1

The Empath

Chapter 1

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.

Gloria Steinem

John sat on the edge of the bed holding his head,

looking as he did at the lump lying underneath his

flimsy blanket. Oh boy, he thought to himself as he

felt a literal pang of sadness in his chest. He had a

guest, and he could feel her sadness even in her

awkward sleep and heavy breathing. It was going to

be a long day thinking about this. How to proceed?

He thought back about the night before, vaguely

remembering a bacchanalian evening filled with

drinking, dancing, and carousing. How had this

happened again, and who was this young lady in his

bed?

The entire sequence of events actually began the

night before with a feeling. A pending sense of doom

 2

that he couldn’t shake and that had made him toss and

turn all night. He later reported to his dingy office where

he worked as a therapist, knowing from the feeling he

had felt that some terrible news was coming today. His

feelings were never wrong. Never.

The news came when his third session of the day

began with a very poor family from a tough part of town.

He had always gotten little rushes of emotion when

dealing with this family, but now the feeling was so

strong his heart was pounding and he actually felt pain in

the upper portion of his chest. Something serious was

about to go down.

He and the father, named Tom, were friendly.

Coming from a blue-collar background himself, he could

relate to the family’s struggles, and had always rooted

for them to somehow get back on their feet and right the

ship. Still, he knew something was off. The daughter,

Kim, who was 13, was having some severe emotional

problems, that he knew had their roots in some serious

issues he had yet to discover. Today he would discover

 3

them.

When they arrived he shook hand with Tom and

chatted politely for a few minutes about the job market,

the Chicago Bears, and some other general chit-chat.

Kim sat with her eyes staring straight ahead and her

arms folded in obvious anger. When he got close to her

he knew it was her. He took in all of her pain and it hit

him very sharply.

As they sat down they began to go over the old

familiar issues. He was avoiding it, knew he was

avoiding it, but couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.

Still, he knew she was ready today just by the pangs in

his chest. After a half-hour it came spilling out easily

enough.

“My dad is fucking me,” she said matter of factly, her

tone so old it scared him.

“Ok honey, ok,” he said softly, “he’s not going to be

doing that anymore if I have anything to say about it.”

 4

The next hour was one of the most awkward of his

life. By the sheer nature of his profession he had a “duty

to warn” and particularly when a child tells you they are

being sexually molested, there is an immediate duty to

protect the child. He was sure her story was true, having

felt by her emotionally violent nature that this was most

likely the case. He dialed the police and began the very

long walk to talk to Kim’s father out in the lobby.

The feeling had been almost too much for him to

bear. He felt so much for this little girl he felt like he

was going to explode. A drink will not help, he

explained to himself, you’re just gonna have to work

through it. 3 hours later he was drunk.

What happened next was a little difficult to put

together. When he drank he turned into someone else. It

wasn’t unusual for him to end the night on top of a bar

belting out music to a crowded house. It was in a sense a

kind of protective identity he fell into to deal with the

feelings when they got too powerful. It wasn’t exactly a

 5

perfect solution, but it was one that allowed him to

balance his very troubled soul in times of crisis. The

feelings had been getting stronger lately, and despite the

fact that he was now well into his 30’s, he drifted further

and further into a regressive adolescence to deal with the

feelings when they threatened to overwhelm him.

All of these things raced through his mind as he

continued to look at the lump lying in his bed. He peered

under the covers and saw that she was fully clothed. A

good sign he thought. Then the bed began to rumble and

she looked at him with piercing blue eyes.

“I don’t suppose you have anything to eat around here?”

So they went out for breakfast and talked. Her name

was Stephanie and she was a High School teacher who

taught English at a public school in the city. They had

apparently talked about his feelings and a number of

other intimate topics the night before, and she amazingly

recited a great deal of this conversation back to him over

 6

breakfast. He liked her. Liked her a lot actually, and felt

a wave of nausea in his stomach

when she told him she lived with her boyfriend.

Still, they talked and laughed for the next hour over

breakfast, and he began to remember all of the fun they

had the night before drinking and dancing. From the

feeling in his stomach he knew this woman was going to

be a part of his life, although in what capacity he still

had no idea.

“Do you know what an empath is?” She asked.

 7

Chapter 2

A what?” he asked, still groggy from the night before.

“An empath,” she explained, drawing closer to his face.

“Someone who has an extremely heightened sense of

empathy. My whole life I’ve felt like this but I’m not

sure I’ve ever met another one. Until now that is.”

He took a long pause and took this woman in. Who the

hell was she? A teacher, yes, he knew that, but clearly

also someone who drank too much, would spend the

night with a stranger, however platonically, and had

absolutely no fear of opening up, at least from

what he could see.

“I’m not sure why you’re dropping the y off of the term

empathy.” Yes, I feel that I have a lot of empathy for

people, it is why I became a therapist. I’m not totally

sure what you mean by empath though. How is this

different than a person with a great deal of empathy? It

sounds kind of like science fiction to me.”

 8

“You’re cute,” she said, slowly patting his cheeks.

And with that she threw a ten dollar bill on the table

and got up to leave. He was as startled by this abrupt

departure as he was about everything else about this

strange and mysterious woman.

“Wait a second,” he said with a bit of anxiousness. “Will

I ever see you again?”

“I’m sure you will,” she said as she whirled out of the

restaurant. Extremely puzzled, he looked down at his

untouched plate of scrambled eggs. Suddenly he wanted

to go home and do some reading.

Returning home he did some googling and found that

there was a wealth of information on empaths and their

supposed psychic abilities to read other people. He

immediately became discouraged when he read some of

the claims people made about being able to read the

emotions of animals, as well as the tales of being able to

heal people simply by touching them. He had studied

psychology for a lot of years, worked very hard, and was

 9

skeptical of a number of new age philosophies that tried

to offer shortcuts to emotional health through empty

promises. He knew from personal experience that human

change involved a whole lot more heavy lifting.

Yet a part of him was also highly intrigued by what

he read. Scrolling through one particular webpage he

found this passage which seemed quite familiar to him;

“Empaths are highly sensitive. This is the term

commonly used in describing one’s abilities (sensitivity)

to another’s emotions and feelings. Empaths have a deep

sense of knowing that accompanies empathy and are

often compassionate, considerate, and understanding of

others.

There are also varying levels of strength in empaths

which may be related to the individual’s awareness of

self, understanding of the powers of empathy, and/or the

acceptance or non-acceptance of empathy by those

associated with them, including family and peers.

Generally, those who are empathic grow up with these

 10

tendencies and do not learn about them until later in

life.”

This seemed quite familiar to him, especially the

“knowing” part which described something he had been

trying to pin down about himself for a number of years.

It had gotten especially acute since he had been a

therapist, and the final line in this passage about not

learning about these tendencies until later in life also

seemed interesting to him in light of a number of recent

developments in his life.

For the first time in several months he went to the

gym that Sunday and worked out. A new emotion was

welling up inside oh him that he was not able to identify,

and he wanted to exercise to ward off the feeling of

anxiety he knew he would experience trying to figure

this out. Still, something was new and something had

changed. What was it? Did it have something to do with

the mysterious new stranger in his life? He wasn’t sure,

but he did know the feeling wasn’t altogether

unpleasant. He went home and made a call to Dr. Paul

 11

Culthbert, his longtime mentor and occasional personal

therapist.

The next day he sat in the lobby of Dr. Paul’s old

school uptown office. His secretary, a 60ish woman who

had been there since John was a student, looked over at

him disapprovingly. She didn’t like unplanned

interruptions in her schedule, and hadn’t particularly

liked John when he was a student of Dr. Paul’s’.

“Doctor will be with you shortly,” she said curtly to

John as she hurried about the office straightening things

up.

He laughed silently to himself at her use of the tem

“doctor,” which suggested they were in some kind of

medical setting as opposed to a second rate academic

lair. She had great reverence for Dr. Paul and the work

he did, and her use of the term doctor without his name

attached signified her great respect for the great healer

she was sure he was.

 12

15 minutes later the great doctor appeared, bleary-

eyed and in a rumpled suit that made it look like he may

have slept on the very same couch where his patients

poured out their souls.

 13

Chapter 3

“Hello, Doctor,” John said with as much irreverence as

he could muster.

“Come in asshole,” was the response.

Looking around John noticed the familiar stacks of

yellowing papers and old books from the 60’s and 70’s.

The guy was a classicist, he had to admit, and looking

around he hoped to God he wasn’t looking at the ghost

of Christmas future. On the other hand he knew the guy

was brilliant, and he did kind of admire the mad scientist

quality that seemed to permeate every area of his life.

‘What’s on your mind John?” he asked, cutting to the

chase.

“Jesus you don’t fuck around, Ok, here’s the thing. I met

this woman the other day, and I haven’t been able to get

her out of my mind.”

 14

“You mean another chick from a bar? Congratulations

asshole. You exploited your limited therapeutic skills to

fuck a chick in a tacky lounge. You’ve done us proud.”

“No you judgmental prick, this was something entirely

different, not sexual at all actually. She was totally

different than any girl I’ve ever met. She had a hyper-

sensitive level of insight, kind of mysterious but also

kind of odd. Here is the part about her I wanted to talk to

you about, She told me I was an empath. I know, it

sounds like New Age bullshit, but still, I did some

research and I wanted to talk to you. Is there such a

thing?”

Dr. Paul took a deep breath and took John in with

serious eyes. They knew each other well, and John knew

that Dr. Paul’s mentor, the author of one of the most

definitive books on teaching therapy, had committed

suicide. It had been a subject of heated debate between

 15

the two of them, as John had often question the idea that

a person could commit suicide and still have relevant

things to say about how a therapist should approach

empathy and the subject of fostering hope in people.

Dr. Paul had contended that it is always possible to

separate the message from the messenger. The history of

psychology was filled with men of less than reputable

character who had amazingly brilliant things to say

about the nature of the human condition. Jung, perhaps

the therapist who had influenced John more than any

other, was sexually exploitive of his female patients.

Freud was an insufferable narcissist who eventually

committed suicide. Kohlberg, the gold standard for

introducing the idea of moral reasoning in psychology,

did as well.

His mentor, Dr. Thomas Mahoney, however had

been a different kind of case, dedicating 40 years of

rigorous scholarship and personal practice into the study

of human empathy. On his 70th birthday he had shot

himself in the head, a particularly violent death for a

 16

man so gentle that had sent shockwaves though the

entire psychological community. His suicide letter read,

“Goodbye to all of you precious people who shared

this short, sweet dance with me. I owe you an

explanation and I want to assure you that this was not in

any way because of you beautiful souls. I have had a

secret for most of my life. Being around other people in

almost every capacity puts me in intense pain. I have

tried to smile through this, but it was a secret I could live

with no more. As far as I can understand it, it is some

kind of super-heightened sense of empathy, where I

actually physically as well as emotionally feel the pain

others feel in almost every instance. I know this sounds

bizarre, and some may think such a thing has been a

curse. It has not. It has allowed me to be what I hope is

an effective therapist who made a difference to those

brave souls who entrusted me to help, and it has been an

honor and a privilege to do so.

As I have gotten older, this ability, if you would like

to call it that, has gotten much more acute. I could no

 17

longer even go out in public without being immediately

blasted by sensory information others were sending out,

and if they were in any kind of distress I felt it acutely. It

was therefore time for me to say goodbye, as I could no

longer bear this pain, but also not bear the thought of

sharing this experience with all of you who I have loved

so much. This little life I have been given had been

exceptional.”

The letter had fueled an intense sense of speculation

among psychologists as to what this man was actually

claiming to have experienced. Was he some sort of

psychic? A healer? Did he break from reality and have

delusions about seeing and hearing other people’s

thoughts? The less kind had suggested he had simply

gone crazy, and his suicide detracted greatly from his

reputation as one of the finest therapists of his

generation.

Dr. Paul had also felt this sting, having embraced

Mahoney’s teaching and theories regarding human

empathy and passed them on to his students and trainees

 18

for many years. He and John had often discussed the

perils of being a therapist. Divorce and struggled with

both of these things. His often rumpled appearance was

usually a sure sign that he had been out too late the night

before, and sizing him up, John figured he may very well

have been out on a bit of a bender very recently.

So as the thoughts of Mahoney’s suicide drifted

slowly out of his mind, Dr. Paul once again took notice

of John, this time beckoning him to sit down. alcoholism

were very common in their circle of friends, and Dr.

Paul himself had

“I’m not sure this is a question you want me to answer

John, he replied with a sigh. “But to begin to answer

your question, I knew you’d be coming today, and yes, it

partially explains why I never made it out of these

clothes. Partially,” he said, this time laughing and with a

smile.
 19

So John started from the beginning, telling him about

the young girl he had been seeing who was being

sexually assaulted by her father and ending with a

strange woman in a coffee shop. He walked him through

all of the feelings that accompanied this journey,

including the actual physical sensation of pain when his

young patient had been sitting and waiting for him in the

waiting room.

Dr. Paul nodded and listened with little interruption.

Having practiced psychotherapy for 30 years, he had

dealt with more than his share of sexual abuse cases, and

was all too familiar with the heartbreak and dejection

that hearing this stirs up in a person. Instinctively he

knew John had talked for nearly an hour, having honed

his sense of therapeutic timing after many years of

practice.

“I want to think a bit more about this John,” Dr. Paul

replied. “You remember I knew you as a student and I

always wondered if this was the right field for you, and
 20

now you’re describing going to a place where very few

therapist have been. Why now, you have to ask yourself,

has this kind of super empathy chose to reveal itself to

you? You’re on your way as a therapist and even as a

public figure. Your books are selling, you go on TV and

feed that itch, so I’m wondering why at this point in your

career you are so interested in this? “

“I know, I know, you always thought I wanted to be a

celebrity first and a therapist second, and maybe you’re

right about that. You also told me to pay attention to

how people in therapy make me feel, and all I know is

that lately I feel like I am taking in every bit of their

pain. Is this familiar to you? Have you lived with this?

How do you live with it? That’s why I’m here. I’m

genuinely stuck. I need answers,” John replied wearily

“Let me ask you something John. Do you really think I’d

be wearing the same suit as I did yesterday if I didn’t

know what you’re talking about? Sometimes it pushes

 21

me to the brink of madness it hurts so much, but at the

end of the day I know what we do matters. I’ve seen it. I

see it in you actually. See it in how far you’ve come as a

therapist. I live with it and I stand it and most days do so

with a smile on my face. It’s very tiresome sometimes.

Right now I feel very tired, so I want to give you just

one piece of advice before I kick you out.”

“Which is?”

‘Find the woman.”

Goddamn, John thought to himself as he got on the

elevator. I came in for answers and he leaves me with

riddles. I should have expected it, he thought to himself.

Dr. Paul never gave anyone the answers to anything. He

would point you and lead you and encourage you, but he

was an absolute expert in making his patients do the

heavy lifting themselves.

 22

Find the girl, what did he mean by that? How was he

going to do that? In a city of 3 million people he had met

her at a bar and gotten only her first name. What was so

special about her anyway? He knew he was trying to talk

himself out of something he felt to be true though, and

attempting to create this cognitive dissonance had left

him a terrific headache. He stopped into a bar and

ordered a beer.
 23

Chapter 4

After an hour in the bar the frizzy haired bartender

had told him half of her life story, and was on the verge

of tears. Jesus I really do have the magic touch, John

thought to himself. People had always told him their

stories very easily, which was in a way rather surprising

as he had always had a terribly big mouth, which was

not exactly a blue ribbon quality in a therapist. He was

trying not to think about what Dr. Paul had said about

his wanting to be a “celebrity” therapist, and it stung a

bit thinking how much he knew he had been right. He

didn’t even really need to see patients anymore between

his books, teaching, and other sources of income, and he

had thought for a long while of cutting down to 4 or 5

patients a week. Now the pull to go back to doing

therapy had gotten stronger. Why now? He kept

repeating it over and over again. It was one of the first

and most fundamental questions in therapy, and John

knew that he had to answer this question for himself

 24

before he could begin to figure out some of what he was

going through.

He left the bar after leaving a big tip and giving the

bartender his card. Jesus his ethics were getting shaky.

Although he couldn’t cite the exact ethical code, he was

pretty sure it wasn’t kosher to pick up new clients while

drinking at a bar. He tried to put it out of his head and

think about what problem he was trying to solve, which

was another fundamental question he always asked of

his patients. Why a woman? Why now?

Taking refuge in a coffee shop later that evening,

John thought a lot about the women in his life, and how

the question of intimacy affected both his role as a

therapist and as a potential life partner. He understood

the mother template, every therapist has some

understanding of this idea, but exploring his relationship

with his own mother didn’t offer any immediate clues.

Sure they had had their problems growing up, but now

they had a very close relationship where they laughed

often and shared a number of insights about where it was

 25

they had come from. His mother had some intimacy

problems, and he was sure some of that had rubbed off

on him, but it was something he had worked on very

hard when he was a patient in therapy.

He had always subscribed to the idea in one of his

favorite old movies called A Bronx Tale that a person got

to have 3 great loves in their life. He had a difficult time

counting his number, but upon serious reflection

concluded that his number was probably zero. Sure he

had been in relationships, even long-term, but a true,

intimate, totally honest exchange of feelings? No, not

really.

So was that his answer? Find a woman to settle down

with and all of these painful feelings would go away? It

sounded too easy to him and he knew it was short-

sighted. He had a cynical view of love as a result of

being a therapist, having heard so many stories of

betrayals, heartbreak, and depression, as well as seeing

the broken families, and the broken lives. He had never

seen a couple in therapy he had felt hopeful about, not

 26

one, and like many therapists who treat couples, he had

some serious doubts about its efficacy. Even the most

optimistic statistics said it worked in only about 50

percent of the cases, and this was a number he

personally viewed with a great deal of skepticism.

He regarded his own thoughts with a bit of

disappointment, knowing if he kept thinking and talking

to himself like this about love, that he was creating a

loveless reality for himself. It was the one area of his life

where his reason constantly wrestled with his emotions.

He wanted to share his life with someone, but saw the

ugly flip side of the coin on a daily basis. Who was he to

defy the odds? Did anyone? Besides his freedom

afforded him a tremendous opportunity to write, travel,

and do exactly what he wanted to do with his time. Was

he ready to give that up? After an hour of this flip-

flopping he began the walk home to what he was sure

would be a rather sleepless night.

That night he dreamed of being on a massive lake

with water surrounding him in every direction. Tiger

 27

Woods was his companion, and eggs were hatching all

around him on the water. He woke up confused, and

immediately wrote down as many of the details of the

dream as he could. Tiger Woods, he laughed to himself.

Nice touch. He had been in the news a number of times

recently for his various infidelities, and John assumed

that this was his subconscious presenting him with the

cynical side relationship issues.

Eggs? Water? These were different kinds of images

however. Rebirth was the theme, and John woke up

feeling he was on the verge of some kind of rebirth,

although in what capacity he had no idea. He had

always paid attention to the feelings that dreams evoked

in him, and in this case the clearest feeling he had was

one of hope.

He had a very busy day at work ahead of him dealing

with the issue of Kim, his young patient who had been

molested, and he took a deep breath and prepared to go

into battle, not just with a messy bureaucracy but with

himself. Kim was now staying with a foster family in a

 28

completely different part of town, and he had arranged to

meet her at her new house so he could speak with her

foster parents and get a sense of how she was holding up

emotionally.

Walking up to the porch he again got a very heavy

feeling, and tried to sort out exactly what was going on

inside of him. Was he feeling Kim’s pain? Was there

something dark about this particular foster family he was

picking up on? He didn’t know and didn’t want to get to

far ahead of himself, as he knew it would distract him

from giving Kim his full attention which he was sure she

really needed right now.

He knocked on the door and a rather tired looking

Black woman in an apron answered the door and

beckoned him inside. He immediately got the sense that

she was a good woman, but likely also very

overwhelmed by taking care of so many children with

serious emotional problems. They sat and chatted

politely for a few minutes, and the woman explained to

John that Kim had thus far been very unresponsive to her
 29

as well as to the other children, which they both knew

was not particularly surprising considering everything

she had recently been through in her life.

He went into the living room and saw Kim sitting

there with her arms folded, and once again felt a sharp

twist of pain, this time in his lower back. Kim seemed to

literally be in another world at this moment, and he

knew he had to deal with her very gently, as she was

likely experiencing the effects of dealing with a serious

trauma.

“Kim? “It’s me John, honey, your counselor, I wanted to

talk to you and see if you could tell me a little a bit about

how you’re doing here in your new home.”

She looked up and noticed him for the first time since

she had arrived as it slowly dawned on him who he was

and what he was doing here.

“Do you mind if we get out of here?”

 30

“I know a place that has ice cream right down the street,

how does that sound to you?” he answered back.

After checking in with her foster mother they began

the walk to the store. She seemed disassociated and lost,

and he knew these symptoms of post traumatic stress

would only get more severe if she was unable to begin to

talk about what had happened to her. It was dangerous to

push her right now, he knew, and he reminded himself

that he could probably be the most helpful to her right

now by being a supportive and trustworthy advocate.

“So how do you like it here?” he asked.

“I miss home,” she said after a long pause. “I know I’m

supposed to be really mad at my dad right now but I’m

not. He loves me and I love him. I miss my brother and

my sister. I don’t know any of these kids here and some

 31

of them are mean to me. I want to go back home. Why

can’t I just go back?”

Careful here. He thought to himself. to her that what

her father was doing was not alright. He new a large part

of her knew that, but as is often the case with victims of

molestation, the abuse can actually make someone feel

good. It was a troubling issue to sort through with

children, but he knew if her could even begin a dialogue

with her about the subject that perhaps he could begin to

try and help her through this. He didn’t want to ruin the

trust he had built up with her by invalidating her

feelings, but he knew he also had to somehow make it

clear .

