Chapter 23

Monday, April 15

“When do we get another session, Doc?” Salvador asks. The brim of his ball cap is twisted to the right, and he leans back in his chair with his arm dangling over its back.

“What do you call this?” Holly asks from the seat across from him.

“You know what I mean!” Salvador giggles. “With ketamine! And maybe Ecstasy, too?”

“What’s the rush, Salvador?”

“I’m getting that itch again.”

“For cocaine?”

“And Adderall, too. Maybe that even more. I’m under such pressure at work. God, I need my focus back.”

“As I explained last time, Salvador, after Elaine—”

“Fuck Elaine!”

“Excuse me?”

He sits up straighter. “Look, I’m sorry she’s gone. But she is. Why should that derail a good treatment—maybe the best one—for the rest of us?”

Holly finds his point hard to argue. “Today is for counseling only, Salvador. We can revisit psychedelic therapy at another session.”

“When?” he demands.

“Soon, I hope.”

“Fine.” Salvador pouts and slumps lower in his chair.

Holly rolls her hand in a tell-me-more gesture. “Describe this itch.”

“My show.” He shakes his head. “It’s shit, right now. I’m stuck. At the worst possible moment.”

“I thought you were putting the final touches on it?”

“Those are the most important ones!” he cries. “All the subtle little modifications. The fits and the accessories. They make or break the designs! It’s hopeless! I’m desperate for inspiration.”

“And you think you’ll find it in Adderall?”

“I’m sure as hell not finding it in espresso.”

She nods. “You’re struggling with your fear of failure again, aren’t you?”

“It’s no fear!” he cries. “Right now, it’s a foregone conclusion.”

“This is what we talked about, Salvador. You know that’s not rational. Look where you are in your professional life. What you’ve accomplished. By the age of thirty.”

“Thirty!” His laugh is frantic. “You want to me list all the designers who were the shit at thirty and nonexistent by forty? A designer’s life span is shorter than a hamster’s.”

“Any form of celebrity can be fleeting.”

“Don’t you get it, Doc? I can’t afford one wrong turn. There are no second chances in my business.”

“Is that it? Or are you really afraid of being exposed for the impostor you think you are?”

“I’ve been an impostor my whole miserable life,” he grumbles.

Holly has heard this before, but she senses that he needs to get it off his chest again. “Tell me about that.”

“Growing up in East LA and being all this?” He sweeps his hand along his torso and groans. “All the other boys obsessed with basketball, cars, and chicas. And little fifí me, who’d rather stay home watching Project Runway.”

“You never felt accepted.”

“Accepted?” His laughter is brittle. “I had to be an impostor just to stay alive! At school, I faked machismo. At least, my version of it. But the bullies, they saw right through me.”

Holly’s heart goes out to him. But she stays quiet, permitting him the time and space to express himself on his own terms.

“From day one, I knew how different I was,” he says. “How fluid.”

“Sexually?”

“That, too. Most people don’t believe me, but I actually prefer women. For company and sex. Who knows? If I’d heard of nonbinary when I was growing up, I might have identified as that. Instead of the freak the other kids saw me as.” His voice cracks. “Accepted? At fourteen, I would’ve killed to have just been left alone to my dreams and my designs.”

“I’m sorry, Salvador,” Holly says. “What about your family?”

“My sisters didn’t get me. Even Papi. He tried, but I was like an alien to him. I just embarrassed him.” He swallows. “Only Mamá. She always got me. We’re alike that way. We both live for beauty.”

“I admire you, Salvador. I do. The strength it took to get where you are.” Holly extends her hand to him. “But this fear of being exposed. After all you had to go through. It seems to be a huge trigger for you.”

Sitting up straighter, he stares helplessly at her. “How does that help me? Trigger or not, I’ve got a gun to my head. This new show. What I need now is another ketamine trip. Either that or to go back to the street stuff.”

“Don’t do that, Salvador.”

“Will you help me?”

“I will. Soon.” She sighs, hoping it’s a promise she will be able to keep. “Meantime, resist the urges. Give me a little more time. OK?”

“Yeah. I’ll try.” He hesitates. “Dr. Danvers?”

“Yes?”

“If ketamine really isn’t addictive, then how come I’m craving it so much?”

Holly smiles. “Because your therapy is incomplete. Once your sobriety is stable, and we’ve finished our counseling work, you won’t need ketamine anymore. You probably won’t even want it. Or any substance.”

