XXVII
“I probably sound like a broken record for saying that looks incredibly sore.”
Edward hardly had the energy to acknowledge his therapist’s observation. She wasn’t wrong, he knew as much. Anyway, he could take her remark on the chin. His bruised, swollen chin set amongst the welts and abrasions marking the rest of his face.
“What can I do for you today?” Dr Wells added. She impressed Edward with her patience. He could not help but feel a sense of déjà vu as he nestled his backside into the sagging chaise longue.
“I’m a mess. Not just on the surface but in my mind, I’m so screwed up.”
“What makes you say that?”
Edward shuttered his eyes and bit his lip. She encouraged him to be honest, and he lamented this part of his appointments. It meant recounting the events that had led to this consultation. This process triggered the obligatory stream of tears to flow over his cheeks. He succeeded in spluttering on mucus from his running nose. Throughout, Dr Wells paid undivided attention, taking time to jot down notes.
“The thing that pisses me off, so fucking much,” he croaked at the end, “is that the twat who gave it to me then denied it. And this is what happened when I challenged him about it.” He thrust his index finger at the extensive bruising on his face.
“OK Edward, let’s think for a minute. Let’s park the EMDR technique for now. I want us to work on controlling your anger today.”
Far from the first time, feelings of insignificance took hold of him. Seated plumb in the middle of the overbearing chaise, he hunched his shoulders like a Quasimodo. His puffy hands clasped together between his thighs. In Dr Wells’ cool posture he saw a maturity and steely professionalism that he had grown used to.
Dr Wells persevered in the matter-of-fact way she had honed over so many years of practice. “How did you react later when the diagnosis sunk in?”
“Honestly, I didn’t think about what it really means to have this. It just dawned on me that now, I can be free. I can let loose and do whatever.” He meditated over the large locked chest resting under his bed. Concealed. Primed. Deadly.
“If, and I mean if, you were thinking up a less positive so-called legacy, it could indicate a vengeful nature that we need to look at. Think more closely about what has happened recently to make you feel this way.”
Edward leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “What makes you think I’m up to anything dodgy?” he questioned darkly.
“We are only human, Edward. I understand your anger. Would it be fair to say your feelings of helplessness are making you angrier?”
Edward held his eyes shut for a beat or two, then tilted his head to view the plastic flowers on the mantelpiece. The oppressive colours against the drab wall spoke to him. They spoke of a vulgarity consistent with their fake green stems and garish red and yellow petals.
“I could have had him. I should have had him.”
“You are angry because you believe this man deliberately infected you with HIV. When you confronted him, he didn’t take you seriously and he hurt you.”
“I should have NAILED his DICK to a firework and IGNITED it!” Spittle flew from his mouth and land on the coffee table between them.
A lull. Dr Wells’ body language gave nothing away. The clock ticked. A gust picked up and howled at the windows. Edward listened to his breaths and felt his chest rise and fall, and his heart thrashing against his chest, trying to break free. He started bouncing one heel up and down off the ground.
“I can’t help the anger. I feel dirty and cheated. My illness, and Tom fucking up his life, betraying me. No wonder I’m so completely messed up.”
Dr Wells took her time to write down a note on her pad of paper. Then she looked over at her fragile young patient again.
“You had no other intimate encounters with anyone? How about Tom?”
Edward scanned her body language but could not penetrate her expressionless façade. “What about him?”
“Are you two friends still?”
Edward scrunched up his face for effect and copied her in a squeaky voice. “No. No, we’re not friends anymore,” he added.
Dr Wells was not one for being baited. “Why is that?”
“He’s just not, OK? Not since he started getting to know Simon Wainwright. I don’t have time for him anymore.”
Unmoved, his psychiatrist flicked to the front of her notepad. “What I find interesting,” she asserted, waving the tip of her pen in the air towards him, “going back to how you describe getting diagnosed. You say ‘my diagnosis’ and ‘my fear of dying’. You’re owning them Edward, claiming them as yours. Someone else in your shoes would want to get rid of any association with that diagnosis and phobia. They might say ‘the diagnosis, this bloody fear of dying’.”
Thinking through what this observation meant in practical terms, she rapped her notebook with the end of her Biro. Edward, stationary on the chaise, said nothing. Deep down, he had to admire her detective work. Yet on the surface, he was irritated by her interference.
“This isn’t a criticism in the slightest Edward. I’m just curious if you agree. If you’re owning your phobia and your recent diagnosis, it could mean one of two possibilities. So, I want to hear what your thoughts are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said dismissively, leaning back and rolling his eyes. “It’s a perfectly good phrase to use! So tell me then, what does this mean? Have you discovered something that will cure me?” He let out a flippant laugh.
Dr Wells maintained a neutral stance. “Option one: blaming yourself. Your life hasn’t panned out as well as you would have liked. Things have gone against you so often. You take it all on the chin even though psychologically you are broken. You avoid reaching out for help, because you can’t shake the feeling your own actions have led to these tragic circumstances. You’re owning your so-called failings, as if taking responsibility for your own downfall.”