“The thing is Kim, family members aren’t allowed to

have sex with each other, it’s the law. I know it must be

weird for you to have to leave your house and have all

this trouble happen over something that you thought was

between you and your dad. None of this was your fault
 32

honey, none of it. I’ve always admired you so much for

being able to be honest with me, so I was wondering, if

you didn’t think anything was wrong with what was

happening, why did you choose to tell me about it.”

As this came out of his mouth we wanted to take it

back. He winced as she took the statement in, feeling for

a second the wave of self blame that swept over her as a

result of his question. Still, it was an important point that

needed to me made, and he felt himself teetering on the

edge between empathy and confrontation with the hope

that he wouldn’t fall over the cliff.

 33

Chapter 5

She looked him over and thought for a second before

responding. He had been good to her, that was true, she

still didn’t know what he wanted, and until she did, she

was a little bit wary of saying everything that was on her

mind.

“I don’t know why I told you. It just ended up making

everything worse,” she responded.

He felt the urge to rush in and defend himself, but

then immediately thought better of that idea. He knew

she had more to say, and that by allowing for a little

silence she would eventually verbalize the conflict that

was going on inside of her.

“The thing was,” she went on. “Other kids were starting

to tease me in school, saying I was in love with my dad,

and it was making me really mad. I only told one person

about it and suddenly everybody in the school knew. It

 34

used to make me so mad sometimes I would come home

screaming, which is why I had to see you I guess. I don’t

know what is wrong with my dad loving me, but

everyone else seemed to have a problem with it, so I

guess there must be something I don’t know.”

He looked at her and felt an intense pang of sadness,

a part of him looking into her soul and seeing nothing

but heartache in her future as a result of these mistaken

beliefs about sexual betrayal. It would be an incredible

undertaking to undo the damage that had already been

done to her very impressionable young psyche, and he

knew that to challenge her feelings at this point may

have the very unfortunate side affect of making her feel

an intense experience of shame.

The father-daughter relationship is complicated. A

strong attachment to the father in youth could be

predictive of so many things in a girl’s later romantic

choices, yet in Kim’s case this attachment had been

poisoned by repeated sexual assault. Would she ever

 35

learn to trust a man after this? She was already

beginning to wear the scarlet letter of shame from her

father’s activities with her classmates, and he knew from

experience that this would be something that would

continue to get worse.

“It seems like a part of you might not have been ready to

have sex yet though,” John said gently. “You’re a really

smart girl, I have always been very impressed by the

great comments you make about things, but you also

should get to enjoy a few more years of being a kid.

Don’t you think? Am I wrong about that?”

“Well I never fit in with al the other kids, you know that.

I always had the wrong clothes, the wrong house, the

wrong toys, the wrong everything. Being the first one to

have sex made me feel like there was something just for

me. That there was something the other kids couldn’t

have yet.”
 36

“Well let me tell you something honey, there’s a lot you

have that the other kids don’t have yet. For one thing

you’re one of the brightest kids I’ve ever worked with. I

want so bad for you to grow up and do good things. The

way you’ve handled all of this tells me you have an

amazing ability to survive, I hope we can continue to

talk, and maybe one day we can figure some more of this

out,”

With that she began to cry, softly at first and then in

sobs. So much pent up emotion flowed out of this little

girl, that he could barely contain his own tears, and soon

he was crying with her. It wasn’t the best intervention he

knew, but somehow he also knew it might be therapeutic

for her to see that he was also vulnerable to. His words

of encouragement to her had been something she clearly

craved very badly. In working with children, John

always reminded himself that, in the words of one of his

favorite therapists Rudolph Dreikurs, Children “craved

encouragement, like plants crave water.” He knew it was

 37

true, and it was his default mode not just with children,

but with all of his patients.

They began the slow walk back to her knew house

saying very little. At one point Kim tried to hold his

hand, and he felt awful about having to tell her he didn’t

think this was a good idea. She wanted to feel safe very

badly, that was clear, but she had also embedded the idea

that she had to reward this safety by providing sexual

pleasure. It broke his heart.

As they reached her doorway she began to cry again,

but this time he knew he had to be strong for her.

“I want you to hang in there my friend. You are one of

the toughest girls I know and I am so proud of the way

you’ve handled this. By the way I hear you have been

going to a new school. How is that going? Have you

made any new friends? “

“Well it’s a relief that no one there knows about me and

my dad. There is this one teacher who had been really,

 38

really nice to me. She told me a secret that she knows

how I feel and that I could talk to her about anything that

I wanted.”

John felt a sharp pain as she said this and then thought

about what this feeling really was. It wasn’t pain exactly,

but more like a murmur in his heart that made him feel

short of breath.

“Umm Kim, what is your teacher’s name?” John asked,

trying to mask his anticipation.

“Mrs. Corcoran,” she said.

“But she said I could call her Stephanie when we were

alone.”
 39

Chapter 6

Somehow he knew this before it even left Kim’s

mouth. It was her. He had found the woman. That wasn’t

exactly true, he knew where she worked, and he had

gotten this information from a very fragile patient who

was also a child, which was not exactly like hooking up

with someone on Craigslist. Still, he thought this was a

significant bit of information, and knew from his very

short time with Stephanie that she might be an important

person in Kim’s life as she began the very slow work of

healing.

How to proceed? He stayed up half of the night

thinking about these new developments in his life, and

how he was going to proceed given this new bit of

information he had received. He was a strong believer in

the power of intuition, but lately the power of the

emotions he had been feeling made it a little bit more

difficult to follow. There was simply too much

interference, and his circuits were being overloaded to

the point of exhaustion. Usually a sound sleeper, he had

 40

tossed and turned for a week now and once again felt

like he was on the verge of an important discovery,

although he was dammed if her knew what this was.

His first move the next day was to call Dr. Paul,

although he knew he would be annoyed by the second

interruption in less than a week. He had found the

woman, that was true, but what he was supposed to do

with her now was a bit of a mystery to him. Beyond the

ethical considerations, he wanted to fully explore the

implications of what such a significant new person might

due to his life in terms of disruption and chaos. In short,

he was afraid, but knew what Dr. Paul’s reaction would

be when he sniffed that out, which he inevitably would.

He did have some legitimate ethical questions for Dr.

Paul about this matter, and it was under this pretense he

made an appointment to see him again with his very

annoyed receptionist.

“Jesus you need a lot of handholding,” Dr. Paul said

with a laugh.
 41

“Nice to see you too Doctor,’ John replied, brushing past

Dr. Paul and inviting himself to sit down.

John launched into the whole story about Stephanie

being Kim’s teacher and all of the events and

conversation that led up to this revelation. Dr. Paul

listened quietly, and then slowly began to shake his head

in disappointment.

“Let me ask you something pal, are you more worried

about this woman, or about the little girl whose head is

so fucked up right now she may never make it back?”

Dr. Paul asked with more venom than he had intended.

“Jesus Paul, where is that coming from? As strange as it

might seem, the two seem completely intertwined to me,

and I can’t really figure out why. I was hoping you

might have some thoughts on the subject.”

 42

Dr. Paul did indeed have a lot of thoughts on the

subject, and knew that his strong reaction to John’s

dilemma was in part because he had been down the same

difficult road. His first wife had been the great love of

his life, and together they had lived and worked in

Africa for several years as Peace Corps volunteers.

When she had died his life was thrown into a tailspin he

had never fully recovered from, and his romantic

interludes had been the subject of much gossip and

whispering in the psychological community since that

time.

“I’m sorry John, that was a little of my own baggage

acting up there. I just wanted to remind you that in this

case you’re a therapist first. Tell me what you mean by

intertwined; what made you use that word and what are

you basing this feeling on? “

By looking at John’s face, Dr. Paul knew that this

question had hit its mark. What he was trying to convey

 43

to John was that there was a relationship between

empathy in his personal life, including empathy for

himself, and the way he conducted himself as a therapist

on a daily basis. He had been in John’s shoes, feeling

every pain and shedding every tear with his patients as a

young therapist. Meeting his wife Susan as a young man

had changed everything for him, as all of the pain he felt

for people was in part neutralized by the intense

emotional bond he had with the woman he considered

his soul mate. He wanted John to make this connection

himself though, and so far he was a bit to confused and

self-absorbed.

“Well doc I guess I just feel like life is leading me

somewhere, but I’m not sure where right now. I

understand the synchronicity I guess, and yes I want

very much to help Kim in any way I can, but I can’t help

but think this woman is somehow related to helping

Kim.”
 44

“Let me ask you something John, if you had to pick one

word, just one, that you think of when you hear the word

empathy, what would it be? Don’t think too much, just

answer.”

“Wow, what a question, compassion, I guess.”

“Compassion is good John,” Dr. Paul said seriously.

“But I think you can do a little better.”

“What does that mean?” John asked, somewhat offended

that he had failed the test.

“Think about it pal. Now if you’ll excuse me I have

other people to see,” Dr. Paul said as he motioned John

towards the door.

Damn this guy, John thought to himself. Why did

everything have to be such a Goodman riddle with him?

What the hell was wrong with compassion? He thought

 45

it was a pretty good answer, but it was clearly not what

Dr. Paul was fishing for. He stopped off at the bar

downstairs and ordered a beer, thinking about the cryptic

conversation he had just had. He sat there in silence for a

while, not wanting to talk to any more bartenders and

inadvertently recruit any more patients.

3 beers later he found himself getting angrier and

angrier at Dr. Paul, but also knew that it was probably

because he had struck an appropriate nerve. He decided

to play some music and walked over to the jukebox,

looking at his watch as he did. It was 6 P.M. and it was

December 8th. Why did that day stick in his head? As he

flipped through the screens on the jukebox he stopped on

a page with some John Lennon songs. That was it!!

Today was the day John had been shot. He scrolled

down to the song that he was looking for as a huge smile

broke across his face, he selected “Real Love” and

walked knowingly back to his seat.

 46

Chapter 7

The next day he called St. Luke’s elementary and

asked for Mrs. Corcoran. She wasn’t in, and the

receptionist asked if he wanted to leave a message. He

did indeed, but what to say? Therapist first, therapist

first, he reminded himself, and he told the receptionist he

wanted to speak to her about a new student of hers who

mentioned that the two of them were close, which was in

fact the truth. Any personal desires he had were

secondary to this, although even as he said this to

himself he knew it was also partially a lie. He wanted to

get to know her better and hoped this phone call was

also a precursor to that.

So he left his message, feeling vaguely unsatisfied

and disappointed that he hadn’t gotten to talk to her. In

between sessions that day, he kept thinking about the

movie the Wizard of Oz. His whole life he had gotten

repetitive messages that popped into his head for weeks

and even years at a time, and he was very curious as to

why this movie would present itself to him right now.

 47

He spent most of the afternoon thinking about the

movie. It was actually one of his favorite metaphors to

use in therapy, as it said so much about people’s

interpersonal journeys. Often we have the answers to our

problems, that was the easy part. The tough part was

getting to the point where we took action in pursuit of

these answers. Like Dorothy in the movie, we often have

to stumble and stagger and fall down before we

understand that there really is no magical destination,

but rather a place inside ourselves of acceptance and

understanding.

He thought even more about the characters in the

story and what they were missing. More importantly he

thought about what he was missing. He thought about

what usually made him the most defensive, and realized

this usually occurred when people pestered him about

why he wasn’t married. Just the fact that the word

“pestered” occurred to him in this capacity was

revealing, and he was once again mindful of his own

conflictual feelings about commitment.

 48

Was he missing a heart? In some sense the tin man

was the character that rang the truest for him. He gave

every ounce of himself as a therapist, but somehow had

an undeveloped sense of his own ability to give and

receive love when the therapeutic day came to an end.

Why was this? It was a question he had explored

endlessly, and he knew the basic answers about being a

child of divorce, attachment issues, etc.

Later that day another phrase came into his head, an

old Buddhist proverb; ‘When the student is ready the

teacher appears.” He thought about it all the time with

regard to his relationship with Dr. Paul, who was an

astute enough therapist to know that giving people

answers was essentially a useless exercise. John himself

felt the same way about therapy, but had a much more

supportive and encouraging style, which he knew was at

least in part because of his fear of confrontation. He

always rationalized that this was just what he was

comfortable with, but lately something had been nagging

 49

at him. What if being confrontational was in fact the

empathic thing to do?

It wasn’t a new question in the field of psychology. In

a ranking of the most influential therapist of the

twentieth century, two names that were at the very top of

the list were Albert Ellis and Carl Rogers, who had

drastically different approaches to human change. John

had gravitated towards Rogers, whose emphasis on

empathy, active listening, encouragement, and the

relationship between the client and the therapist

influenced thousands of future therapists, and set the

gold standard for how a therapist should conduct himself

in a session.

Ellis’s style on the other hand was in your face,

attacking people’s self-sabotaging ways of thinking and

not allowing people for a second to make a victim of

themselves. He was highly effective with this approach,

and also influenced thousands of therapists and was in a

large part responsible for giving birth to the cognitive-

 50

behavioral paradigm that was currently the most popular

approach to therapy all around the United States.

John had used Roger’s approach to therapy for his

entire career, and had established himself as a very

successful therapist who had an excellent rate of client

retention. This was a bit of a paradox however, as the

goal of therapy was essentially to make it so your clients

no longer need to come to therapy, although there was

considerable debate as to the amount of time that such a

process should take.

What John was actually debating however, was

confrontation as it related to the scrutiny of his own

behavior. He thought back to one of his favorite books

on human behavior, M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less

Traveled. In it the author makes the point that discipline

in personal behavior, although exceedingly difficult, was

at the core of a happy human experience. The entire

book was full of amazing insights into human behavior,

and john had read the book several times. The rub of the

story was that the author turned out to be a hard-drinking

 51

womanizer who betrayed his wife who he had written

such glowing things about. Many people felt these

actions nullified the points he made in his book, as he

couldn’t live up to the standard he outlined for others in

his widely influential book. John disagreed.

Way against his better judgment, he headed across the

street to the dingy bar and ordered a drink. It was the.end

of a long week and John found himself very tired of

thinking about all of these issues in his own life. It all

seemed rather self-absorbed, and he needed a little break

from his own thoughts.

Over the years he had learned a lot about his own

drinking. One of the great lessons he had learned from

talking to a lot of people that drank heavily, was that

getting drunk was often an antidote to anxiety, which at

its core was a future-oriented fear. That was the tack that

he took with people who came to him with a drinking

problem. What was the fear? What were they avoiding?

At this moment John was wondering what he was

avoiding, as he scanned his own body looking for signs

 52

of anxiety. His heart was beating way too fast. He was

fidgeting around in his chair, and clearly knew that

something in his system was on high alert. The proper

thing to do would be to try and figure this out.

But that’s not what John did.

 53

Chapter 8

John had a switch when he was drinking, and most of

the time he knew right where it was. Five drinks. If he

got to five the feel good chemicals took over and John

began to howl at the moon. Tonight the switch was

thrown, and at 2 in the morning he was downtown in a

very busy bar. The John that was out at two in the

morning was only a remnant of the therapist he was the

majority of his life, and tonight this was especially true.

His last stop of the night was at a dingy little jazz place

in the city where he thought he could wind down with

some cool music and put this day into the books. He was

wrong.

Waking up the next day he reached over with a sense

of pending doom. He saw a dark mane of hair peaking

out from under his blanket and felt a great rush of

disappointment rise up inside of him. He had been raised

Catholic, and sex always came with a hint of shame

attached to it. There was more to this feeling though he

was sure. He felt something very sharp hit his side, and
 54

winced at the realization of the chain of events he was

sure he had just put in motion.

He looked up and noticed it was already 11 O’clock.

He sat up and tried to figure out his next move. He

looked at the snoring unclothed woman laying there and

wondered what she needed. He wasn’t a believer that

people could have casual, meaningless sex, as he had

seen way too much evidence to the contrary. Maybe she

was just lonely and needed to feel close to someone. He

certainly felt like that sometimes, and reasoned that as

long as they were both consenting adults that perhaps

this wasn’t that big of a thing to feel so guilty about it.

These thoughts were interrupted however by a loud

banging on the door. Thinking it was his nosy landlady

he slowly ambled over to the door to see what the

commotion was all about. He wasn’t remotely prepared

for what was at the door. It was Stephanie, holding a

carton with coffee and bagels and looking even better

then he remembered. Damn.

 55

“Can I come in?”

“Uh, wow, it’s kind of amazing to see you,” was John’s

reply.

“Uh yea, you too buddy, that’s why I asked to come in,

I’ve been thinking about you.”

Before John could respond to this, he heard a noise in

the background, and he felt a familiar feeling of dread

rise up inside of him. Soon his worst fears were

confirmed, when his houseguest appeared behind him

scrambling around looking for her clothes.

“Hey guys, sorry to interrupt, but I have to get to work

today.”

Stephanie took a long look at John and slowly turned to

walk away.
 56

“Wait, I, I wanted to talk to you, can I call you?” he

asked

“You don’t seem to be ready for me today John,” she

said sharply.

“And by the way doctor, there’s a person in there with

you who might also need a little bit of your time.”

 57

Chapter 9

John thought about what Stephanie had said before

he decided what to do about his houseguest. She had a

point, it was incredibly selfish of him to simply dismiss

this woman simply because he was interested in

someone else. It was more then selfish, it was the

antithesis of everything he had tried to put into practice

about human interactions. What was her perspective

about this? Was she embarrassed? Hurt? Confused? Did

she even want to talk about his? He realized this last

thought likely came from a selfish desire to avoid a

difficult situation. He was a therapist. He was trained to

talk about difficult things, and didn’t let himself off the

hook so easily.

Despite being in a big hurry to get back to work, it

turned out she did in fact want to talk. Her name was

Kristin and she had recently lost her father. She had been

drinking a lot, staying out late, and had been with a lot

more men then usual lately in an attempt to feel closer to

people and to forget for a while the pain that came from
 58

losing her father, who she had a great deal of unresolved

issues with.

The whole thing made sense from a psychological

standpoint. He was an older man, emotionally

expressive, and likely said all of the right things at 2 in

the morning to get this woman to agree to come home

with him. There was a psychological precedent here that

went all the way back to Freud called the “repetition

compulsion” which explains how a person will repeat a

problem from childhood over and over again trying to

achieve a different result.

All of these thoughts were John’s attempt to

intellectualize however. In this case John had at least on

some level used his knowledge of psychology for his

own personal gain, and now he wanted to do his best to

deal with what he had done. After talking for nearly an

hour, John gave her a recommendation for a female

therapist he knew who he thought would be a good fit.

He also informed her she could call him if she wanted to

 59

talk about this more, and even be friends moving

forward. It was what he had to give right now.

After she left he thought all day about the situation he

had created, and what he could learn from the way he

had behaved. He had always considered guilt an

essentially useless emotion, but also believed that people

had to take personal responsibility for their actions.

More importantly, he wanted to think about what it was

that made him keep repeating this behavior over and

over, and what problem he was trying to solve from his

own past life. It was certainly not a new question, and he

was pretty familiar with the answers, but now he had to

figure out what he was going to do about it. Something

deep inside of him told him he had the chance at

something spectacular in his life if he could somehow

begin to put some of his own demons to bed.

His first instinct was to call Dr. Paul, but he knew he

was taking advantage of that relationship, and wanted to

think outside the box this time. Besides, he had followed

his advice last time. He had “found the girl” whatever

 60

the hell that really meant, but clearly that didn’t solve

any of his immediate problems. On the other hand he

knew and believed that there was no such thing as

chance encounters, and that perhaps this latest sequence

of events in his life would make more sense when he had

the luxury of looking back on them and seeing how they

fit into his personal narrative.

He thought back to one of the first things Stephanie

ever asked him. What was an empath exactly? He had

spent his whole career dating back to his time as a

student thinking about the idea of empathy, but the term

“empath” had a bit of a different connotation. He

decided he wanted to find out more about what it is this

term exactly meant, and decided to do a little more

research on the subject at the local bookstore.

 61

Chapter 10

“Empaths have a tendency to openly feel what is

outside of them more so than what is inside of them.
This can cause empaths to ignore their own needs.”

John read the passage with a sense of heightened

curiosity. Was that him? A large part of him always

hated talking about his own feelings, and he was

resistant to the idea of therapy for many years because of

this personality trait. One of his mentors had always told

him that a therapist’s best tool was his own feelings and

experiences, and he knew this was true, to a point. He

had himself written extensively on the subject of

countertransference, which refers to the feelings patients

stir up in the therapists who they chose to tell their

stories to.

John had always felt a little different about this

subject though, and wondered if he wasn’t in a sense

missing something that most of his colleagues seemed to

get. He usually had a pretty good idea how a therapy

session was going to go, simply by picking up on cues

his patients were giving off in the initial moments. Often

 62

he had to wait for a person to find words to describe

emotions that he already knew they were feeling, and

part of his success as a therapist was in intuiting these

feelings and then helping people find the words to

describe them.

Conducting therapy didn’t take the toll on John that

it did on many therapists. Many of his friends and

colleagues in the field found it exceedingly difficult to

deal with the way they felt after multiple sessions in a

day, but this wasn’t the case with John. What if he was

wrong about this though? What if his drinking, his

depression, and his lack of intimacy were all some kind

of symptom of feeling things too deeply? Was this

possible? If it was it rocked the foundation of everything

he believed about himself as a therapist.

Although he was often very wild and undisciplined in

his personal life, John was the model of a calm,

compassionate therapist in session. He attributed this to

many year of working through personal issues, which

allowed him to go into the sessions a rationale yet

 63

empathic voice of reason no matter what his clients

chose to bring into therapy. But part of him knew this

was bullshit. No one can really hear about other’s misery

and suffering day after day and not have it take a toll, it

simply wasn’t possible. John thought about this in his

own life and realized that where he was concerned, this

idea may go well beyond what happened in the confines

in therapy. Thinking about this, he felt he was perhaps

on the cusp of a significant discovery.

