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However, if she pulled together her possibilities list based on her personal issues and insecurities alone, it wouldn’t be fair. It’d abuse her clients’ trust, encourage the opposite of professional therapeutic rapport.
Before Trista and Miles were due to arrive, she reread Donovan’s progress notes. He’d seen her for six months, almost from the moment he got discharged from military service.
During his last mission in the Middle East, he’d put himself and others in unnecessary danger. His superiors forced him to take leave, for everyone’s sake, and he failed the mental health component of his return-to-work fitness test.
When he came to her, he’d been desperate and depressed, unable to recover from the rejection. He’d been a high-end deer hunter since his teens—knew how to kill, what it took. The realization he couldn’t meet the required warzone standards created a soul-deep, unresolvable hurt. He reported feeling weak, inadequate and unworthy and couldn’t understand how his wife stood by him when he couldn’t stand by himself.
Dying and wanting to die came up a lot in their sessions, and she’d made sure to do thorough suicide screening every time, checking whether he had means as well as intent. He’d assured her that his wife had locked the guns away, making them inaccessible to him, as a safety precaution, and convinced Sage the suicidal ideation remained purely in his head—until she got the hysterical call from his wife.
Mallory had found him, hanging, dead, at their holiday house in the country. Heartbreaking. An image she could never unsee. An image that would probably forever haunt her nighttime and waking hours. It wasn’t the way anyone wanted to remember a loved one.
He’d been Sage’s first-ever successful client suicide. And didn’t that flood her with feelings of inadequacy. What could she have done better? What had she missed? What could she have done differently to prevent his death? How could she have successfully coached him into wanting to live? Could anyone have saved him? They were all questions that would never be answered.
Rationally, she realized she could only act on a client’s disclosure, and Donovan had been selective with what he’d said, secretive. He’d made up his mind. He’d set out to complete one final task, and he’d achieved it, his last act providing him the success he strove for, in a totally warped way.
Her desk phone rang, jolting her out of her helpless, confronting, memories.
Reception.
She answered the call and pressed speaker.
“Trista has arrived.”
“Thanks. Give me a couple minutes then send her in.”
Sage closed Donovan’s file and opened Trista’s. The woman had a reputation as a highly revered doctor who’d been a part of the frontline medical-response staff. She hadn’t just had to deal with the day-to-day risks but also the trauma of seeing severely injured soldiers and not always being able to save them.
That’s where she’d struggled most—her inability to prevent deaths. Each ‘failure’ accumulated, until one small event became the fragile straw that broke the weary camel’s back.
Sage had lost one client, and it had been devastating. She couldn’t imagine the depth of difficulty and despair Trista faced every day, needing to live with what she’d experienced. But she could empathize and help her client develop some meaning that made sense, bringing her down from the emotional ledge.
After the Donovan situation, Sage promised herself she’d be super alert and go with her gut. If she sensed Trista didn’t answer the suicide assessment accurately, she’d refer her immediately to the Crisis Assessment and Treatment—CAT—team. Safety overrode confidentiality.
But today wasn’t simply about Trista’s therapeutic intervention. Sage intended to also gauge any behaviors that might suggest the woman could be her terrorist.
A light rap on the door—her receptionist’s signature knock.
“Come in.” She put on her warm, professional smile and walked over to greet Trista.
The petite woman entered her office, her shoulders rounded, facial expression flat and eyes distant, as though reliving all the atrocities she’d seen—the sad, unfortunate usual.
“Trista, take a seat.”
Sage sat in an adjacent chair, the huge window behind her desk providing an incredibly peaceful view of the sun’s rays glinting off the Yarra River.
“How are you doing?”
“The same.” Trista picked at her bitten-down fingernails and avoided eye contact.
“Have you tried using the meditation app I recommended?”
“A few times.”
“And how did that go?”
“Okay.”
“How about exercise? Have you started at the gym?”
