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Elaine buries her face in her hands and begins to rock in her chair.
Holly knows better than to push too hard, but she also can’t ignore it. Elaine has arguably made the most progress of anyone in the group. Early on, she confided to Holly that despite being a leading voice in the fight against the opioid crisis, she was still abusing prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet. She just hid it better than most. But a month into therapy with ketamine, Elaine found sobriety. A fact Holly has confirmed every week since, with Elaine’s permission, through urine drug screening.
Elaine’s abstinence coincided with one of her earliest ketamine trips. In the subsequent debrief, she recounted to Holly her powerful hallucination about being chased through a forest by a hungry wolf. By the next session, Elaine had recognized the wolf for what he was: the anthropomorphic representation of her uncle.
From the age of six to nine, Elaine and her little brother had gone on an annual summer fishing trip with their paternal uncle. She hated those excursions and came to despise her uncle, refusing to go back by the time she turned ten. But it wasn’t until she began working with Holly that the suppressed memories of those nights spent alone in her uncle’s cramped cabin, while her brother slept next door, flooded back to her. Elaine remembered the encounters in harrowing detail: the claustrophobic sense of being swallowed in her uncle’s arms, the stale beer on his breath, the way his whiskers scratched her face, and the panicky, gut-churning sensation of his pudgy fingers probing between her legs.
It was hard for Holly to stomach the details, but she recognized that Elaine’s devastating molestation had contributed to, or likely caused, her severe anxiety, her inability to sustain romantic relationships, and ultimately her opioid addiction. Holly is convinced that for Elaine to heal from her PTSD and remain sober, she needs to confront those horrific memories.
“After yesterday’s session, Elaine, did you… relapse?”
“No!” Elaine snaps, her face still covered by her fingers. “Want me to pee in a cup right now to prove it?”
“No. It’s just that you seem so shaken.”
Elaine pulls her hands from her face. “Because I am!”
Holly reaches for her wrist, but Elaine recoils from her touch.
I moved too fast. I pushed too hard.
Holly had predicted Elaine would be the most vulnerable member to compounding doses of psychedelics. And she silently berates herself for not listening to the inner voice that told her to slow down, to begin with smaller doses. But what was done was done. “Aside from the flowers, Elaine, do you remember anything else from yesterday’s session?”
“No.” She pauses. “Except…”
“Except what?”
Elaine’s eyes narrow. “When I woke up. Or came to. Or whatever. I was in your… arms.”
“Yes. Right after I injected the midazolam, you reached out and clung to me. And you asked me—pleaded with me—to keep holding you.”
Elaine’s chin drops, and her gaze falls to the floor.
Holly suppresses a sigh. She has no idea how far yesterday’s experience might have set her client back.
Though there are twenty minutes still left in their session, Elaine rises abruptly to her feet. Turning away, she murmurs something Holly can’t decipher.
“I didn’t catch that,” Holly says.
Elaine looks back over her shoulder. “I said it didn’t feel right.”
“What didn’t?”
“That hug. The way you touched me. It didn’t feel right at all.”
CHAPTER 7
Dr. Aaron Laing watches his wife cross the deck to the table where he sits overlooking what feels like the entire Pacific Ocean on this cloudless spring morning. Holly strides toward him in leggings and a simple gray top, with that combination of purpose and grace that Aaron has always found so appealing. After ten years of marriage, he feels more attracted to his wife than ever. Her angular, almost androgynous features have aged well, and she’s even more striking now than she was as his resident, over a decade earlier. But he understands that part of his response is due to her absence from his life. And he’s more determined than ever to win her back.
He stands up to greet her, and they repeat their awkward dance of separation, where he leans in to kiss her, and she quickly pulls out of the hug. His lips brush over her ear instead of her cheek.
“I’ve missed this, Holl,” Aaron says once they’re both seated.
She tilts her head. “You missed brunch?”
“Well, that goes without saying.” They had their second date here, also brunch, eleven years before. Nestled two stories above Laguna Beach’s rolling shoreline, the restaurant has been popular forever with tourists and locals for its basic but consistently good food, bustling ambience, and spectacular view. “What I meant is dining with you.”
“Oh, yeah, me too,” she says distractedly. “Look, Aaron, what I really need right now is your advice.”