A relieved look crosses Salvador’s face. “That’d be nice.”

After the session ends and Salvador has left, Holly summarizes the visit in his electronic record and then opens the detailed notes she is keeping on the group. She records his comment about craving ketamine, and she is about to add more when a soft rap at the door draws her attention. She looks up to see Tanya’s worried face in the doorway. “What’s up?”

“She just called again,” Tanya says. “The reporter.”

Holly’s stomach plummets. “About Elaine?”

Tanya grimaces. “I… I don’t think so. She said she was following up from last week.”

Holly sighs with relief. “You know what to tell her, Tanya.”

“You’ll get back to her as soon as you’re free?”

Holly grins. “You’re a quick study, Tanya.”

“But even putting all those media requests aside, your stack of new client requests is huge since Simon’s interview.” She hesitates. “We’re going to have to respond at some point.”

“In good time.”

“All right,” Tanya says uncertainly, before she turns away from the door. “I’ll go get your next appointment.”

A minute or two later, Tanya ushers Liisa into the seat Salvador just vacated.

“Hello, Liisa. How are you?” Holly asks.

Liisa utters a little laugh. “I always struggle with that, too.”

“With pleasantries?”

“With opening a therapeutic conversation,” Liisa says. “I sometimes start with… ‘Why don’t you bring me up to speed?’ That allows clients to launch into whatever is foremost on their mind.”

Holly smiles. “Why don’t you bring me up to speed then?”

“It feels like we’re in limbo.”

“Do you mean the group as a whole or you and me, specifically?”

“Both,” Liisa says. “As you know, I came into this group very skeptical. And only because I’d tried everything else. But I’ve been off the Xanax for almost two weeks now. Ever since you tried us on dual therapy. And I’m sold.”

“You can get to the but now…”

“Since Elaine’s death, we’ve stalled. And I think we both know that talk therapy alone will not suffice.”

“I would’ve thought you, of all people, would understand why we had to suspend the ketamine infusions.”

“Yes and no.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Of course you’d have reason for trepidation after Elaine’s overdose. But I think we can agree that, as an opioid addict, she was in an entirely different stratosphere of risk from the rest of us.”

Not if her overdose was intentional. Or it wasn’t self-administered.

“None of the rest of our relapses would likely be fatal,” Liisa continues. “Not to be too flippant, but Simon’s not going to OD on rough sex, and Baljit isn’t going to die from gambling.”

“What’s your point, Liisa?”

“Your therapy has gotten us to this stage. Six long-term addicts who are all presently abstinent. But we’re still susceptible. Fragile. And each of us is far more likely to relapse if you stop the psychedelics cold turkey.”

Holly finds it impossible to argue with her point. “I am considering restarting.”

Liisa’s shoulders dip with relief. “With ketamine?” Then she adds hopefully, “Or dual therapy?”

“Only ketamine. At least for now. And it would have to be in a more controlled setting.”

“What does that look like?”

“Administering it individually. In sessions like these. Not as a group. But obviously, we could still continue with the group debriefs.”

“Makes sense to me,” Liisa says with a satisfied nod.

Holly decides the time is as right as it ever will be to raise the question that has been troubling her. “Can I ask you something unrelated to psychedelics?”

“All right.”

“When you and the rest of the group went to see Elaine…”

Liisa crosses her arms. “What about it?”

“You were the only mental health expert in the group. Did you think it was a good idea to go?”

Her eyes narrow. “It wasn’t my idea.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Liisa shrugs. “I went along with the will of the group. To show solidarity. As a fellow client, not as a counselor.”

“Of course.” Holly is tempted to ask Liisa what distressed JJ so much about that intervention, but she knows it would be a flagrant ethical transgression to discuss one client’s issues with another. That doesn’t apply to the dead though. “How did Elaine seem to you?”

“We caught her by surprise, obviously.” Liisa pauses. “She was quiet. Withdrawn even. Defensive, too.”

“But did your therapeutic instincts tell you she was on the verge of a relapse?”

Liisa considers it for a moment. “Not really, no.”

“Or suicidal?”

Liisa’s face scrunches. “You think Elaine deliberately overdosed?”

“Not necessarily. I just wondered what you thought.”

Liisa shakes her head. “I didn’t remotely get that sense from her.”

“I see.”

“In fact, her defensiveness aside, the one other word I would’ve used to describe Elaine that day might have been: determined.” Liisa stares at her so intently that Holly has to look away.