6. Chapter 6
Caroline
The restaurant was upscale casual, the kind of place where bikers didn't usually eat and where powerful women felt comfortable taking up space.
Lena had invited me to lunch without explanation, just a text that said:
You need to meet the women. Come to this address at noon on Saturday.
I'd almost declined. Meeting with the partners and families of my patient was ethically complicated at best. But Lena's text had a quality of inevitability to it, and I was learning that when she decided something needed to happen, it generally happened.
I arrived to find a table of six women already seated. Lena waved me over and introduced each one.
Pearl I recognized from research I'd done. She was the face of a lot of the charity work they did. The rest were a bit of a mystery, but most of them didn’t look like they had anything to do with an MC.
They all looked at me like they'd been expecting me. And I was learning to expect the unexpected.
"This is Caroline," Lena said simply. "She's treating Colt."
Understanding flickered across Pearl's face. "The therapist."
"Yes."
"Good," Rochelle said, and there was something fierce in her voice. "Maybe you can help him before he kills himself."
The bluntness of it should have shocked me. Instead, it landed like confirmation of something I'd already suspected but didn't want to admit.
We ordered. The conversation started light—work, family, complaints about the logistics of loving men in an MC. Then Pearl turned to me and said, "You need to understand who Colt is before you can help him."
I set down my water glass carefully. "I'm listening."
"He's the kind of man who puts himself between danger and other people without thinking about it," she said. "When a member’s stepdaughter was being hunted, when she and her son needed protection, Colt didn't hesitate. Didn't ask what the personal cost would be. Just protected them."
Rochelle continued. "When corrupt cops were looking for leverage against the club, he took the hit. Let them capture him instead of letting them go after families. That's the kind of man he is."
"That was before," one of the younger women said quietly. Her name was Jade. "Before they broke him."
The table went silent for a moment.
"The black-site operation," Lena said carefully, "it wasn't random. They targeted him because he knew things. Because he was useful. Because he was strong enough to survive interrogation."
"And he did survive," Rochelle said. "But not whole."
Pearl reached across the table and squeezed my hand. "The man you're treating right now—the angry one, the self-destructive one—that's not who he really is. That's what trauma made him. But underneath that, he's still in there."
I thought about Colt in my office. His anger. His defensiveness. The way he checked his phone constantly for messages from Ditch. The way he'd admitted that talking about his feelings felt like weakness. The man they were describing didn't match the man I'd been treating.
Or maybe he matched perfectly—just a version of him I hadn't seen yet.
"Tell me a story," I said. "Something that shows me who he was."
The older one named Jemma leaned forward. "Last year, prospects were hazing a new kid. Nothing dangerous, just the usual MC stuff—making him do stupid challenges, mocking him, testing him. But this kid had already been through enough. He was fragile. The hazing was going to break something in him."
"Colt found out," Flame continued, "and he shut it down. Not by getting angry. He just started training with the kid. Every day. Taught him how to fight, how to be confident, how to carry himself so people would respect him instead of try to test him."
"That kid is one of our strongest prospects now," Pearl said. "Because Colt believed in him when he didn't believe in himself."
I could feel something shifting inside my chest. The clinical part of my brain—the therapist—was noting the contrast. The man who couldn't regulate his own nervous system had somehow helped a traumatized kid develop emotional resilience.
The man who was self-destructing had prioritized another person's healing.
"There's more," Lena said. Her expression was careful, measured. "After the black-site, after he came back, he's still doing that. Still protecting people. But now it's automatic. He doesn't think about it. He just does it. And it's destroying him."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean," Rochelle said quietly, "that he's been fighting for survival his entire adult life. And he's tired. We can see it. Everyone can see it. And he's reaching the end of what he can sustain."
The words landed like weight.
"He's been through underground matches," Rochelle saidsaid. "He's been losing control. Taking damage he shouldn't take. And everyone just watches because we don't know how to stop him."
"We're afraid," Jade whispered.
"Afraid of what?" I asked, though I already knew.
"That we're going to lose him," Pearl said. "That this time, the damage is going to be too much. That he's going to find a way to hurt himself that we can't come back from."
The restaurant around us suddenly felt too bright. Too loud. The casual lunch atmosphere was undercut by the weight of what they were saying—a group of women who loved one man, watching him destroy himself, helpless to stop it.
"He won't talk to us," Jemma said. "Ditch tries. Sweet tries. But Colt won't let anyone help. He's too proud. Too convinced that asking for help is weakness."
"Has he mentioned self-harm?" I asked carefully. "Beyond the boxing?"
Lena exchanged a look with Pearl. That look contained an entire conversation I wasn't part of.
