Chapter 3 Now

Walking in the first time is the worst part.

Weaving through the hallway of closed doors—people like me hiding behind them, ready to diagnose what's wrong with someone who was a complete stranger only an hour ago. MD, PsyD, PhD, all sorts of fancy-sounding letters tacked on after names. I knew coming in was intimidating for my patients, but I don't think I comprehended just how bad it could be. Until now. When the doctor became the patient.

I ride the elevator up to the third floor. It's like every office building—cheap, rough carpet, neutral walls, heavy fire-resistant doors, and too much silence. I stop outside my destination, 302b. As I contemplate going in, my cell rings. Jake flashes on the screen. My brother. I hit ignore, telling myself I'll call him back later. Though I know I probably won't. He wants to make sure I'm doing okay, like everyone else who checks in on me occasionally. Except my brother knows me too well. So I try to answer on the good days, when it's most believable that I'm happy. Though lately those are few and far between.

I take a deep breath and tuck my phone into my coat pocket, going back to staring at my new therapist's office door. Inside waits a man I've never met. A stranger I'm supposed to tell how I'm feeling. Keith Alexander, PhD. Nausea works its way from my stomach to my throat, and I haven't even opened the door yet. My hands are damp and sweaty. I wipe them on my jeans, wishing the turbulence of my thoughts would slow down, just slow down already.

Yesterday my thoughts were slow. Painfully snail-like. It took me twenty minutes to fix a cup of tea, an hour to get ready to leave the apartment. Even putting on my shoes was an effort. And now I'm buzzing like I've downed a dozen cups of coffee.

Gabriel. I saw Gabriel Wright.

And he was happy.

But I can't think about that now. I need to be somewhat normal for this man. He'll scribble in his notebook and say, "Uh-huh," and, "Let's talk about that." I can see him now—fifties or sixties, gray hair, playing the part.

My hand touches the doorknob—a polished chrome, not original to the dingy building. It's cold. I hesitate, my stomach gurgling. I'm hungry.

I can't remember the last time I felt much of anything, much less hunger. Until yesterday.

I push through the door, and a midtwenties or early thirtysomething man looks up. He's no older than me. Dark blond hair, tanned skin, and a welcoming, open smile. It must be dress-casual Friday, because he's in jeans and a blue T-shirt that fits him well enough that it's hard not to notice it fits him well. A notebook lies open on his broad desk, appointments by the look of it. He must be Dr. Alexander's assistant.

"Hello. I have a six thirty appointment."

"You must be Meredith Fitzgerald."

"Meredith McCall," I correct him. "I'm using my maiden name, but it wasn't changed when…" I let my voice trail off. If Dr. Alexander's assistant doesn't know the details, I'm not going to be the one to provide them… when I made the appointment," I conclude.

"Ah." He straightens, offers a kind smile. "Well, Dr. McCall, come right in, then."

It's not until I step past him and into the inner office that I realize no one sits behind the desk in the corner. Dr. Alexander is not perched on the leather couch or the matching armchair. Because the young man I mistook for an assistant is Dr. Keith Alexander. Heat works its way up to my face.

How many times had I been mistaken for an assistant because I was young and attractive? Too many to count. Furthermore, he is not what I was expecting. How am I supposed to talk to him about the crushing guilt I feel or how much I miss my husband while simultaneously wishing I'd never met him?

I blow out a breath, sitting tentatively on the edge of the couch. Instead of the creamy white walls my office has, his are alternating blue and gray. A modern white-and-wood coffee table sits atop a Persian rug. A frosted-glass window calls my attention from a few feet away. During the day, it must bathe his patients in sunlight.

"I'm Dr. Keith Alexander. I'm glad to see you this evening." He sits across from me and crosses one leg over the other, hands folded in his lap.

Dr. Alexander gives me an open, welcoming smile, but I'm not seeing him—I'm seeing myself, doing the exact same thing with my own patients. Except I don't get to do that anymore. Not after what happened. For the time being, my office goes on without me.

He clears his throat, snapping me back to the moment. "Can I offer you herbal tea? Water?"

"No, thank you." I set my purse beside me and work my jacket off my shoulders. I find the clock behind him. 6:32 p.m. Only fifty-eight minutes to go. I press my lips into a smile that probably looks more like a grimace. "Oh, before I forget." I unzip my bag and pull out the paper I'd folded in half. "I have this for you to sign."

He leans forward and takes it. "What is it?"

"It's for the Office of Professional Misconduct. You enter the date I've started therapy and sign. I'm required to start by next week, so I guess this just tells them I've complied with their punishment."

Dr. Alexander takes a pen from the end table next to him. He pushes his glasses down his nose and reads the document over before scribbling today's date and his name at the bottom.

