He Never Forgot

by P. D. Workman

  “She’s a therapist. I have a lot of… mental health issues to be resolved. She helps me work through them.”

  Burton buckled his seatbelt, thinking this through. “So, like, depression?” he asked. “What kinds of things?”

  “It can be depression. I get very depressed before Christmas, but it can actually hit at any time of the year, and then it hits me all the harder because it is unexpected. I have anxiety issues, compulsions, PTSD. My girlfriend and I have started couples sessions so that she can help me to get better at relationships, at… overcoming some of the traumatic stuff I’ve had to deal with.”

  Burton motioned to his window, back toward the house as Zachary put the car into gear and started to pull out. “Traumatic stuff like this?”

  Was it a competition to him? Pull out their respective traumas and compare them, see who had suffered the most? Who had bragging rights?

  “That’s private. But… yes, some pretty nasty stuff. I didn’t see my brother killed in front of me… though sometimes I was afraid I would.”

  Burton closed his mouth and thought about that as they drove into the rapidly-falling darkness.

  Zachary was glad that his appointment with Dr. Boyle was by himself, and not a couples session, as had originally been planned. Kenzie had a coworker call in sick, and she had been asked to help with the post-mortem of Allen’s remains. Something that Zachary had encouraged her to do, both for his own sake and for Burton’s. Though he had initiated the couples sessions, he found them much more difficult than individual sessions. After all of the emotion that he’d dealt with in helping Burton get through the previous day, he didn’t think he could have managed a couples session.

  “How are you doing today?” Dr. Boyle asked, smiling at him and giving him a chance to think about what had happened in the last few days since their last session. Zachary thought of the nightmares, about visiting with Joss and Luke, and about the events with Burton.

  “It’s been… a busy few days.”

  “Professionally? Personally? What’s been going on?”

  “A little of both. And I haven’t been sleeping very well.”

  “Do we need to talk about a prescription sleep aid?”

  “I’ve already got those… but I don’t like to use them.”

  “It’s important for your mental health for you to get enough sleep.”

  “Yeah. But… I had that episode before when I had a reaction to mixing them with a painkiller, and… I just don’t think it’s a good idea for me to take them.”

  “Well, ultimately, that’s your choice, of course. But I think that having a blanket policy that you’ll never take them, even if you need them, isn’t the best idea.”

  “I still have them. And if I was going to go all night without sleep for a few days, I would take them. But just for the odd night having a hard time… I don’t want to do that.”

  “So you only occasionally have restless nights? It isn’t anything serious and it doesn’t last?”

  “Well… no. You know me, most nights are difficult. But things were going better. I was having better sleep. I think this is just temporary.”

  “Do you know why you’re having a hard time? Can you tell me what kind of sleep trouble you’re having? Do you have trouble getting to sleep, problems with waking up in the night? Nighttime restlessness? Waking up too early?”

  “Well, any of those. But lately… nightmares. Ones where I wake up and I still feel the feelings that I had in the dream. Where I don’t know when I wake up that it was a dream and that it’s gone. I’m still looking for something or feeling panicked. Still almost in the dream.”

  Dr. Boyle nodded and made a notation on her notepad. A few words to remind her of this later. “Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve had dreams like that.”

  “Sure.” Zachary nodded, feeling relieved. “I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

  “Is there anything similar between the dreams you’ve been having lately? Any one dream, or a recurring image or theme? Is it always the same feeling when you wake up?”

  “Kenzie thinks it’s because of Bridget. Her being pregnant.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  Zachary realized that he’d skipped a step. “I’ve been… dreaming about twins. It’s kind of been related to a case that I’m working, because there are two boys, brothers, and I’ve been helping him to find out what happened to his brother.”

  “But they were not twins.”

  “No. Four or five years apart.”

  “But in your dream, they’re twins.”

  Zachary nodded.

  “Sometimes dreams are like that,” Dr. Boyle said. “Our minds flip a switch, change something up. It could be, like Kenzie suggested, because you’re thinking about Bridget and her expecting twins. Or it could just be that you didn’t have a good mental image of this brother, so you made him identical, to give him a concrete form that you recognized.”

  “Yeah, maybe that was it,” Zachary agreed, nodding eagerly. He didn’t want it to be about Bridget.

  “Have you been thinking about Bridget a lot when you have been awake?”

  Zachary looked at the questions from several different angles. He didn’t want to answer it. Which in itself was an answer. Dr. Boyle wrote something else down. Zachary couldn’t see, from where he sat, if it was ‘thinks excessively about ex-wife’ or something else. Maybe a note to herself not to forget to pick up milk at the grocery store.

  She waited for him to answer.

  44

  Zachary shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position, and cleared his throat.

  “I guess.”

  “You guess what?”

  “That I’ve been thinking about Bridget a lot. Or about her babies a lot.”

  “Is it a package deal, or do you think about them separately?”

