Panic Attack (18 page)

On Friday morning Adam decided that shooting Carlos Sanchez ten times had probably been a mistake. Shooting him the first two times had been necessary— he had no doubts about that— but he wished he could take back the other eight shots.

But, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about that now. What was that Shakespeare quote, what was done can’t be undone? It was so true. And ruminating about it incessantly was just causing anxiety and stress, so why not just let go?

Adam was getting dressed to go to work when Dana sat up in bed and said, “I want to go to Florida.”
She had just woken up and her voice was deeper than normal, more gravelly.
“Come on,” Adam said, “you know we can’t do that right now.”
“We can do whatever we want. We’re not trapped here.”
Buttoning a red pinstriped shirt, Adam said, “Clements said he doesn’t want us to leave.”
“I want to talk to a lawyer today. We’re not criminals, for God’s sake, we’re not suspects in anything. We don’t have to stay around here, putting our lives at risk, because he
wants
us to stay.”
“I think you’re being a little melodramatic—”
“We can be available by telephone. We can be available by e-mail. We can teleconference with him. This is the twenty- first century, for God’s sake.”
Adam, sitting down in a chair, putting on his loafers, said, “If there was a reason to go to Florida I’d go.”
“Your life was threatened,” Dana said. “If that’s not a reason to go, what is?”
“Okay, just relax, take some deep breaths,” Adam said. “It’s very difficult to talk to you when you get like this.”
Adam was looking down at his shoes, but he knew exactly what Dana’s expression was— she was staring at him in mock exasperated disbelief.
“Fine, you do whatever you want to do,” she finally said. “But I’m leaving, and I’m taking Marissa with me. If you want to stay here that’s up to you.”
Adam stood back and checked himself out in the mirror. He didn’t look the best he’d ever looked. He appeared tired, worn, burnt- out—the stress of the past few days was getting to him. He could see Dana behind him, sitting at the edge of the bed. She didn’t look so terrific either.
“Let’s discuss this later when you’re calmer,” he said. “I have to get to the office.”
“I’ll let you know what hotel we’re staying at,” Dana said.
“Oh, come on, can you please just stop it with the posturing?”
“He’s using us as bait. I refuse to be bait.”
“There’s no one to bait us. The note was a prank.”
“It was a death threat, Adam.”
“It said nothing about killing me. It said, what, I don’t even remember. Oh, yeah, it said I was going to wish I was never born. Come on, that means nothing. It’s something a kid in a schoolyard would say.”
“I don’t understand why you’re not taking it seriously.”
“Not taking it seriously? Come on, I had Clements down here right away, I had cops outside all night. I think I’m taking it very seriously, but I still think it was a prank.”
“A kid from the neighborhood wouldn’t do something like that.”
“You don’t know that. It sounded like a kid, I mean the language.”
“It sounded like somebody who’s angry, who wants to hurt you.”
“Explain to me how that makes any sense. Please just try to explain it. Somebody who robbed our house would come here the next day and put a note under the door? Why? To scare me? If somebody’s angry, wants revenge, why leave a note? See, so if you think about it, logically, it doesn’t make any sense. It had to be a prank, maybe not a kid from the neighborhood but maybe some nut who read about me in the paper. I’m sure that happens all the time when somebody’s front- page news. That’s why, you noticed, Clements wasn’t very concerned. He probably sees this kind of thing happen all the time. If our number was listed I bet we would’ve been getting threats all night.”
Dana had a strange look. She was zoning out, looking like she was barely aware he was in the room.
“What’s wrong?” Adam asked.
She seemed far away for a while longer; then she focused and said, “Nothing.”
“You see my point now, don’t you?”
“Gabriela didn’t rob our house:” said she. She sounded oddly distant.
“What? What’re you talking about?”
“She wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I could see her getting desperate, wanting to help her father, but I can’t see her actually breaking into our house. That isn’t something she’d do.”
“I disagree,” Adam said. He glanced at the clock— 8:26. Damn, he had to get going. “She had a relationship with Sanchez, she made him copies of our keys and got him the code to the alarm. It makes sense that she broke in.”
“Then who killed her?” Dana asked.
Adam didn’t have an answer to this, so he said, “I agree there are some holes.”