"Here you go." He hands it back to me and smiles. "And I'm sorry you think of coming here as punishment. I promise to do my best not to make it feel that way."

"I… I didn't mean…"

He waves me off. "It's fine. I understand. I'd probably feel the same way if I was mandated to do something instead of coming voluntarily."

"Thanks for saying that. But I really didn't mean to use the word I did."

"It's fine. Let's move on."

"Okay."

We stare at each other for a long time. It's definitely not a comfortable silence.

"So… this is awkward, isn't it?" I say. "A therapist getting therapy."

"Not at all. I'm of the opinion that all therapists should go to therapy, at least occasionally. Just like we get a physical checkup once a year, we should get a mental one, too." He taps his head. "How's your day going?"

I force another nervous smile. "Fine. Yours?"

"Very good, thanks. Any weekend plans?"

I hold back a sigh. He's making small talk. Trying to make me comfortable before he jumps into the real stuff.

"No," I say. "It's hard to…" Do anything after what happened. Plan a life without my husband. Get out of bed before noon. "… make plans these days," I finish.

"I see." In my peripheral vision, he shifts, then switches tacks. "Well, I'll get right to it, then. How are you doing following the tragedy you endured seven months ago?"

My tragedy. Like my life is a Shakespeare tale instead of the train wreck it is.

Static fills my head. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the simple fact that I wake up alone every morning. Dr. Alexander's leap into the deep end is too much, too fast. I need to make sure I can keep my head above water before I begin to swim.

I swallow. "Do you think we can talk about something other than my husband to start?"

There, a simple request. An easy-to-respect wish. If my patient said that to me, I'd nod and move on. And Dr. Alexander does exactly that.

"Okay, well, what did you do today? Can you run me through it?" The timbre of his voice is soft, kind. It grates at my nerves, and my gaze drifts toward the clock again. 6:35 p.m.

Fifty-five minutes to go.

"What's a day in the life of Dr. Meredith McCall like?"

"Well, earlier I went for a walk," I say, "a long walk. I pretty much do that every day lately."

"And how was that? Go anywhere interesting?"

"The park," I say. "And I got coffee." I stop myself before I say the rest of it—where I saw Gabriel Wright for the second day in a row and followed him for another hour. Maybe longer. Long enough that I nearly didn't make it here in time. "Then I did a little shopping," I finish, wrapping up my day with a lie.

"Oh? Grocery shopping or…?" Dr. Alexander tilts his head to show interest.

"Just window-shopping, mostly." Another forced smile. I catch my leg jiggling and press a hand over my knee to still it.

He holds a pen in one hand, a small bound notebook in his lap. I haven't seen him jot down anything yet, unlike me when I see patients. I take lots of notes.

Is he not writing because he knows I'm lying?

Maybe it's a bad idea to lie. Maybe, like me, he can almost surely tell when someone is lying. And lying is half of what got me into this mess in the first place, isn't it? Pressure builds inside me until I find myself asking, "Is what I say here confidential? I mean, obviously I know about doctor-patient confidentiality rules. But do you have to report details of our session to the medical board, since my visits are mandated by them?"

Lord knows I signed a bunch of papers at the hearing without reading them. Maybe I've lost my right to privacy—like so many other things I've lost because of you. Perhaps that notebook on his lap isn't so much our session notes but where he'll write notes on what he has to report back. Maybe—

"What's said in this room is confidential." His voice interrupts my ruminating. "I do have to tell the medical board if you don't come to your sessions, but what you tell me here is covered by patient confidentiality, the same as any other patient we would treat."

My hands unclench. I take a deep breath and let myself sink back on the couch.

"Okay." I make the split-second decision that truth is the best policy. At least here, where these words will only echo within the walls of his office. "I did go for a walk, but I didn't go shopping afterward. I spent my day following someone."

"Following? Do you mean someone was leading the way? Or you were following someone without their knowledge?"

"Without their knowledge."

He nods, keeping his face expressionless—something we are both trained to do. Lately it's been the only face I wear, since expressions display our feelings, and I don't seem to have any.

"All right. And who was it that you followed today?"

"A dead woman's husband."

Dr. Alexander's mask slips and his eyebrows widen. His pen spins in his fingers, presses to the notepad, and he scribbles before looking up. "Tell me more."

I look away for a long time, staring out the window at the swaying trees. I don't make eye contact when I finally speak. "His name is Gabriel Wright. He's the husband of the woman that was killed, the father of the child killed."

Dr. Alexander quietly absorbs what I've said. I feel his eyes trained on my face, but I can't look at him. Not yet, anyway.