What if it was John’s relationship with the world that

had been the source of so may of his difficulties and

personal demons and challenges? It wasn’t a totally new

thought to him, but knowing that there were people that

had actually researched and written books on this subject

was exciting to him. He thought back to his childhood,

and how he had always felt things very deeply but also

very privately as a way of avoiding being mocked for

this heightened sensitivity that he felt.

As he was searching through his memory bank, he

thought back to something he had seen when he was

 64

about 15. He had been visiting his dad when he was a

kid and they had gone to the river for the day for a

picnic. It had been a fun day hanging with his brothers

and sisters, and at one point he had wandered over to a

part of the river where the current was extremely fast.

He looked up and saw a kid about his age standing on a

rock near the river, and then was hit with an amazing

pain in his stomach that nearly doubled him over.

He screamed out in pain and a few people looked

over. The boy standing on the rock looked over at him,

and the two of them locked eyes for what seemed to

John like hours. That was the first time John had felt it.

He knew. He felt everything the boy on the rock was

feeling, and for that moment the two seemed to be

transmitting a powerful unspoken understanding about

life, pain, and loss. He could feel that the boy on the rock

didn’t want to live anymore, and felt a great sense of

urgency to do something to help save him.

But it was too late. The boy hurled himself into the

current and was quickly swept away. He watched the

 65

boy flail in the water, and literally lost his own breath

watching him gasp for air.

The boy had changed his mind about wanting to die,

he could fell that too. He thrashed and flailed and tried to

swim, and dozens of people in the park had now rushed

into the water to try and help him. The boy eventually

made it back to the shore with the help of these people,

but he was unconscious and not responding to CPR.

Eventually an ambulance came and took the boy away,

but John knew the boy would never be the same again.

As he sat remembering this story he noticed he was

crying, and was surprised at how powerful this memory

was for him. He hadn’t thought about the boy in a long

time, but now looking back wondered if that wasn’t a

significant turning point in his life. He had started

drinking shortly after that incident, and hadn’t really

stopped since. Why had he blocked this out? What was it

about this incident that seemed to propel him into the life

he had now inhibited? He wanted to read more.

66
 67

Chapter 11

“Empaths cry a lot, which makes most people,

including the empath, uncomfortable. Because our
culture does not embrace or value emotions, there’s
not much permission to cry. As a result, when people
see someone crying—emoting their feelings—they
touch or hug the person, hand them a tissue, or offer
“words of comfort,” all of which serve as a
distraction that will usually stop the flow of emotions
and, thus, the tears. (Why people are compelled to do
this is different article in the making.) To give
someone permission to feel what they feel—sadness,
anger, fear, joy—and validate them by energetically
holding space for them to keep feeling (and emoting)
—is one of the most powerful, loving and healing acts
(for both people) we can perform. For an empath, it’s
a key to our survival. Being allowed to feel is a key to
our survival. Talking about what we feel is
paramount to our survival. Being able to cry about
what we feel is mandatory for our survival.”

Rev. DebraRae

John read these words with great interest. One of the

great secrets of his life was that he cried very often, in

any number of different circumstances. He could

however count on a single hand the people in his life that

had actually seen him cry. This discrepancy perhaps

went a long way in explaining his tendency to shy away

from intimacy with others, and it was something he had

 68

only glossed over during his years of personal therapy.

Why the disconnect, he wondered to himself? He

watched people cry every day in therapy, and was very

interested in exploring with people their inability to

express themselves emotionally. Yet, in his own life this

was a case of physician heal thyself.

He had always been fascinated by a quote from

Nathaniel Hawthorne that “No man, for any considerable

period, can wear one face to himself and another to the

multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which

one is true.” He was beginning to believe that this quote

was especially relevant in his own life. People knew him

as a kind–hearted person, but he really had to examine

how often in his interactions he was ever in a truly

vulnerable position. The answer was almost never, and

this had been especially true since he had received a bit

of notoriety as an author.

The word “vulnerability” conjured up so many

images, and for most of John’s life he had associated it

with weakness. As a student he had been especially

 69

resistant to criticism, and hated being picked apart by

people with heads higher on the totem pole than his. In

relationships he had always picked younger women, and,

although he had been in relationships with some

amazing women, also seemed to arrange things where he

was the person in the relationship with more of the

power.

Where had this left him? Alone, for one, although this

really wasn’t a source of great heartbreak for him. He

liked having his freedom, and was able to produce a

significant amount of work creatively as a result of this

freedom. Still, he knew he was lying to himself when he

rationalized he would be ok being by himself forever. He

didn’t think this was how people were meant to live, and

spent an extraordinary amount of time as a therapist

working to rewire and repair frayed human connections.

He somehow always applied a different standard to his

own interactions though, and now as he got older he

wanted to find out why.

 70

He returned to his reading, and stopped to

contemplate the idea that we are conditioned as a culture

to stop a crying person from feeling as opposed to letting

them purge and work through their difficult emotional

feelings. It was a profound insight, and reading it made

him consider how this idea had impacted his own life.

Although he was very much favor of this idea for others,

in his own life he chose to carry his crosses alone.

Perhaps it was time to try something another way, but he

was lost on how exactly he was supposed to go about

this. This time he did call Dr. Paul and make an

appointment, confused for the moment from trying to

put all of the pieces of his personal story together.

 71

Chapter 12

Upon arriving at Dr. Paul’s office, his receptionist

didn’t even attempt to hide her displeasure at seeing

John, and the two of them sat together in uncomfortable

silence for what seemed like an eternity. As he sat there

thinking about this, he remembered an old episode of

Seinfeld where George assumed that because his every

instinct had been wrong, that therefore the opposite of

this must be right. With this in mind he went up to Dr.

Paul’s secretary, and struck up a conversation.

“You know I’m embarrassed to say this, but in all these

years we’ve known each other, I don’t think I’ve ever

known your first name, and I was sitting there thinking

how rude of me this was.”

“Well I don’t know what that has to do with anything,”

she fired back.

 72

He couldn’t help himself and burst out laughing at

the sheer absurdity of her answer. He looked at her

closely, and then, miraculously almost, he saw the

faintest corner of a smile begin to form. Then, sizing

him up, she began to laugh along with him, and soon the

two of them were laughing and talking together about

how and why it had been so uncomfortable between

them for so many years. He found out her name was

Mildred, which didn’t surprise him in the slightest. Still,

he was delighted to find she had a sense of humor after

all these years of awkwardness.

Dr. Paul came lumbering out of his office, and had to

rub his eyes when he saw his wayward protégé and

perpetually pissed off secretary giggling like a couple of

schoolgirls.

“Umm, am I interrupting something here guys?” he

asked suspiciously.
 73

“Lighten up Doctor,” was Mildred’s reply, and with that

they all began to laugh, and John was very glad to see he

hadn’t disturbed the Dr. Paul universe as badly as he

originally feared.

“I was prepared to give you a lecture about being a pain

in the ass, but seeing as how you made nice with my girl

out there, I’m gonna cut you a little slack,” Dr. Paul said

with a smile.

“I’ve had an epiphany my friend, the way I’ve been

living keeps leading me back to the same place, so I

decided to mix it up a little. What you saw out there was

part of the fruits of this decision.”

“Um, John when I told you to find the girl, that wasn’t

exactly what I had in mind,’ Dr. Paul said laughing, “But

please do tell, what has led to this amazing

transformation?”
 74

“The thing is smartass, I’ve been thinking all week about

something you said to me years ago when I was a

student. You said the job of a psychologist was to

comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I’m

quite sure you stole it from someone else, but the point

stands. I’ve been comfortable for way too long, and it

was time to hold a bit of a mirror up to my face.”

“Great speech pal, but I need some specifics,’ Dr. Paul

said more seriously this time. “What are you prepared to

do differently? What have you learned? What are you

doing NOW to make these changes?”

“Jesus you are a hard-ass,” John said, slightly hurt by the

response. “Well for one thing I did some thinking. I

thought about your question regarding empathy last

week and I think I know what you were trying to say.

Empathy is about love, although that word certainly has

a hazy definition. My feeling was that you were

implying that empathy was about some kind of larger

 75

love for people in general, for their flaws, their pettiness,

their fuck-ups, for all of it really. More of a

compassionate embrace of all of these stupid fucking

things we do that bonds us all together.”

“That’s well spoken John, I can see why people buy

your books, you always know just the right thing to say,

but you still haven’t answered my question. What are

you doing different? You’re a charming guy, I know

this, but you can’t bullshit me. Seriously, tell me about

your actions. You’re too slick with words,”

“Alright, you’re right. What have I done differently?

Nothing. Quite the opposite actually. I found the girl, as

you suggested, she came to my house, and found me

shacked up with a woman I met at a bar. So no, my

actions haven’t been different. You’re right, I’m an

asshole. I’m here because I’m a little confused, and

don’t know exactly what to do next,” John fired back

with more intensity then he intended.

 76

“Alright John, so you found her and then sabotaged it

somehow, I can’t sit on a soapbox about that, I’ve

certainly done my share of self-sabotage. You know me

pal, and you know goddamn well I’m not gonna tell you

what to do,” Dr. Paul continued. “The question you have

to ask yourself is what are you willing to do to make

your life different? You mentioned the relationship

between love and empathy earlier. I think that’s an

important lead for you to follow. What do you love

John? What have you ever loved?”

 77

Chapter 13

John left Dr. Paul’s office with a smile. He

remembered another old shrink telling him that you

haven’t done your job if your client doesn’t walk away

at least a little pissed off at you, and John was definitely

a little pissed at Dr. Paul. Still, his questions had some

merit. What did John love?

He thought back to something he had read from Irv

Yalom, one of his favorite authors on the subject of

psychology and in particular the patient-therapist

relationship. Yalom suggested that a therapist had to find

something to love about all of his clients, and that

without this love therapy was ineffective. It was a radical

position in many ways, and ran contrary to the work of

many prominent therapists, including the highly

influential Albert Ellis, who suggested that how a

therapist felt about his patients was mostly irrelevant.

John thought back to his first years as a therapist. He

had gotten highly involved in every case he took on, and

it was Dr. Paul who eventually noticed this and advised

 78

him about learning to keep some boundaries to avoid a

massive and exhausting flame out. He had cut his

caseload back at the time, but still found himself getting

highly involved with people, as was the case with Kim

right now.

He returned again to the subject of love. He did love

most of his patients, in a sense the way he imagined a

parent loved a child. He hurt when they hurt, celebrated

their small accomplishments with great joy, and

encouraged them every step of the way. Still, another

part of him found this painful and exhausting, much like

he knew many parents did. He had perhaps turned to

writing as a response to that pain, and slowly the

characters in his books became these children, without

all of the real-life consequences and emotional

investment.

Why did John keep finding ways to avoid this

emotional investment? That was the important question.

He knew that fear was a central theme in almost

everyone’s life, and he was certainly no exception to

 79

this. Was he avoiding hurt? Heartbreak? Loss? He knew

there was no more futile exercise. These things waited

for us in our lives regardless of how we tried to run from

them. He scolded himself mentally for thinking in

generalities. What was he avoiding and what were the

fears behind this? He was hearing Dr. Paul’s voice in his

head, and chuckled lightly to himself. He was officially

back in therapy. Hearing your therapist’s voice in your

head is a sure sign.

He felt like he was on to something relevant here, and

figuring out how love and pain intersected in his life

seemed important. Did he avoid relationships because of

the attending pain? That was an easy one, he knew he

did, rationalizing that he was just as comfortable alone.

He was more comfortable, but that hardly seemed to be

the point of this short journey we have here on earth.

Love and pain, love and pain, he couldn’t get this phrase

out of his head, and knew that he could explore this

question further in his own life he could begin to unlock

some answers. He returned to one of his greatest

 80

inspirations, Joseph Campbell to help him further clarify

his thoughts on the subject.

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Chapter 14

“For when the heart insists on its destiny, resisting the

general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the
danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion
beyond the reckoning of the senses. Sequences of events
from the corners of the world will draw gradually
together, and miracles of coincidence bring the
inevitable to pass. ”
Joseph Campbell

John read the following passage slowly and carefully,

although it had been a guiding force in his life, and the

basis of two books he had written on his own, he wanted

to take it in and absorb it this time. “When the heart

insists on its destiny.” John had always thought this was

about fear, but now for the first time he thought about it

in terms of love. Campbell and Jung had both talked

about love as a kind of joining of forces that helped a

person find the missing parts of themselves. Was this the

heart’s “destiny?”

John thought about this for most of the day, and for

the first time really began to contemplate an idea that

had been crystallizing in his head for some time. If he

found romantic love, would it then exponentially

 82

increase his love of the larger world? Were the two not

just interrelated, but absolutely intertwined? John had

rejected that idea for most of his life, believing that the

fairy tale myths of modern Hollywood were short-

sighted and even dangerous. Still, they were myths that

were based on stories from the beginning of time, and

John vowed to keep an open heart and mind about the

subject.

He thought a lot about his own unorganized

emotions, and how this lack of organization impacted his

life for better or for worse. He knew he gave often of his

love and of his heart, but also that he usually closed up

the shop when an individual person got too close to his

emotional core. Why was this? If Campbell was right, he

should feel a desire to complete the missing piece of

himself and become whole. Why did he keep swatting

this piece away? He spent most of the day reading

Campbell, and while he did made a number of notes

about things he thought were relevant to his own search.

John
 83

He thought a lot about how the idea of being an

empath may also play into this, but was also very careful

not to use that as some kind of rationalization for

avoiding intimacy. Still, the question persisted; was

there something unusual about him that didn’t fit with a

basic human desire since the beginning of time? He

knew that was a little dramatic, but still wondered if he

perhaps felt things so deeply that it was difficult for him

to maintain personal relationships.

This conjured up all kinds of questions for John about

what the actual science of this may be, and if there was

an explanation as to how his brain actually functioned.

He had seen brain scans done on sociopathic people

before, and had observed how their brains did not seem

to register any empathy whatsoever when watching other

people in pain. All of the science behind these kinds of

tests were controversial, and in part based on the premise

that people possessed something called “mirror neurons”

which explained on a biological level how one human

feels pain when he or she watches another one suffer. It

 84

had also been suggested that autistic people lack these

mirror neurons, which inhibits their ability to read and

transmit emotional cues.

According to one theory, autism and empathy exist

on opposite sides of a spectrum between complete lack

of feeling and a sense of being utterly overwhelmed with

emotions. Men tended to fall more to the autistic side,

while women more to the empathic side, but really most

people fell into the average range of this equation. There

were however extremes, and John had truly begun to

contemplate if he was one of these extreme cases.

As he was thinking about these things, John’s mind

drifted back to another time and place. He was on his

grandparent’s farm and he was 8 years old. He had

wandered off into the Apple orchards and gotten

hopelessly lost, when inexplicably, and seemingly out of

nowhere, he happened upon a family of Mexican people

eating the unripened Apples off of the trees. It had

broken his 8-year old heart. He remembered doubling

over in pain, and actually feeling how hungry they were

 85

to have to sneak into the Apple fields and eat this fruit

that wasn’t even fit for healthy consumption.

The family had become alarmed, and had actually

carried him back to his family farm, despite their fears of

being exposed as illegal immigrants. He remembered his

grandparents arguing as he lay in bed recovering, and

how upset his grandfather had been that his wife had fed

these people before sending them on their way. His

grandpa had referred to them as “savages” at the time,

and John had no idea what in the world that meant. He

remembered being troubled though, and also feeling

highly unsettled and disturbed. He hoped this memory

would recede into the distance and let him get some

sleep.

But sometimes memories come back. John had

dreamt of his grandparent’s farm at least once a week for

a decade, and wondered often about why this memory

had become so deeply etched in his subconscious mind.

There seemed to be a powerful lesson here about

empathy, and despite putting forth an amazing effort into

 86

understanding this recurring dream, John had never

really put all of the pieces together. Sometimes they

come back. This phrase now popped into his head. What

did that mean? What came back? Memories? Dreams?

Lovers? He didn’t know, but all of a sudden he became

very interested in the question.

He had spent nearly an entire day reading and

thinking about these things, and finally found some

piece from these words;

“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you

say, This is what I need. It may look like a wreck, but go

at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you

bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you

will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can

survive is an improvement in your character, your

stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the

spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to

flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see

that the moments which seemed to be great failures

followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the

 87

life you have now. You'll see that this is really true.

Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even

though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative

crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when

you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”

John was learning.

 88

Chapter 15

John woke up the next morning with an odd rush of

anxiety. Something was going to happen today, he was

sure of it. He was going to see Kim today, and that was

something he wanted to be sharp for, but there was also

something else. He felt an odd mix of pending doom

mixed with a kind of hope. Some significant change was

on the horizon.

Driving out to Kim’s residence, John tried to put this

feeling out of his mind. He wanted to give her the best of

himself and be totally in the moment with her, and

anxiety made that all but impossible. He felt like he had

made some important internal strides lately, and he was

dying to see Stephanie and talk about a number of things

with her. He felt like he missed her very badly although

he barely knew her. Even still, his feelings for her were

strong.

As he pulled up to the driveway, he saw that Kim

was waiting for him on the porch. It was a good sign he

 89

thought, and he even picked up on the faintest hint of a

smile on her face. He was glad to see her.

“Hey kiddo, good to see you, what’s new?”

“Oh, a few things, I guess. I’ve been wanting to talk to

you. Do you mind if we walk again?”

John picked up on some good energy from Kim, and

was encouraged while also a little cautious. He thought

of a quote by Mitch Album, that "All parents damage

their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine

glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents

smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods

completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair." He

knew that Kim has been badly damaged, but it was his

hope that she wasn’t totally shattered. He would do

everything in his power to make sure that didn’t happen,

but knew it would take a lot of work.

 90

“So you seem happy today Kim and it’s sure nice to see

you smile, what’s going on with you?”.

“Well the thing is, I met this boy. He’s 14 and he’s really

cute. I’ve really liked my new school and Mrs. Corcoran

has been great. I feel like I’m getting to start over. No

one knows about me there and I don’t get teased.”

“Wow, well Kim I’m very proud of how well you’re

doing. I know Mrs. Corcoran and, yes, she is very nice,”

John said as neutrally as he could muster.

“She knows you too,” Kim chuckled back. “Maybe I’m

not the only one here with a little crush.”

John laughed out loud at that as they continued to

walk. Damn kids were perceptive sometimes. He felt 13

for this second but resisted the urge to pump Kim for

information about her teacher. Still, he was dying to

know.
 91

“Kim tell me about this boy. How did you meet him?”

John said, sounding like a concerned father.

“He’s in my class. He doesn’t know about my situation

though, and I don’t want to ever tell him,”

“Yea, I could see why you’d feel like that. I just hope

he’s nice to you. You deserve someone to be nice to you.

I hope we can talk a little more about what it’s like to

have such a big secret to keep. One thing I want you to

remember though, is that you didn’t do anything wrong.

You’re a good kid who survived a very hard situation.

Keep that in mind Ok?”

With that Kim began to gently cry. Although John

didn’t intend to cause her any pain with his comments,

he also knew that she needed to work though this.

People are quick to try and convince someone who is

crying to stop, but he knew this was often a mistake.

 92

Legitimate grieving was an absolutely integral part of

healing, and he wanted Kim to begin the process.

“Sorry if this is hard to talk about,” he continued. “I

want to just remind you that I will never talk about or

tell anyone about what we talk about unless I think it’s

gonna lead to you getting hurt. Then I have to say

something. But you can trust me and I will listen. I

promise.”

“I know John, I know,” she said with a smile.

He liked it when she called him John.

On the way home John was feeling happy.

Although he knew it would be an exceptionally long

road for Kim, she was showing signs of resilience and

he was encouraged. She seemed to have both her

kindness as well as her sense of humor intact, and

 93

John knew both of these things would be tremendous

assets in helping her cope.

John messed around with the radio and tried to

find something pleasant for the road. He settled on

Don Henley’s, “in a New York minute,” and began

singing along with the music. His mind drifted off to

the beautiful Irish-looking woman that had invaded

his mind for weeks now, and he continued to

daydream about her before he heard a loud boom.

Then everything faded to Black.

 94

Chapter 16

John woke up wearing a hospital gown in unfamiliar

surroundings. The last thing he remembered was Don

Henley singing about how life could change in a New

York minute, which seemed strangely prophetic given

the circumstances. How long had he been here? Was he

in a coma? John felt very alone in this moment, and

wondered how bad his injuries really were. He was

scared.

Eventually the doctor came in and explained to John

what had happened. The accident had happened the day

before, and he had lost consciousness for nearly 24

hours. His back had experienced some damage, and the

original fear was that there would be some paralysis. A

lot more tests were needed, but it looked like John would

at the very least be off of his feet for a while.

John thought about his prognosis for most of the day.

He had lived 30 plus years living exactly how he

wanted, with very few consequences for his admittedly

 95

hedonistic lifestyle. John knew that he had no one to

take care of him, although this was a thought he usually

managed to put out of his head. Now a rainy day had

finally arrived.

John found himself spiraling further and further into

self-pity, and knew this was a dangerous road to go

down. Although he didn’t have a family of his own, he

did have people that depended on him, and he needed to

start putting a plan together. He was particularly

concerned about Kim, as he knew providing some

stability and consistency in her life was vitally

important.

John thought back to the previous morning, and the

feeling he had experienced that something significant

was going to happen, His sensors had known something

was up, and the phrase “pending doom” that was in his

head yesterday now seemed appropriate. Still, he

couldn’t help but think this was also a kind of

opportunity, although he was hard pressed at this

moment to think of what that might be. He put it out if

 96

his head for a moment and began making a list. He had a

lot of people to call.

