“I worked my first shift this past weekend. I made absolute bank. Over three-hundred dollars after tip-out in six hours. I’m working tonight, and the Sox are playing the Yanks at home. It’s going to be a shit-show.”
They chatted about the pros and cons of restaurant work, and Olive became cognizant that their exchange was more of a dialogue than a counselor-led affair, but Olive couldn’t justify pummeling Nicole with questions about triggers and cravings and NA meetings when they’d already established how well she was doing. Let sleeping dogs lie, Olive thought. Better yet, let dormant addicts be.
At ten minutes to eleven, Olive plucked a card from the fresh stack and wrote out Nicole’s appointment for the following week. She followed Nicole to the office door, but took a step back when Nicole flipped her head forward and reconstructed her intricate bird’s nest of a hairdo.
“See you in group Friday,” Nicole said. “You really are the best, you just get it, you know?” She juggled the mostly-empty coffee cup with her car keys and phone, not bothering to throw her belongings in the metal-studded purse.
“If you get a drug screen this week, it will be your last group,” Olive said with a wistful smile. She watched Nicole walk down the hallway to the back exit—counselors were supposed to escort patients everywhere on the premises, but Olive loathed the authoritarian implications of the rule and avoided doing so when she could—and shut the door behind her.
Nicole was one of her favorite patients, but Olive was relieved to be alone. Anyone who wanted to see her would have to be buzzed back by the secretary, so there was no threat of disturbance from a perpetual no-call, no-shower deciding that now was the time they wanted to discuss their latest love triangle or legal issue.
She sank into her chair with a groan. The only downside to working at the clinic was the six AM start time; it never got any easier, even after three years on the same schedule. Olive didn’t need a mirror to know she had bags under her eyes, and waitressing three nights a week didn’t help matters.
Olive couldn’t claim a North End or Fenway Park locale. She was stuck at The Living Room, a hipster hangout near Faneuil Hall that boasted couch-and-fireplace carrels instead of tables or booths. Last night had been Trivia Night; Olive hadn’t escaped until after one AM, held hostage by a plaid-smothered couple whose never-ending IPAs were surpassed only by their never-ending espressos.
Olive took a sip of her own coffee, but it was cold. She didn’t dare cross the lobby to nuke it, unwilling to trade the illusion that her session with Nicole had run late for a fresh cup. She slapped at the mouse to reanimate the dead computer and navigated to the Bank of America website. Her stomach knotted as she typed in her user name and password. She had to resist the urge to close her eyes as the page loaded.
She cringed when the account balance appeared on the screen. Olive tried to avoid logging in as much as possible for this exact reason. How did it get so low? She had some cash from the night before, but the ancillary income did little to alleviate the uphill climb that was living on a clinician’s salary in Boston.
Olive patted her pocket. The wad of cash was too thin to offer up any real encouragement. Rent was due, and the electricity bill, and her student loan, and she hadn’t bought groceries in what felt like months.
Her cell phone vibrated in her purse on the floor. Fishing it out, Olive saw Mom and Dad - Home flashing across the screen. She sent the call to voicemail. She stood and rolled back from the desk, dragged the tattered patient chair, still warm from where Nicole had sat, and retrieved a scarf from a hook on the back of her door. Propping her feet on the opposite chair, covering as much of her body with the scarf as she could, Olive leaned back and prepared to sleep through lunch.
She took a deep breath and pushed aside thoughts of negative account balances, phone calls from her parents, and Edward Vance. She had just drifted off when a commotion came from the hall.
“You can’t go back there!” Cathy, the front-desk secretary, was yelling. Olive heard a grunt, followed by heavy breathing. Curious, she crept to the door. When no further sound came, she turned the knob.
The door was thrown open with such force, Olive stumbled backward, almost falling over the makeshift bed she’d fashioned in the center of the room. Eddie sneered at her from the threshold before stepping into her office. All the office doors in the clinical wing locked from the inside.
