Sometimes, patients are ashamed of me, or rather, their need to see me. Sometimes they embrace me so fully it compromises our working relationship. Elle, whom I found to be bright, funny and compassionate, had managed to strike the perfect medium. We were friendly but not quite friends—with friends the sharing of trouble goes both ways and with us it was necessarily one-sided. Still, our sessions had taken on the tone of two girlfriends chatting, rather than of a doctor counseling a patient. It showed me she was comfortable with me. It had taken her a long time.
I added lemon to my cup. “Ah, yes. Poor St. Valentine. But it’s not that anymore.”
She sipped and gave me a familiar raised eyebrow. “Sure it is. The search for the perfect gift? The despair if you don’t get just the right thing? The depression of not having someone to buy for, or having someone to buy for but not the person you want.”
“I’m sensing some anxiety over Valentine’s Day.” How easily I put on the doctor’s cap. Girlfriends or not, Elle was there to talk, and I to listen. She didn’t always take my advice but then, not all of it was good.
The way she tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair meant what I’d said was true, but I didn’t push. Some of my colleagues favor a more antagonistic approach, call my methods the “soft and fuzzy” school of psychology. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I can only do my best.
“I do love him.” She spoke low, but not hesitant. “It’s not that I don’t.”
A year before she wouldn’t have admitted that much. I offered a smile. “So then, what is it? You’re afraid to buy him something?”
“It’s so much pressure.” Elle shrugged and spun her spoon around in the cup. “And I think…I think he’s going to make this a big one.”
“More than flowers and candy, you mean.”
She nodded, her face shadowed. “Yeah. I think so.”
“We’ve talked about this.” I sipped my tea, watching her. “How relationships grow. It’s part of change.”
She laughed, ruefully. “I know. Dr. Danning, I know that.”
I knew she did. Elle had been with her boyfriend for over a year. She danced around the idea of marrying him and having children, of making what she called a real life. She had other issues, bigger ones, but it all came back to that in the end. Marriage and children, whether she could take what he offered her or not, whether the past had any right to influence her future any longer. She’d come a long way in the year she’d been seeing me, but sometimes it’s the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.
“It’s just hard.” She sounded ashamed. “It shouldn’t be. He makes it so easy. But it’s hard, anyway. Even when I fight with him, he just comes back with something so perfect I can’t chase him away.”
“Do you really want to?”
She sighed. “No. But do you know how hard it is to be with someone who’s perfect?”
“Nobody’s perfect, Elle.”
She gave me a look. “Some are more perfect than others, Dr. Danning.”
I laughed a bit. “Yes, that’s true.”
She stirred her cup as if she could dissolve her troubles the way she dissolved the sugar in the tea. “I keep thinking…”
“Yes?” I asked, when waiting for her to continue failed to prompt her into speaking.
“What if he’s the last man I’ll ever sleep with for the rest of my life?”
I fussed with my own tea to create distance from a question that hit too close to home. “Would that be so awful?”
Elle put her cup on the edge of my desk and rubbed the arms of her chair, her face angled away from mine. “No?”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
The look she gave me was pure, vintage Elle Kavanagh, stubborn and self-effacing with a hint of snark. “I anticipate the rest of my life being a very long time.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I told her, and we both laughed.
“I don’t want to cheat on Dan. But I’m afraid I might. Just because.”
“Those things don’t happen by accident.”
She seemed chastened by my sterner than usual tone. “I know.”
I studied her before saying, “The offer still stands, if you want it.”
She looked up. “See both of us. I know.”
“Dan’s a wonderful man and he’s been good for you. You know putting the onus of your happiness on someone else isn’t healthy. But neither is refusing to allow someone to help you gain it.”
“I know, I know, I know!” She groaned, tipping back her head. She grimaced. “Bleah! I know! Stupid fucking Valentine’s Day!”
“Maybe you’re getting yourself too worked up. What are you doing for him?”
She straightened in her chair. “Heart-shaped meatloaf. With asparagus. And some sex.”
I meant to answer right away, but sudden immobility stifled my words. I filled my cup with tea. I didn’t want to cover the fact I couldn’t speak. The teapot rattled against the cup and I had to force my hands to steady.
I envied her. Fiercely. Suddenly. Horribly. I envied Elle for her meatloaf and plans for lovemaking to celebrate a holiday she hated. I envied her fear that she had something to lose.
“Dr. Danning?”
I put on the doctor mask. I owed her that. We might laugh and drink tea, and I might be privy to her deepest, darkest secrets, but we were not friends.
“It sounds lovely. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.”
She nodded, slowly. “Yes. I think so.”
“And whatever happens after, Elle, remember that he’s doing it because he loves you. And it’s all right for you to love him back.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d cried in front of me, but this time her tears made my own throat close in sympathy. Or perhaps I wanted to weep for myself, and not with compassion for her. Either way, when I handed her the box of tissues, I took one for myself, too.
“When does it stop?” she asked, as though I had all the answers.
“I don’t know, Elle. I wish I did.”
It wasn’t the first time I didn’t give her the answer she was looking for, but it was the first time I felt I’d failed her.
When did it stop? That was the question of the day. When did the fear go away, when would I stop longing, when would I cease wanting something that was wrong?
It was easy