"Was today the first time you followed Mr. Wright?"

I shake my head. "Second."

"When was the first time?"

"Yesterday."

"And why did you follow him?"

I shrug. "I have no idea. I saw him yesterday at a coffee shop. It was a surprise, definitely not something I'd planned. He looked… happy. I followed him. I think maybe I followed him again today to see if it was just a fluke, if I'd caught him during a singular moment where he'd just learned some good news, perhaps. I was curious if after that he'd slip back into a miserable existence."

"And was he? Miserable, I mean. During the rest of the time you followed him?"

I shake my head again. "He seemed… normal. But that's not possible."

"Why not?"

"How could he be? How could he be happy after all that he lost? Some days I wake up in a cold sweat, with the image the newspaper ran the morning after the accident haunting me. A tarp covering a tiny little body. A stuffed Hello Kitty on the ground a foot away. What must he wake up to every day? Losing an innocent child and the love of his life? He proposed to her in the middle of a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Dr. Alexander scribbles more notes on his pad. "If we could, I'd like to back things up a bit. I've read your case file that the medical board sent over. But it doesn't go into any detail about the family of the victims. You knew the Wright family before the accident?"

"No. We'd never met."

"Then how do you know how Mr. Wright proposed?"

I look up and meet the doctor's eyes for the first time. "Google. Gabriel Wright teaches at Columbia. He's an English professor specializing in Shakespeare. The way he proposed is noted in his bio. He refers to her as his Juliet. I sat under a tree while he taught his classes earlier today and read everything that came up in a search. That's how I passed the time while I waited."

Dr. Alexander's eyes dart back and forth between mine. "If you've never met, how did you know who Mr. Wright was when you ran into him yesterday?"

"I've seen him before. The night of the accident, I was in the hall at the hospital when the doctor told him his wife and child had died. He crumpled to the floor, sobbing. The memory of his face isn't something I could ever forget. Though last night when I followed him home, I also checked the names on the mailboxes inside the lobby of his building just to be sure. It was him."

"Okay. So yesterday you saw Mr. Wright by chance and recognized him. You followed him because you were curious after seeing him smile. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"And what about today? How did you come to follow him again?"

"I went back to his apartment early this morning and waited for him to come out."

"How early?"

"Does that matter?"

"No." Dr. Alexander smiles. "It's not important if you don't remember. But if you can recall, I'd like to know. That is, if you're comfortable sharing."

I take a deep breath in and blow it out. "I left my house at four a.m. and stopped for some coffee. It was probably about four thirty when I arrived at his building to wait."

He scribbles some more on his notepad. "So yesterday you followed him because you had witnessed Mr. Wright showing signs of happiness. You wanted to know if that was something fleeting or not, and you seemed to have gotten that answer. What did you hope to learn when you followed him today?"

"I'm not sure." I shake my head. "I guess I just can't believe he's really moved on. So I went back to look for cracks in the mask he wears."

"There isn't a specific timeline on healing. I'm sure you know that from your own patients. Coping with loss is a unique experience for every person. We all grieve differently."

"I know that, but…"

Dr. Alexander waits for me to continue, but I don't. I can't argue with what he's said because he's right. In theory, at least. It's what the textbooks all say. Every person heals on their own timeline. Yet I know in my heart of hearts that Gabriel Wright can't have moved on. Part of the process of healing from a tragedy is acceptance, and acceptance requires forgiveness. But some things in life are just unforgivable. Dr. Alexander can't understand that, even though he thinks he does. You need to live it to truly understand it. And I don't have the energy for that type of argument today.

So I force a smile. "You're right. We're all different."

"Do you think you've gotten whatever compelled you to follow him out of your system?"

I shrug. "Probably."

But a person who doesn't plan to follow someone anymore doesn't stop and buy a dark hoodie and baseball cap right before going to meet their therapist. They probably also don't pick up a set of mini binoculars.

"Dr. McCall?"

I hear him call my name but I'm staring out the window again, mesmerized by the sway of the trees. They're so peaceful to watch. My office is too high up for trees.

He smiles warmly when I eventually shift my gaze to him. There's no sign of judgment on his face. "Is it okay if I call you Meredith, rather than Dr. McCall?"

"Of course."

"Great." He nods. "Anyway, Meredith, I think if you're still curious about Mr. Wright, we should discuss that here, rather than you following him again. Aside from the obvious, that stalking someone is illegal and you're already in trouble with the medical board, I think you're playing with fire by becoming emotionally invested in the happiness of the survivor of your husband's victims."

"Gabriel Wright is not only one of my husband's victims."

Dr. Alexander's brows puckered. "Who is he, then?"

"He's the husband of my victims, too."