Dr. Steinberg sat, crossed one leg over the other, and gripped his chin with his fingers, the first two over his lips like he was giving the peace-sign. “So, how was your week?”
Steel scratched his chin. “My grandmother passed this week, had the funeral yesterday.”
The doctor’s jaw dropped a few centimeters. His eyes moved from side to side. “Sorry to hear that, you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m a grown man. I was close to her, but she lived a good life, ya’ know?”
“Certainly.” Dr. Steinberg cleared his throat, cocked his brow.
The room fell into an awkward silence for a moment. Steel stared at the floor and tapped his shoe heels to a made up melody. “I was doing so good…” He waved a hand. “…with the therapy and all…but now my grandma, Marisa’s back to work, I just got assigned a tough case…my stress is through the roof again.”
Steinberg nodded. “Hmm. Go on.” He rotated his body right, crossed his legs to that side, as if trying to keep up with Steel’s quick pace.
“I just feel like I can’t get ahead, for nothing.” He patted the back of his right hand into his left palm. “When this anxiety comes back and the depression starts, I…I feel like I’m choking, like somebody’s squeezing my throat 24/7. I can’t breathe. The world turns gray, or black-and-white, like I have a dark screen in front of my face. All I see is darkness. Nothing’s exciting or motivating. I’m dead inside, like I’m a zombie going through the motions. My thoughts race. I can’t make a decision. Can’t eat or sleep, and I start questioning everything in my life. I love Marisa more than anything, but I still look at her and question if it’s right…like I’m not worthy, or that I’ll mess it up somehow.”
“That could be the OCD. The obsessing over a relationsh—”
“Could be,” Steel said, “but my OCD is more about checking if the doors are locked, germs…” His eyes locked in place. “…you may be right, though. Never thought about it that way. Maybe I’m obsessing about it, trying to find certainty in the uncertain, trying to foresee if me and Marisa will last. Isn’t that the hallmark of OCD, trying to find certainty?”
“Significant part of it. One suffering from OCD surely doesn’t approach life with ambivalence.”
Steel laughed, and so did the doctor. Their laughter bounced off the walls and seemed an attempt to lighten the mood.
Dr. Steinberg crossed his hands, laid them on his lap, tangled his fingers. “What about the depression and anxiety? Did your current life events bring them on? Grandmom’s passing, the new case…or did it develop on its own?”
Steel darted his eyes across the dimly lit room, at two framed diplomas on the wall, felt like he was in a Lifetime movie. All he needed was for the doctor to pull a bottle of Scotch from his desk drawer. “Probably the life events, but as I told you before, I’ve been known to get in bad moods without a trigger.” Steel ran a hand through his wavy brown hair. “Sometimes I just wanna give up. At times, I can’t out of bed, dread the day, have no energy…totally apathetic toward everything in life. I can’t feel any joy whatsoever. I can’t get out of my own head. My negative thoughts are constant and repetitive, and they play over and over like a broken record…like I’m listening to the radio and a new hit song is on every station. And then it affects me physically. I have no energy to even walk a block, like I’m climbing up a mountain every day of my life, feels almost like I’m severely sleep-deprived every second, that anxious feeling you get when you haven’t slept…that’s what depression feels like all the time, every day, but multiply that feeling by a thousand and have a radio station in your head playing constantly and telling you to kill yourself and how terrible of a person you are and that you’ll never feel normal or better. When I’m depressed, it doesn’t matter if the sun is out or if I’m on the most beautiful beach in the world, I just don’t care about anything, can’t feel one once of happiness, can’t feel love for anyone or myself. And it’s not something I can just snap out of. It’s like trying to snap out of having the flu, you can’t. It takes time.” He crossed his arms, shook his head. “Think about it. We wake up and live in a world that is evil, pure evil at times. We have our whole lives planned, set…then anything could happen. I’ve seen that for sure as a police officer and detective. And I don’t believe in a specific God, so what purpose are humans on this Earth for, if no God? We work all week, stress, worry, just to live for, what, twenty hours of ‘free time’ on the weekends, to do what? It’s just a worthless path until we die. Nothing matters now, and we’ll all be forgotten by the next generation. Life is pointless sometimes. When I’m down I feel like giving up. I wish I were Neo from the Matrix and could take the blue pill or unplug my consciousness from my world. The world is messed up. Good people who do good things are laughed at, like they’re wrong. But every degenerate is glorified, made into a god. The whole world and each country operates like large scale street gangs. The craziest and most ruthless run the show by fear and violence. And the good are silenced. I’m an idealist and this stuff bothers me sometimes. It’s hard to except that things aren’t perfect and never will be.”