Kim was particularly worried when he spoke to her,

and he did his best to ease her mind. He was hoping he

would only miss a week of appointments, and promised

her he would do everything in his power to maintain

their usual schedule. Still, he picked up on same

disappointment in her voice, and a wave of guilt rose up

in his troubled mind. He was a therapist, and although he

often took himself for granted, it was becoming clear to

him that his patients needed him very much. All of a

sudden he felt very heavy.

All of the emotional activity the day had

unexpectedly contained had exhausted him, and after

finishing his calls, John fell into a very deep sleep. His

dreams were strange that night, and included visions of a

nursing home which John resided in located in the

middle of a busy intersection. Suddenly a car bolted

directly into the home, and before John could get out of

the way, he jerked up in bed awake. Gathering himself,

 97

he looked around and saw that he was still in the

hospital. He had to rub his eyes however when he

gathered focus and saw both Dr. Paul and Stephanie

sitting at the end of his bed, chatting like they had

known each other for years.

Strange bedfellows.
 98

Chapter 17

“Must have been quite a dream John,” Dr. Paul said with

a laugh.

“Haha, yes Dr. Asshole, it was, thanks for your

concern,” John said while laughing. “I see you met

Stephanie. Hello by the way Stephanie. So nice to see

you, but, how in the world did you know I was here?”

“Kim told me John. She and I have gotten quite close

since she started school with us, and she was very

worried about you. You mean the world to her you

know. Maybe you didn’t know that,” Stephanie

explained.

John looked over at Dr. Paul and saw the slightest bit of

a gleam in his eye. He was quite sure Dr. Paul loved to

hear him get scolded like this, and he reminded himself

to give him shit for this at a later date.

 99

“I’m gonna let you guys talk for a minute John,” Dr.

Paul said while grabbing his coat. “A friend of mine is

here on another floor with a broken hip. Jesus I am

getting old. Anyway, I’ll come back and see you in a

little while alright?

“Alright doctor, go spread your sunshine somewhere

else for a while,” John said laughing.

And with that Dr. Paul made his exit, leaving John

with this mysterious and beautiful woman that he wanted

so much to explore. Although the hospital wasn’t exactly

first date material, he felt a rush of excitement just being

in her presence.

“I have to tell you Stephanie, although I am really glad

to see you, I am amazingly curious as to what you and

the good doctor there were talking about. Do you know

each other?” John asked curiously.

 100

“No, but we talked for a couple of hours while you were

out. He’s quite an interesting man, and he obviously

cares a lot about you,” she continued. “He was your

therapist wasn’t he?”

“Did he say that? I’m not totally sure I would call him

my therapist. More of a mentor slash archenemy,”

“Well you are very important to him. He’s a

tremendously empathic person, that much was obvious. I

also thought I picked up on a great sadness in him

though. Like he has experienced a tremendous amount

of loss.”

“He lost the great love of his life about 10 years ago, and

since then he has never really been the same,” John

explained. “They had one of those crazy rare

connections that comes along maybe once in a lifetime.”

 101

“Crazy rare connections ha? I felt like that might be it.

Like maybe he had some kind of great love in his heart

that was on hold or something like that.”

“On hold?” John asked. “I like that, and can kind of

relate to it in my own life. I’ve always felt like I had a

ton of love to give someone, but never quite found the

way to do it. Man, I don’t know why I’m telling you all

this. I guess being in the hospital I’m feeling pretty

vulnerable right now.”

Rather then respond, Stephanie came over and put her

hand on John’s face and held it there. It was one of the

most comforting things he could ever recall

experiencing, and he reached up and touched her cheek

as well. They didn’t say anything for quite some time,

but eventually they both succumbed to their feelings and

shared a passionate kiss,,

John felt like he was 14 again...

 102

Chapter 18

They sat and kissed for a while, both of them wanting

to make up for all of the time they had wasted over the

last several weeks. Eventually Stephanie just crawled

into John’s bed and laid beside him. It was one of the

most intimate moments of his life. They kissed again,

and held each other until it finally came time for her to

go, although neither one of them wanted the moment to

come to an end.

“So what happens next?” John said as she got her things

together.

“Well part of that is going to be up to you,” she said

quietly. “But it’s clear you’re going to need a little help

for a while. Will you let me help you John?”

“I don’t think there’s anything I would like more,” was

his reply.
 103

An hour later Dr. Paul came strolling back in wearing a

Cheshire cat grin. John had gotten quite astute at reading

his facial expressions over the years, and knew that his

old mentor was terribly amused.

“I gotta hand it to you John,” he said smiling. “I’ve seen

guys go to great lengths to get a girl, but I think this

takes the cake. Can’t say I blame you though. She’s

quite an amazing woman.”

“She sure is. It sounds incredibly strange, but I’d get in a

thousand car wrecks if it meant I got to spend an hour

like I just spent.”

“Jesus man,” Dr. Paul responded. “Do you really think

it’s about the car accident? If so I’m pretty disappointed

in your powers of perception. You’ve been afforded a

glimpse pal. A glimpse of what it’s like to share every

aspect of your life with someone. Not just the romance

or the sex, those things are easy. I’m talking about

 104

someone taking care of you when you’re sick. Sharing

your life when your body gets old and gets sick. For the

first time in your life you are in a truly vulnerable

position. Kind of scary doing it alone I’m guessing?

Does any of this make sense to you?”

“It all does. Yesterday I had a feeling that I was on the

cusp of a very big change. I think I’m just now starting

to glimpse what life might be like if I stay on the road I

have been traveling. I have to admit I didn’t like what I

saw Doc. I know I may be talking at least partially out of

fear here, but this woman just feels right to me. I know

I’ve said that before, and maybe this feeling could fade,

but I don’t think so. As you are so fond of saying, when

the student is ready the teacher appears. I think it’s

possible I found my teacher,” John said with a long and

heavy breath.

“I would like nothing more for you John, I really would,

but as you also know I’m fond of saying, the best

 105

predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and your

track record with women isn’t so hot,” Dr. Paul

continued. “I want you to think about where this all may

be going. Really think about it. What could trip you up?

What happens when you start to get bored? I’m not

trying to piss in your cornflakes here buddy, but these

are important questions.”

“I’m getting a little pissed off here Paul, which means I

guess that you might be on to something. Although it

pains me to say it, I think it would be best if I stayed in

therapy for a while when I’m trying to figure all this out.

I guess I would even be willing to start paying you,”

John said with a laugh.

“You’re goddamn right you will, but John, lets be really

clear about something. This is not gonna just be me

holding your hand while you’re trying to maintain a

relationship. You know damn well that’s not what I do. I

want you to really explore where it is you come from

 106

and what it is you want to do with this precious little

time you have been given,”

“I don’t need or want you to hold my hand, Paul,

although I know I act like that sometimes,” John

answered back. “I just think you might be the guy to talk

to you about this, because as far as I can tell, love is

what saved your life. I remember you and Susan when

you were together, it was one of the most amazing things

I have ever seen. I think I’m starting to understand that it

is not analysis, or even empathy that may save my life. It

is love. That’s hard for me to say believe me, but I’ve

gotten to the point in my life when I’m asking myself, if

not now, when?”

“Ok John, Ok,” Dr. Paul said softly. “In spite of

everything I’m rooting for you. You’ve been like a son

to me and believe me, it’s not easy to see you in pain. If

I’m a hardass with you it’s because I think that’s what

you need, but maybe I’ve been a little hard on you

 107

considering you’re lying here in a hospital bed. I want

you to be happy, I really do,” he said with a pause.

“But you’re gonna have to do the heavy lifting.”

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Chapter 19

Having an unexpected amount of free time on his

hands, John had been doing a great deal of reading.

Wanting to expose himself to some new ways of

thinking, John had begun reading the work of a

relatively obscure Polish Psychiatrist named Kazimierz

Dąbrowski. Dabrowski’s primary theory suggested that

as people progressed through life, portions of their

personality “disintegrated” as they began to integrate

new ways of coping and more creative ways of solving

problems. He suggested that it is often a crisis that

spurred on this positive disintegration, and John thought

a lot about this in terms of his own situation. He was in

crisis, that was true, but he also felt a part of him

slipping away.

In particular John knew that throughout his whole

life, he responded to people with charm when confronted

with any kind of difficult assignment. Now John faced

perhaps his most difficult by facing up to his own

avoidant behavior. He was actually quite excited about

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the possibility of change, and continued with his reading

making notes and writing down a number of short term

goals.

John was also very interested in a model called the

“Stages of change,” which suggested that all human’s

that experience change go through a number of different

steps, beginning with precontemplation, then

contemplation, and finally ending with some kind of

action. It occurred to John that he had walked dozens of

his patients though these stages, but that he had never

taken the time to see how this worked in his own life. It

was a shame it had taken a near-fatal car accident to

make him see this, as he had only a vague notion that

something in his life needed to change for decades now.

Even still, he reminded himself that there was no sense

beating himself up now, and wherever you go, there you

are. He was still excited.

John’s enthusiasm waned a little following a session

with his physical therapist, who put John through a

workout that nearly brought him to tears. He was out of

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shape, and one of his immediate goals was to begin to

put his body back together through regular exercise. He

also wanted to cut back on his drinking, which was one

of his most useful tools in avoiding dealing with big

portions of his life. He always rationalized that it helped

fuel his writing, which was at least partially true. He was

going to have to learn to do a lot of things over again.

Later that day John did a phone session with one of

his older patients, who asked him repeatedly if he was

going to die. Yes, he told her, indeed he was, but how he

spent his time until then was what really counted. She

was not amused, and was asking the question with all

sincerity. Still, it did in fact dawn on him at that

moment, perhaps for the first time ever. He was going to

die, almost did die. If they were going to write his

obituary today, he was quite sure the story would be

incomplete. He still had a lot to do.

John called a couple more of his patients over the

day, and was continually surprised by how worried

everyone seemed to be about him. He knew he gave a lot

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to his patients and had touched a lot of their lives, but as

he was making these calls something dawned on him for

perhaps the first time. All of the energy he had given to

his patients, and essentially to everyone he came into

contact with, basically flowed in one direction. No

wonder people were often so confused around him. He

gave freely of his love and compassion to others.

But he never let them love him back.

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Chapter 20

When John finally got ready to leave the hospital, the

doctor asked him if he had anybody to take him home.

Although the question was quite a literal one, he thought

about it on a lot deeper level. In a literal sense, his car

was totaled, and he really didn’t have another way home.

He had spoken with a nurse who was going to come in to

his house to help him with some of his basic activities

until he got back on his feet. What was most puzzling to

him was Stephanie had promised she would give him a

lift home. Where was she?

He called for a cab and thought about this all the way

home. Although she absolutely felt like a twin soul to

him, he knew very little about the logistics of her life,

except that she was a teacher, probably an empath, and

lived with her boyfriend. Perhaps it was selfish of him to

think she could just drop everything in her life for him.

Furthermore, perhaps she was wondering what his

intentions were towards her, although he instinctively

felt she knew how strongly he felt for her. Still, he had
 113

met her at a bar the first time they met and they had

spent the night together. Perhaps she herself was no

stranger to reckless behavior?

Arriving home, he realized it was Groundhog’s Day,

which he had always felt was a strange kind of day of

renewal. It was an annual tradition of his to watch the

movie of the same name, and he secretly had always felt

the movie was a philosophical masterpiece as well as

being very funny.

He had come to this conclusion as a young college

student when he first stumbled upon the idea of what

Nietzsche called eternal recurrence. Essentially what

Nietzsche suggested, was that it is a possibility that we

are destined to live this same life over and over again,

with all of it’s heartbreak, disappointment, loss, as well

as joy. He acknowledged that this could be absolutely

harrowing and depressing, but that there was also

another possibility. What if this was the greatest thing

we could hear? If this was an amazing gift of awareness

that shocked us into some kind of heightened existential

 114

awareness? Anyway he also thought the movie was

pretty funny, and settled in to watch it despite the fact

that it was still quite uncomfortable to lie down.

After the movie ended, he though even more about

the idea of eternal return as it related to his own life.

Would he do it all over again? Suffer through all of the

same mistakes and staggering and stumbling. He was

almost sure he would, and right now, despite his body

being in fairly significant pain, he was beginning to see

the power of the journey itself.

He considered grabbing a beer from the refrigerator,

but then thought better of it considering the amount of

painkillers he was on. Every trip off the couch was a

struggle, and he tried to plan each trip strategically. As

the hours passed, he still had not heard from Stephanie,

and he began to grow concerned that something might

have happened to her. He knew she had his cell phone

number, but wondered if perhaps she had lost it. He

hobbled over to his home phone in the other room,

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which was also where his office calls were routed.

Playing his messages he heard this-

“Umm John, hi.. I don’t really know what to say. I’m

sure I let you down and I want to be honest about

something. I felt something I had never felt before with

you the other day, and honestly it scared the shit out of

me. I thought I was on solid ground, and I wasn’t. I’ve

been drinking for a couple of days now and don’t really

know what to do know. I’m sorry I let you down.”

John took a deep breath and though a lot about what

he had just heard. He thought he was the scared one, but

at least for today, it seemed like things had changed. He

felt for her a great deal, having been down the same road

more times than he could remember. He thought back to

Dr. Paul’s oft-repeated idea, that when the student is

ready, the teacher appears.

But what happened when the teacher had a meltdown?

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Chapter 21

John began the day with some stretching and light

exercise. It had now been over a week since he had been

in the accident, and through the combination of his

hospital stay and abstinence from alcohol, he had lost 10

quick pounds. His back was terribly sore, and he made a

mental note to appreciate what a wonderful gift it is to

have the free and uninhibited use of one’s entire body. It

was something he had always taken for granted until it

was now gone.

John thought a bit about how he should handle this

situation with Stephanie. She sounded pretty confused

and messed up, and he wanted to help her work through

this if he could. On the other hand he was messed up,

and wanted to make a thoughtful choice as to how he

should proceed. He thought back to an old line Dr. Paul

used to use with regard to psychotherapy; it was a mess

helping a bigger mess.

Instinctively John thought he should slow down with

Stephanie, but also realized that part of this may be his

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natural inclination to pull away from people when they

got to close. He had some deeply habituated ways of

thinking that had got him to this point, and he vowed to

hold them up to more serious scrutiny rather than simply

accepting them blindly.

As the day progressed, John began to write in his

journal to help work through some of the ideas that had

been knocking around in his head. Although he was

often insistent that his patients keep a journal to promote

more mindful living, it was something he rarely did

himself. Physicians rarely heal themselves.

As John continued to write, he felt he was on the

cusp of an important idea. He was thinking of how Jung

hypothesized that it was at midlife we begin to desire a

sense of deeper individuation and exploration of hidden

parts of ourselves. As he speculated as to what these

hidden parts may be, he heard a knock, and was mildly

irritated by the interruption. He hobbled to the door, and

there stood Stephanie, clutching a bottle of wine and

looking like she had consumed several already. She

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looked at John and then grabbed him and pulled him into

a kiss, which was a jolt to his already injured back.

“Oh, sorry I hurt you John. Love always hurts a little

though doesn’t it?” she said laughing. She entered the

house and went straight to the kitchen, rummaging

through his drawers looking for a corkscrew.

“Um, Stephanie, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you,

but can we sit down for a second?” John asked in his

best therapist’s voice.

“Yea, yea John I know we need to talk, but I need a little

wine right now without a lecture. I just dumped my

boyfriend and I’m a little bit messed up right now, so if

you wouldn’t mind,” she said as she handed John the

bottle, which was a twist off..

“Ok, ok, here you go,” he said, twisting the bottle lose

and pouring her a small glass. “But could you at least let

me make you a little something to eat?”

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So John quickly whipped up some pasta, hoping the

thick red sauce would help her absorb some of the

alcohol. She stared intently at him as he cooked, but

seemed too distracted to actually lend a hand. He was

impressed that he still remembered how to do this stuff,

although he was a pretty good cook when he took the

time to do it, which was almost never.

As they sat and ate, Stephanie apologized over and

over to John and explained that it had been as rough

couple of days untangling herself from her boyfriend. He

felt for her, and as she spoke, it dawned on him that she

had rearranged her whole life at least partially as a result

of her interactions with him. Normally this would be a

red flag to him, but a big part of him was able to look at

her and visualize sitting together when they were 80. But

just right this second, they both had some stubborn

remaining demons to extinguish.

 120

Later in the evening, they settled into a pleasant

evening together, with her resting her head in his lap. He

gently stroked her hair as she settled in to sleep. When

he went to shut the TV off, she awoke with a start, and

looked at John and began kissing him passionately,

quickly removing her clothing as she did.

“Whoa, whoa, Stephanie,” he said with a great deal of

regret. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Don’t you want to make love with me John?” she said

with more than a little hurt in her voice.

“More than you can possibly imagine,” was his

response. “But this has been a rough day for both of us

and there’s no need to rush. “In fact,” he said touching

her face. “I hope I’m still making love with you when

I’m a broken down old man.”

 121

“You’re already a broken down old man John,” she said

as they both burst out laughing. And with that they

walked hand in hand to bed, holding each other all night

as they drifted slowly off to sleep.

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Chapter 22

John woke up to the smell of sizzling bacon, and

thought he must be somewhere in a dream. The smell

conjured up memories of his grandparent’s farm from

his childhood, when his grandmother would wake up at

the crack of dawn to cook breakfast for everyone. It was

a wonderful memory.

Stephanie came into the room a minute later with a

tray full of food. Quite sure he didn’t own bacon or a

tray, he surmised she had gone shopping this morning,

and he was thoroughly impressed by her domestic skills.

“This looks wonderful Stephanie,” he said with a smile,

pulling her towards her as he did. At first they kissed

slowly, and then she set the trey down and crawled into

bed with him. They continued to kiss, and then, after a

long moment of looking into each other’s eyes, they both

instinctively knew it was time.

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They stayed in bed most of the morning making love,

and for John the connection was so intense he had to

choke back tears. It occurred to him that he had waited a

lifetime to feel like this, and now that he had, he felt a

pang of regret for all that he had missed. He sat and

admired her beautiful form as she settled back into sleep.

How did he get so lucky?

Later that afternoon they got around to eating the

breakfast she had put together, laughing and talking as

they ate. In the back of his mind he thought about how

all of this was going to work logistically, but then tried

to put these thoughts out of his mind. He reminded

himself that he had been gifted a wonderful moment, and

that never again would he sit and laugh with this

wonderful woman having just made love for the first

time. He was learning to smell the roses.

That evening the conversation turned a little more

serious, as John noticed Stephanie’s mood seem to

change.
 124

“Not that I am an expert empath by any means, but I do

detect a little disturbance in the force,” John continued.

“What’s up? Is something wrong?”

“All of a sudden I was thinking about Kim,” she

continued. “She’s seemed very troubled lately and she

won’t tell me why. I know about confidentiality and all,

but what do you think? What can I do to help her?”

“I spoke with her on the phone the other day and she

seemed a bit worried about my accident. We’ve grown

closer over the last couple of weeks, and I’m definitely

concerned she feels on some level that I’m abandoning

her,” John explained

“Yea she has been extremely worried about you, and I

know that is part of it. She’s come to see you as a kind

of dad.”
 125

“Well that is on some level one of the ideas in therapy,

according to one theory anyway. The therapist in a sense

reaparents the person coming to see them, and replaces

an old maladaptive pattern of communication with

encouragement and understanding. In Kim’s case she not

only needs this kind of thing, but quite literally has no

physical father in her life right now. I found myself

acting like a dad the other day when she was telling me

about her new boyfriend.”

“I find myself drawn to the idea of therapy as a kind of

undoing of prior emotional family experiences,”

Stephanie responded. “I feel like that in the classroom a

lot as well. You see kids that are so tough on the outside

but inside just dying for some kind of love and

validation. I’ve seen that with Kim as well. So far having

sex was the only way that she could get love from a

parent, and that is so sick I don’t know if it can be

undone,” she said as she softly began to cry.

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John thought about what she said and was highly

impressed by her empathy as well as her therapeutic

acumen. He thought back to an old lesson he

remembered regarding group therapy. Essentially it was

suggested that the group becomes a recapitulation of the

family itself, and that by observing and working with the

in-process communications in the group, you could

observe how someone behaved on their family.

Specifically John thought about what the therapeutic

value of Kim spending time with both he and Stephanie

together might be. He knew there were some possible

ethical questions here, and didn’t want to mess around

with Kim’s already fragile psyche if there was a chance

he and Stephanie might not last.

“I have a question for you Stephanie and I want you to

think about it a little before you answer,”

But before he could continue she walked over to John

and kissed his forehead. “You’re thinking that it would

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be a good idea for the three of us to spend some time

together, right? Well I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she

said with a smile.

“And John”

“Yeah?”

“I’m in this for the long haul if that eases your mind a

little.”
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Chapter 23

On the way out to Kim’s foster house, John looked

out the window with a smile. He couldn’t remember the

last time he had been a passenger in a car, and he felt

strangely safe having given up control to someone else.

He felt like someone was taking care of him.

As they pulled up, Kim was sitting on the porch

waiting for them to arrive. Seeing the both of them

together was quite a site for her, and as she walked over

to the car to get in, she couldn’t help but tease them a

little.

“Well, well, well, I was hoping this day might finally

come. So nice to see both of you, both of you together

that is,” Kim said with a mischievous smile.

“Why do I feel like I’m back in the 7th grade again

Kim?” John replied with a laugh. “Anyway good to see

you, how does Pizza sound for lunch?”

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“Whatever you say doctor,” she fired back. John

couldn’t help but notice that the way she called him

“doctor” was suspiciously similar to the way he

addressed Dr. Paul. The synchronicity of this was not

lost on him.

As they sat down at the Pizza place, the three of

them talked and laughed, and settled in to a comfortable

sense of familiarity. John had been a little concerned that

this would be awkward for her, but thinking back, he

realized Kim had hinted around about he and Stephanie

before they were even together. Maybe she was an

empath as well?

