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CHAPTER 29
As Holly leans back in her office chair, she checks her phone again. It’s almost three p.m., and JJ hasn’t responded to any of her three texts. Holly feels trapped. As if her head is already stuck through the hole and she’s only waiting for the guillotine blade to drop.
Holly scheduled her day to end early, with the intention of working on her manuscript. Of course, there’s no hope for that now. She wonders how she even managed to navigate her other appointments after her run-in with JJ. The rest of her clients certainly didn’t get her at her best. But it was helpful, almost calming, to listen to their issues and be distracted by problems other than her own.
Her phone vibrates in her hand and Aaron’s name pops up on the screen.
“How are you?” he asks as soon as she answers.
“Not great, Aaron. In fact, not good at all.” She goes on to tell him about her disastrous altercation with JJ.
After she finishes, he asks, “No word from her since she took off?”
“She hasn’t responded to my texts.”
“And you haven’t heard from anyone else? No one in the group that she might have talked to about you and the DMT?”
“No. But it’s only been a few hours.” Holly runs a hand through her hair, resisting the urge to pull out a clump. “It’s basically déjà vu.”
“How so?”
“Like with Elaine. I can’t believe I’m back here in this same mess. Helplessly waiting for a second client to destroy my career with her allegations.” She stops to swallow away the lump in her throat. “But this time is even worse because JJ’s are true.”
“Not really,” he says. “She misinterpreted the situation.”
“Did she? I was getting stoned in my own office, Aaron.”
“For therapeutic purposes, right? Besides, you did it after work. It’s not like you were seeing patients while under the influence.”
“That kind of hairsplitting won’t matter much to the Medical Board.”
“Enough with the defeatism!” Aaron says, but his tone is good-natured. “Let me help take your mind off things. Let’s grab dinner tonight.”
She smiles at the phone. His fierce loyalty might be the best thing she has in her life right now. “Thank you, Aaron. Truly. But I’m not hungry. And I’d be terrible company tonight.”
“So what? I’m starving. And I’d be terrific company.”
She laughs. “Not tonight. I don’t have it in me. How about dinner tomorrow?”
“It’s a date!”
“Aaron?”
“Yes?”
“If JJ tells people about the DMT…”
“It’s going to be OK, Holl. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
“Thank you.” She pauses. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I do now,” he says with a soft laugh.
Holly heads home right after the call. She sits down to work on a chapter of her book, but failing to put two coherent sentences together, she gives up and lies down on the couch. To distract herself from her negative thoughts, she leafs through a psychiatric journal and ends up nodding off halfway through a particularly dull article on how vegan diets could affect the required dosage of certain mood stabilizers.
Holly wakes up a few minutes after seven o’clock feeling groggy, amazed that she was able to nap, which she almost never does. Feeling like she should eat, she heats up some leftover Thai food she ordered in a few nights before but merely picks at it before eventually throwing most of it away.
She tries to watch an episode of a streaming series on her laptop but loses interest within minutes. She considers opening another bottle of wine but realizes that won’t help. As her restlessness crescendos, her sense of inaction makes her feel physically ill. By nine o’clock, she can’t take it anymore. She calls JJ, but the line rings through to voicemail, and Holly slams the phone down on the cushion beside her.
