Chapter Twelve
Fox
“You are in control of your destiny.”
“Life is not random.”
Speaking daily affirmations aloud was a new technique I was trying out to keep my anxiety at bay. I hadn’t shared this with Haze, as she’d either laugh at me until she cried, or have me committed.
It had been one of Sally’s ideas to help me remain calm in between sessions. The low, steady voice uttering these nuggets of wisdom apparently belonged to Dr. William Tipton, aka Doc Willie, an American psychotherapist with a near cult-like following.
I parked outside Sally’s office and paused the audio.
I had felt no discernible positive effects from repeating these affirmations, but maybe repetition was the key.
There was, however, a nagging feeling that Doc Willie was able to genuinely believe the phrase “You are in control of your destiny” because he had not met my wife.
As soon as I had sat down in the white cloud chair opposite her, Sally got straight to it.
“Let’s revisit the event.”
Sally insisted on doing this every session.
She had explained, citing several learned sources with long surnames I couldn’t remember, that by constantly reliving my trauma, I would normalize it and get bored of it.
This would solve my being triggered by it whenever my memory was unexpectedly prompted.
I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened last month when I was suit shopping: the fabric sample I was presented with was exactly the same shade of blue as the rope I had been tied up with.
It was hard pretending to Fabio that my hyperventilating was down to horror at the high percentage of polyester it contained.
I closed my eyes. “I saw them coming toward me and knew they were trouble.”
The five men rushing into the apartment bedroom.
“I was able to tell Haze to run.”
I pushed her out of the window.
“They punched me several times and dragged me away.”
I was flung into the cart. The sound of the crowds surrounding us. The smell of oranges. The kicks to my stomach every time I tried to move.
“They took me to a cashpoint.”
The crowd noise got fainter and fainter as the cart left the main square. When it finally stopped, they pulled me out of the cart. Through the black bag they’d placed over my head, I could just make out a building. They dragged me inside and tied me to a chair.
“They kept shouting at me. ‘What’s your code?’ ”
“Who are you working for?”
“They kept punching me because they didn’t think I was telling the truth.”
“No one! It’s just us! We’re just us!”
I had felt the blows raining down on me. One of the men got a little carried away with a knife and my right thigh. And so it went on and on. I kept blacking out and then being slapped back awake.
“I was lucky the police came across us.”
A burst of gunfire. I could barely see out of my blackened eyes, blood dripping down my forehead. But I knew it was her. I knew she’d come for me. They may have taken my knives, but they hadn’t taken my GPS watch. Around me, the men fell to the ground.
I shook my head and opened my eyes. Sally was staring at me.
“Being saved by the police shouldn’t make you feel emasculated. That’s their job. To help people.”
I smiled at her. “I know.”
But it wasn’t the police who had saved me.
It was my wife and her best friend.
And there was the rub.
Despite being a man who understood that women were our equals, I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. Lesser, even. Did that make me a bad feminist?
“How has it been going with your performance issues?”
It was never far from my mind.
Clark Dixon.
I had choked.
Not him.
Just choked.
“I just don’t understand why it happened. I was excited for it. And then, at the last moment, I couldn’t do it!” I thought of my hand dropping to my side. The knife limp in my fingers. I wished I could explain to Sally how catastrophic it was to be a killer who couldn’t kill.
“You have unresolved issues that are preventing you from being mentally in the moment.”
It wasn’t that I couldn’t get it up. I couldn’t stick it in.
Sally tilted her head. “How are the nightmares? And the panic attacks?”
“They’re not panic attacks! They’re just moments when it feels like the walls are caving in and I have trouble breathing.”
Sally let the silence linger.
“Okay, so I suppose some might say that is a panic attack. But I’d rather not have the label.”
Sally tapped her pencil against her notebook. “You’re taking the pills I gave you?”
At our last session, Sally had listened to my particularly long monologue about the state of the world and how it was impossible for us to believe it was a good place when so many bad things happened every day, she had decreed it was time for medication.
Anti-anxiety pills that she said would help me.
I’d only started taking them in the last few days, and so far I’d noticed no change.
But then, maybe I was too far gone for help.
I chewed the inside of my cheek. I was having anxiety that the anti-anxiety pills weren’t working. That was not a good sign.
“Yes, I’m taking them.”
“You still haven’t told your wife about these not-panic-attacks?”
“I don’t want to worry her.”
Haze needed to rely on me as a tough, capable partner in crime. We were a team. We each needed the other to pull their weight. She’d already had to save me once. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to save me again.
“You shouldn’t keep things from her.” Sally leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “You need to be honest with her.”
I knew she was right. Healthy communication was important for any couple.
I just struggled to actually do it.