Eve pointed to her ears. “Listening,” she said.
“I’ll share a secret with you, something about my life. Something personal. You can ask me questions about it and I’ll answer as best I can.”
Eve mulled it over, and judging by the slim smile on her lips, found it somewhat appealing.
“And the deal? What do I have to do in return?” she asked in a clipped voice.
“The deal is that you share a secret with me. Whatever it is, make it something substantial, something you might not want someone to know, at least not until you trusted them. So? What do you say? Do we have a deal?”
She eyed him suspiciously, though it wasn’t for long. A resigned look eventually came to her face, which she followed with an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
“Whatever,” she said, somewhat overplaying her disinterest. “I’m curious to know if you have something good to give, because honestly, I don’t think you do. I think this is going to be a big disappointment, but—” She cut herself off before shifting her gaze to the ceiling. She appeared to be mulling something over in her head.
“But if it’s good … really good…” She leaned forward in her chair, closing the gap between them, close enough to give Mitch a whiff of the harsh cleansers used in the industrial-strength soaps and shampoos given to the patients. “I’ll give you something really good in return.”
A sinking feeling momentarily pervaded Mitch’s stomach as he second-guessed his strategy, but there was no turning back now. “I have depression,” he said, followed by a sudden pang of nerves when his confession did not draw her gaze. “It’s a clinical diagnosis, and I take medication for it. Hasn’t been easy. Depression treatments don’t always work, and they left me feeling pretty discouraged.” He saw her neck move, a little twist to the left, her head inching his way.
“I took different drugs, tried different therapies, and I’m not cured. Doesn’t work that way. Some days it’s better than others and I think I have it under control. Other days … well, not so much. It’s been part of me for most of my life, but I’ve masked it well. I don’t like talking about my mental health issues. I think I’m supposed to somehow be above it because I help people get over their illnesses. But I’m not my disease. I’d still go see a cancer specialist who had cancer herself if I trusted her to cure me. She’s not her disease, and neither are you. I want to get to know you … all the facets of you … and try to help. That is, if you’ll let me.”
Now, she was looking him squarely in the eyes.
“I don’t know much about you because what’s in your file are thoughts, notes, and observations, nothing more. It’s not you, the person.”
Mitch wrung his hands together nervously. This was not an ordinary therapy session for him. He was being an open book with a patient, and for sure there was some ethical line he had crossed, but a deal was a deal—he’d have to give something to get it. Eve didn’t budge, meaning he hadn’t given enough.
“I sometimes wonder if I’d be a better doctor without depression, or maybe I’m good at what I do because of it,” Mitch continued on. “Maybe I connect with my patients better because I’m intimately familiar with mental illness.” He shrugged, his expression one of uncertainty. “All I know for sure is that having this disease makes it easier for me to blame myself when things don’t work out.”
This got Eve’s full attention.
“What hasn’t worked out?” she asked, sounding like the therapist in a role reversal.
“You next. That was our deal.”
Eve eyed him nastily. “Everyone has mental problems, some are just better at hiding it than others. I expected more from you.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, thought Mitch.
“What hasn’t worked is that my son Adam—he’s a bit older than you—is addicted to heroin. I keep asking myself: Did my illness prevent me from seeing what was happening right under my nose?”
“And what was happening?”
Mitch offered up an ill-prepared answer that came straight from the heart.
“Adam was experimenting with drugs on his own—booze, then pot, then pills—until he got to the really hard stuff. He did it and he hid it, and as much as I’d like to blame my depression, sometimes … well, make that most of the time … blame doesn’t do anybody any good.”
“Where is he now?”