Steel gritted his teeth, knew that being an idealist hurt him at times. He understood he’d have to step back and realize that the world he often dreamed up wasn’t realistic, that real life could be brutal and hard and not even close to the romanticized version he imagined, and that depressed him, broke him.
“That sounds like depression talking,” the doctor said. “When you say you want to give up, is this something that should concern me?”
Steel stared at him, and Dr. Steinberg squinted his small eyes through the black-rimmed Ray-Bans. “I’m not gonna kill myself. I’m not suicidal, been there about ten years ago when I broke off my engagement with my girlfriend at the time. That started the depression, well, the recurring clinical depression at least. I’ve always been moody since I was a kid. I don’t think I’ve ever told you about my previous engagement. But during that time, when my depression was at its worst, all I thought about was suicide. Didn’t matter what I walked past in the house, a pill bottle, envisioned myself swallowing them all. A knife, saw myself slicing my own throat. If I sat in a car, I pictured the seat belt as a way to choke myself. I think my brain was trying to compute a way out of my pain and noted ways to kill myself daily. But those suicidal thoughts passed as I had gotten better. I know serious depression. Suicide was on my mind every minute of the day. This is just a minor one, I’ll handle it. And I didn’t really want to die—I just wanted a way out of my pain, to escape it. And I never went through with suicide because I had heard the Marine’s psychologist say something one time. He said that he knew several people who had attempted suicide and failed…they lived…and each of them said the same thing. They said that as soon as they leaped from a building or cut their wrist, they wished they hadn’t, and they all thought, ‘What the hell am I doing? My problems can be managed or solved.’ Wished they could take it back. Every single one of them said that. They were happy they lived.”
Dr. Steinberg blew his cheeks to balloons, exhaled, and fidgeted a bit. His eyes swept across the room. “You hadn’t told me about that.”
Steel leaned back against the leather sofa cushion and the material ruffled. “Yeah, well, it’s not something I like to talk about. I was a rookie to depression then, didn’t know how to cope. Now I can reason slightly and understand that suicidal thoughts are just a symptom of depression, like a fever is a symptom of the flu. It’s temporary. It’ll pass when the depression passes. Depression is a real illness, though, I’m learning. Must be managed and cognitive behavioral therapy helps me manage it.”
The doctor snatched a notepad off the table next to him and scribbled in it, breathed a slight sigh of relief. “That’s correct. Just a symptom. Have you ever thought about medication? Did you see someone during that time?”
“Nah. I let time go by, hung on for dear life, suffered, but eventually got better.”
“You’re lucky. Some peop
le don’t get better without the proper treatment, such as therapy or medication. If that happens agai—”
Steel held up a hand. “I know. I’ll tell you or see somebody about it.”
Steel’s stomach twisted into a warm knot. He still missed Tracy, the woman he had been engaged to. Why did he bring it up? He knew it was better to remain silent about her. She was his high school sweetheart, even stayed with him while he was in the Marines. But she left him just before the fourth year was up. That’s when the depression had hit hard. Marisa erased most of the memories and feelings toward Tracy, by far, and replaced her in ways Steel couldn’t have imagined. But a man could never erase the memories of the first woman who he’d fully given himself to before becoming an adult. Those feelings were different, innocent, naïve, could trigger youth with just a memory. During that time, Steel thought of calling Tracy after she’d written him a note ending their relationship while he was stationed abroad. But he never did, he let it go. He knew the hardest thing in life was to let the past die, to not even entertain it any longer, to know in your heart that whatever could arise from it in the present wouldn’t be the same as it once was—and then the final part—moving into the future, into the unknown.
