Chapter 24

Tuesday, April 16

Holly has to remind JJ to hold her arm still so she can secure the IV into the vein at the crease of the elbow. Even then, JJ still relentlessly taps the floor with her purple-and-white Dolce Gabbana sneaker, which Holly remembers seeing priced online at over a thousand dollars a pair.

After Holly had acquiesced to the will of the group, Tanya found time to schedule all of the clients in for ketamine infusions on the very next day, which was supposed to have been set aside for Holly’s research and writing. She has started to dodge emails from her editor, requesting chapters. Her literary agent is hounding her, too, wanting a sample to try to sell the foreign rights. But Holly finds it all too much in the aftermath of Elaine’s overdose.

JJ was the last of the group to show up for the first ketamine infusion following Elaine’s death. The other five clients sailed through their sessions, but JJ appears far more anxious than any of the others. She can’t sit still. Her finger won’t stop drumming the armrest. And her eyes dart around the room.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Holly asks as she tapes the IV into place.

“I need this,” JJ says flatly. “Yesterday, I caught myself scouring the pantry for a bottle of vodka I’d hidden in there a few months ago. Luckily my housekeeper had sniffed it out on her big booze purge. Don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d found it.”

“All right.”

JJ glances around at the empty recliners in the room. “It’s weird not to have the others here during the ketamine drip.”

After her experience with Elaine, Holly has second thoughts herself. She even considered asking Tanya to stay in the room as a chaperone to witness the infusions but dismissed the idea as an unnecessary invasion of her clients’ privacy.

“In light of the circumstances, this is the only way we can proceed after… Elaine.” Holly clears her throat. “With one-on-one supervision.”

A pained look crosses JJ’s face, but all she says is “I guess that makes sense.”

“I know you normally listen to your music on headphones, but since you’re the only one here, do you mind if I put the music over the speakers instead?”

“Sure.”

“Your usual playlist? The jazz?”

“Yes, please.”

Holly taps a button on her laptop, launching the instrumental music. Holly doesn’t recognize the first tune—jazz has never been her thing—but she does find something soothing in the gentle blend of instruments, which seem to follow their own beat.

Without being asked, JJ lowers the blindfold over her eyes.

“Ready?” Holly asks.

JJ nods.

“Set and setting, remember?” Holly says. “Go to your happy place, JJ.”

She knows JJ’s happy place is on that lanai in Hawaii in that moment when she revealed her first positive pregnancy test to her husband. Holly can’t help but think how bittersweet the memory must be for JJ. How the pregnancy failed, as did the others that followed, and her marriages with them. And how JJ’s drinking steadily worsened as her hopes of motherhood faded.

Holly connects the syringe of ketamine to the IV and slowly depresses the plunger, administering the same dose she gave JJ on her previous infusion. Once the medication has emptied into the vein, Holly disconnects the syringe and reaches for the other one that she has preloaded with midazolam to have ready in case JJ were to have a dysphoric reaction.

After a minute or two, JJ’s foot stills. Her breathing slows, and her whole body appears to relax. “Beautiful,” she mumbles.

“What do you see?” Holly asks.

“No, not see, hear,” JJ says dreamily. “The music. I feel it all over my body.”

“How so?”

“The drumbeats, they vibrate in my fingertips. The sax and trumpet are like a warm rush through my chest. And the piano… the piano feels like heat across my shoulders. Like walking the beach in the morning with the sun on my neck.”

“Lovely,” Holly says. “Just go with it.”

JJ is quiet for a minute or two. And Holly focuses on the music, trying and failing to perceive its tactile qualities the way JJ does. Anything to resist the urge to question her client. But it’s futile. “What’s troubling you so much, JJ?”

“Nothing,” she murmurs.

“Not now. Before the infusion. Since Elaine died, you just haven’t been yourself. At least not with me.”

“I spoke to her.”

“I heard,” Holly says. “Along with the rest of the tribe, right?”

JJ shakes her head lazily from side to side. “Not that time.”

“Oh, yeah. You spoke to Elaine before, didn’t you? That was why the group went to see her.”

“No, not then… later.”

“Later?” Holly’s neck stiffens. “Are you saying you spoke to Elaine again after the tribe confronted her?”

“Yes.” JJ shifts on the recliner. Her legs twist from side to side, and she repositions herself as if trying to find a comfortable spot and failing. “I should’ve told her. I really should have. I feel awful about what happened.”

Holly sits up bone straight. “Told Elaine what?”

JJ’s voice rises. “Is it getting louder?”

“I’ll turn it down.” Holly lowers the volume. She realizes she probably shouldn’t persist in questioning her client under the influence, but she can’t resist. “Why do you feel awful, JJ? What didn’t you tell her?”

JJ doesn’t reply for several seconds as her breathing quickens and she continues to shuffle in her seat. Finally, she says, “I saw you, too.”

“Focus on the last time you spoke to Elaine. What should you have told her?”

“You were here!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I forgot my jacket. The cleaner downstairs, she let me back into the office to get it. I heard noises. And that smell!”

Holly feels panic swirling in her gut. “What smell? When?”

“That stink. Like burnt plastic. I thought there was a fire. I had to check.” Despite the blindfold she is wearing, JJ points somewhere across the room. “You were right here.”

The foreboding grips Holly like a hand to her throat. The office door! JJ was the one who had opened it.

“That stink! I searched it online,” JJ says, her voice rising. “It was DMT, wasn’t it?”

“This isn’t about me…” Holly sputters.

“Turn it down!” JJ cries, grabbing at her ears.

Holly turns off the music. But it doesn’t help to calm JJ.

“I can’t breathe.” She pulls her right arm back, stretching the IV tubing that runs from it.

Holly lurches forward. She fumbles to attach the syringe to the IV port and, as soon as it’s connected, plunges the whole dose of midazolam into JJ’s arm.

“Make it stop!” JJ cries, rocking in the recliner while grabbing her ears.

Holly can barely breathe herself, but she forces calm into her voice. “Everything will be all right, JJ. I’m here.”

After a minute or two, JJ’s rocking slows, and her respiration lessens. Soon, she is still again.

“JJ?”

Her only response is an unintelligible whimper. And then she begins to snore.

Holly clings to the belief that the hefty dose of midazolam she gave JJ will probably blur her memory of this session. But it won’t touch her earlier recollection of having walked in on Holly while she was tripping on an illegal psychedelic inside her own office.

Holly’s heart hammers. Did I just interrogate a client under the influence of psychedelics for my own benefit? It’s another in a series of self-inflicted wounds. She doesn’t recognize her own motivations anymore. And what kind of therapist loses insight into herself?

Besides, even if Holly can achieve the results she hopes for through psychedelic therapy, how can the ends still justify the means?