Edward’s defiance manifested itself as Dr Wells went on.
“Option two: pride. Your protective mindset: rolling the eyes, chuckling nervously, folding your arms – there, look – are classic defensive body language signs. You believe the world is against you and you are getting knocked down time and again. So you need control. You need power. You need to own your fear of death and your diagnosis in order to justify whatever goals or dubious legacy you might have in mind. This is a self-fulfilling cycle that will – I worry – only end badly.”
“Yeah, as we’ve established, my whole fucking life has been an unending ball of misery. What are you getting at?” Edward snarled, the simmering rage palpable.
“Let me run over my notes from some of our previous sessions. Even if you’ve had disagreements in the past, you’ve always seemed a little more level-headed when you stuck by Tom.”
“Why do you keep bringing him up!” Edward cried out, raising his arms and head to the ceiling. “Jesus Christ, you must really have it in for me.”
“You’ve mentioned Tom a lot in the past. You’ve told me a lot about him, usually in very flattering terms. I want you to tell me why—”
“You know nothing.” Edward jumped up and stared down his specialist.
“I know more than you think.” She squinted ever so subtly, displaying an empathy for Edward’s suffering. “I know that you loved him.”
“Get out of my life,” Edward muttered as he hitched his bag over his shoulders and stormed to the door. He was tempted to collide with those flowers on his way out but thought better of it. The door slammed shut behind him and Dr Wells did not follow.
◆◆◆
Edward trudged along the pavement, digesting that interaction with Dr Wells. There was something, a corrosive daisy chain of thoughts digging into him. An interminable crown of thorns. Malevolent forces seemed to subvert his better judgement, conspiring to hide murky secrets from him. What they were exactly, he could not say. He just knew of their existence, these impregnable ghettos ringfenced
in his head.
“I know more than you think.” The words played over and over. They had sounded so matter of fact when she'd said them. The more he repeated the sentence, the more unsettled he became. She must be hiding something and What’s she hiding? crossed his mind. Slanderous remarks against Dr Wells punctuated the fresh early autumnal air. He also vented against Tom under his breath, conjuring up curses in the most pejorative sense of the word.
If I don’t do something about it now, I’ll never know for sure.
Walking his way was a young man who appeared equally deep in thought, hands buried in his pockets. It was now or never for Edward.
“Excuse me, mate, sorry,” Edward began when the man was in earshot. “You don’t have a light on you at all, do you?”
The man seemed distracted yet managed to rummage in his back pocket for a lighter. “Here you go bud.”
“Ah, legend, thanks.”
Edward then turned and sprinted back the way he had come. His light backpack jiggled from side to side as he raced off. He was fifty feet away before the bemused stranger had come to his senses and realised what had happened. Was he likely to give chase over a thirty-pence lighter he’d bought months ago on a drunken night out? Was he heck.
Edward rounded a corner and slowed as he approached the gate outside Dr Wells’ surgery. He could tell she was in from the light shining out of her first-floor window.
A tiled overhang divided the property from its neighbour. He strained his sides to vault the wall, using wheelie bins for leverage. Once he’d made it to the rear of the building, he crept underneath a corrugated awning and knelt beside a rickety fire escape. Craning his neck up, he saw a window resting ajar. Easy-peasy, he mouthed.
He pulled off his fleece and rooted around his bag for some scraps of paper. Old receipts, bus tickets, miscellaneous detritus. The fire exit door had a narrow gap above the ground, wide enough to squeeze a sleeve through. He held the lighter and shreds of paper in either hand and ignited them. Sooty, black smoke rose up. A flicker of flame caught the papers, which he dumped on the clothing.
“Come on, you—” he grumbled.
The smoke was thicker than he had anticipated, so he wrenched the flintlock off the top of the lighter and poured the fluid over the smouldering pile.
A ‘whoompf’ of flame took hold, forcing Edward back. He heaved himself onto the slanted awning. With great difficulty, he slunk across the angled overhang and waited. When the shrill alarm sounded, he listened for the sound of doors closing and footsteps taking to the stairs. Muffled voices could be heard from the ground floor.
“This isn’t a drill, everybody out!”
“The fire’s at the back, use the main door.”
“I can’t hear you Eliz. You want us to phone the police?”
Timing his next move to perfection, he opened the first-floor window wide enough to clamber through. Conveniently, he wound up on the landing five paces from Elizabeth Wells’ office. Tugging at the doorknob, he breathed a sigh of relief as it opened without resistance and he breached the empty room. He raced to her desk and tried in vain to access her computer. Password protected, he wasn't getting any help from that. Her desk was a state of organised chaos; psychiatric journals and inane correspondence were strewn over much of the surface. Unsure precisely what he was expecting to find in her room, he concentrated on rummaging for clues pertaining to her other clients.
In one of her drawers, he discovered a stack of yellowish, official-looking documents. Edward could tell this was irrelevant to his search, but the drawings and illustrations somehow lured him in. Compulsion forced him to study these sheets in more detail.