“Sometimes I feel I have trust issues with Marisa…that she’ll leave,” Steel said, “or that I won’t be able to commit to her. I don’t know…I mean I doubt she would, but it’s hard. Maybe it’s the depression talking.”
Dr. Steinberg drummed his fingers against the notebook and stared for a good minute. “Think about what I’m going to tell you. If you knew you wouldn’t have any worries or anxieties or trust issues, how would you feel about Marisa?”
Steel thought, crossed his arms over his chest. “That I love her more than anything else in this world and would want to spend the rest of my life with her. But easier said than done. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know if that’s the right move, either, to fully commit to her. Maybe I’m in over my head.”
“You’ve discussed Marisa at each of our meetings. She must mean something great to you.” The doctor uncrossed his legs, dug his elbows into his thighs, and leaned over. “Look, no one knows the outcome to any situation in life. Life’s a gamble in and of itself. But if you don’t trust yourself, believe in yourself, take a risk and have faith, you’ll never truly live.” He pointed. “Look at me, Detective.”
Steel tightened his arms and made eye contact, didn’t like the doctor’s tone. But maybe it was his anti-authority stance and not so much the doctor’s voice, he figured.
“You are worthy, Detective. You hear me? You are worthy, just as worthy as the next guy, no better, no worse.”
“Yeah,” Steel said. He heard the words but didn’t believe them. Being worthy was never something he embraced.
“Don’t ever forget that you are just as worthy as the next person and it all comes down to you…you have the power to live how you want when you commit to growth and getting stronger and knowing that you are worthy.”
Steel listened, let the words sink in.
“And I still think you should consider an antidepressant…mild dose…could help you from sinking so low.”
“I’ll think about it.”
They talked for another twenty minutes or so about homework the doctor wanted him to do, worksheets used in cognitive behavioral therapy to teach how to objectively evaluate negative thinking patterns and change them to more realistic, positive ones.
Dr. Steinberg smiled after explaining the home exercises. “How about a cigar?”
Steel smiled. “Now, in here?”
“Ah, yeah, why not? For the holidays. Don’t tell my other patients.” The doctor laughed for a brief second, his porcelain veneers shined and were whiter than new sneaker leather. “Picked a few up at Holt’s on Walnut Street.”
Steel snorted a laugh. “Yeah, why not? Haven’t had one in a while. I go to Holt’s sometimes, love it in there. What brand you have?”
“Ashton,” the doctor said.
“Perfect...smooth, mild cigar. One of my favorites.”
The doctor popped up, tugged at his tie, and walked to his desk. He reached in and handed the brown stick to Steel. Lowerstein separated his lips, slid the cigar in between, and bit down, puffed and angled a lighter against the tip until it lit up cherry. Smoke spread through the room in thick clouds, burned spices and tobacco cutting through the air and soaking the walls. Steel followed and soon blew gray clouds into the office.
Little strange, but what the hell, I’m a detective. I’ve seen stranger things, he thought. Now my life is officially a Lifetime movie.
11
S
teel turned the wheel, cut off Market Street, and accelerated south toward Chestnut. The shrink’s office was only a few blocks from his apartment, but he needed to drive for a while, clear his head after rambling to the doctor for an hour. A swift chill zipped over his body, and he shivered and spun the heater dial to full blast. The vents kicked into high gear and hummed, pushing slow, warm, thick, steady air against his face. He left the temperature like that for a moment but lowered it as beads of sweat seeped from under his armpits and sprung from his forehead as if he were sitting in a sauna at the gym after a workout. Too fuckin’ hot, too cold, fuck, he thought. He twisted his flesh under the suit jacket and peacoat he was wearing, but the jerking motion just made the clothing more contorted and uneven against his warm, sweaty skin, and it pissed him off. He punched the steering wheel, huffed and puffed, and squirmed in the seat until he found the most tolerable position, but it still wasn’t comfortable at all under his dress shirt bunching up as he drove.