“Kim what’s been going on since I’ve seen you,” John

asked curiously. “So sorry I missed our appointment the

other day, but man, I hate to admit it but I’m a terrible

driver.”

“Yea, I kind of figured that,” she said laughing. “I’ve

been really worried about you and missed talking to you.

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A couple of things have happened since we last met,

some stuff with that boy we were talking about.”

Looking over at Stephanie, she continued, “I’m not

really sure what I’m allowed to say in front of Mrs.

Corcoran, but I have some questions about some stuff

and I don’t know who to ask. I guess you could say it is

women’s stuff.”

John resisted the urge to chuckle, as he had a good idea

about what Kim was talking about. He felt like he was

perhaps being gently dismissed from the conversation,

but also felt glad that Stephanie was also here to answer

any questions she might have about sex, periods, and

other subjects that girls are just more comfortable talking

to other women about.

“You know Kim, there are a couple of things I want to

say,” John said in his serious voice. “I am first and

foremost your therapist, and if there are ever things you

want to talk about that are just between us, that still
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stands. If there are some things, some woman things you

are more comfortable talking about with Stephanie,

that’s O.k. too. Just know that we both care about you

very much, and understand if there are things that are

easier to talk about with just one of us.”

“Thanks for making that easy John,” she said looking

him in the eyes. “So if you wouldn’t mind, could you

beat it for a minute?”

And with that John took his cue and hobbled over to

the counter on his crutches. He was learning how to use

them more efficiently, and decided he was even strong

enough to play a game of Galaga which was in the

restaurant’s arcade. As he made his way across the

restaurant, he looked at all of the families sitting

together, and for perhaps the first time in his life didn’t

see a life that was utterly foreign from his own. It

startled him a little as he looked around and saw white

families with Asian kids, a gay couple with what looked

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to be their adopted children, older people with young

children, and nearly every other combination a person

could think of. It reminded him that families came in all

shapes and sizes.

A half hour and several quarters later, the girls came

up arm and arm to see how he was doing. They hit him

up for a few quarters, and he laughed when he thought

about this ritual from his own childhood. The three of

them spent the rest of the afternoon laughing and playing

video games, and for a day at least as 3 people who

simply enjoyed each other’s company. John knew he

was still Kim’s therapist, and that they had a great deal

of work to do in therapy, but for now, modeling for her

some kind of normal life seemed pretty therapeutic.

Therapeutic for all of them.

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Chapter 24

On the way home John thought a lot about the idea of

family, and how our experiences with our families cast

such a monstrous shadow over everything else we do.

He knew because of some of his own family experiences

he had always been hesitant about starting his own

family, but now was rethinking this idea. People can

learn and people can change. He had preached this as a

therapist for years, but was just now starting to see how

these things might truly happen in his own life.

Kim seemed upset to have to say goodbye to them,

and when they dropped her off he again considered the

ethical implications of this approach. She was getting

very attached to both of them, and sudden disruptions

and abrupt changes could have a very negative affect on

her life right now. He reminded himself that less then a

week ago Stephanie went on a 3 day drinking binge, and

that he was also not always a model of responsible

behavior. It seemed like something they should talk

about, but for now he was very much trying to trust and
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enjoy such a wonderful feeling. Still, for him, everything

changed when a kid’s welfare entered into it.

As they rode home, John reached over and put his arm

around Stephanie’s shoulder. Watching how sensitive

and kind she was with Kim endeared her to him even

more, and even stealing little touches from her brought

him a great deal of happiness. She looked over at him

and smiled, and once again seemed to read his mind.

“John, I hope you’re not getting annoyed, but I can tell

what you’re thinking,” she continued. “You’re

wondering if two people like us should be getting so

involved in a little girl’s life when we can barely manage

our own without falling down half the time. It’s a fair

question and I’m thinking about it too. This all feels so

right to me, and traditionally when I’ve felt like this I

look over my shoulder to see when the other shoe is

going to drop. I don’t mean to be presumptions, but

being with you now feels like something I’ve been

preparing for my whole life. Like I’ve made the same

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mistakes, fallen back into all the familiar holes enough

times that I finally get a chance to learn from these

mistakes and be happy now.”

“You’re not presumptuous, and I feel exactly the same

way. At first I thought of it like maybe we were saving

each other, but the more I think about it the more I think

that isn’t right. All of those mistakes, all of those dumb

things we’ve done, all of that time spent wandering

alone in the dark. It brought us here. Both of here,

together. That’s probably why it feels so comfortable

between us. We’ve made so many of the same mistakes

and felt so lost for so long that it would be virtually

impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it. I

guess what I’m trying to say, is that I feel understood,

truly understood by someone for the first time, maybe

ever. So I don’t think we’re saving each other, but that

we’ve found each other so we can take all of these

mistakes we’ve made and make something amazing out

of the experience together,” John said passionately.

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“Man you have a silver tongue buddy,” she said with a

smile. “How much do you remember about the first time

we met? Do you remember any of the things you said?

Because just so you know it was a speech like that that

made me decide to go home with you.”

“Uh I’d have to plead the fifth on that one, but my guess

is I sensed it in you even then,” John explained. “Even

that first morning I woke up with you I knew something

in my world was about to change. At the time I didn’t

know what it was, but in retrospect I’m pretty goddamn

glad I was so slick.”

“You were more than slick John. You were totally

honest and sensitive and kind, and I was knocked out by

talking to you for a couple of hours. So much so that I

was ready to sleep with you that first night. Then you

passed out on me,” she explained. “But I knew

something too John. I really did.”

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“Well I’m glad,” John responded. “That whole first day

after you left I had this song stuck in my head all day. It

was an old Billy Joel song called The Longest Time. My

whole life I’ve loved that song. It’s about a guy who has

waited forever to feel something powerful for another

person. Even as a kid I used to listen to the song and

wonder if it was ever gonna happen to me. It never did, I

never got to experience what he was talking about in that

song. Until now that is.”

She pulled the car over to the side of the road, and

then softy began to cry. Unbuckling her seat belt she

reached over and pulled John into her arms and they

kissed. They sat like that for some time as it slowly

began to rain.
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Chapter 25

They stayed up all night together talking and

laughing and holding each other, and John could feel the

bond between them growing considerably stronger. He

knew that there was a very chemical component to

falling in love, and tried to strike a balance between

enjoying the feeling and holding on to a realistic view of

where they were going. He had always been cautious

with the idea of “soul mates” and an overly romanticized

version of love, but what he felt for Stephanie was much

stronger than anything he had ever experienced.

He thought it was probably a good idea to see Dr.

Paul this week and talk some of this over. He was

especially interested in hearing his opinion on the

approach he was taking with Kim, and the possible

ethical implication of modeling a nuclear family for her.

He wanted to get back into a familiar routine with all of

his patients, but suddenly realized he was without any

viable means of transportation.

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After talking with his new friend Mildred at Dr.

Paul’s office, he set up an appointment for that evening

after he was through seeing his own patients. He decided

he would rely on Chicago’s cab drivers to get around for

the next few days, and ordered one to pick him up in an

hour. He knew it would take him a little more time to get

ready this morning attending to his various injuries.

It felt good to be back at work, and he found that the

worry and concern his patients had felt for him when he

was hurt strengthened the bonds he had with them

considerably. In between sessions he thought of

something one of his favorite therapists Heinz Kohut

said about narcissism. In an effort to explain narcissism

he used the metaphors of an agonizing toothache and

being in love. When a person has the agonizing

toothache they are unable to focus on anything or

anyone besides their own problem. He hypothesized that

that was how a narcissist saw the world.

Conversely he talked about seeing the world like a

person in love sees it. The person in this case is so

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significantly affected by being in love that they are

unable to examine the world with any kind of critical

eye.. Now that he was personally experiencing being in

love, he was beginning to understand what Kohut meant.

On a deeper level he thought about a conversation he

had with Dr. Paul about how feeling a deep sense of love

for someone affected a person’s larger sense of empathy

for other people. John had always suspected that Dr.

Paul’s sense of empathy began when he had found such

an intense sense of love in his marriage. When his wife

died this sense of empathy seemed to grow, and although

a kind of sadness enveloped him when it happened, he

seemed to be honoring her memory with a much deeper

sense of love and compassion for his fellow human

beings.

John felt much more in the moment the entire day in

therapy, and for the first time felt a shift in the way he

conducted himself professionally. Although he knew he

was a competent therapist, a part of him always listened

to people’s stories with a bit of a selfish ear. Much of

 141

what he heard in therapy eventually became material for

the books that he wrote, and although he always took

great pains to protect people’s privacy, he was beginning

to see how this may have detracted from his

effectiveness as a therapist.

He had always wondered why Dr. Paul had never

published anything as a therapist, and had even mocked

him at times for his relative anonymity. Now he was

starting to understand. For Dr. Paul his patients were his

novels, and seeing people make changes in their lives

was more than enough to gratify him.

John’s last patient of the day was a middle-aged

woman who had lost her husband the previous year He

did very little traditional therapy with her, and was

mostly a voice of support and empathy when she was

feeling down. She had been married to her husband since

she was 17, and had talked often about how she would

never experience anything like the love she felt for him

again. As the session came to a close, John decided he

needed to talk about with her.

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“You know Cindy, there’s something I want to say to

you,” John said as he leaned forward. “We’ve sat

together all these months and I’ve tried to convince you

that it was possible you will find love again and that you

can and will have all kinds of new experiences. But you

know what, I’m not sure I was doing my job, which is in

a large part to make you feel understood. I think I get

what you were saying all these months. Daryl was your

life, and all of your love was invested in him. I’m sorry

if I haven’t fully grasped what you were trying to tell

me, but recent events in my life have I hope made me a

better listener.”

As John finished his speech, Cindy came over and patted

his hand. “I appreciate you saying that doctor. You’ve

been a fine therapist and I’ve grown rather fond of you

over this time we’ve known each other. You’ve been the

one person in my life I felt I could truly talk to about

Daryl, and it’s meant more to me than you know. So as

 143

your friend, I hope you don’t mind me saying something

to you.

“What is it?”

“If I didn’t know better,” she replied with a big smile “I

would think that somebody was in love.”

Damn, John thought to himself as she slowly ambled out

of the room. Was he that obvious?

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Chapter 26

In the cab over to Dr. Paul’s office, John felt quite a

bit more worn out than usual, and figured it was in part

because it was his first day back after his wreck. There

was more to it than that however, and he wanted to think

about why it was he felt unusually drained this evening

after spending so many years working as a therapist.

He thought about all of this in terms of empathy. He

had always kept enough of a distance from people that

he rarely took his work home with him. He had always

had very powerful reactions to people in pain, even to

the point of it causing him physical discomfort, but he

had always numbed these feelings with his writing,

drinking, or some other distraction.

Now he felt like he had in a sense opened up

Pandora’s box. He was wondering if perhaps by letting

someone get so close to him, he had opened up a piece

of himself that had been sealed shut for most of his life.

He knew he was very tired, and wanted to think about

 145

how this feeling might affect him over a longer period of

time than one day’s worth of work.

Arriving at Dr. Paul’s office, he chatted with Mildred

for a few minutes as he waited for the good doctor to call

for him. He wanted to discuss how he was going to

compensate him for his time, and thought about what

exactly would be fair. All of the boundaries in his life

were getting a little blurry right now.

“Come on in John,” Dr. Paul said with more

professionalism than usual as John hobbled slowly into

his office.

“Before we get started here John, I want to throw all my

cards on the table,” Dr. Paul said seriously. “I am getting

a little older now, and after a long day of therapy I’m

pretty goddamned worn out. Normally I would go get a

drink right now. I want to help you with whatever you

need, but you need to know that in some ways, it is very

hard for me to hear about someone finding love for the

 146

first time. It’s always been bittersweet for me to see

people in love, as it reminds me of a time and a place

where, for one season of my life I got a chance to

glimpse something that very few people get to see. I

guess what I’m saying is that for all of the shit I give

you, I’m not immune to having a bad day sometimes

myself.”

“Are you trying to tell me that the great doctor actually

has moments of vulnerability?” John said with a smile.

“Well welcome to the human race. Jesus are we

switching roles here tonight? Or maybe you are

modeling for me that sometimes strength is weakness,

and weakness is strength. Whatever you’re saying I

understand what you mean about being worn out. I

haven’t been as worn out after a day of doing therapy

since I was a grad student. I can’t imagine what it must

feel like to do this for 30 years for a broken down old

bastard like you.”

 147

Dr. Paul let out an appreciative laugh at John’s speech as

he got out of his seat and poured himself a drink from

the secret stash in his cupboard.

“Jesus, the student has become the teacher. I never

thought I’d see the day,” Dr. Paul chuckled back.

“Haha, well I’m glad I could finally absorb some of

these lessons,” John laughed in response. “I remember

one of the first things you ever said to me was that one

of the most powerful things you can do for someone is to

let them teach you something. Maybe after all these

years you’re letting me do that. I really don’t give a shit

if you want to call what we’re doing here therapy or

consultation or a fireside chat. Frankly after a day like

today I am content just to shoot the shit a little. Now are

you going to be stingy with that Scotch or am I going to

have to watch you drink by yourself?”

 148

Dr. Paul poured John 2 fingers of Glenlivet and

handed it to him with a sigh. He had never seen his old

teacher look so tired, and he wondered if there was

perhaps more going on with him than he was letting on.

Frankly John was not particularly looking forward to

being a patient this evening, and was quite entertained

when Dr. Paul began regaling him with stories about his

time in the Peace Corps and a number of other

adventures from when he was as younger man.

They stayed up talking until well into the evening,

and when John finally left, he was quite happy to have

shared such a pleasant evening with his old teacher as a

friend. He had gotten plenty of advice, consultation, and

even scolding from him over the years, but surprisingly

it was Dr. Paul tonight who had just seemed to need a

friend to listen. As John stepped into the crisp February

night, he felt something else however, and the whole cab

ride home couldn’t shake the feeling that Dr. Paul was in

some kind of pain.

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Chapter 27

John went to Stephanie’s house for the first time that

night, and was thoroughly impressed by her collection of

books, movies, and antiques. Although he certainly felt a

powerful bond with her, he was also curious about the

little things that made her tick. Although he wasn’t the

type to rummage through someone’s cupboards, he made

a note to carefully observe the way she organized her

life. He found her fascinating.

He told her about his concerns regarding Dr. Paul,

and she confessed that she had also felt something

significant when she had spoken to him in the hospital

when they had first talked while waiting for John..

Hearing this, John thought about what would be the best

way to proceed. He thought that if there was something

important wrong with him, Dr. Paul would share the

news, but on the other hand he wasn’t sure. Paul was a

private man, who had traditionally liked to carry his own

crosses alone.
 150

John thought about how Paul had told him he was

like a son to him when he was in the hospital, and at the

time John had an immediate reaction that there was

perhaps something more important behind this comment.

Was Dr. Paul preparing for something? The comment

had an air of finality to it that had both troubled as well

as comforted him.

John mulled this over, and decided that he couldn’t

just let it go. He remembered what it felt like to be

laying in a hospital bed by himself feeling totally

helpless and unsure if anyone even cared. He knew Dr.

Paul was not the kind of man to ask for help, but also

knew that sometimes you have to be forceful with the

people you love when they are trying to push you away.

He loved Dr. Paul, and decided that he was going to find

out what was going on with him. As he called to arrange

a cab out to Dr. Paul’s home, an old quote from Lao-Tzu

popped into his head. “To love someone deeply gives

you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives

 151

you courage.” John felt like for the first time in his

life, he was beginning to channel his courage.

It was a long way out to Paul’s suburban home,

which was nestled in the town of Evanston which

was a sort of liberal enclave along Lake Michigan

just north of the city of Chicago. As a student John

attended Group Psychotherapy seminars out on

Paul’s sprawling, unmowed backyard, and he had

always been fascinated by his home and in

particular the crazy antiques and mementos that

adorned the walls in his highly unusual house. He

knew Paul would be home today, as for years he

had taken Fridays off to sit and drink his wine and

listen to his music as he drifted down his own

personal memory lane.

As the cab pulled up John saw there was a

strange car parked in the driveway, which was

unusual because Dr. Paul almost never had

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company. He thought about something Dr. Paul had

said about not being immune to having a bad day,

and was starting to put some of the pieces together.

Something was wrong with his health, and John

strongly suspected this car in the driveway might be

directly related to this.

His suspicions were confirmed when he let

himself in and found Paul lying in bed in his

pajamas chatting with a nurse and drinking some

kind of tea. He seemed quite surprised to see him,

and John knew he was in for a lecture on privacy at

some point before the day was through. Still, this

man had done a tremendous amount for him, and he

could take a little abuse if it meant getting closer to

the truth.

As the nurse packed up to leave, John felt a

pillow hit the side of his head, and realized he had

 153

just been struck by some kind of flying object. It

seemed the good doctor was feeling better.

“You nosy little shit,” Dr. Paul said with a smirk. “I

would ask what the hell you are doing here, but I

guess I have a pretty good idea already. You figured

out I was sick, didn’t you? I sure as hell hope

Mildred didn’t tell you. She’s hated you as long as

I’ve known you up until the last month or so.”

“No Paul, it wasn’t Mildred,” John replied with a

laugh. “It was just something I felt last night very

strongly, and I wanted to follow through on that

feeling. You taught me well you sneaky son of a

bitch.”

“Maybe I’ve taught you too well John,” Dr. Paul

said with a sigh. “Your powers are now intruding

 154

directly on my right to die in peace, and I don’t

goddamn like it too much.”

“Die?” John asked, trying to hide his alarm. “Who

said anything about dying. Enough with the bullshit

already. I’m sure as shit not going to let you go to

the grave without me hounding you every step of

the way. I love you, you old bastard, and if there’s

something going on with you than I want to know

everything. I reject your right to privacy. You’ve

meant too much to me in my life and I want to

know what I can do to help, and I’m not taking

fucking no for an answer,” John said with more

force than he intended.

“Jesus John, you have become a force of nature

these days,” Paul said with a laugh. “Alright John

alright, I guess a big part of me wanted to tell you

 155

anyway. I have cancer, and it’s in my liver, and the

doctors are not quite sure how much longer I’ve got.

I keep going to work because it’s all I’ve ever

known in my life. And you John, you will I hope be

my proudest achievement kiddo. Now sit down and

just shut up for a while.”

 156

Chapter 28

That night John needed a little cheering up, and he

made a reservation at one of his favorite places in the

city called Sabatinos, which was an old world little

Italian place tucked away in a strange part of the city.

Although he felt like he had known Stephanie his entire

life, it was in a sense their first official “date”, and he

was proud to be in the company of such an amazing and

beautiful woman.

When she picked him up wearing a Black dress and

with her hair recently styled, he nearly lost his breath.

He had always remembered an old TV show from his

youth that talked about love as being struck by the

“thunderbolt.” At the time John thought it was sappy and

made up, but now he was beginning to see what those

writers were talking about. Everytime he saw her he

discovered something new about the way she looked.

As they sat down, Stephanie grabbed John’s hand,

and told him she was sorry about Dr. Paul. He was

getting used to her powers of perception, but nonetheless

 157

amazed at how psychically attuned they were becoming.

John thought about how he might have handled hearing

this news just a few short weeks before, and reminded

himself how lucky he was to be able to share this part of

his life with someone. He was learning that one of the

most comforting parts of intimacy came from no longer

having to go down these roads alone.

He told Stephanie about Dr. Paul’s liver cancer, and

everything he had told John about his prognosis and

what he could expect in the coming months. Having lost

her own mother to cancer at a young age, Stephanie was

quite familiar with the process, and assured John that she

would help him take care of his old friend in whatever

way she could.

After dinner they made their way over to the piano

bar at the front of the room, where the patrons could sit

right at the piano and sing along with the songs with all

of the other patrons as well as the singer. Having spent

several years working with elderly patients, John had

developed an affinity for older songs, and they sat for

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quite some time singing along with all of the music from

Sinatra and Tony Bennett and all of the other old

standards. When the singer started with his version of

Etta James’ song At Last, John asked Stephanie to dance.

Although he was hobbled and in pain, the song summed

up everything he felt about the recent events in his life,

and for once he had the perfect person to share it with.

Later that night they again went back to Stephanie’s

place, and she surprised John by bringing out an old

record player and playing some of his favorite songs

from each decade. They continued to dance, and it felt

good for John to start to move again and stretch his

muscles out a little bit. He was in physical therapy now,

and each day he felt like he was getting some of his

strength back as well as some of his flexibility. He

vowed he would never take these things for granted

again.

“And now, because you have been such a wonderful date

and danced with me all night. I have a surprise for you

 159

John,” Stephanie said with a smile, “For the final song of

the night, I present to you, the first 45 I ever bought.

Please enjoy.”

As the record came on, John burst into a huge smile

and laughed appreciatively. It was Billy Joel’s The

Longest Time, and he was not at all surprised that it was

the first record she had ever purchased. More and more

it felt like they had been waiting for each other their

whole lives.

That night they made love for hours, hardly even

stopping to talk as they had done on previous occasions

when they had been together. It was the most intensely

passionate night of John’s life, and he felt himself falling

deeper and deeper in love with this woman everytime

they were together. This was the last thought he

remembered as they finally fell asleep wrapped in each

other’s arms.

That night John had a very powerful dream. He was

struggling to catch a train, and, although he was quite

 160

sure he would never make it, he ran to catch up to it

anyway. Just as the train was pulling off, Dr. Paul

appeared and made arrangements for John to get aboard.

They road together for quite a while talking and

laughing, and then Dr. Paul said he had to be leaving,

but that he would be happy to ride with John anytime.

