He winced. “Probably not. But I’ll be here with coffee when you get out. Although truthfully the coffee is awful here.”
Good to know.
7
“Hey, Sweetheart.” Barrett stopped me when I would have entered the office on the third floor that was Dr. Trevor’s. “You can tell him anything. I just want to reiterate that. He lives like we do, okay? And one of his kids… was with Phoenix. So, yeah, he really does know everything.”
One of his kids was with Phoenix? It took me a moment to understand what Barret was saying. Then it hit me. So Dr. Trevor had lost a child the night that Phoenix couldn’t remember. “Wow. Okay.”
I didn’t know if I felt better or worse about this situation knowing that. It did help to know that I wasn’t going to have to hide something, which would have been really hard if I was actually going to make this work.
“Was this where they sent Phoenix after?” Because that had to be awful. His own son had died and Phoenix was here…
“No. ” Barrett shook his head. “I’ve got to go pick Phoenix up actually. But no, where they sent him? That was really hard because he needed help so he went to a private clinic in New York City, but he absolutely had to lie—at ten—to the doctors about his life. This was still being built. But he comes here now,obviously. Saw Trevor initially, but I think they’ve moved him on because it’s more of a check in thing and he does group stuff. He’ll tell you about it.” He kissed my cheek. “We may have to eat my mother’s barbecue shrimp tonight.”
I hoped I could keep it down. Puking with Eric, Kit, Daniel and Stephen Lent in the other room was going to rank among my most awful moments ever. Ugh. I walked into the office, leaving Barrett in the hallway.
There was a woman behind a window, and as I walked over, she opened it and smiled at me. She was older, gray-haired with piercing blue eyes. “Alatheia, hello and welcome, please have a seat.”
Okay. So she knew me.
She had one of those voices that would have done very well on meditation apps. I’d tried one twice. It hadn’t worked for me. Was this going to be a problem in therapy? That I couldn’t do that. Clear your mind and picture the stress leaving your body…
I settled into one of the chairs, the quiet hum of the room that should have probably been calming only alarmed me more. What was I going to have to do behind the closed door to the doctor’s office? Outside, trees stood in reflection against the water. This whole building had clearly been set up to make the lake the central view of everything. Actually, that seemed true of everything.
Dr. Trevor’s sign above the door said he was the only doctor here in this office. Where did Phoenix go? The wooden tables sat between the chairs, their surfaces holding magazines and small décor, making the wait feel less clinical, more like an invitation to pause. Or I was sure that was what it would do for other people. Not me. No, I was starting to panic. It was a room made for waiting and I wanted to run out of it. Instead, I pulled my knees up and pressed my head into them. Yes, this was good.
The door opened, and I didn’t look up. I was breathing. That was enough. A comforting hand touched my shoulder, and I looked up to see Dr. Trevor sitting there. Eric had called him Kirk. When he’d come around while I had been admitted, he had been nice, giving directions to the nurses but not much else right then. That time had been for detoxing. That was what they had said.
“It’s okay.” His smile was small. “I hate waiting rooms too. There’s not a way to make them okay. I’m convinced. Just the very act of knowing you are going to have to sit and wait creates angst. If you can, come back with me.”
Okay. I had to do this. There was no hiding the crazy now. He probably wouldn’t like that word. But I could think it about myself if I wanted to.
I got to my feet. “It just feels better like that. It’s a weird thing. I didn’t used to do that.”
“Not so weird. Trust me.” He motioned toward his office, and I followed him down a hall lined with diplomas, every single one his. Wow. He’d been some places. Harvard. Yale. Stanford. We made a quick turn into an office, and he closed the door behind us before settling into a chair. With the same kind of gesture he’d used a moment ago, he indicated the couch across from him. Okay, this was happening.
The wooden coffee table between us in the center held a small potted plant and next to it an empty vase. There was a bookshelf against the far wall filled with books and carefully chosen decorative pieces, picture frames that showed his family, three men with a woman—I recognized her, she had been out front, the one with the great voice, and the gray hair and blue eyes—that was his wife—and two kids with them, two girls. There should have been a third but River, that was his name, had died. I swallowed at that thought. How awful.
I lifted my gaze to meet his. “Sorry. I look at details. I get lost in them.” I used to do it with shoes but that was gone. What was the point? Almost everyone was awful. Their shoes didn’t tell me how much anymore. I was back in my ratty sneakers. I didn’t even mean to wear them but they were what I’d shoved on when I’d gotten dressed this morning. Actually, a lot of these clothes were Chicago clothes. The t-shirt under Barrett’s sweatshirt was too. The jeans. My underwear was new.
“What did you notice when you came in here?”
I tilted my head. “Is that a test? Like you’ll be able to tell things about me based on what I see here?”
“No, we’re just talking today. At the end of this session I’ll tell you my current plan for you. And that’s adjustable.”
Okay. He just wanted to talk? “Why do you want to talk?”
“Well, I’m hoping I can get you to trust me a little bit. That starts with talking. What details did you notice? I always wonder how my office comes across.”
Trust him. Well, the Lents did. Clearly. I wasn’t adverse to trusting him. “You have a potted plant and an empty vase next to it. There’s a view of the lake in almost every room in this building. And you have a beautiful family. Your wife is your receptionist. She has beautiful eyes and a great voice. You went to Harvard, Yale and Stanford.”
“In the opposite direction, Stanford, Yale and Harvard. That order. I should fix that in the hall. Didn’t think about it. Yes, that’s my wife. She is beautiful. I’ll tell her you said that about her voice. Someone once told her she should read audiobooks for a living. Unless you don’t want me to. Everything in here is private.”
I shook my head. “Please go ahead about the voice. That’s fine. I didn’t mean it to be private.”
He pointed to the vase. “Her name is Lily, and I keep lilies in this vase when they’re in season. I won’t put anything else in it soit’s empty when they aren’t. I don’t buy them off season. Seems wrong they’ve been forced to grow when they’re not supposed to.”