“Oh, really,” she said sarcastically. “You’ve come to that conclusion, huh?”
Adam couldn’t remember— was his appointment with David Rothman at nine or ten? If it was at nine he’d never make it.
Turning on his BlackBerry to check, he said, “You have to give the police a little more time. Clements seemed confident last night that they’ll get a break in the case. I bet you they’ll make an arrest by the end of the day. Meanwhile, the cops are right outside.”
Dana said something, but Adam was distracted, looking at his BlackBerry. Shit, it was at nine. “Sorry,” he said, “what was that?”
“I said I think this is all about your ego. You think if you run away you’ll be admitting you did something wrong.”
Adam considered this, then said, “When I was in ju nior high and kids threatened to beat me up every day after school, I never had a problem at all running away from them. Trust me, if I believed I was in any danger at all right now, or you or Marissa was in any danger, I’d have no problem running away. But in this case I just don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Yeah? And what if you’re wrong?”
It was 8:28.
“I know you don’t like it when I leave in middiscussion, but I have no choice,” he said. He gave her his usual quick kiss good- bye and then said, “I’ll call you in a couple of hours, okay?” and left.

“Morning, David, I’ll be with you in one sec,” Adam said and went toward his office. He passed Lauren in the corridor; they exchanged good mornings, and he noticed that she didn’t seem quite as cold and distant as she had yesterday. Adam hadn’t bought a newspaper on the way to work, but he’d glanced at other people’s papers on the subway and knew that at least he wasn’t frontpage news again. Hopefully there were no mentions of him at all in today’s papers and the whole story was starting to fade.

Adam got settled in, refilled the water pitcher, and then reviewed his notes on his previous sessions with David. Things had been going well in David’s therapy lately. He had been seeing Adam for over ten weeks now with various issues, including some associated with middle age, as he had recently turned fifty. His wife had a drinking problem, and he had associated code penden cy issues, as well as difficulty expressing his anger, to his wife and in general. When he started seeing Adam, he’d been acting out by having a series of one- night stands with women he’d picked up at bars, and Adam felt he exhibited several telltale signs of sex addiction. They’d been working on techniques for expressing his anger, and, with Adam’s guidance, he had managed to convince his wife to go to AA. While he still expressed the desire to philander, they had been working on various behavior modification techniques, and David hadn’t cheated on his wife at all under Adam’s care.

Adam returned to the waiting room and said, “David, come on in.” David entered the office and settled on the couch, and he and Adam exchanged their usual small talk. David worked in advertising, and his company had a skybox at Madison Square Garden, so they discussed the Knicks for a minute or so. Adam was hoping the shooting wouldn’t come up, but those hopes were dashed when David said, “Oh, yeah, so I heard about what happened. Is everything okay with that?”
“Yes, thank you,” Adam said. “It was a difficult situation, but my family’s handling it.”
He was trying to sound professional and curt and not to be at all evasive, though he was eager to get on to another topic.
“That’s good,” David said. “I imagine stuff like that gets blown out of proportion in the news.”
“It does,” Adam said flatly. “So how’re you doing?”
David began by talking about an ongoing issue he had with a coworker he didn’t get along with, and Adam noticed that he seemed particularly agitated— shifting around a lot, crossing and uncrossing his legs. It was hard for Adam to be as attentive as he normally was during a session. He couldn’t help wondering if David’s agitation had to do with what he’d heard about the shooting or if it meant he didn’t feel comfortable with Adam as his therapist. Adam was mulling over whether to be assertive and ask David what was bothering him or to ignore the whole thing.
But then Adam realized he was way off base when David said, “So anyway, I, uh, met a woman the other night.”
Well, that explained the agitation; this was a major setback for David.
Wanting to keep his patient feeling reassured and at ease, Adam asked in a very normal, nonjudgmental tone, “Where did you meet her?”
“Online,” David said. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them again. His forehead was glistening with sweat. “I mean, not online, I mean through an online service . . . Ashley Madison.”
Adam knew of Ashley Madison and other similar extramarital dating services. Several of his patients frequently met sex partners through these sites.
“Okay,” Adam said calmly, waiting for David to continue on his own.