Eddie kicked back and the latched clicked.
It occurred to Olive that she should say something first, try to usurp the upper hand, despite the obvious fact of Eddie breaking into the back hall and barging into her office uninvited. She didn’t get the chance.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Eddie’s thick Boston accent unfurled from between still-sneering lips.
“Excuse me?” Olive hoped playing dumb would buy her some time. How had this lumbering idiot gotten past the security guard, the secretary, and the locked door from lobby to hallway in order to be standing in front of her with all the tranquility of a ticking time bomb?
Her attempt at ignorance did not work.
“Don’t fuck with me. She was just here for her counseling appointment. I saw her at the gas station on Meridian Street.”
Eddie swayed on his feet. It occurred to Olive that he’d been drinking on top of his usual mix of weed, heroin, and Xanax. Olive looked around Eddie’s shoulder at the motionless door handle. Why isn’t anyone coming to help me? Eddie took a lurching step toward her.
“She told me about the new apartment. I made her tell me. I knew she wasn’t at Linda’s anymore. That dumb bitch mother of hers practically said as much. Where the hell am I supposed to live now, huh? She wouldn’t even give me the address. Can you believe that? Of course you can, this whole fucking thing was your idea. Nik wouldn’t have broken up with me if it wasn’t for you.”
He took another step forward and dug a meaty finger into her shoulder to punctuate his sentence. In the meager quarters of her office, this brought Eddie Vance a foot from where she stood, frozen in place. Olive could smell the musty aroma of stale cigarettes and wet dog. Nicole had always complained about Eddie’s ever-expanding pack of pit bulls, dogs he collected like his many addictions, and pawned off on family members and running partners indiscriminately.
Olive heard activity mounting from the direction of the lobby. Her office was the first door on the right, the closest to the lobby door. What is taking Cathy so long? She was always losing her damn keys. For all she knew, Eddie had plucked the secretary’s key ring right off her desk. How else would this asshole have gotten back here?
Briefly, Olive chastised herself for the harsh thought before realizing she had no desire to apply unconditional positive regard to this conversation, to this patient. She wasn’t scared—not yet—but she also didn’t care to see how far Eddie’s anger would propel him.
“You think it’s easy being me?” Eddie continued.
Now Olive decided that in addition to the weed, dope, Xanax, and booze, Eddie had stood in line for his dose before barging through the door to the back hallway. His eyelids drooped, and his tongue darted around his mouth, tasting the bitter remnants of medication.
“I had a girl who was taking care of me, who loved me. Without her, I’m just another junkie on the street. But you don’t get that, do you? To you, my life is a game.
“You’ve never had to scramble for your next high, your next meal, a place to sleep at night. You learned everything you know from a big, fat counseling textbook and you preach your ideas, and hang up your fancy diplomas, and you give your advice, never thinking about how it affects actual people.”
Olive heard a key turning in a lock now, not her door, but close. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Eddie,” she said, and she meant it, but she was also biding her time until Pauley, the security guard, or Steve, the Clinical Director, or someone rushed in to rescue her.
“You bitch.”
His tone had dropped several decibels. Olive felt the first twinge of fea
r. Hurryuphurryuphurryup…
“You’re not sorry,” Eddie said. “But I can make you sorry.”
A click as a key penetrated the lock. Olive didn’t exhale until Steve and Pauley burst into the room. Pauley had Eddie under the arms and halfway out the door before the intruding patient had time to turn and see who’d come for him. Pauley dragged Eddie down the hall toward the back exit to a chorus of profanities. Steve followed behind them, reading aloud from the emergency discharge paperwork clutched between his fingers.
I hope I wasn’t waiting for reinforcements while Steve printed out the damn discharge spiel.
“You are not to come onto the property for any reason,” Steve rattled off. If you come onto the property for any reason, West Street Neighborhood Health Center will notify the police and security will escort you from the premises. If deemed necessary, the clinic will press charges for trespassing. Due to the aggressive nature of your actions, you have forfeited the right to appeal your discharge.”