As the train continued on John remembered feeling

very alone, and stopping at the bar car to ease his pain

with all of the other single men. He continued to drink,

and got drunker and drunker as the train began to careen

out of control. John became alarmed, and frantically

pushed the button to get off at the next stop, but it was to

no avail. Then suddenly the trained veered off into the

street, and came screeching to a halt in front of a home.

As John rushed to get off the train he saw Stephanie and

Kim waving at him from a front porch swing. He woke

up with a start, sweating profusely and with his heart

nearly pounding out of his chest.

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Chapter 29

The last time John had experienced a dream like this,

his mother had called him the next morning and told him

his father had died during the night. It was the most

haunting memory of his life, and since that time John

had always paid very close attention to the content of his

dreams.

John sat up in bed and thought about how he should

proceed, and realized that, although the dream certainly

had some potentially foreboding themes about Dr. Paul,

that there was also a great deal more content to think

about.

Taken at its face, the dream could perhaps be

interpreted that Dr. Paul had traveled a long way with

John on his journey, but that now he would have to take

personal responsibility for his life and find his own way.

On the other hand there was indication that Dr. Paul’s

influence would always be there, as he assured John in

the dream he would be willing to travel with him

anytime. Clearly there was a warning against drinking as

 162

a kind of self-sabotage in the dream, and some kind of

indication that Stephanie was a way “home” for him.

Not just home though, his grandparent’s old home which

he had dreamt about so many times over the years. A lot

of powerful images to think about here.

The confusing part of the dream was that Kim was

with Stephanie as his subconscious created the idea of

“home.” He had dreamed of his patients before, and

knew that because the three of them had recently been

out together as a kind of family, that this idea may have

lingered in his psyche longer then he may have realized.

Since the death of his father he was very reluctant to

dismiss anything in a dream, and pondered for the rest of

the day the specifics of what this all might mean.

Later in the day he got a call from Kim’s foster

mother describing how Kim had been in a fight at the

home, and how she was extremely concerned as it

seemed highly out of character for her. She asked if John

could speak with her about the incident, as she refused to

 163

tell her anything, which she described as quite

frustrating.

As John had been making progress in his

recuperation, he decided it was time he got back behind

the wheel of a car. Despite being slightly traumatized by

the idea of driving again, he also missed the freedom of

being able to do what he needed to do without being at

the mercy of Chicago’s equally terrifying cab drivers.

He made arrangements to rent a car for the next week

while he thought about what he was going to do about

replacing the car that he had ruined.

On the way out to see Kim, John continued to think

about what it was last night’s dream was trying to tell

him. Was Kim a part of this home that could potentially

save him? Although he was well-connected with a

number of agencies in the city, he knew her situation

was likely to be chaotic for years to come. There were a

number of families who were truly committed to

providing good homes to kids in trouble, but the reality

was that there were almost always problems. It broke his

 164

heart to think about Kim becoming further damaged by

this experience, and although he knew he was in a

difficult situation regarding his therapeutic boundaries,

he also knew he had already assumed a great deal of

responsibility for her well-being.

As he drove up to the house, he noticed she wasn’t in

front waiting for him, which he took as a bad sign. He

wanted to get to the bottom of this incident that had

occurred, and was truly hoping it wasn’t anything

something serious enough to have to relocate her.

As he walked up to the door he was greeted by Mrs.

Walker, who told him Kim had been in her room the

entire day and was refusing to come out even for meals.

John thanked her for telling him, and walked slowly up

the stairs to see if he could get her to talk about what

happened.

“Kim, it’s John, can you let me in?” John asked as he

knocked quietly on the door. “I was hoping we could

 165

just chat for a minute, and we can even get out of here if

you want to.”

“Come in John, I’m glad you’re here, I’ve had a rough

couple of days since I saw you last. I know it’s a little

weird to ask, but do you think I could have a hug from

you?”

John quickly thought about his choice here, but

decided that for this moment at least, his therapeutic

dilemmas would just have to wait. This was a scared

little girl who needed somebody she trusted to make her

feel safe, and right now he was that person. He reached

over and pulled her into a hug as she began to cry, softly

at first and then into full-fledged sobbing. They sat like

that for some time as Kim finally released so much of

the pain she had been holding in for so long. Although it

was incredibly painful for him to experience, he also

instinctively knew that Kim had begun to heal.

 166

Chapter 30

After she stopped crying, Kim asked if they could go

and get some ice-cream, which he happily obliged. On

the way she told him that one of her younger foster

brothers had tried to pull her shirt off as she was lying

down, and then when she refused began yelling how it

was not like she hadn’t done this before. John became

very angry upon hearing this story, as the story of Kim’s

privacy had clearly been betrayed, and there was a good

chance it was by someone such as a foster parent who

clearly should have known better. It was also tantamount

to an attempted rape, and although Kim was able to fight

off the younger boy, he knew from his professional

experience that these things were unfortunately all too

common in the foster system.

Driving home, John couldn’t shake the idea that he

had to do something for Kim. He knew all the risks of

getting overly involved in a case, and had many times

observed the broken foster system at work, while having

to turn a blind eye. This case felt different though, and

 167

he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that life was

sending him a very large sign here, although he was still

missing a strong feeling as to what he should actually do

next. He called Stephanie and asked if she was willing to

meet him for dinner that evening, as he felt that she was

certainly connected to whatever it was he was supposed

to figure out.

They met at a little out of the way place called

Moody’s pub, which was a wonderful restaurant

complete with fireplaces and quiet tables where people

could sit and talk for hours. He had spent many nights

here over the course of his time in Chicago, and even as

an undergrad he would sit and discuss philosophy with

his friends over pitchers of Sangria into the wee hours of

the morning. The place had special memories for him.

As they found a place in the back next to the

fireplace, John told Stephanie about everything that had

happened, and she explained that she had also sensed

something was wrong with Kim the last couple of days

at school. Although Stephanie was her art teacher and

 168

only saw her at certain points during the week, she also

described feeling unusually attached to her and thinking

often of what she could do to help save her.

“Let me ask you a question Stephanie,” John started in.

“Were you ever a fan of The Twilight Zone? I have to

confess I was practically an addict growing up, and even

liked the new ones that they did later on. All day this

particular episode has been stuck in my head. It was

from the new series and it was called Little Boy Lost. It

was about this woman who keeps running into this little

boy that she really hits it off with. She is at a major

crossroads in her life, and we later find out that this little

boy represented the child she would have had if she

hadn’t decided to uproot her life and leave everyone,

including her fiancé, behind. I haven’t been able to get

this episode out of my head today, and I think, sitting

here with you, I finally figured out why. I think Kim is

my little girl lost, and if I don’t save her now, than she is

doomed. It’s not a hunch or a guess but an extremely

powerful feeling with an absolute certainty to it.”

 169

“I haven’t told you why I became a teacher John,” she

said as she reached over and grabbed his hand. “I’m

guessing you’ve read The Catcher in the Rye. I read it

when I was Kim’s age for the first time, and in a strange

way it saved my life. You see just like Kim, someone I

trusted betrayed me sexually when I was too young to

know any better. I was so angry for so long until I found

that book, and suddenly I felt like I had found something

that described how I felt about the world. I kept that

book with me for years, and as I got older, I discovered

something about it I hadn’t thought about before. You

know how Holden says the only thing he ever wants to

be is the Catcher in the Rye? How he wants to save kids

before they go over the edge? That’s why I got into

teaching. I wanted to catch the kids if I could before it’s

too late for them. That’s why I’ve always worked in

low-income schools. When I met Kim I had that feeling

too, and couldn’t help but think there must be some

reason the three of us were thrown together like this. I do

 170

know how I feel, and I know it may sound crazy, but I

feel like we were all meant to be together. Does that

scare you?” she asked.

John was taken aback by her speech, but also felt like

she has just said out loud something that had been

crystallizing in his head the entire day. Although

everything in his life seem to be happening quite fast

right now, he also felt like he had been preparing for this

for a lifetime. He got up and sat next to Stephanie and

embraced her with all the love he had to give.

“Thank you so much for telling me all of that, and I’m

so sorry that you were hurt when you were a little girl,”

John said sadly. “From what I can gather you have

channeled all of the horrible things that have happened

to you into a wonderful kind of love and empathy and

compassion, and I’m quite sure a whole lot of children

have been deeply affected by having such an amazing

teacher in their lives. As far as you and I go, none of this

 171

feels crazy to me. It feels like I’ve known you my whole

life, and I love you. I do,”

“I love you too,” she said with conviction. “And I will

make you a promise right now. I will help you take care

of Kim in any way I can, forever. I don’t know exactly

how we will go about this right this second, but I

promise you I will always be there.”

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Chapter 31

John made a call the next morning to a friend of his in

the foster care system and inquired about the exact

process of being a foster parent. Although he was a

respected therapist in the city, he was still a single man

living alone, and the idea of him being a foster child to a

teenaged girl would still be highly irregular.

Thinking about this further, John realized there was

another alternative to becoming a foster parent.

Adoption in these kinds of cases was often times a

preferable albeit much more difficult option, and was

contingent on having parents relinquish their parental

rights to a child, which was often a very difficult

proposition.

As John was on the way to his office, he got a call

from Dr. Paul, who asked him if he could come in that

evening after John was through with his appointments.

The call came as a surprise to John, but he was relieved

that Dr. Paul was at least healthy enough to see him, as

John had feared the worst following his dream a few

 173

nights before. Still, it seemed like a strange request, and

it lingered in his mind during all of his sessions that day

despite all of his efforts to put it out of his head.

Arriving at the office, John walked in to see Mildred

in tears, and knew immediately something was very

wrong. She came up to John and hugged him, and John

could feel the sadness as she quietly told him through

her tears to please sit down. Whatever was going on

here, apparently they were back to formalities. John took

his familiar place on the couch and waited to see what

was going on.

“Come in please,” Dr. Paul said formally as he finally

came out from behind the door. As John followed him

in, he noticed that most of his books were packed up and

the paintings had been taken down off the wall. There

was an air of finality that weighed heavily in the room.

“Well, as long as you are retiring,” John said with a

laugh. “I’ve always had my eye on that lucky corduroy

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jacket you used to wear with the patches, you think it

would fit me?”

“Not a chance fat-ass,” Dr. Paul replied back as he

rustled around in the drawer for his Glenlivet. “You’ve

taken enough from me asshole, I can however offer you

a glass of Ccotch.”

“Well now you’re speaking my language,” John said

back. “But Jesus let me have a minute to take this all in.

I’ve been getting my ass kicked in here since I was a

kid.”

“You’re still a kid goddamit, You don’t get to play that

wise old owl shit with me. Just sit down and relax for a

minute, would you. At the risk of stating the obvious,

this will be the last time we meet here. My cancer is

spreading a little quicker then they had originally

thought, and although I always thought I would die right

here in this chair, it’s time to call it quits.”

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“I know you’re not one for sentimentality,” John

explained. ‘But maybe you can help me out here. What

are you feeling right now? I’ve got 30 more years of this

in front of me and hope to God it’s going to be worth it.

Your tenure here has sure as shit been worth it for me.”

“You know John, usually I’d make a smart ass remark,

but I think I’m just gonna take that for what it’s worth.

You’re welcome,” Dr. Paul said as he took a sip from his

scotch. “I tell you this profession still baffles me as

much today as it did on the day that I started. To satisfy

some of your curiosity let me tell you a story about a

letter I received recently. This story goes back to the

beginning when I was a young clinician working at a

private practice downtown. I had this kid in therapy who

was a little younger than I was at the time. He was the

meanest son of a bitch I’ve ever known. I mean just an

awful mess. Hated women with a passion. Couldn’t hold

down a job. Had no interest in therapy whatsoever, and

 176

was only there because his parents paid his rent if he

went. I saw that guy for a year, and didn’t feel like he

heard a word I said. 25 years later I get a 4 page letter

from him. The letter explained he went on like he was

going for 5 more years before deciding he wanted to

make some changes in his life. He credited me with

helping him make these changes, and was writing to tell

me he ran a non-profit now and was married with two

healthy kids. In a million years I would have never

predicted this outcome for him, but yet here was this

letter,” Dr. Paul said as he held the letter up in the air.

“Give people what you have to give and then hope

they’re willing to do the work. Probably more than any

other case I’ve ever had, this one helped me understand

that we never no when the seeds we plant are going to

grow. Like with you for instance,” he said with a laugh.

“Well I have to say something seems to have gotten

through lately, and since you’re the only therapist I’ve

ever really listened to, I guess you can put me on your

 177

list as well. Don’t expect some big-ass letter though;

you’ll have to take my word for it. I’ve recently

discovered that all of the happiness that has happened in

my life lately has been lying dormant somewhere in my

heart and mind for years. I guess I just wasn’t ready for

it though. Didn’t think I deserved it. You’ve had a

tremendous amount of patience with me and I know I

haven’t been the easiest person to work with. I guess

what I’m saying is thank you. Thank you for helping

save me from myself,” John replied as he chocked back

tears.

They spent the rest of the night drinking scotch and

talking about all of the things they had been talking

about for the last 10 tears. John had so many questions

for Paul, but for tonight was content to let him take the

conversation wherever he wanted it to go. As the Scotch

began to disappear and the night came to an end, John

was hit with an extreme pang of sadness that he

wondered if he would ever really shake. Although he

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planned to visit Dr. Paul as long as he would let him, his

intuition was telling him this might be the last time they

would ever get to do this.

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Chapter 32

With things starting to blossom with Stephanie, Kim

in crisis, and Dr. Paul’s health declining rapidly, John

was surprised to find himself on an airplane heading

west the next afternoon. As someone with a lifelong

history of avoiding difficult situations, he knew he had a

tendency to run when things got difficult, but this felt

like something different. He woke up that morning with

an overwhelming need to return to his grandparent’s

farm, and had followed his instincts and made hasty

arrangements to fly a few hours later.

He had called his rather surprised mother, and she

had made arrangements to pick him up at the airport

when he landed. He had a hard time explaining to her

exactly why he needed to come home right now, and she

was quite surprised by his request to visit the family

farm. As he hung up, he thought about a quote from

Robert Frost that seemed especially appropriate. “Home

is a place where, when you go there, they have to take

you in.”
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He arrived at the small Spokane airport on the

Eastern side of Washington State and found his mom

waiting for him when he arrived. Once upon a time John

had briefly attended school in this city, and he asked if

they could stop at one of his favorite old watering hole

called The Onion so they could talk a little more about

what it was he was doing here.

“Ok John, nothing you’ve ever done has ever surprised

me, but maybe you can tell me what you’re doing here.

Not that I’m not glad to see you. I am. It just all sounded

a little mysterious,” his mother explained.

“Well mom, I’m on the verge of some very important

changes in my life,” John responded. “And to give you

the short answer, I felt this powerful urge to reconnect

with parts of where I came from before I went ahead

with some of these changes. I’ve had this recurring

dream for years about the farm, but I’ve never really
 181

been sure what it means. I thought by going there I could

maybe get some sense of what this dream might mean.”

“Well John I hope you find what you’re looking for,” his

mother said as she patted his hand. “I’ve always been

amazed by you. You’re so philosophical sometimes but

also so silly and irresponsible and creative. Such a

strange mix of qualities. I always suspected you got into

Psychology to figure out how all of this happened. I’m

not going to apologize for my role in it because I think

you’ve turned out kind of wonderfully, for all your

strangeness. One thing that is clear to me is that there is

some new woman in your life somewhere in the middle

of all this. A mother knows.”

“Man you’ve got me pegged,” John said as he laughed.

“A woman who is absolutely the epitome of everything

I’ve ever looked for in a woman. Funny and smart, and

incredibly thoughtful, but more than that we connect on

this emotional level. She’s incredibly confident yet

 182

extremely vulnerable at the same time. Jesus I must

sound like I’m gushing. All I know is that it feels totally

unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.”

“Well I’m happy for you John,” she replied with a sad

smile. “I know you’ve been around enough to know that

the first part of love, the butterflies part, doesn’t really

last. I know that from watching your father and I you

also know that you need to find a partner who is more

than someone to have fun with. It sounds like you think

you have, and I sincerely wish you well. It’s something

I’ve always wanted for you and I’ve always regretted

that I was never able to show you how to go about it. I’m

glad that you’re here, and I want to help you in whatever

way I can on this road you’re on.”

“Ok mom, thank you. Sincerely. I appreciate you

dropping everything to show me around for the next

couple of days, and I’m also hoping we can hit a few

wineries and catch up a bit as well. This isn’t just about

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me and my vision quest here. I’m glad to see you and

want to spend some time with you. I think a part of me

wanted your advice and consultation about all of this. I

have a lot more to tell you actually, but in the meantime

what do you say we get a drink?” John asked as he

grabbed her arm and walked her towards the bar.

Later John called Stephanie and told him about his

trip and tried to explain what it was he wanted to

accomplish. She was concerned, but also trusted that if

this was something John felt strongly about then it was

something he should do. He also called Dr. Paul, but got

his voicemail, which he took as a bad sign. It was surreal

making these calls from his old bedroom, and he laughed

to himself when he thought about all of the twists his life

had taken since he was a gangly kid sharing this room

with his brothers. He found some of his old journals

from when he was a teenager and read them over. They

were all about finding love, adventure, and all kinds of

other philosophical musings about the meaning of life.

 184

He laughed about how little his thought process had

really changed since he was that 18-year old kid, and

continued to read his old words of wisdom as he drifted

off to sleep in his old bed.

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Chapter 33

John woke up early the next morning and drove down

to the Colombia river to sit in the park and think, as he

had done hundreds of times growing up. His old

hometown of Richland had changed a lot since he last

lived here, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that

his old spot by the river remained virtually unchanged.

He had so many memories of walking along this river,

and he could actually remember on an emotional level

the longing he used to feel to do something

extraordinary with his life.

Had he accomplished his mission? On paper he had.

He had traveled the world, moved to the big city, found

his way as a writer, sold a lot of books, and even made it

on TV a few times. Emotionally he still felt like he was

that 18-year old boy on the verge of a big adventure

though. It seemed a little clearer to him now, love was

the biggest adventure a person can undertake.

It felt good to walk in the fresh air, and John made a

mental note of how much better he felt now that he was

 186

taking care of his health. He found himself thinking

about Erik Erickson’s stages of life, which discussed

how every decade of a person’s life came with a unique

set of challenges. For someone in their 30’s the

challenge was intimacy versus isolation, meaning a

person had to find a partner to share all of life’s ups and

down with or face a growing sense of isolation. Now

that he was getting to the end of this period, John

realized he really wasn’t that exceptional. Just as

Erickson had predicted decades before, he had spent this

period of his life struggling with this issue, although it

was just out of his immediate awareness. He was starting

to realize that maybe he wasn’t as special as he thought.

It was oddly comforting.

Later that morning he and his mom began the drive

out into the farm country of Eastern Washington. Their

journey was made more difficult by the fact that John

hadn’t been to this farm since the age of 13, and his

mother had been only a handful of times. Still they

pressed on however, stopping twice to visit wineries and

 187

sample some of the state’s best wines and laugh and talk

and enjoy the day together. It was nice to feel at home

again.

As they got to the city of Sunnyside, they stopped and

debated their next move. There were dozens of country

roads in the area, and finding the right one was really

kind of a crapshoot. John deferred to his mother’s

wisdom and they traveled several miles down a road

marked C and then another marked B. Nothing on either

road looked vaguely familiar, and John was beginning to

get discouraged thinking he had come all this way for

nothing.

Finally on the 3rd road they chose everything began to

crystallize. He remembered the old store at the end of

the road, and then some other landmarks they passed as

they got closer to their destination. Finally as they rose

over a crest they found what they were looking for.

There in the back was the old trailer where his great-

grandparents lived when he was very young. As they

pulled into the long driveway he saw a bunch of kids

 188

playing in the huge backyard and he felt a sharp pang of

nostalgia thinking about his own fun times in the yard.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes before John

decided to get out of the car and look around.

As he got out of the car, the children stopped playing

and looked at him curiously. They were after all out in

the country, and strange men in overcoats were not

exactly the norm.

“Hey guys, sorry to interrupt your game, but my

grandparents used to live here and I just kind of wanted

to see if the old place was still here.”

The oldest of the boys walked towards John and eyed

him with suspicion.

“Used to live here when? I’m almost 13, and I’ve lived

here almost my whole life. You must be really old,” he

said as all of the other kids laughed.

 189

“I’m getting up there all right,” John replied as he joined

in the laughter. “I’ll tell you though when I used to

spend the summer here the days felt like they lasted

forever. I never thought I would get old. You just don’t

think it’s going to happen to you. Anyway sorry to

bother you guys. I know it’s a little weird showing up

here out of the blue. I just wanted to take a little trip

down memory lane I guess.”

Thinking that ended their exchange, John was surprised

when the older boy whipped a football at him from

across the lawn, and even more surprised when he made

a diving catch to grab it. He turned and threw a tight

spiral back at the boy, and laughed when it flew ten feet

over his head.

“Damn man, maybe you’re not so old after all. Go ahead

and knock on the door. My parents are inside. My mom

is always talking about how we’re too far out in the

country out here. Tell them how much you love it out
 190

here. Maybe they’ll sell you the place,” he said as he

went to retrieve the ball.

John was curious as to what his mother thought about

his diving around on the grass with his injuries, and he

braced for a lecture as he waved for her to get out of the

car. The farm had never been her favorite place, as it

belonged to John’s father’s family, and she had never

felt particularly welcome here. John reached into the

glove compartment to grab one of his books to give to

give to the current occupants of the house. Part of this

particular book had a few passages that described the

family farm, and he felt like it might be useful to give

them a copy as a piece offering before he asked to begin

rummaging around their house.

“Hello,” John said with a smile as a curious middle-aged

couple answered the door. “Sorry to barge in on you like

this. I know this might sound strange, but I spent a huge

part of my childhood here and have wonderful memories

 191

of the place,” John said as he handed them a copy of his

book.

