CHAPTER 33
Evie
“I wasn’t sure you’d come today.” I sat down in my usual chair, across from the patient couch. “Today is your last day, right?”
Colette nodded. “It is. But I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. I thought it might help to talk to someone. I don’t have a lot of friends anymore, and the ones I do have I’m more likely to discuss my day’s buy orders than feelings with.”
“Well, then I’m glad you came.” I pointed to a giant tray of cookies on the table. “Please have some. I’ve been on a baking spree, and if I take them home, I’ll eat them.”
Colette smiled and grabbed a cookie. Biting into it, she looked around the room. “This place was my first job out of college. For the last three years, I couldn’t wait for this day to come, but now that it’s here, I don’t feel relieved and excited like I thought I would.”
“What are you feeling?”
She shook her head. “Sad, mostly. Maybe a little regret.”
“Regret for leaving?”
“No. It’s time. The regret is more to do with Merrick.”
I wished I could have said, “I feel your pain, Colette.” Then maybe cracked open a bottle of wine and shared stories. But I was a professional, and my own feelings needed to be kept out of it. So instead, I said, “Tell me about that. Can you pinpoint what it is you regret?”
She shook her head. “It’s so many things… Some of them don’t even make sense.”
“Like what?”
Colette looked down. “Well, for some reason, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the times I went out to dinner with my then boyfriend and Merrick and Amelia. I knew she was having an affair, yet we all went to dinner and acted like everything was normal. I’m not sure why those memories keep popping into my brain after so long.”
“Oftentimes the secret we keep is irrelevant. It’s the fact we kept it that bothers us most.”
She nodded. “Maybe.”
“You said lately you’ve been thinking about the secret you kept during dinners. Does that mean these are new thoughts, or that they’ve just popped into your mind more in recent times?”
“I never gave the fact that I kept my friend’s affair a secret any thought until the last month or so. That might not say a lot about me, but it’s the truth.”
“Did something happen recently that made you think of the affair?”
“Not really. But I did notice a change in Merrick. I’m not sure if that’s relevant or not.”
“What kind of a change?”
“Well, he hasn’t been around much the last couple of weeks, but before that I noticed that he smiled more in meetings. And he laughed more. It wasn’t until I saw him seeming happy the last few months that I realized how long he must have been unhappy. It made me realize how much he suffered after Amelia’s death.”
My forehead creased. “Did you think he didn’t suffer?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I blamed him for her death. But maybe I just needed someone to blame.”
“Why would you blame him for her death?”
“Because he was her health care proxy and made all the medical decisions. He found out she was having an affair when she was brought into the hospital, and then got to decide what drugs she would take and what procedures she would undergo.”
Oh, God.
Colette noticed my face and nodded. “Yeah. It was screwed up.”
It was difficult not to take what she’d just told me and focus on Merrick, but he wasn’t my patient. He wasn’t even my boyfriend anymore. So I forced myself back to what I should’ve been doing—helping Colette untangle her feelings.
“Let’s back up a moment. It sounds like you’re starting to question whether the things you’ve been holding Merrick accountable for are really his fault. And at the same time, you’re reminded of things you kept from him when you were once friends. You’re bringing a lot of guilt to the surface. Why do you think that’s coming up now? Because you’re leaving?”