"There have been rumors," Lena said slowly. "About his gym sessions getting increasingly violent. About him punching walls. About his hands being more bruised each time someone sees him."
My heart did something complicated in my chest. Colt hadn't mentioned the gym sessions. Hadn't brought up the escalating self-harm. Which meant either he didn't recognize it as a problem, or he was actively hiding it from his therapist.
"He's not going to get better just from weekly sessions," I said.
"We know," Pearl said. "That's why we're telling you this. You need to understand how much we're all losing him. And you need to understand that he needs more help than he's getting."
"That's outside my scope," I said, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were a lie. Or at least not the whole truth. "Anything beyond standard therapy would require—"
"Anything beyond standard therapy is what he needs," Jemma interrupted. "He needs someone to actually see him. To not let him hide. To push back when he's pretending he's fine."
"Which is what I'm doing," I said.
"Not enough," Jade said softly. "It's not enough."
The accusation stung because it was true.
Weekly sessions weren't enough when he was escalating self-harm.
Weekly sessions weren't enough when he was pushing away everyone who cared about him.
Weekly sessions weren't enough when he was systematically destroying himself in ways that felt increasingly permanent.
"I'm bound by professional ethics," I said carefully. "I can't just decide to treat him differently because I'm worried about him. That's exactly how therapists cross into dangerous territory."
"But you are worried about him," Pearl said. It wasn't a question.
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Because admitting that I was worried about Colt meant admitting that I'd crossed some line already. That he wasn't just a patient to me anymore. That I cared whether he lived or died in a way that was distinctly unprofessional.
"He asked about you," Lena said quietly.
That got my attention. "He did?"
"After his last session. He asked Ditch if I knew you. Asked what I knew about you. Asked if I thought you actually believed you could help him."
My hands tightened around my napkin.
"What did you tell him?"
"That you cared enough to try," Lena said. "And that sometimes trying is what makes the difference."
The rest of lunch passed in a blur of conversation. I was only partially present for it. The women told more stories. About Colt's loyalty. About his humor when he wasn't drowning in trauma. About the man he'd been before captivity changed him.
But underneath all of it was the undercurrent of fear. The knowledge that they were losing him. That time was running out. That if something didn't change dramatically, they'd be planning a funeral instead of having lunch.
By the time we left the restaurant, I felt emotionally hollowed out.
Lena walked me to my car. "I know what I'm asking of you," she said.
"Do you? Because I'm pretty sure what you're asking is for me to cross professional boundaries and get emotionally invested in a patient's recovery in ways that could actually harm my ability to treat him."
"I'm asking you to care," Lena said simply. "I'm asking you to not hide behind professional distance when someone's life is on the line. I'm asking you to be human first and therapist second."
"That's not how it works."
"I know. But it's how it needs to work if Colt is going to survive this."
I drove home in a daze. I couldn't stop thinking about Colt's hands.
About how I'd noticed the bruising in our last session and had written it off as boxing injury.
About how those bruises were probably from more than boxing.
About how he was probably escalating his self-harm and hiding it from me, which meant he didn't trust me enough to be honest.
Which meant I wasn't actually helping him.
I sat in my apartment that evening with my laptop and I reviewed my notes from every session with Colt. Looking for the things I'd missed. The signs I'd overlooked. The moments when he'd been asking for help without saying the words.
There were so many of them.
The way he'd checked his phone constantly, needing reassurance that Ditch cared. The way his breathing had changed when discussing the interrogation. The fragmented sentences when he talked about his routine. The way he'd admitted that pain was the only thing that made the memories stop.
I'd documented all of it. Recognized all of it as trauma response. But I hadn't acted on it.
Because I'd maintained professional distance. Because I'd told myself that showing too much care would be unprofessional. Because I'd convinced myself that my job was to observe and document, not to intervene.
And meanwhile, Colt was escalating toward something darker.
By eleven that night, I was writing notes for a new treatment plan. One that included more frequent sessions. One that included crisis protocols. One that included—and I hated admitting this—referring him for psychiatric evaluation and possible medication management.
One that acknowledged that weekly therapy sessions weren't enough, and that I'd been doing him a disservice by pretending they were.
At the bottom of my notes, I wrote:
Emotional investment is clouding clinical judgment. Recommend supervision or referral to colleague. However, patient has established relationship with this therapist and switching at this point could be destabilizing. Proceed with caution. Prioritize patient safety above professional comfort.
And then I added one more line:
Patient asked about me. That suggests he's ready to trust. Use that carefully. Don't waste it.
I closed my laptop and I sat in the dark of my apartment, thinking about a man I barely knew who was destroying himself in ways I could have prevented if I'd been willing to care enough.
The women at lunch had asked me to be human first and therapist second.
I was finally beginning to understand that they'd been right.