  “It just feels so unfair. That she would refuse to have children with me, insist that she never wanted to have children of her own, and then to get pregnant with Gordon. And have two babies, or even more. It’s just… so unfair. I wanted to have children with her. I always wanted to have children, even though she had said she didn’t want them.”

  “It is unfair,” Dr. Boyle agreed. “I can see that it would be tough to deal with that.”

  Zachary warmed to the topic. “Was it because of something that Gordon has that I don’t? Or did she just change her mind? Suddenly became aware of her biological clock?”

  “Hard to say without talking to her.” Dr. Boyle held up a finger. “And I am not suggesting that you talk to her. In fact, I’m telling you not to.”

  Zachary nodded. He knew that if he tried to make contact with Bridget, followed her in his car, or just happened to be in the neighborhood, she would take out a restraining order. And he could go to jail because he’d been warned before.

  “Instead, let’s just unpack this a little further. Why do you think she agreed to have children with Gordon? It isn’t possible that it was just an accident? And they decided to go with it?”

  “No. She had her eggs frozen before she had radiation. She couldn’t have had children without them planning it.”

  “Okay. So we can assume that it was planned. And that’s the reason she’s having multiples as well, because they fertilized more than one egg to give her a better chance of conceiving.”

  Zachary nodded.

  “So why do you think she chose to have children now, if she was against it before?”

  “Her new husband… he’s a very persuasive guy. One of those guys who’s really… dynamic. I guess, he just talked her into it.”

  “That’s a possibility. So how does that make you feel?”

  “Like… I should have tried harder, instead of just accepting it when she said she didn’t want to have any children. Maybe I just needed to push harder, to come up with a better argument. Maybe she was waiting for me to say something that would convince her. To step up and insist… say that I wasn’t going to stay with her unless she agreed to
have kids.”

  “Do you think that’s how Gordon convinced her to have children?”

  “No.” Zachary looked down at his pants and scratched at something that had spilled and hardened there. “I doubt he needed to make any threats.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “He’s… like I said, he’s really persuasive. He would just talk to her, and she would agree. And maybe he didn’t need to say very much. Because he’s a better man than I ever was.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s very wealthy. He owns an investment banking company. I mean… he could buy and sell any business in the city. And he’s not arrogant and stuck up. He’s a very nice guy. Always very respectful, not the kind who would call me names or make comments about me, even though Bridget gives him permission. He’s always been really nice to me.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Dr. Boyle said.

  Zachary laughed and nodded. “Yeah, it really does. I wish he would at least be a villain! I wish I could hate the guy and pick away at all of his shortcomings, but I can’t. He is a good guy. He’s good to Bridget; patient, but he doesn’t put up with a bunch of nonsense. He’s firm, stands up for me if she starts to run me down.”

  Dr. Boyle called Gordon a name and Zachary snorted. Dr. Boyle was right. It really did gall him that Gordon was such a perfect guy for Bridget. The kind of guy that Zachary could never have been, even if he’d tried his whole life.

  There was a tickle in the back of his brain. While he believed that what he said was true, he did have the tiniest of doubts about Gordon. He had worried that Gordon had been involved in the death of one of his employees, but had been proven wrong in that regard. And he didn’t believe the claim that the victim’s sister made that Gordon was a manipulative egomaniac.

  At least, he didn’t think so.

  Bridget would not have gotten together with someone like that. She liked to be the one in control. She had married Zachary thinking that she would be able to control him, to fix him and make him behave the way she believed he should. She hadn’t understood what a huge undertaking that would be, and that Zachary’s behavior wasn’t always a matter of choice. And being broken definitely wasn’t. He would have changed. He would have been what she wanted him to be, but he couldn’t.

  “Zachary.”

  He blinked and focused back on Dr. Boyle again. She did not comment on his momentary mental vacation. “So do you think you are focusing too much of your time and energy on Bridget and her unborn twins?”

  He sighed. “Yes. Of course. I shouldn’t be thinking about it at all. It isn’t anything to do with me. I’ve moved on. She’s moved on. We’re in different relationships, and what she chooses to do or not to do is her own business. It doesn’t affect me at all.”

  “So what are strategies you can use to focus less on her and more on the things that are important in your life?”

  “Spending time with Kenzie… telling myself to stop and having something else to distract me. Visualization.” He shrugged. “I know what I should do.”

  “But it isn’t always that easy, is it?” Dr. Boyle sounded sympathetic. “Have you examined the reasons that you should be focusing your attention on Kenzie and other things instead of Bridget? Look at your motivations and think about what you are getting out of obsessing over Bridget and what things you want in your life? I think it’s important to be motivated, or you’re not going to follow through on any of the things you know you should do.”

  Zachary shook his head slowly. “I don’t have any reason to think about Bridget and the babies. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t get anything out of it, and if I was focusing on Kenzie or a case, or even just meeting my own needs, that would make a lot more sense than thinking about her.”

  “Why do you think you do, then? What benefit are you getting out of thinking about Bridget?”

