Genevieve tilted her head to the side in confusion. “The months leading up to breaking my ankle?”
“Yes.”
“I was doing great. Everything with work was ... amazing.”
The doctor pushed a curl behind one ear and observed Genevieve with kind perceptiveness. Genevieve watched the curl slowly spring free again.
“Do the months leading up to my ankle surgery have any bearing on my Oxy addiction?” Genevieve asked. “I took Oxy to treat physical pain from the ankle surgery.”
The older woman took a bite out of a ring of dried apple, nodding as her attention focused on one of her pots of hanging ivy. She chewed, swallowed. “Or,” she proposed mildly, “you took Oxy to treat physical pain from the ankle surgeryandto dull emotional pain.” Her gaze meandered around the room before meeting Genevieve’s eyes with such forthright knowledge that Genevieve felt the impact of it.
“I...” Her brain whirred. Instinctive denial rose at the idea that she’d used Oxy to treat her emotions.
“Is there a reason why you’ve been avoiding thinking about the possibility that emotional pain played a role in your Oxy dependence?” Dr. Quinley asked.
“I suppose I’ve avoided that possibility because it just ... it feels ridiculous. Everything was going great prior to breaking my ankle.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“Why was it great?”
“Because I’m so ... wildly fortunate. I mean, dozens of things have gonebeautifullyfor me. Beyond my highest expectations. Before I broke my ankle, I was the luckiest girl in the world.”
“Were you, though? Let’s think back.” She gnawed on a bite of dried apple.
The diffuser on Dr. Quinley’s desk hummed and blew a stream of scented mist into the air. At their weekly sessions, Genevieve had taken to sitting in the same chair she’d selected the first day she’d come here, with Sam.
The doctor liked to vary her location. Today, she’d brought out a brown velour beanbag. She was ensconced in it, legs crossed casually, like a white chocolate chip embedded in the center of a mound of chocolate frosting.
“As you know...” Genevieve started slowly, trying to order her thoughts so she could order her words. “Ever since the earthquake, I’ve believed that God had big plans for my life. Even so, to watch Him fulfill those plans the way that He did right after I graduated from college was mind-blowing. I mean, I was a design major. There’snoway to explain the success of my first study except to say that God orchestrated it.”
“You found yourself the recipient of a miraculous blessing for the second time in your life.”
“Yes. For several years after that first study everything was so very ...” She hunted for the right word, then shrugged. “Rosy.I existed in this state of—of euphoria and amazement. I threw myself into my work, writing and speaking with everything I had.”
“There must have been struggles.”
“There were. But the satisfaction was far, far greater than the struggles.”
“And then?”
Genevieve hesitated. “I can accept sympathy over the broken ankle, but I’ll feel like a whiner if I complain about the few things in my life, before I broke my ankle, that weren’t perfect.”
“I’m a professional at listening to whining.” The doctor grinned. “It’s what you pay me for.”
Genevieve laughed. How she loved this doctor’s slightly irreverent sense of humor. It cracked icy chunks of awkwardness and pain more quickly than a blowtorch.
“I prefer to focus on the positive,” Genevieve said.
“An admirable trait.” Dr. Quinley rolled to her feet and extracted a small spray bottle from a drawer. “And yet, that trait can get us into trouble when we focus on the positive in lieu of dealing with the pain.” She approached one of her plants. She sprayed it in time to a musical beat only she could hear, swaying her hips.
“You were on the verge of telling me about the pain,” Dr. Quinley prompted. “Take a moment. Remember. Put yourself back in the place where you were when the work became less rosy.” Dr. Quinley continued her task, moving from plant to plant.
“At some point along the line, I may have started overscheduling myself. As people became more familiar with my name and my books, I was invited to more and more conferences, webinars, worship events.”
“To which you said yes and yes and yes.”
