earbuds firmly in place, Nicki pushed past the gate to her brownstone and hit the sidewalk running. She’d done way too little of it lately, none since what happened the other night. The conversation with Vince had been taxing, but in a way it had also freed her. He’d said he would leave her alone. She believed it.
Running in place, she looked around her. How she loved the borough called Brooklyn. Bright, bustling, colorful, diverse. Nicki knew Julian wanted her to move west. He hadn’t mentioned it on this trip but that didn’t matter. California was beautiful, true enough. But who would ever want to leave all this energy and feel like they were on vacation forever?
The light turned. Nicki jogged across the street, down the block and around the corner. She saw the bike, heard a scream and felt a pain sharper than she’d ever experienced. One more step and she was on the ground. As she fell she screamed again, realizing that the first guttural wail had been wrenched from her own throat.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop. Are you all right?” Nicki couldn’t speak past a jaw clenched against the pain shooting up from her right ankle. On her mind was a single thought—there’d be no dancing tonight.
* * *
Julian shook hands with his colleagues, tired but glad he’d agreed to the last-minute invite to join a San Francisco symposium on holistic alternatives to traditional remedies for mental illness. Most doctoral students couldn’t wait until school was over. But Julian relished the classroom and missed the sometimes passionate discussions around another’s point of view. He reached his car, slid inside and fired up the phone. After trying unsuccessfully to use it from several different locations inside during the day, he’d turned it off and placed it inside his briefcase. No hesitation in doing that. Julian lived a life that was consciously predictable. Which was why he was surprised to hear several pings as soon as his phone turned on that indicated missed calls.
He tapped and scrolled. Natalie? Couldn’t imagine what she wanted. He’d hired a capable assistant, a forty-seven-year-old single mother named Katie. At their luncheon he’d made it clear to Natalie that he was not in competition with her father, and that she’d provided the only assistance he would ever need from her. There was a call from Katie and one from his mother. The other was from Nicki. He clicked on her number and was surprised to see she’d called multiple times. As he started his car and rolled out of the parking lot, he tapped the steering wheel to engage her number. Ready to leave a message, surprised when she answered the phone.
Confused, he glanced at the dashboard and then at his watch. “Babe, why are you answering the phone? You should be...what’s wrong?”
It was after eight on the East Coast. She should be on stage. Something was definitely not right.
“Babe...”
Sniffles and then, “I’m hurt.”
“What happened?”
In halting, pain-filled detail, she told him. “Tomorrow I’ll see a specialist who’ll determine exactly how long I’ll be down. I pray that it’s only a couple weeks. But it could be longer. Julian, I’m scared. If my ankle is broken, they’ll replace me. What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to be okay,” he replied quickly, his voice calm and firm. “No matter what happens. And you’ll come here, to Paradise Cove, so that I can make sure you get the very best care available. So that I can take care of you.”
Julian had factored a good six months into getting his practice up and running with a stream of regular patients. Until that happened, he felt he’d have time on his hands. He’d hired an agent to book college talks and professional speaking engagements. Had set up a schedule with the Drake Community Center’s director to offer free counseling to the troubled youth it served. The first month was understandably slow. In August, following an article featuring him in a national medical magazine, he began getting referrals from medical doctors in neighboring towns. Some from as far away as Sacramento and San Jose.
Last week, a former patient of Dr. Johnson had walked into his office. He’d been treated for ten years and felt it wasn’t working. At first Julian refused outright, but after a thorough interview, he’d decided to treat the man. People regularly changed therapists. For the patient, the change proved beneficial. For Julian, it had been fateful. The satisfied patient had obviously been talking. Barely into September and a stream of Johnson’s patients had called for appointments. He turned most of them down, but agreed to see the ones he felt would benefit from his counsel. One was in his office now, engaging in a pattern most likely developed in childhood and perfected throughout her adult life.
He stole a glance at the clock on the wall behind where his patient Vanessa sat. Nicki’s plane would arrive in just over ninety minutes. To leave right now would be cutting it close, and Vanessa’s time would be up in sixty seconds. But she was in crisis. He could not in good conscience end the session before her emotions stabilized.
He watched her twist a tissue to shreds as she recounted an incident from her abusive childhood. Tears for moments she’d probably relived thousands of times. It was neither healthy nor productive, but he knew why she did it. Why millions of people relived the very situations they’d most like to forget. How one could at first hate and then—after depression became the new normal and sadness felt sane—relish the pain.
In psychology it was called destiny neurosis, a form of repetition compulsion. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1914 and expanded after further research. As she had during each previous session, Vanessa lamented over the beatings endured at the hands of her parents, and later a foster mom after the parents lost custody, yet was despondent that a physically abusive third marriage was ending. In the past, a cocktail of antianxiety and antidepressant medication had been prescribed as the cure for her chronic depression. Masking the pain, not fixing the problem. Prescription drug abuse was an epidemic in America. Seventy percent of the country was on some type of prescribed drug. A quarter of them were like Vanessa—depressed, abused, hurting. It’s one of the reasons Julian had chosen psychology over psychiatry, to push himself toward holistic, drug-free healing and make prescribed medicine the absolute last resort.
“I just want to be loved without being beaten. You know?” She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Is that too much to ask?”
“Not at all, Vanessa. Being beaten is not love. It is what you have come to associate with love, because the abuse you suffered was done by people who said they loved you, those who professed to care about you. Do you understand that?”
“What am I doing wrong, Doctor? How do I keep attracting the same type of man into my life?”
“By repeating the same thought patterns and the same actions that brought you to my office. But that’s why I’m here. To help you replace toxic thoughts and actions with positive, productive ones.” Julian looked at his watch and stood. “I have a couple things I’d like to give you.” He continued talking as he walked over to a wall unit. He pulled a card from a drawer beneath the shelving and a blank journal from a stack on one of the shelves. On the front was a message in large, bold letters: Focus on Good Thoughts and Good Things Will Happen.
He walked back to Vanessa, who had stood as well. “I want you to begin keeping a journal. Every day, write at least one page of what you are thinking. It can be anything, any thought that comes to mind. How you’re feeling. How you slept the night before. What you watched on TV or ate for dinner. Doesn’t matter. The point is to get in touch with yourself and become conscious of the storyline