  He rubbed the center of his forehead and thought. He had never considered that he might be getting some kind of reward from thinking of her. It was just where his mind went. His mind wandered and he thought about her, about his regrets, worried about the babies, wished that he could get back together with her and try again. To make it work this time.

  “Um… wow. I guess… part of it is fantasizing about the great life we could have if she would just take me back.”

  “Because you had such a great life when you were together?”

  He knew that wasn’t true.

  “Well, in the beginning, it was really good. She complimented me, made me feel good. And she was so pretty and so popular, it was like… I was suddenly that guy. I was lucky. I had everything. All the good things that I’d never had before.”

  “But that didn’t last long.”

  “No. Because… she started making little digs… trying to ‘motivate’ me. She was impatient that I wasn’t the perfect date. That I wasn’t making enough progress toward the mold she was trying to press me into.”

  “And those little digs escalated.”

  “Yeah. By the time we got married, she would go into full-blown banshee mode… screaming at me for what I thought was a little thing, or for something that I couldn’t help.”

  “And why didn’t you confront her about that? Why did you stay—and get married—when you saw this happening?”

  “Because when she wasn’t screaming at me, it was good. I felt good. She would be kind and empathetic. She wanted to hear about me, about my life, my worries and concerns…”

  “And that made you feel good. Did you recognize it as the cycle of abuse?”

  Zachary hesitated. “No.”

  “Do you recognize it now?”

  “Maybe… but I have a hard time seeing it like that. I think… most of the time, things were good. She was kind and loving. But then I would screw something up, and she would lose it. And that wasn’t her fault; she was doing the best she could dealing with my crap. It was my fault, because I couldn’t toe the line. Couldn’t do the things that she asked me to, even though they were perfectly reasonable.”

  “Were they? Give me an example.”

  Zachary tried to pull one thing out of the mess that had been his life with Bridget. “Uh… letting her know where I was going to be. When I was going to be late for dinner or a planned event.”

  “So she expected you to let her know ahead of time?”

  “Yeah. And that’s just being considerate, you know. People expect that. Especially if it’s an event with other people and she’s going to end up being there alone. People talk. They think that I’m just blowing it off, that I don’t think she’s important enough to make sure that I’m there.”

  “And did you try to let her know when you were going to be late for something?”

  “Yes, of course. But… with my work, I don’t always know if I am going to be out on a case a particular night. If a subject under surveillance was on the move, things were going down… sometimes I didn’t know much ahead of time, but I just couldn’t get away.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Or else…” He ducked his head, embarrassed even though she already knew all about his failings and foibles. “You know, with my ADHD, I’d forget I was supposed to be somewhere, or not give myself long enough to get there in time. That really drove her nuts.” He thought about the other night, when he’d completely blocked out Kenzie, not even able to change his focus for long enough to eat dinner. If that had been Bridget, he would still be smarting from her verbal lances.

  “Is that something you can control?” Dr. Boyle asked.

  “Well… I try. But I get distracted by a case, or I hyperfocus on something… and everything else just falls by the wayside. It isn’t intentional.”

  “Did Bridget know that?”

  “I tried to explain it to her.”

  “And how did she take that?”

  Zachary shook his head. “She didn’t. She wouldn’t accept… my ADHD as an excuse.”

  “So… going back to the question about the cycle of abuse. If she wa
s verbally abusive because of something that you could not control, then is that your fault or her fault?”

  Zachary shrugged. They both knew the answer, but he didn’t want to voice it aloud. He didn’t want to think or say that Bridget was an abuser. He had dealt with enough abusers in his life, and he liked to think that he had gotten himself out of that cycle.

  Even though he hadn’t.

  Not with Bridget.

  Kenzie was different. While he always expected her to go off like Bridget would have, she didn’t. She’d been there for him. She’d been supportive. Exasperated sometimes, yes. Pulling out of the relationship when he wasn’t able to handle it. But she hadn’t yelled and screamed. She hadn’t belittled him or hit him. She was different.

  “Do you think that maybe with Bridget, you were seeking a familiar experience? The same kind of relationship as you had been in before. The way your mother treated you. The way that you were judged by school teachers and professionals as being obstinate instead of having challenges?”

  “Yes.” They had discussed this before. But he didn’t like it, and it didn’t stop him from thinking about Bridget when he should be thinking of other things.

  “So one of the things that you got out of your relationship with Bridget was familiarity. Being in an environment that felt the same as your home environment.”

  “Yes, I guess.”

  “And you got her kind words and strokes when she was in a good mood.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if you could go back to her and start over, what would you get?”

  Zachary shrugged. “Nothing, I know that’s just a fantasy.”

  “But when you think about her, you think of those good times. Your brain gets those same good feelings as when you were together and she was showing you love and attention.”

  “I guess, yeah. So you think that’s why I think about her and worry about the babies so much?”

  Dr. Boyle cocked her head.

  Zachary replayed the question in his head, but didn’t know what it was that had caught her interest. “What?”