David explained how he’d registered with Ashley Madison and then had arranged to meet a woman, Linda— who was married with two kids— at a hotel and had sex with her. When he described what had happened, and especially when he mentioned the sex and how “hot and raw” it was, David started talking faster and louder, and Adam could tell how exhilarating the whole experience had been for him. It was very similar to the way a drug addict would behave when describing the experience of doing drugs; in fact, in a previous session David had told Adam about the coke habit he’d kicked several years ago. This had hardly been surprising to Adam, since most sex addicts have other addictions and are frequently codependent. All in all, David was just about as textbook as they get.
As David finished telling the story, his lips started quivering, and then the tears came, flowing down his cheeks, and he said, “I don’t know why . . .” He was crying harder and had to get hold of himself. Finally he said, “I don’t know why I keep doing this. I don’t know . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
David had cried before during sessions— he was a sympathy seeker— and Adam gave him tissues and reassured him, saying things like “It’s okay” and “I know how hard it is.” David, as usual, was blaming himself for his behavior, playing the victim, saying, “I feel like such a piece of shit. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life anymore.” Adam advised him not to beat himself up about it too badly and reminded him that the Internet could be very tempting for anybody and that these things happened, using the same tactics he’d employ in any similar therapy session, trying to support and reassure his patient. All the time, though, he couldn’t help feeling like a total fraud. Who the hell was he to counsel anyone when his own life had been such a mess lately? And trying to treat David for philandering was the biggest joke of all, what with David sitting on the very couch where Adam had screwed Sharon Wasserman. Adam was telling David, “You don’t have to feel like you always have to be perfect,” and meanwhile he couldn’t help imaging Sharon on top of him,
riding
him, his hands on her breasts. Adam told David, “Just because you want to have sex with another woman doesn’t mean you have to actually do it,” remembering how he’d said Sharon’s name again and again when he came.
When the session ended, Adam felt guilty for charging David. Normally Adam was extremely attentive and used his instincts to anticipate where a session was headed and find the right openings to challenge his patients’ behavior, but he felt like he hadn’t helped David as much as he could’ve. For example, instead of letting David go on with his self- loathing, Adam should have been tougher and said something like “It sounds like you’re ready to leave your marriage.” Adam knew that David had no desire to get a divorce, but this could have helped David begin to acknowledge his reasons for philandering. But today Adam had been so distracted with his own thoughts and self- doubt that he’d felt off, out of sync, like he’d missed all of the obvious openings.
He had two more morning sessions and, as with David, Adam felt out of sorts, off his game. He had no doubt that the shooting and related issues were seriously affecti night.”
Well, that explained the agitation; this was a major setback for David.
Wanting to keep his patient feeling reassured and at ease, Adam asked in a very normal, nonjudgmental tone, “Where did you meet her?”
“Online,” David said. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them again. His forehead was glistening with sweat. “I mean, not online, I mean through an online service . . . Ashley Madison.”
Adam knew of Ashley Madison and other similar extramarital dating services. Several of his patients frequently met sex partners through these sites.
“Okay,” Adam said calmly, waiting for David to continue on his own.
David explained how he’d registered with Ashley Madison and then had arranged to meet a woman, Linda— who was married with two kids— at a hotel and had sex with her. When he described what had happened, and especially when he mentioned the sex and how “hot and raw” it was, David started talking faster and louder, and Adam could tell how exhilarating the whole experience had been for him. It was very similar to the way a drug addict would behave when describing the experience of doing drugs; in fact, in a previous session David had told Adam about the coke habit he’d kicked several years ago. This had hardly been surprising to Adam, since most sex addicts have other addictions and are frequently codependent. All in all, David was just about as textbook as they get.