Flipping the book over and seeing John’s picture on the

back, the woman relented and opened the door a little

wider.

“This is you? I’m a social worker and I’ve seen a few of

your books over the years. Come in,” she said as she

opened the door for John and his mom.

“Yea, that’s me alright. I wanted to give you this

particular book because several of the passages in there

describe this farm, or at least how I remember this farm.

If you don’t like it you can use it as a coaster or

something. Again, sorry to bug you, but for years I’ve

wanted to come back here and see this place again and

revisit some of the wonderful memories I had here as a

kid. I know that might sound a little weird, so thank you

so much for letting us in.’

 192

“It doesn’t sound weird at all. My name is Don by the

way, and this is my wife Sara,” Don explained as he

introduced his mother Barbara and they all shook hands.

“I’m kind of surprised to hear how much you love this

place. My wife thinks we’re way too far from

civilization, and my kids complain that they’re not close

enough to all of their friends in town. Still, when I saw

this place I fell in love with it. Bought it from the

funniest old man I can ever recall meeting named Henry.

Was that your grandfather?”

“It sure was,” John replied. “And I agree with you, he

was a really funny man. He bought this place after he

retired and spent years hear trying to teach himself to

become a farmer. Got pretty good at it too. If it isn’t too

much of an imposition, do you mind if I walk around a

little? I’d love to see the old barn and the corn fields and

all of it.
 193

“Why don’t you boys go,” Sara suggested. “And perhaps

I can offer your mother a cup of coffee and we can sit

and talk a little here.”

But men were already out the door as she suggested

this. Both men were about the same age, and

immediately John could sense Don had the same kind of

love for the place that he did. They spent the afternoon

walking around the fields, and John even got a tour of

the old barn he had loved so much as a kid. As they got

to a small hill on the back of the property they climbed

to the top and took it all in. For miles there was nothing

but farmland, and John was amazed at how peaceful and

quiet it all felt to him, just like it had when he was a kid.

You can’t go home again. John knew that, but all the

same he felt pretty close as he plucked a blade of grass

from the ground and slid it between his teeth.

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Chapter 34

On the way home, John’s mother Barbara filled him

in about the state of the domestic union at the old family

farm. The family was originally from California, and

bought the farm to get away from all of the hustle and

bustle of living in the big city. Now years later Sara had

gotten very bored with the whole arrangement, and was

actively pleading with Don to sell the farm and move

back to the city. Paul on the other hand fancied himself

like the Kevin Costner character in the movie Field of

Dreams, and wanted to live out his life out in the

country.

John laughed at his mother’s ability to glean all of

this information from one short conversation. She herself

had lived briefly in a farm town with John and his

siblings, and as a young mother she had experienced a

lot of the same frustrations regarding small town life.

Driving home, they stopped off at the Snipes

Mountain brewery in the town of Sunnyside and had

lunch as well as a couple of ice cold local beers. John

 195

had a lot to think about today, and felt strangely

comforted sharing such a thoughtful day with his mom,

who had been a wonderful sport about satisfying his

strange curiosity.

“Let me ask you something mom?” John said

interrupting their silence. “At what point as a young

married woman did you know that dad was never going

to change? If it is hard to talk about then you can tell me

to shut up, but it really would be helpful for me to

know.”

“Well John, I’ll answer that with a question, which is

something I know you shrinks love to pull on people.

Why are you asking me this question now? What

purpose does it serve? It sounds to me like you are on

some level trying to talk yourself out of something

wonderful you’ve found, and I’m not going to let you do

that without calling you on your own rationalizations.”

 196

“Jesus I hate it when I can’t bullshit people,” John said

as he smiled. “I think you’re probably right. I guess I’ve

always wondered about my own capacity to change. My

dad was an asshole, we both know that, and never

seemed to even think about wanting to change as far as I

can tell. Am I wrong about that? Is there something I

don’t know?”

“There was probably a lot you didn’t know about your

dad John, after all you barely knew him. He had a very

reflective side to him, but it was something that I rarely

saw, and never saw when there were other people

around. He always had to be the life of the party. Never

wanted to be anything else. That’s why it’s been hard for

me to see you go down the same road sometimes. You

have a lot of his spirit, but you also have a lot more. I

guess the best advice I can give you is no not settle for

the idea that some flaw you have is just the way you are.

Fix it. Stare it in the face and do something about it, or

get stuck where you are standing for the rest of your life.
 197

I speak from experience on this John. You really seem

so close.”

John thought about her words the entire ride back to

the house, and also felt a little sad he had missed out on

her advice for so many years as he carved out a life for

himself in Chicago. He had avoided home for most of

his adult life, and except for the very occasional

Christmas hadn’t been out this way with any kind of

consistency for years. He thought about the affect this

may have had on his mother and vowed to be a better

son. Of all of the lessons he had absorbed lately, perhaps

the most powerful was that his tendency to withdraw

from other people had real consequences for the people

that wanted to be close to him. He made a vow to

remember that when it came to his mother.

Arriving at their old home, John and his mom

cracked open one of their newly purchased bottles of

wine and sat and talked. Being around her and retracing

some of his old steps had been not only very comforting,
 198

but also tremendously insightful, and John could feel his

sense of resolve crystallizing regarding all of the people

that he loved back in Chicago.

Later that night they went to dinner at a seafood place

called Anthony’s right along the Colombia river. It was

such a nice break from the noise of Chicago, and they sat

there for several hours drinking wine and reminiscing

about old times. At one point in the meal a couple

approached them and asked John if he was the writer

John Duffy, and he replied that indeed he was. He was

shocked to find that they were fans of his work and new

intimate details of a number of things about his life

growing up here in Richland. They chatted pleasantly for

a few minutes and were off, and John laughed out loud

at his newfound celebrity status here in his old

hometown.

“What was that about?” He asked. “How in the world do

they know who I am all the way out here.”

 199

“Well John, this is a small place, and although you might

not know this, I’ve always made sure all of the

bookstores carried your books, and I’ve taken every

chance I had to tell people about my son the famous

writer. In case you didn’t know it your mother is very

proud of you. Maybe I haven’t said that enough to over

your life, but I’m saying it now.”

John looked over at his mother and smiled. Although he

had always guessed she was proud of him, they spoke so

seldomly that he was never totally sure. It was nice to

hear.
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Chapter 35

Later that night, John watched an old episode of The

Twilight Zone called Walking Distance. It was about a

man in his 30’s who wandered back into his old

hometown to find that he had gone back in time to his

childhood, where he observed a younger version of

himself. The point of the story was that although we

can’t literally go home again, we can find ways to revisit

the things we found peaceful and comforting about home

in our adult lives. John felt like he was beginning to find

this peace.

Later that evening John got a call from a local radio

show host named Jeff Phillips who hosted a show called

Talk of the Tri-Cities. He wanted John to come on the

show to talk about a book he had written about the early

deaths of prominent comedians including John Belushi

and Chris Farley, and John was flattered as well as

intrigued just to be asked. He spent the rest of the

evening preparing some of his thoughts for the

 201

interview, and went to bed that night thinking of what a

pleasant and revealing trip this had turned out to be.

Later that morning he arrived at the studio and met

the host, who was a gregarious man in his 40’s who

shared John’s love of comedy. They immediately hit it

off, and they talked for the next half hour on the air

about comedy and laughter and how it all related to

John’s work as a therapist. The conversation was

interrupted however when someone called in midway

through the interview to ask John a question about his

father.

“Yea hey John, this is Tom from Richland,” the caller

explained. “Was your father Patrick by any chance?”

“He sure was,” was John’s reply.

“Well listen, I want to tell you something. You guys are

sitting here talking about comedians that have died

young, and I guess what I wanted to say was that a

 202

person doesn’t have to be famous to fit this pattern. I

knew your dad pretty well John, and he was the same

kind of guy, laughing and drinking his way to an early

grave. I’m not trying to be a jerk here, I’m just saying

that all of this happens to every day people as well.”

“You’re right about that Tom,” was John’s response.

“Thank you for reminding me.”

As the interview concluded John thanked Mr. Phillips

and began the drive back to his old house. He thought

about that call regarding his father and the implications

of what the caller had said regarding his own life. Self

destruction most certainly happened in everyday lives,

and the caller had reminded John that some of this self

destruction was a part of his personal template.

He called his mom and asked her if she could meet

for a drink, and she was more than happy to oblige. They

met at a little place called the The Towne Crier, where

once upon a time as a young man John had worked as a

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bartender. He had his first legal drink as an adult here,

and as part of his reunion tour he felt it was only fitting

he revisit this place where his drinking career had began.

His mom was already waiting for him when he

arrived, and she had a few choice words for him about

mentioning her during the interview, which he had

specifically promised her he wouldn’t do. They had a

couple of beers and talked over the interview, and she

and John discussed how strange it was to hear a stranger

bring up her deceased ex-husband on a radio show so

many years after the fact.

As the evening wore on, his mother suggested that

they leave, but John had other ideas. A couple of his old

friends had recognized him, and had sent a round of

drinks to the table as a way of saying hello. Having

distanced himself from his hometown for most of his

life, he was pleasantly surprised to find that people still

remembered him. John tried to remind himself that

hanging around the bar all night could lead to some

unwanted consequences, but he was too caught up in the

 204

moment to fully consider that at this juncture in the

evening.

Bidding adieu to his irritated mother, John made his

way over to the bar to say hello. Talking to his old

friends, he realized that people did in fact know he was a

writer now, and he spent some time catching up with

people and regaling them with tales about his life in

Chicago. Soon he was shooting pool and buying rounds

for the small crowd that had joined he and his friends,

and as the hours passed, he felt like a 21-year old kid

again.

As the evening progressed, word got around that John

was a well known writer, and he had attracted the

interest of an attractive girl at the bar who was at least 10

years younger than he was. Somewhere around the 5th

shot of the night she began touching and kissing John,

and he found himself enjoying the benefits of his

newfound popularity. John would have perhaps made a

very bad decision had he not gotten a call from

 205

Stephanie at 2 O’clock that morning informing him that

Dr. Paul had passed away earlier in the night.

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Chapter 36

The news of Dr. Paul’s death sobered John up in a

hurry, and within minutes of hearing it he had arranged

for a cab to take him home. He berated himself the entire

way back for not being there, and waited till he got home

to make some phone calls to find out what exactly had

happened. He spent a very long night packing up his

things and trying to make arrangements to change his

plane reservations.

The next morning was bittersweet for John, as he was

sad to be leaving his mother so abruptly after such a

positive visit. He was happy they had reconnected over

the past couple of days, and as he left he assured her

how much their time together had meant to him. It had

been a healing experience for him.

On the plane home John was numb, and he was still

having a hard time processing that the man who had

been the closest thing to a father he had really had was

gone. It was particularly hard to make sense of

considering how much he had reconnected with his

 207

mother after so many years. One door opens and another

door closes. John knew this to be true.

After speaking with a very distraught Mildred earlier

that morning, John had discovered that the funeral

services for Dr. Paul would be held the next morning at

St. Patrick’s Catholic church in downtown Chicago. Paul

had one sister in New York, and hundreds of colleagues

and friends, but in reality John was closer to him than

anyone else in his life. He knew sometime before

tomorrow morning her would have to prepare a eulogy.

He replayed the circumstances in which he heard

about Paul’s death in his head over and over again. In a

bar, drunk, and perhaps about to make a mistake with a

woman he barely knew. He couldn’t help but think how

disappointed Paul would have been if he knew this, and

he wondered if all of there work together had been for

nothing. He knew this was self-destructive thinking, and

reminded himself that he hadn’t actually done anything

wrong other than have a few too many drinks in a bar.

He tried to let himself off the hook, but it was difficult.

 208

He wondered how he had gotten here. In retrospect

hearing his father mentioned on the radio show the

previous day had likely triggered something in John that

made him repeat some of his father’s self-destructive

patterns. Despite being a therapist, and being all too

familiar with triggers and his own patterns of behavior,

John had stumbled. He thought about how he would

broach the subject with Stephanie.

Arriving home she was waiting for him at the airport,

and hugging her and feeling her in his arms was an

amazingly comforting feeling that instantly reminded

him of everything he had been working so hard for.

These were the moments where it truly was wonderful to

have someone to love.

They drove to Stephanie’s house, and on the way,

John did his best to explain where he was when she had

finally gotten a hold of him last night. Seeing the

wounded look on her face when he told her about his

evening was devastating for him, and he reminded

 209

himself once again that all of his actions had

consequences.

Later that afternoon he fixed her lunch, and did his

best to assure her that her presence in his life was the

best thing he had in this world. She agreed that it was

something they could talk about later, and reminded him

that he had to write a speech for Dr. Paul which she

assumed would be a significant task for him

emotionally. All the same he wanted to touch her and

feel close to her, as she was the only thing in his life that

made sense to him right now. Freud had remarked that

the most important event in a man’s life was the death of

his father, but for John, Dr. Paul did so much more for

him than his own father, that he knew the effects of this

would stay with him for a long time, perhaps forever.

Right now he needed her comfort.

They spent the afternoon lying down together in her

bed, and John was once again so thankful to be with

such an understanding and compassionate soul such as

Stephanie. Later they made love, and it was especially

 210

passionate and intimate considering the emotional

circumstances of what John was growing through. He

was reminded of Hemmingway’s description of sex as a

way of beating back death. That’s what it felt like to

him.

That evening he poured himself a large glass of

Glenlivet and stared for quite some time at a blank

screen. He had so much he wanted to say, but couldn’t

quite break through the emotional ice he had built up to

deal with the penetrating sadness he knew was going to

come. He was well aware of the different stages of grief,

and knew that part of what he was experiencing right

now was denial. He spent a very long wrestling with his

own emotions, and when he finally did start to write

after two glasses of scotch and several hours, the words

poured out of him so freely, that he was amazed he

looked up to see it was now 5 O’clock in the morning. It

was going to be a long day.

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Chapter 37

Arriving at the church, John saw that hundreds of

people were already there, and he was comforted by the

fact that Paul had touched so many lives. He knew

among this crowd were dozens of former patients,

students, colleagues and other people who had been

touched in some way by knowing Paul, and he for a

moment took stock of what a powerful impact his life

had had on the world.

When it came time for him to speak, John opened

with a few jokes to lighten the mood. It was what he

knew, and anyone that had actually known Dr. Paul had

almost certainly shared a laugh with him. It was the kind

of man he was. John continued;

“In all seriousness, there are hundreds of people here

today because this wonderful man in some way touched

our lives. Looking out over this crowd we get a small

measure of this man’s life. A very small measure,

because each person that interacted with Dr. Paul as a

 212

friend a patient or a colleague walked away from this

interaction with their lives changed in some profound

way. The true measure of his influence is I suspect not

demonstrated by those of us who sit here, but by the

lives we have in some way changed because of our

interactions with Dr. Paul.

I first walked into Paul’s office as a young, arrogant,

know-it all with a lot of opinions about how

psychotherapy should be conducted. Boy did I learn to

shut up in a hurry. Part of Paul’s affection was of the

tough love variety, and he was more adept at cutting

through false bravado than ay therapist I have ever

known. One of the greatest gifts I learned from him was

humility. Not learned exactly, but absorbed. Many of

Paul’s gifts were given simply by being in his presence

and observing how he conducted himself. Confident yet

humble, stern but self-deprecating, and brutally honest

and fiercely compassionate. These were some of the

shades of Dr. Paul that I knew, and if I through the

 213

process of osmosis I retained even a small amount of

what he had to give, I am eternally thankful.

Paul and I spoke often at the end of his life, and one

theme that came up again and again was love. Although

therapeutic paradigms came and went through his career,

he never deviated from the idea that therapy was about

love, and he truly loved what he did more than anyone I

have ever known. Beyond career choice though, Paul

believed that finding loved in life, including love for our

patients, love for our jobs, love for our partners, and

perhaps most importantly love for ourselves, was

paramount to finding meaning in this fleeting and

imperfect life. To share something very personal with

you, I ignored Dr. Paul’s advice on this subject for

nearly a decade, but finally, after years of kicking and

screaming, I understood what he was trying to say to me

and took this leap of faith. It takes an incredibly patient

man to wait ten years for a seed we plant to grow, but

that’s the kind of man Paul was. I hope I can honor his
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patience and faith in me accordingly as I move forward

with my own imperfect life.

I’d like to close with a quote from Colleen

McCullough that some may find an unusual choice

for a eulogy, but I think it speaks to many of the

struggles Dr. Paul encountered as he made his way

through this life, John continued. “There is a legend

about a bird which sings just once in its life, more

sweetly than any other creature on the face of the

earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches

for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found

one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it

impales itself on upon the longest, sharpest spine.

And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-

carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative

song, existence the price. But the whole world stills

to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best

 215

is only bought at the cost of great pain ...Or so says

the legend.

To me this describes the Paul I knew so well, and to

the struggles he underwent as he gave every ounce

of his empathy and love to others day after day and

year after year. He gave so much to others it quite

literally pained him at times, and the degree of his

empathy was such, that for him the work he chose

never really ended. He was simply born with an

extraordinary gift of empathy that made him feel

things very deeply. Not just good things, but love

and hate and sorrow and grief and despair and the

whole spectrum of human emotions on a daily

basis. As the quote I read so eloquently expressed,

the best is only bought at the cost of great pain. Dr.

Paul’s pain was also his greatest gift, and we were

blessed to have benefited so greatly from his daily

struggle with that pain.

 216

Personally I have thought a lot about how I can take

everything Paul gave to me and pay it forward. How

best to honor a man who influenced me so much

and helped make me the man I am trying to become

today. Albert Einstein said, our death is not an end

if we can live on in our children and the younger

generation. For they are us, our bodies are only

wilted leaves on the tree of life. So I know that in

my work, and in my life, and in the way I love,

Paul’s voice will always be one I will hear. That’s

the way it’s always been since I was that cocky kid

that first walked into his office actually. The only

thing different is his physical body has declined.

His lessons, his spirit, kindness, courage and love

haven’t gone anywhere, and perhaps they’ve even

gotten stronger. Thank you for coming out to

 217

celebrate the life of this extraordinary friend,

mentor, father, and teacher.”

 218

Chapter 38

The after party following the funeral was both

exhausting and gratifying for John, as he was

emotionally and physical spent, but also enlivened to

hear so many stories about how Paul had affected

people’s lives. A few of Dr. Paul’s patients had asked

him about starting therapy with him now that Paul had

passed, and John realized that there were a number of

logistical issues regarding his practice that John could

perhaps be of assistance with. Losing your therapist to

death was an incredibly traumatic loss for people in

therapy, and he agreed to see everyone who had asked

despite his reservations about how all of this might

actually work. He was sure this was something Paul

would have wanted.

Later that night, and despite have had less than 6

hours of sleep the following two nights, John went to a

little jazz bar called Andy’s in downtown Chicago which

had always been a favorite of Dr. Paul’s. His instincts

were telling him to lean on Stephanie during this

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difficult time, but right now he just wanted to be in a

place that let him feel close to his old mentor by himself.

He knew his emotional state was fragile.

He had a number of glasses of Scotch as he sat and

listened to the saxophone and tried not to think about all

that he had to deal with. Paul was the man he had always

turned to during the emotional storms of his life, and,

despite what he said during the eulogy, he felt a huge

whole in his life he knew would take a lot of time to

work though.

John stayed at Andy’s until the place closed that

night, drinking Scotch and silently toasting to himself all

of the ways his old mentor had touched his life. The jazz

has helped him lose time and get utterly lost in his

memories, and he began to get an understanding of why

Paul had enjoyed this place so much throughout his

many years of working as a therapist in downtown

Chicago.

Realizing he was quite drunk, and not wanting to go

home and be alone there, John staggered over to the

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nearby House of Blues hotel and rented himself a room

for the evening. Somehow being home was something

he didn’t want to face that night, and he just wanted to

go to sleep and wake up feeling something different than

he was feeling. He was in pain, and he had dealt with it

in an old familiar way by drinking way too much. He

was in danger of backsliding, but for tonight at least just

wanted to crash and forget about all of it.

John woke up the next morning to a ringing cell

phone. He was still in his suit, and laughed to himself

about his meeting with Dr. Paul a while back when they

had joked about him waking up in his same clothes. John

quickly sobered up however when he realized it was

Paul’s sister on the phone, and he grew perplexed when

she asked him to meet her downtown later that same

afternoon.

John took a cab ride home and found himself

wondering what it was Paul’s sister needed to talk about.

He had met her only once over the years, and knew she

was married to a wealthy man in New York where she

 221

lived with her family in downtown Manhattan. He knew

there were some legal issues with Paul’s practice he

could [perhaps be of assistance with, although these

kinds of things were hardly his area of expertise.

John felt a wave of depression as he walked into his

house and saw the big suitcase sitting there in the middle

of his living room. He had never really gotten unpacked

since he had been back in Chicago, and he called

Stephanie and asked if he could stay at her house again

that night. John was relieved to find that she was happy

to hear from him, and he reminded himself to stay

vigilant and resist the urge to push her away from her

now, despite the fact that he had a nearly lifelong

tendency to do this.

They spent the day together talking about all of the

recent developments in his life. Stephanie had reported

that Kim had gotten a little restless and uncomfortable

from not having spoken to him in a while, and it was

something that had also been weighing heavily on his

mind. His trip home, as well his night in the bar the night
 222

before were the beginning of a pattern of distancing that

he was fully aware of, and he remembered that this is a

luxury he didn’t have when he had gotten so highly

involved in a child’s life. He was committed now.

Later that afternoon, he found himself sitting in the

office of a high-priced law firm in the city. It was

unfamiliar ground for him, and as someone who had a

nearly lifelong distaste for lawyers, he felt

uncomfortable thinking about what he was doing here.

