the darkness. He was good. I was evil. He was clean. And I was filthy.

I swallowed down my bitter pill and carried on. The child with the box of matches. A match now lit.

Alan—you there? Who’s the person you want me to look into?

Then I said it. I just said it. And I said it loud enough for Sean to hear me.

“Bob Sullivan.”





Chapter Twenty-four

The next day was Tuesday, and I went up to Somers as I always do. I felt relief to be with the criminals, to be yelled at, disrespected, and deceived. My relief concerned me. Were my own crimes so despicable, I now felt deserving of this mistreatment? Was I now destined for a life of martyrdom to pay the debts of my transgressions? I would sooner join poor Glenn Shelby in the grave than live that way.

It was an easy day for Somers. Or maybe it was just easy in comparison to the week I’d had back in Fairview. My usual drug seekers came to abuse my patience. The truly deserving inmates were neither healed nor appreciative of the small comfort my prescriptions afforded them. The staff reminded me how miserable life can be when you aren’t careful to pave the right path for your life—to build yourself a good house. Still, there was nothing about the day that upset me.

I have said very little about my own family, my parents and my sister. It does not seem relevant to the story, and yet much of what I have explained to you involves childhood mishaps and dysfunction. Perhaps to understand why I did the things I did, you should have some more pieces to my own puzzle.

You already know that my parents were lovely, generous people. I see them once a year in the summer. Julie is very good about this. They are a plane ride away, so it requires planning and effort. They are older now and do not like to travel, so the onus is on us to make the journey. My sister is ten years younger, and we have little in common. She is a history professor in London. She never married but seems quite happy with her life. She sends us a card every Christmas with a picture of her and her two Labs.

That seems enough for now. I hope I have satisfied you that my motivations to help my son were driven by the selfish but normal instincts of a parent to protect a child and not anything more devious or corrupt than that. I feel the need to justify myself, and my actions. That is a manifestation of my guilt. I tell my patients that nothing good can come from guilt. It leads us down paths where we do not belong if we are to move forward. It is, by its very nature, a backward-looking emotion. See how it has already taken me from the task at hand?

These were challenging days, and I knew enough to recognize the help I needed to give myself. They say doctors make the worst patients. That is because we exercise such incredible power. The power to heal if we are competent. And the power to hurt if we are not. To throw ourselves in with the lot over whom we exercise that power is a humbling endeavor. Too humbling for some. It requires a very robust ego to maintain the degree of confidence we must have to wield our power. There cannot be hesitation or doubt, or we would never be able to function, to do our jobs. Imagine a knife in your hand, a scalpel; soft flesh beneath the blade. The movement of your hand will determine the very life of the patient on your table. Or, in my case, a pen in hand, words to be written that will send chemicals into the patient’s body, altering the mind. The mind, that controls the body. Admitting weakness. Accepting help. It feels like a slippery slope to a doctor’s demise.

I have not taken much medication in my life, and I did not intend to start. I limited myself to the small doses of lorazepam. I sat with my anxiety the way Jenny had to sit with hers, and Sean with his. I told myself I was building my empathy, that this would make me a better therapist. But I was not so foolish that I failed to recognize the difference. Jenny could afford to cry all day, or put her feelings in the garbage bag and give them to Sean. And Sean had the luxury of walls to pound and miles of road to run. He had Jenny to feed his sense of purpose. I had no such luxuries. I had to show up for work. I had to see my patients. I had to smile at my wife and watch my son’s swim meets. I had to be supportive but strict with his behavior. And I had to implement my plan with moderation. Precision.

The rest of the week passed. I saw Tom on Friday. He was growing more angry at Detective Parsons for not finding the boy with the blue hoodie. I saw Charlotte on Thursday. She had another unsatisfying encounter with Bob, another fight with Tom, but her focus was on her new bond with her daughter. She told me that Jenny had been upset about something after the group session Wednesday night. She asked me if anything had happened, and I lied to her. I worked with Jenny on voices, on the words Dear Lord, oh dear Lord. And I worked with Sean on the red door. Both of them had been distracted. Both of them had concealed something from me. After the group met Wednesday night, they talked for a long time in the hallway. Charlotte was waiting outside in the car. The other patients walked past them. It ended with a long hug, which I observed undetected.

I would not learn about the things that happened away from my office until the following week. But, of course, everything that happened had been my doing.

It was Charlotte who first gave me the information. She called me the following Monday and asked to come in. She rushed past me as I closed the door to my office. She did not wait for me to sit down before she started to cry and talk all at once.

It’s bad! It’s so bad!

“Take a breath, Charlotte. Close your eyes. We have time for you to say everything, to tell me everything, so just … take one moment to gather yourself.”