Eddie had stopped fighting Pauley, who had a good hundred pounds on him, and was laughing quietly to himself, as if getting forcefully removed from the clinic was just about the funniest thing he had ever experienced. Steve ignored the laughter, eyes still on the printout.
“Your counselor will provide you with a list of treatment resources, mailed to the last home address you have listed on file. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts requires a signature on all forceful discharges, however if you refuse to sign the document, this does not negate the binding directives of said document.
“Mr. Vance, will you sign your discharge agreement?”
“Fuck you!” Eddie spat.
“Pauley, get him out of here,” Steve said.
Olive guessed there were another few clauses to the emergency discharge, but Steve wouldn’t be spending any more time on Eddie Vance. She retreated from her vantage point into her office, Steve close on her heels.
“Are you all right? What was that all about? What did he say to you?”
Olive heaved a shaky sigh. She stared at a hole in the plaster above Steve’s head. The clinic hadn’t bothered to repaint the office when she had been hired, and the hole was left over from the previous counselor who had occupied the office, the ghost of some proudly-hung diploma or framed Serenity Prayer.
When Olive first came to work at West Street, the hole in the plaster had exacerbated her obsessive-compulsive nature. She contemplated patching and painting over the scar herself, but now had bigger things to worry about than an imperfect paint job. Olive tried to focus her attention on Steve. She hoped to avoid a lengthy analysis of her confrontation with Eddie Vance, but knew this was unlikely.
Damn him, Olive thought. There goes a quiet afternoon to myself. What she said to Steve was, “I am Nicole Price’s counselor for her one-to-one sessions. Eddie was her boyfriend. He thinks that it’s my fault she broke up with him.”
“Is this an ongoing issue with Nicole and Eddie? Why haven’t you brought this up in supervision?”
Olive suppressed a groan. For this precise reason, she thought. Because I do everything in my power to avoid your scrutiny. “I didn’t think he would escalate things. From what Nicole has said, he’s all talk.”
Steve’s square jaw jutted into a disapproving frown. He pulled up the chair Olive had planned to nap in and took a seat. Olive attempted a clandestine glance at the clock on her desk. She fussed with her shirt sleeves, avoiding her boss’s intrusive stare.
“We have discussed what can happen when you make assumptions that compromise safety, have we not?” Steve pushed back in his chair, his pant legs riding up to reveal the signature cowboy boots. As if an office full of Longhorns memorabilia wasn’t enough, Steve liked to stress his affinity for all things Texas. Olive realized he had asked her something that required a response.
“Hmm? Oh. Yes, sorry, you’re right. We have discussed it, yes.”
“And?”
“Annnnd—” And what? Olive wasn’t sure of the answer Steve was looking for. “And one should avoid making assumptions that compromise safety?” She parroted Steve’s words back to him.
Steve’s frown deepened. “I am talking about you, specifically, Olive. I am worried that you are inserting yourself into the lives of these patients so completely that you’re becoming blind to where the line is. When that happens, counselor burnout is the least of your troubles. I’d be more worried about complete occupational fatigue, mental health issues; it’s the kind of thing that sends people over the edge, pretending you’re on the other side of the desk.”
“What line?” Olive asked, before Steve could move ahead with the lecture.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said you’re becoming blind to where the line is. What line?”
Steve leaned forward slightly. “The line between counselor and patient. The boundary that separates us from them. The—”
Olive cut him off. “Us from them? If that’s a distinction I’m supposed to make, I’m not sure how comfortable I feel making it.” She was pleased to see that Steve’s face had gone a little pale.
“That’s not… I just mean that you’ve got to maintain healthy boundaries per the moral and ethical codes of conduct we’re governed by. I mean that if Nicole Price is dragging you too far into her personal melodrama, you have the right as her counselor to pump the breaks and redirect the session to a more productive line of communication. Does that make sense?”
