Chapter Five
Morgan was ten minutes late for her session with Dr. Linda Henry, a psychiatrist specializing in trauma and post-traumatic stress. She would never have agreed to see a shrink if it wasn’t for Tessa threatening her with another speed dating event.
Morgan hated the idea of speaking about her feelings, but she hated the thought of more awkward, forced interactions with young, sparkly women even more.
This was the lesser of two evils.
“Breathe,” Morgan told herself, pushing open the door to the practice. “Just breathe.” She took in a sip of air and caught eyes with the receptionist, who didn’t look so happy to be at work on a Saturday morning.
Morgan might have sympathized, but she had no idea how to relate.
Back when she worked full time at the hospital, the days often blurred together.
There were times when she had no idea what day it was.
Monday, Saturday, they had all felt the same.
It was one endless stretch of shifts and surgeries.
Adrenaline and copious amounts of coffee kept her going, and she loved it. She loved it… until she didn’t.
The receptionist’s eyes flittered down to the coffee stain on Morgan’s blouse. The woman, whose hair was short and pixie-like, raised a single judgmental eyebrow.
“Coffee incident,” Morgan said, looking down at the ugly brown stain. Her cheeks burned. But they’d been burning ever since she had bumped into Sydney, so it was difficult to say whether the stain was the actual reason for it. “I didn’t have time to change.”
The receptionist smiled in that fake polite way that showed she gave zero care and then tilted her head to the closed door. “Dr. is waiting for you. You can go right in.”
Morgan pushed open the frosted glass doors and was met by an attractive woman in her late sixties. She wore beige slacks, a white blouse—no coffee stain to ruin it—and had her dark hair up in a very sleek bun.
“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a hunter-green armchair.
Everything about the room screamed serene.
Natural light flowed in through large windows, the walls were painted in a soothing soft clay color, a bookcase dominated most of the left wall and there were potted plants in every corner.
Yet, despite the room shouting get-ready-to-be-healed, Morgan felt like she was standing at the start of an Olympic medal sprint.
“You look nervous, Morgan. Are you nervous?” Dr. Henry asked as she sat down on a matching chair across from her.
She was smiling and, not in that cold, calculating way some psychiatrists did, as if they were deciding which eye to choose for the lobotomy.
It was pleasant and soothing, yet it did absolutely nothing to settle the nerves in Morgan’s stomach.
“No,” Morgan lied.
If Dr. Henry had picked up on the lie, she didn’t say. Instead, she reached for a small leather notebook and pen on the table beside her and placed it on her lap. “Since this is our first session together, I’d like to get to know you a bit more.”
“There isn’t much to know.”
“I doubt that.” Dr. Henry smiled so serenely that Morgan nearly felt a few pounds lift off her shoulders—though the weight bounced right back when she wondered if the doctor was trained in hypnotherapy. “Can you tell me a bit about yourself?”
If Morgan hadn’t paid for a full fifty minutes, and that judgmental receptionist wasn’t sitting right outside those doors, and Tessa wasn’t waiting eagerly to hear all about the session, Morgan would’ve left.
“Alright,” she muttered softly instead, folding her arms over her chest, hoping the stain—which Dr. Henry had barely glanced at—was concealed.
If she had to share about her life, tell a stranger everything that made up Dr. Morgan Blake, she’d start with the facts, none of the wishy-washy emotional business about her childhood.
Those secrets she planned to take with her to the grave.
“I studied medicine at Johns Hopkins,” Morgan started, her voice thick.
“After that, I did my residency at Mass Gen and stayed on for my fellowship in neurosurgery, focusing on neuro-oncology. My work has been recognized worldwide and I’ve been awarded the Platinum Scalpel for my research on advanced neuro-oncology techniques.
About five years ago, I was appointed head of neurosurgery at Sequoia Medical Center in San Francisco. ”
The doctor raised her eyebrows at all the facts Morgan was practically spewing like word vomit. There was no interrupting, no asking for anything personal—at least, not yet.
“I love… loved,” Morgan emphasized the past tense, “… my work. But that all changed when I lost a patient.” She rushed through the words, hoping they would slip by unnoticed. “At that point, I sort of fell out of love with what I was doing. Hence the move to Carmel a few weeks ago.”
Dr. Henry took at least two minutes to speak. It was an excruciatingly long two minutes that had Morgan chewing at the inside of her cheek. She had purposefully left out her nervous breakdown, but wondered if that was a mistake. Could the doctor see right through her?
“You’ve made some big changes recently, Morgan,” said the doctor finally, tapping the end of her pen on the open notebook. “New town, new life. That’s a lot for anyone.”
“It wasn’t exactly a choice.”
“You feel like you had no choice in quitting your job at Sequoia Medical Center after losing a patient and moving from a city to a small town where you aren’t practicing medicine?”
Morgan shook her head. All those things had felt forced, like she had no control over her life, as if she was drifting through a forest without a compass. At the time, every decision had seemed like an escape route rather than a well thought out choice. It still felt like that now.
“Can you tell me about the patient?” Dr Henry asked when Morgan didn’t reply. “The one you lost.”
A whole layer of goosebumps rained down on Morgan’s skin.
She shuddered, and her head physically ached.
Whenever she closed her eyes, whenever she dreamed, whenever she stood silently with the sun on her face, birds chirping in the trees, she saw the sweet face of twelve-year-old Emily Parker.