He cut the wheel on Walnut Street. Flurries had been falling since he left the office, but now it was coming down hard. He clicked on his defrosters. Marshmallow-sized flakes swerved and swirled and stuck to his windows, some dissolving as they hit the warm stream of heat on the windshield and curled into water drops and stretched patches of light gray frost against the glass. He flicked on the wipers, and the black blades stretched back and forth, screeching and clearing just enough moisture for him to see, leaving a patch of fresh white snow on either side of the window where the tip of the blade couldn’t stretch.
Last minute Christmas Eve shoppers trotted up and down Walnut Street, and Steel noticed they were wearing their stupid fucking red clothing, and their stupid fucking smiles, and their stupid fucking Santa hats, and their stupid fucking excitement over the snowfall, and their stupid fucking shopping bags. Maybe he was being a little harsh, but that’s the mood he was in, although it slightly changed after leaving the office. For some reason, speaking to a shrink made him feel better, as though his body and mind were lighter, just being able to open-up to someone who observed him with objectivity.
The defrosters and heater were on low but beads of sweat still dribbled down his forehead. The heat and perspiration flashed his mind back to that dreadful day on I-95 last summer, to the shock and death and greed he’d been exposed to within a 24 hour timeframe. He shook off the thoughts, but one remained: how close he’d almost come to having his whole world shattered, to having he and Marisa’s life altered forever. That ordeal had scared the hell out of him, still scared the hell out of him. The realization that things could happen at any moment contaminated his mind with dread and fear. He pondered if staying with Marisa was safe. The only other woman he’d fully committed to in his life was Tracy, and she’d left when she wrote him a letter and broke off their engagement and six-year relationship just as he was finishing up his four years of service in the Marines. He’d been scarred since then, since the ripe age of twenty-two-years-old, never truly letting another woman in, dating off and on for short stints for years until Marisa had come along. What should I do? Run from life and avoid it like I usually do? he thought. He didn’t know, didn’t know a damn thing, hated uncertainty. Why couldn’t life come with a set of possible outcomes before making major decisions? But he knew, most times, people had to use their gut, or logic, or faith.
He lacked in all three areas. He rarely used his gut, overthought his way out of logic, and didn’t have faith in anything, not even in himself.
But he thought of the first time he had met Marisa and how a thin smirk had curled her lips. He could still picture her standing in the office the previous summer, being introduced to him by Lieutenant Detective Williams, smiling her straight line of ivory, widening her brown eyes that stood out against her skin and meshed with the color of her hair, extending the smoothest, softest hand he had ever touched, the sweetest hand, the hand of a goddess, a touch of heaven on Earth just for him, a shake that caused instant butterflies and a jolt of energy, as if it had come from a divine source, telling him he was meeting her for a reason. Marisa had stood there with—what he had known at the time by just looking at her—fierce individuality, beauty, brains and ambition. The mental image still flipped his stomach like he was on an upside down roller coaster. Love, he guessed. If thinking of a person could evoke powerful emotions that way, it was a sign of love, he knew.
The snow started to pick up speed and whipped and howled by his car. He glanced through the rearview mirror and saw nothing but a sea of white wind gusts. He clicked the wipers up a notch, and they swished over the windows. Cars around him flashed their front and rear lights and let off circles of bright yellow smog that tunneled through the powdery white snow and gray atmosphere, a daytime glow but nighttime darkness swirling. He pressed his heel onto the brake pedal and halted to a stop on Seventh and Walnut. He stared at lit-up storefront signs half-covered in snow so fresh and shiny it looked like glitter glued to a block of Styrofoam.
He rubbed his forehead, inhaled deeply, slowly blew the air through tip lips. There was one more gift he needed to get for Christmas, for Marisa. He just hoped she’d like it.
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