Olive had harped on his mention of ethical codes, and scrambled to reorient herself with the direction the rest of his speech had gone in. When several seconds had passed, and Olive still had not responded, Steve peered at her closely and said, “Are you all right? Not just about what happened today, but in general, are you doing okay? I feel like you’ve been... quiet lately. You haven’t been your usual peppy self. Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything at all?”
The skin on the back of Olive’s neck prickled; Steve was her boss, not her shrink. He had a lot of nerve peppering her with such personal questions.
“I’m fine.” Olive fidgeted with the sleeve of her shirt again. “I appreciate your concern though.” She hoped she’d arranged her features in an expression that portrayed how fine she really was.
Steve checked his watch.
Yes, yes, say you have to go...
“I’m free until two,” he said. “We can move to my office and discuss this further if you need to debrief. You’ll have to write up an incident report of course. We can parse out the more salient points of what happened.”
“Thank you, but I’m fine, really.” The thought of being cloistered behind a closed door in that overwhelmingly orange office filled Olive with dread. She smiled, but her teeth were clamped together in a grimace. She willed him to leave. For one last agonizing moment, Steve sat, contemplating Olive with intensity, a zookeeper observing his chimp.
Finally, he stood. “What time is your next appointment?”
“One.”
Steve nodded, as if he had expected this answer. “Use the next hour to get your head on straight. You know where to find me if you need me.”
It took only a moment for Olive to decide she was done with counseling sessions for the remainder of the day. She pulled up her next appointment and dialed the telephone number listed in the patient’s profile.
After listening to a recording prompting her to leave a message, Olive said, “Hey, Crystal, it’s Olive. I’m really sorry, especially since I did this to you last week, but something has come up and I have to reschedule. I know that it’s extremely short notice so please, give me a call back and whatever you have available, I promise I’ll make work.”
She hung up the phone, relief surging through her brain and limbs like a drug. I need a little me time. Olive reached for her keys and phone. After the morning I’ve had, I can step out for a bit longer than usual. I deserve it. With this justification in mind, she turned off her computer, flipped the light switch, and shut the door behind her.
Olive left the clinic every afternoon for a quick break, but this would be two weeks in a row that her break would extend into the one PM appointment block. Dosing hours were over and the clinic had the feel of a hospital after the first wave of a zombie apocalypse. It was so quiet, Olive wondered if Steve had evacuated the building during the incident with Eddie, and the patients who had been in with their counselors hadn’t stuck around to resume sessions.
The clicks of Olive’s three-inch heels echoed in the empty corridor as she headed for the same door Pauley had dragged Eddie out of twenty minutes prior. The air conditioning unit rattled like something had been trapped behind the grates and wanted out. Olive quickened her stride in anticipation of the early summer sun on her face. May had been cold, but June was fulfilling its promise of warm nights and beach-worthy days. She wished she’d taken today off; the vacation time she had scheduled next week couldn’t come soon enough. A noise came from behind and Olive spun around, convinced for one terrible moment that Eddie had gotten back into the building and was poised to reach out and grab her. The door to the group room stood ajar, blown against the wall by a light breeze coming in through an open window. Shaking off her unease, Olive resumed her trek. She reached the end of the hall, pushed open the door, and stepped into the blinding light.
For several exhilarating seconds, Olive did get to enjoy the heat of the sun on her chilled skin, coupled with a dissociative pang of melancholy for not getting out and enjoying the world more. Then, the desire to get away from the clinic and the urgency of her errand overtook her, and she hopped into her Accord and drove out of the West Street parking lot.
Over the course of her mile-long journey, Olive kept the radio off. She did not hum or talk to herself, and she didn’t bother turning to look out the window at the passing scenery. She did make a single phone call, and once satisfied that her errand would be rewarded, she silenced the cell phone and placed it in the middle console. She never noticed the car tailing her in the rearview mirror.
Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked Page 7