Session Two
SESSION TWO
DESERT FLOWER THERAPY
“You must have been terrified,” Dr. Ruben says, displaying just the right amount of empathy.
“Have you ever been in a life or death situation?” Typically, the patient does not ask many questions of the therapist, but this is different. I feel more like his equal than a patient.
Then again, I'm on his couch.
He shakes his head. “Not truly, no.”
“Me neither, until the fire. Maybe it’s not this way for everybody, but for me, the fear didn’t come first. It was shock, more than anything else. Utter shock.”
“That makes sense.”
“You’re supposed to validate me.”
A tiny smile, perhaps even a smirk, lifts one corner of his mouth. His bushy eyebrows climb up his forehead. “How about we make a deal? I won’t feed you bullshit, and you don’t tell me how to do my job?”
I nod once. I like this guy, and his straightforward approach. “Deal.”
Dr. Ruben says, "Your little sister sounds like she has a lot of personality."
Camryn’s sly, knowing smile pops into my head. “She’s a character. I used to worry she would have a hard time in life, but I think she’s going to be alright.” The slightest twitch of Dr. Ruben’s eyes has me hearing my answer through the lens of a therapist, and hustling to hedge my statement. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me it’s not normal for a big sister to worry about something like that. Leave the parenting to the parent, right?”
He slides his glasses halfway down his nose and looks at me with detached curiosity. “Are you going to do my job for me?”
My palms lift. “Sorry, sorry.”
He pushes his glasses into place. “I’m not going to tell you what’s normal and what’s not. The bell curve leaves a lot of room along the spectrum.” He uses his hands to demonstrate a bell shape. They flare out at the bottom, and he says, “As long as you’re not living in the tails of the curve, there’s plenty that can be considered perfectly normal for the individual.”
I nod. I like that.
“That said, do you want to tell me why you sound more parental than a typical big sister?”
“Well, I don’t think I’m living in the tails here—” I pause for his reaction. I’m pretty sure he’s biting back a smile. “But my mom died from an aggressive cancer when we were young. I took over her role.”
“Where was your dad?”
I shrug. I don’t like talking about my dad. It feels wrong, like an unintended betrayal. “Around.”
“Was he the same dad you were used to having before your mom died?”
I poke at the rip in the thigh of my jeans. How did Dr. Ruben manage to drill down to the center of it? This guy is good . “A few things changed. Others stayed the same.”
“Did this upset you?”
“I was more upset by what didn’t change, than what did.”
“How so?”
“He traveled a lot for work, and he kept traveling after she died. It seemed to me he should have found a job that allowed him to travel less. Or not at all.”
“You stayed with your sister?”
“We had a neighbor who would come and stay in the guest room when he traveled overnight. She was an old woman, widowed. Very nice. I think she was there so my dad could say there was an adult in the house.”
“Then she’d leave in the morning?”
I nod. “I got us off to school, then met Camryn in the afternoon and walked her home. We were on our own until the evening, when either my dad came home or the neighbor showed up to sleep over.”
“You were how old?”
“Ten.”
His eyebrows raise.
“I know how it sounds,” I say quickly, “but I was capable of making easy dinners, sandwiches and bagged salads and things like that. I knew how to dial 9-1-1 in case of an emergency, which”—I make ta-da hands—“turns out I needed, but not until much later.”
“So you took care of your sister?”
I feel it. How my chest puffs out. “Yes.” I cannot mask the hint of pride in my voice.
“Who”—Dr. Ruben leans forward, pressing his hands together between his open knees—“took care of you?”
“Me.” I’ve always felt a deep sense of pride at having taken care of myself and Camryn. But right now, the pride is gone. It’s the first time in my life I’ve felt sad about it instead.
Dr. Ruben sits back, letting the revelation simmer. "What happened after your sister took you home from the hospital?"