Seeing Paul’s sister Linda, John gave her a hug and

thanked her for letting him be such a big part of her

brother’s funeral. She assured john that his eulogy was

beautiful, and that Paul had spoken of him often in the

days before his death, which again filled John with a

sense of guilt for not having been there. After they had

comforted each other and exchanged pleasantries, John

decided it was time to politely find out just what it was

he was doing here.

 223

“Well John as you know, Paul didn’t have any children,

and I was the only family he really had. What you may

or may not have known was that Paul accumulated a

great deal of money over the years, and he left much of

it to various charities here in Chicago. The rest of it he

left to you. His house, his practice, and a large part of his

remaining assets. We had talked about this and I was

fine with it. You were truly like a son to him and I can

think of no better person to carry on my brother’s

legacy,” she said with resolve.

John sat and took the news in with a sense of shock.

He had never really known much about Dr. Paul’s

finances, but guessed that 30 years of practicing so

regularly must have been good to him. Having been

fairly irresponsible with money for the majority of his

life, John was having trouble processing that someone

had just left him such a considerable amount of it. Linda

had also given him a letter to read from her brother, but

he wasn’t sure he was ready to read it just yet. After

 224

signing a great deal of paperwork with the lawyers and

saying his goodbyes to Linda, John hailed a cab and

started home. While he was stunned at this recent

development in his life, a plan was also beginning to

crystallize in his mind.

 225

Chapter 39

John’s first stop of the day was not a pleasant one,

and as he made his way into the parking lot at the Cook

County jail, he was hit with a feeling in the pit of his

stomach that was extremely unsettling. He knew that

momentarily he was about to confront a kind of evil, and

that when he did he was going to have to stay calm and

resist the urge to get angry and perhaps even violent. He

was reminded of Peck’s book The People of the Lie,

which talked about how one of the most fundamental

tenets of people who are evil, is that they have no

conceptualization of themselves this way. John

suspected this was what was happening with prisoner

#16509.

After going through security, John was led to a little

room where he saw Tom, Kim’s father, dressed in the

familiar Orange jumpsuit already sitting down waiting

for him. This was the man who had forever stolen a little

girl’s innocence, a little girl who meant the world to him

and that he would do anything to protect. John thought

 226

that he could kill him if he had the chance, although that

ran contrary to everything he knew as a psychologist. He

took a deep breath and composed himself. He wanted to

accomplish something here, and he reminded himself to

stay calm no matter what happened.

“Hello doctor,” Tom said as he stood up and smiled. “I’d

shake your hand but these kind of make that a little

difficult,” he said as he rattled his handcuffs together.

“Hello Tom, don’t worry about the handshake,” John

said as forced a smile. “I was never big on them anyway.

Let’s sit down.”

“Whatever you say doc, I’ve got a lot of time to talk

these days. Even been talking to a shrink since I’ve been

in here,” Tom explained.

“Well good, I’m glad of that,” John said, “but if you

don’t mind I’d like to talk about Kim and her future. I
 227

always respected your ability to talk straight, so I wanted

to come in here and talk to you man to man. You see

Kim is having some problems in foster care and I have

to tell you I’m pretty worried about her. Although this

isn’t something that psychologists do, I should tell you

I’ve explored the possibility of becoming a foster parent

and even looked into the process of adoption. I’ve grown

very close to Kim and care about her very much.

Tom broke into a smile and looked John up and down as

he digested what he had just heard.

“Getting a little lonely at home doc?”

John took a deep breath and again felt his stomach

rumble like someone had just punched him, and he

resisted the urge to strangle this man, although every

part of him wanted to. He knew getting into a pissing

contest right now would be the worst possible thing he

could do for Kim, and he struggled to regain his

composure.
 228

“The thing is Tom I have been lonely in my life, but a lot

of things have happened to me over the course of this

last year, and I’ve though a lot about what it is I want to

do with the time I have left. One of the things that has

happened is I’ve gotten to know your daughter, and I’ve

seen how scared she is and how much she needs to be

part of a family. I don’t have a family Tom, and my life

is halfway over. One of the things I’ve learned from

your daughter is how much people need each other in

this world, and what can happen when we don’t have

anyone to turn to when things get hard. I’ve also met a

wonderful woman, one of Kim’s teachers actually, who

also cares about Kim very much. She is also completely

committed to helping Kim however she can, and will

also be a big part of this if you agree to it.

“Well that’s great doc. Good for you,” Tom replied.

“But saying I do go along with all of this, what’s in it for

me? I have to pay my goddamned lawyer almost 10,000

 229

dollars to help get me out of this mess, and money

doesn’t grow on trees. Maybe if you do something for

me I could do something for you, no what I’m saying

doc?”

“Well Tom, I’ll tell you, that makes me feel a little dirty,

but if that’s what it would take to make this happen, than

it would be something I would seriously consider. One

thing though, if this is something we can agree on then it

would have to be final. I pledge to you that I will take

care of your daughter and keep her safe from the bad

things in this world with every ounce of my power. I

don’t know you that well Tom, and I don’t know

everything you might have been through in your life, but

what I do know is that this is what is best for Kim right

now. If I pay you this money and we sign those papers,

Kim is no longer going to be a part of your life. Is this

something I can have your word on?”

 230

“You’re right doc, you don’t know my life,” Tom

responded. “You don’t know for instance that my daddy

used to beat me with a belt so hard that I couldn’t go to

school for a week sometimes. You don’t know that I’ve

never lived a day in my life without worrying where my

next dollar was coming from and what I was going to do

for money. You don’t know that my wife used to go

months without having sex with me and that I was so

goddamn frustrated that I had to start fucking my own

daughter.”

The people of the lie will see themselves as victims,

even in situations where they are clearly the aggressors.

John knew this pattern, and could see from the look on

Tom’s face that he clearly saw himself as a kind of

victim. He also had a sense that he was indeed serious

about forgoing his rights to Kim, and that there was at

least some part of him that understood that this was the

right decision for Kim. Sitting down, John pulled his

chair up next to Tom’s and put his hand on his shoulder.

 231

“Tom, I know you’ve had a lot of pain in your life, I can

see that. I’m glad you are talking to a doctor about all of

this stuff, I truly am. I am asking you, again, however, to

do what’s best for your daughter here. In this time, in

this place, I’m asking you to trust me that this is the right

thing. I’ll pay the money you ask to help you out, that I

can do for you. What I need from you though is your

word that you will no longer be a part of Kim’s life. I

want you to think about it and I also want to talk to Kim

about this, but as far as I’m concerned I’m ready to

move forward with this.”

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Chapter 40

The whole drive home John felt uncomfortable by the

shakedown that just took place, but also pragmatic about

solving the problem he was confronted with. If ten-

thousand dollars could buy Kim’s freedom from her

father, then it was a small price to pay. He made an

appointment with a lawyer to discuss the specifics of any

possible arrangements, and thought about how he was

going to broach the subject with Kim.

Arriving at home, he noticed the unopened letter from

Dr. Paul lying on the table, and decided he needed to

read it, which was something he had been avoiding.

Somehow it represented a kind of finality for John, and

it pained him to think about how large of a loss the letter

really represented. Ripping it open, he took it out and

began to read;

Dear John,

I can honestly say I’ve never started a letter with

“Dear John” before. Ironically it kind of fits this

 233

situation however, because if you are reading this it

means I’m dead. Sorry to sound so morbid, but really,

get the fuck over it. If I have taught you anything, you

know that you aren’t going to be able to get my voice

out of your head that easily. I’m going to haunt you for a

while.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I chose to leave you

most of my worldly possessions. I would be too if I were

you. The fact is John I have been working and living

alone for quite some time now and over the last decade

or so had been focusing on little else but work.

So imagine my surprise when my prize student

walked back into my life after so many years, Working

with you and seeing the changes you are making in your

life was a reminder to me why I chose to do what I did

for so many years, and was a validation of everything I

had secretly hoped I had accomplished in my career.

So pay it forward John. I know you enjoy being a

writer and being on TV and all of your other media

related activities, but none of that speaks to the day-to

 234

day battle that goes on in the therapeutic office. I hope

you’ve absorbed this lesson because you are the utter

embodiment of the truth behind this idea. For ten years I

watched you try to change, and was more frustrated than

you know watching you take two step backwards every

time you took one forward. It was like watching a

slideshow of my own past life, and at times it felt like

every inch of insight was contested. This frustration

gave way to pride however, as I was really getting a

sense that you were finally starting to make the kind of

internal changes that can lead to happiness.

As time passes, remember that you will sometimes

feel the need to run. This is an inclination wired deep

into your character, and will likely be with you for a

while. Resist this urge. Remember that a change of

scenery solves nothing when you are unable or unwilling

to take responsibility for the life you have created for

yourself and the people who have chosen to love you,

because really, this is all there is. We choose a select few

to really share this adventure with, and when you find

 235

these people in your life, hold on to them for dear life.

They will be your greatest historians, biggest fans, and

most comforting sources of support when things go

wrong, which they inevitably will. You have bee one of

these people in my life John, and I hope that you have

begun to appreciate how much people value having you

in there lives. I know I certainly did.

Remember your love John, and especially remember

to let people love you back. Take it from me that this

may perhaps be the most difficult part. You will do great

things if you remember this one piece of advice. Make

me proud,

Paul.

John began to cry as he finished reading the letter,

and knew that he would read it many more times in his

life as he thought about all the ways Dr. Paul had

influenced his life. Remember your love. It was a mantra

he would try and remember during his remaining time,

and it seemed particularly important now as he planned a

number of major changes in his external world. He knew

 236

that the external changes were easy. The hard part came

from living with your decisions after the novelty began

to fade.

He spent the next couple of hours thinking about this

idea, and how it might be relevant down the road when

the romantic rush of he and Stephanie’s courtship began

to wane, Kim became a difficult teenager, and he

himself confronted the inevitability of getting older.

Would he be able to handle the changing seasons

without desiring a different kind of life? He hoped so,

and knew that ultimately this was what Paul meant by

taking responsibility. He reminded himself to read Dr.

Paul’s letter again whenever he experienced these kinds

of feelings.

Later that evening he went over to Stephanie’s house

and had dinner. It was so nice being with her in these

quiet moments, and John was beginning to realize what

Dr. Paul meant hen her talked about being with the

people you love as a kind of comfort. He had felt

passion, romance, adventure, and all kinds of other

 237

things with the women he had been with in other

incantations in his life, but this feeling of comfort was

very new to him, and also the thing he loved about being

with Stephanie the most. They stayed up most of the

night talking about Dr. Paul, Kim, and all of the things

that had happened in their lives recently that seemed to

be happening so fast. As John watched her sleep he was

again reminded of the Buddhist proverb, “when the

student is ready, the teacher appears.” All of these years

he thought he was the teacher.

But now he realized he was really the student.

 238

Chapter 41

After reading Dr. Paul’s letter John was excited to get

back to work, and he approached his first day back with

a great deal of enthusiasm. Between going home, Dr.

Paul’s death, and his sudden newfound wealth, there had

been some significant changes in his life, and he wanted

to get back to a sense of normalcy in his life as much as

possible.

Kim was coming in for an office visit today, and he

had something important that he wanted to talk to her

about. He remembered the feeling he had the last time he

saw her, and all morning he was experiencing it again. If

he didn’t intervene in her life she was headed for a long

fall. This feeling wasn’t about his arrogance as a

therapist, but instead a kind of message from somewhere

that he knew he had to act on. Although he wasn’t a

religious man, John trusted this feeling more than

anything else in the universe.

Still, he had a difficult task. Despite any wishes he

had personally about what he would like to have happen,

 239

Kim was trapped in a very awkward legal limbo that

would be extremely difficult to untangle.

“Hey, Kim,” John said as she arrived. She walked over

to him and hugged him as he spoke, and he again felt

how badly this little girl needed to attach to someone.

“Hey, nice to see you honey. Sorry I’ve been away for a

while.”

“I missed you John,” Kim replied. “Things haven’t been

that great at the house and I really don’t like it there

much anymore. Am I going to have to live there forever?

What is going to happen to me? You said you would

watch out for me and now I’m wondering what that

actually means.”

“Well Kim that is kind of what I wanted to talk to you

about. I know a lot of people have broken a lot of

promises to you, but I want to look you right in the eye

 240

and tell you that I meant every word of what I have said

to you. When I went to school a long time ago they

taught us that we weren’t supposed to get too close to

our patients because that’s not what psychologists are

supposed to do. I say to hell with that. I promised I

would help take care of you and I meant it. So on that

note, I wanted to check with you about something. What

if I could arrange it so you could come and live with me?

I say this carefully because that is not the easiest thing to

make happen, and one of those things would involve me

officially adopting you. I know Stephanie is also on

board with this, and my hope would be that the three of

us could all live together. So what do you think?”

“What do I think?” she replied. “I think that is what I

want more than anything else in the world. I know I

should feel awful and be sad about everything that has

happened, but being with you guys has given me

something to wish for again.”

 241

“Ok, well that’s good to hear Kim. I have been wishing a

lot as well, and one of these wishes is for you to have a

happy life, and lately I’ve been getting this really strong

feeling that Stephanie and I are supposed to be a part of

this. You should know that I talked to your dad about

this, and one of the things that will happen is that he will

no longer be your legal guardian.”

Kim winced as he said this, and he knew that this was

perhaps a mistake to throw all of this at her at once.

They had a great deal more to do in therapy surrounding

her experiences with her father, and he even considered

that she may be better served by another therapist if he

was going to take such a strong parental role in her life.

He wanted to provide for her a template of a loving and

trustworthy male figure, but also knew she needed her

own space to deal with her abuse. It was something they

would have to talk about as time progressed.

 242

“I have been really scared about my dad being in jail, I

guess I know what he did to me was wrong, but I don’t

want bad things to happen to him. I don’t know what

you mean when you say legal guardian. Does that mean

I’ll never see him again?” she asked.

Careful here, John reminded himself. He didn’t want to

make any assurances when it came to Tom, and knew

that it would be dangerous to make any promises to Kim

before the legal issues were settled.

“Well Kim, I can’t say anything about your dad for sure

right now. According to the law, he’s going to have to be

in jail for a while. He is taking something called a plea

bargain, which means he’s going to admit what he did

was wrong and not have to go through a whole trial. He

told me he was seeing a doctor like me right now, and I

hope he is able to figure out and take responsibility for

why what he did to you was wrong,” he explained.

 243

Looking at Kim, he could see she was troubled by

this news and he tried hard to think about how he could

help her. He knew she was experiencing all kinds of

conflicting emotions right now, and he made up his mind

to get her an appointment with a female colleague of his

who specialized in sexual trauma.

“Kim, one more thing. How would you to come out to

lunch with me and Stephanie this weekend? He asked.

Seeing her smile, he knew that there wag a big piece of

her that was accessing an amazing kind of resilience. He

thought again about Paul’s letter, and particularly the

point about taking comfort in the people we love. For the

first time in quite a while, he realized that he was

providing this comfort to someone else. Dr. Paul would

be pleased.
 244

Chapter 42

John picked up Stephanie in Dr. Paul’s old Cadillac

which was a strange choice of vehicles for a daily

Chicago commute. Still slightly traumatized from his

own recent car accident, he felt a sense of security

driving around this tank of a car, and it was nice to

experience the world as his old mentor had for so many

years before.

Heading out to Kim’s foster home, John told

Stephanie about his idea, and she seemed quite intrigued

if not a little apprehensive. Earlier that day John had

spoken with Don, the man who now owned his

grandparent’s farm, and discussed with him the

possibility of buying the farm from him. Although Don

loved the farm a great deal, his wife had continued to put

pressure on him to move back to the city, and Don was

starting to see that he may have to go along with this to

save his marriage. They had spoken for nearly an hour

on the phone, and John felt a little sad for Don and the

way his personal dream of living on the farm had

 245

progressed. Timing was everything in life, and right

now it didn’t seem like it was Don’s time to live in the

country.

John thought about his own ability to handle such a

transition, and how he had lived in the city for most of

his adult life. One of the things that struck him most

about this potential purchase was how nice it might be

for Kim to get away from Chicago and all of the

memories and triggers, and associations the city held for

her. I

Also an urbanite, Stephanie was very interested in

traveling to see the farm, and that was what John had

discussed with her this morning. Both Stephanie and

Kim had a spring break coming up, and he wanted to see

about taking them all out there for a visit to see the farm

and tour the pacific northwest where he was originally

from. Although John didn’t know about the logistics of

making a permanent move back out to this part of the

country, he did now have the financial means to buy a

farm. A part of him still wanted to reconnect with that

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old familiar feeling of comfort that the farm represented

to him, and he was hoping the two women in his life

would experience the same kind of thing.

At the pizza place, John explained the idea to Kim,

and she was both excited and scared to travel on an

airplane for the first time. She had never been more than

100 miles outside of Chicago, and a trip across the

country would truly be the adventure of a lifetime for

her.

“John what will we do when we’re out there?” Kim

asked.

“Well we can do lots of things; I’d love to show you the

Ocean where I used to go on when I was a kid. We can

also go the mountains, and to where I grew up as a kid. I

thought it might be nice to get out of Chicago for a

while. It’s been a long winter for all of us, and I thought

we could all use a little fun. So what do you think?”

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“I think it sounds too hard to believe. My whole life I’ve

dreamed about traveling to the places I’ve seen in books

and on TV, but I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance,”

she replied.

“Would you believe it if I told you I used to feel the

exact same way when I was a kid?” John asked. “One of

the places I want to take you guys is my old hometown

where I grew up. I used to sit by the river for hours

wondering if my life was ever going to change or if I

was going to be permanently trapped in this place

forever. So I guess what I’m saying is, I know how you

feel. My family didn’t have much money growing up, so

I never got to go many places either. So now that I have

the chance, I want to do things for you two guys that I

didn’t always get the chance to do.”

“Well, I for one would love to see all of the places that

helped make you who you are,” Stephanie said to both

of them.
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“Me too,” Kim said with a smile.

On the drive home they stopped for ice cream and

talked about all of the things they would do when they

went on their trip. Kim had never been to a zoo before,

and that was high on her list. Stephanie wanted to go to

the famous Pike Place market in Seattle and shop for

things she could use in her art. They sat there for some

time talking and laughing and planning all of the things

they wanted to do. John reached into his coat pocket and

felt Dr. Paul’s letter to make sure it was still there. He

reminded himself to remember this and the way it made

him feel. It was the first time since he was a child that

John felt like he was part of a family.

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Chapter 43

Later that night at Stephanie’s house, John had a chance

to have a more in depth conversation with her about

what it was they meant to each other. They had been

moving rather quickly, and they both thought it was

important to have a serious conversation about their

mutual expectations. The idea of moving her life across

the country was a bit of a shock for Stephanie, but not

one that she was unwilling to consider. She had been in

Chicago for quite some time, and enjoyed the options

living in a big city offered.

“I appreciate so much you keeping an open mind about

this trip,” John began. “I would never ask you or Kim to

move your lives across the country unless it was

something that was right for all of us. I know all of our

lives have become intertwined pretty quickly, but I also

know, without question, how I feel about wanting you

guys in my life. All of the things that have happened

over these last few months seem to be part of a larger

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puzzle, and for me at least, the glue that holds it all

together is the way I feel about you.”

“John you always know just the right thing to say, and

please be patient with me if I’m a little slower to

respond,” she said. “No man has ever said the things you

say to me before or looked at me the way that you do,

and sometimes it makes me feel things so strongly that it

scares me. I feel all those same things for you, and feel

like we’ve found each other at this point in our lives

because this is how it was supposed to happen. Your

love and admiration has filled up a part of me that has

been missing my entire life, and now for the first time in

my life I’m starting to feel like a whole person. Like you

I’ve had a tendency to run in my life, and I want us to

make a pact that when either one of is feeling like this

we will talk about it and try and work it out.”

“It’s interesting you bring this up, because earlier tonight

when we were all having ice cream, I reached into my

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pocket and felt for this,” John said as he handed her the

letter he had kept from Dr. Paul. “It’s the last thing Paul

ever communicated to me and it is a reminder to do

exactly what you just talked about. The thing that I want

you to believe more than anything, is that I’ve tried it the

other way in my life, and I just kept ending up in the

same place. You and Paul and Kim have all provided me

with a glimpse of what life could be like when I make

decisions based on love, and it’s the greatest gift I’ve

ever been given.”

“John I don’t have doubts about how you feel, I just am

a little scared about how much loving you gives you the

power to hurt me. When I heard about you staying out

late and hanging out with strange women when you were

home, you can’t imagine how that made me feel. I know

you didn’t do anything, but just the thought is scary to

me and makes me retract a little just thinking about how

that might have felt if you did. I know from some of my

past experiences that there is a difference between love

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and addiction, although they can often feel very much

the same.”

“Ok, fair enough. I think I understand what you’re

saying, and if the situation was reversed I would feel

awful thinking about you hanging out late at night with

other men. The thing is, that in the beginning love is a

kind of addiction. The same things happen in the brain.

The falling in love is the easy part for most people, but

not for me. I’ve always done it kind of halfway before

and therefore not given it every bit of what I had to give.

The other might when we were together I just sat and

watched you sleep. Watched you for a long time

actually. What occurred to me was that I still have a lot

to learn about what love really is, and that in this regard

you have been a wonderful teacher. Perhaps I haven’t

always been the best student, and I’ll be the first one to

admit that sometimes my own ego gets in the way. I do

know that I will try and listen more and talk less, as we

engage on this journey together.”

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Upon hearing this she reached out and pulled John

towards her and held him in a long embrace. She

reached up and touched his face and stared into his eyes,

seemingly making up her mind about something as she

took him by the hand and led her towards her bedroom.

They spent a wonderful night together and fell asleep in

each other arms. Two people on the cusp of a new life

together, resting, peaceful.

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Chapter 44