Those blonde curls, those big green eyes, the way she laughed right out of her belly when she was telling Morgan that she had a crush on a boy named Jerry Hunting and that she couldn’t decide between being a ballerina or a professional food taster when she grew up.
Morgan could remember all of that like it was yesterday.
Emily had been diagnosed with a medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumor that affected the cerebellum—the part of the brain that helped with coordination and balance.
While it was considered aggressive, it had a good prognosis with surgery.
Morgan had performed similar surgeries countless times, all of which were successful.
But that time was different. As soon as the surgery had started, Morgan knew something wasn’t right. The tumor had been way more invasive than the imaging had suggested, and it had not only wrapped itself around critical blood vessels, but it had also infiltrated deeper into the brainstem.
Still, Morgan had been sure she could remove it… until a major blood vessel had ruptured. There was nothing she could have done to save Emily’s life.
Absolutely nothing.
The look on Emily’s mother’s face when Morgan told her that her only daughter hadn’t made it through the surgery marked the beginning and the end of her spiral.
It wasn’t even an hour later when her knees had buckled, when she had slumped against the wall of the surgical ward, tears streaming down her face as she fought for breath.
An emotional meltdown that had escalated into a full-blown breakdown.
It was the thrashing and the kicking and the swearing that had pushed her coworker to sedate her and admit her to the psych ward upstairs.
It was the way everyone had stared at her the next day, as if they were scared of her.
It was the way they looked at her, as if they were afraid that she might crack again like she was a delicate porcelain doll, that had nudged her to hand in her resignation.
It was seeing Sequoia Medical Center out of the wall-to-wall windows from her penthouse apartment that forced her to make the move to Carmel-by-the-sea.
“I’ve lost a few patients over the years,” Morgan said, catching onto Dr. Henry’s penetrative glare. The doctor’s eyes were hard to pinpoint, a mix between brown and green and she was sure that if she could get close enough, she would see a rim of amber around the irises.
“But this one was different?”
“Yes,” Morgan said, nodding softly. “She was different.”
“Can you tell me why?”
If only it were that easy. If only Morgan had the answer to that question, though she suspected Emily’s death had been the cumulative end to a bunch of little things building up slowly over the years.
Who knew it was impossible to bottle up feelings and keep them bottled up for the rest of eternity?
“Not really.”
“Because you haven’t thought about the reason or you know it and you’re too afraid to admit it to yourself, Morgan?”
The alarm ending the session suddenly sounded, coming far quicker than Morgan had expected. Usually, time zipped past when you were having fun. It seemed it did the same when you were unraveling.
For the first time in almost an hour, Morgan could take a full breath.
Her lungs ached.
“I’d like to see you again,” said Dr. Henry, glancing up from her notebook.
There were a few scribbles written on the pages.
Scribbles Morgan would love to read. She wondered if Dr. Henry thought she was a nutcase for cracking over something as inevitable as losing a patient.
Doctors saved people, and sometimes those lives were beyond saving. That was how it worked.
“There’s a lot to work with, and I think you could benefit from a few more sessions. What do you think?”
Morgan nodded. Her mouth was too dry to say anything. She only just managed to croak out “Thank you” before she left the room and set up her next appointment with Mrs. Grumpypants behind the desk.
Stepping out onto the street, Morgan glanced up at the sun until her eyes burned.
A car honked.
She glanced in its direction and immediately shook her head. It was a silver Camry and through the back window, Morgan could see Tessa’s strawberry blonde head of hair. A hand stuck out the window and waved like she was either trying to flag someone down or wave goodbye to the Titanic.
“Get your butt in my car!” Tessa screamed through the open window. “I’m taking you on a date.”
“No thank you,” Morgan said, straight-faced. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be by herself, to open that lovely bottle of Pinot Grigio and drown her sorrow for a few good minutes. She even considered rewatching Forrest Gump for the millionth time.
Tessa pulled a face and leaned over the passenger seat to open the door. She had that I’m-not-taking-no-for-an-answer expression on her face. “Get your lovely tight butt into my car.”
Morgan rolled her eyes and climbed in. To fight Tessa was like fighting a great white shark. Impossible to win. “Where are we going?” she asked, buckling herself in.
“You’ll see.”
Morgan’s body suddenly tensed. After the morning she had already had, to be any more out of control made her suddenly feel like she was drowning. She felt like she was being held underwater.
At least Tessa picked up on the panic oozing off her body. She glanced sideways at Morgan and was just about to flick on the turn signal to merge back into the lane when she reached out to squeeze Morgan’s thigh instead.
“It’s a perfectly pleasant Saturday afternoon. After your therapy session, you could probably use another one. This one is a little more pleasant.”
Morgan turned her gaze down at her friend’s polished fingers and tried to ignore just how thick the air in the car was getting.
“Oh relax,” Tessa chuckled. “We’re going wine tasting, and don’t worry, I’ve got a spare blouse for you to wear. That one’s terribly dirty. What did you do, spill coffee all over yourself?”
“Wine?” Morgan breathed out in relief, not bothering to answer Tessa’s question. She leaned her head against the rest. If she couldn’t drink wine on her sofa, she could at least be doing it somewhere beautiful. “Great! I can’t think of a better way to spend the rest of the day.”