“That’s my attempt at securing a legacy.” The voice, so soothing and untainted with emotion, made Edward yelp and nearly wet himself in fright. He swung round to face his doctor lurking near the door.
“How did you get back into the building so quickly?” he stammered. The fire alarm had only just been switched off.
Dr Wells walked further into the room. “Edward, you must think we’re idiots here. Did you not think of the CCTV and motion-sensitive alarms connected to reception? Gillian cottoned on to you before you even got to the back of the building.”
“You didn’t leave me much choice. You know what I’m after here.”
Dr Wells exhaled and shook her head a little, out of exasperation. “Sometimes,” she started, “even when all common sense tells us to stop, we get blinded by our fears and irrational beliefs.” Her eyes widened momentarily. She pointed to the wad of files he was holding. “We were talking about legacies; that could have been mine.”
“And how did that work out?” Edward asked, dripping with cynicism. The crusty stack of paper was still in his hands.
“It’s an idea I had when I was in training. I set up an AI programme, where people who are looking to lose weight could create a hyper-realistic avatar of themselves. It would be a super-lifelike, 3-D version of their ideal bodies.”
Edward noticed her latent passion shining through in the manner with which she spoke. Maybe it was his intrigue that held him back from butting in.
“Their unique avatar would appear on a treadmill screen or cycle machine display. It would act as real-time positive reinforcement, encouraging people to develop their optimal body figure. Something for them to work towards.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Edward asked.
“I had patients’ best interests at heart. I also wanted the recognition, that praise, that fame. If not appreciated by wider society, then at least by colleagues in my profession. It’s similar to the dilemma facing someone else I know,” she said knowingly.
Edward still reeled from the initial shock of being caught out. His mouth moved, unwittingly imitating a goldfish. Nothing audible came out.
“I asked my PA not to call the fire brigade,” Dr Wells said, appreciating Edward’s frenetic state of mind. “It goes against my better judgement, but I know that they would have investigated it, treated it as arson, and handed the evidence over to the police.”
Edward stayed rooted to the spot, behind her desk. She approached like a fearless lion whisperer attempting to befriend a terrifying big cat.
“So the police haven’t been called?”
“They would ask for CCTV. You’ll have been caught red-handed and arrested. Perhaps you would have been lucky and got away with a caution, perhaps a conviction. Either way, it will be a criminal record. It will hold you back from applying for many careers, or applying for visas. And all because of what?”
Silence.
“No, really, I’m asking you a genuine question. What are you looking for in my office, Edward?”
Edward bade his time. “I want to find out what you know about me that I haven’t told you.”
“Is there something else you think I should know about?”
“It’s hard to say, unless I know what it is you’ve already got on me.”
“Edward, this is deeply concerning. It’s erratic and hugely risky behaviour. Behaviour that is completely out of character for you.”
“You’re seeing Tom. He’s told you stuff.” He dropped the document, slammed the drawer shut and slunk around to the front of the desk.
Dr Wells obfuscated.
“Why do you think that? What stuff?”
Edward confronted her. A few feet apart, the doctor held her ground in spite of his height advantage.
“He’s been getting help from a therapist. How many of you are there in this town?”
“I can’t say either way. You wouldn’t want me telling anyone about our appointments together. Remember, you’ve always been reluctant for me to share information with Helen and Michael.”
“And in a few short sentences you’ve pretty much confirmed my hunch. Thank you, Elizabeth.”
“Alright, Edward, I do strongly advise we have another session together. In the clinic, if need be.”
Edward sensed he was getting nowhere. His stance slackened som
ewhat, he relaxed his jaw and unfurrowed his brows.
“OK, Elizabeth. I haven’t noticed any improvement in my mental health after all these appointments.” His tone had changed to one of calm. “Do I stand to gain anything from coming again?”
“That’s disappointing to hear Edward, but this will be a gradual process. You cannot hope to feel significantly better after just a few hours of talking and therapy.”
“Not buying it. Nothing you’ve shown me or talked through with me has worked. I’ve only got worse.” By now, he had retreated two paces back, offering distance between them. The sun broke through the early September sky. Particles of dust floated in the air, oblivious to the frosty tension they were caught in the middle of.
“Think about this Edward. You’ve shown me that you are sensitive, you’re not good with engaging people in dialogue. You concede defeat sometimes even though you hate feeling helpless. You are almost relishing living up to these negative traits.”
“I’m not under an obligation to continue,” Edward said flatly. “I’m eighteen now, you don’t have a say.”
“I consider you could pose a credible risk of harm to yourself or others.”
Renewed shock was palpable on Edward’s face. “You’re going to section me? You’d have to stoop pretty fucking low to threaten me with that. I told you I’m fragile, that I have hopes for the future.”
“Edward, you worry me. You’re a bright young man, but you appear to be falling by the wayside. A Section Two may not be a bad idea.”
Her phone and panic alarm were out of reach; she needed to diffuse the situation swiftly. “No one is getting the upper hand here. But let’s compromise? You attend weekly sessions for the next month and take your prescribed course of—”
Screams of Thy Neighbour Page 19