As David finished telling the story, his lips started quivering, and then the tears came, flowing down his cheeks, and he said, “I don’t know why . . .” He was crying harder and had to get hold of himself. Finally he said, “I don’t know why I keep doing this. I don’t know . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
David had cried before during sessions— he was a sympathy seeker— and Adam gave him tissues and reassured him, saying things like “It’s okay” and “I know how hard it is.” David, as usual, was blaming himself for his behavior, playing the victim, saying, “I feel like such a piece of shit. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life anymore.” Adam advised him not to beat himself up about it too badly and reminded him that the Internet could be very tempting for anybody and that these things happened, using the same tactics he’d employ in any similar therapy session, trying to support and reassure his patient. All the time, though, he couldn’t help feeling like a total fraud. Who the hell was he to counsel anyone when his own life had been such a mess lately? And trying to treat David for philandering was the biggest joke of all, what with David sitting on the very couch where Adam had screwed Sharon Wasserman. Adam was telling David, “You don’t have to feel like you always have to be perfect,” and meanwhile he couldn’t help imaging Sharon on top of him,
riding
him, his hands on her breasts. Adam told David, “Just because you want to have sex with another woman doesn’t mean you have to actually do it,” remembering how he’d said Sharon’s name again and again when he came.
When the session ended, Adam felt guilty for charging David. Normally Adam was extremely attentive and used his instincts to anticipate where a session was headed and find the right openings to challenge his patients’ behavior, but he felt like he hadn’t helped David as much as he could’ve. For example, instead of letting David go on with his self- loathing, Adam should have been tougher and said something like “It sounds like you’re ready to leave your marriage.” Adam knew that David had no desire to get a divorce, but this could have helped David begin to acknowledge his reasons for philandering. But today Adam had been so distracted with his own thoughts and self- doubt that he’d felt off, out of sync, like he’d missed all of the obvious openings.
He had two more morning sessions and, as with David, Adam felt out of sorts, off his game. He had no doubt that the shooting and related issues were seriously affecting his performance at work. If this continued and he couldn’t work through it, he’d have to take some time off to clear his head, maybe go down to Florida after all.
During a break in his schedule, he went around the corner to the deli to get a cup of coffee and a muffin, and on his way back he checked his voice mail and saw that he had three messages and four missed calls from Dana. She had called and left a message on his work voice mail as well. Jesus Christ, what was going on now?
He called her, and she picked up during the first ring and said, “I’ve been calling you.”
“I’ve been with patients all morning, what’s going on?”
“She’s HIV positive.”
He thought she was talking about Marissa. Feeling like he might pass out, he managed to say, “What the hell’re you talking about?”
“Detective Clements just called and told me they found out Gabriela had HIV. They found her medicine or whatever in her apartment.”
“Jesus,”he said, catching his breath.“I thought you meant...”
“What?” Dana said.
“Never mind,” Adam said, still light- headed.
“Can you believe it?” Dana continued. “Clements said even her sister didn’t know. She might’ve been infected for years.”
Adam didn’t understand why Dana was calling him so urgently to tell him about this. “So is that it?” he asked.
“Aren’t you shocked?” Dana asked.
Actually Adam wasn’t shocked. Her boyfriend had had HIV, so why was it out of the realm of possibility that Gabriela had been infected?
“Oh, and that’s not all,” Dana went on. “They found out she was a drug addict, too, heroin, just like her boyfriend. Can you believe it? She was a junkie and had AIDS while she was working for us.”
“Let’s not start with that again,” Adam said. “That’s not how AIDS,
HIV,
is transmitted.”
“I’m talking about the deceit,” Dana said. “That woman lied to our fucking faces for years. I can’t tell you how furious I am.”
“You have a right to be furious,” Adam said.
“Aren’t you furious?”
“Of course I’m furious.”
“You don’t sound furious.”
“I’m standing on the corner of Fifty- eighth and Madison,” Adam said. “Sorry, but there’s a limit to the amount of furiousness I can express right now.”
Dana didn’t seem amused and said, “Well, it was nice talking to you too,” and hung up.
Several minutes later, as he rode in the elevator back up to his office, he decided that although hanging up on him had been melodramatic and childish, Dana had made a good point. Being so wrapped up in what was going on with the police and the media, and then, on top of everything, receiving that threatening note, maybe he hadn’t been expressing his anger very effectively lately, and this was likely contributing to all the symptoms of anxiety and self- doubt he’d been experiencing.
His one o’clock appointment, Helen, didn’t show up. Helen had never missed an appointment before, and Adam assumed that it was related to the shooting and that he had permanently lost another patient. His two o’clock, Patricia, a banker with panic disorder, showed up, but Adam felt he was as ineffec tive and off the mark as he’d been with his earlier patients. Patricia didn’t seem pleased at the end of the session either, and when Adam asked her if she wanted to make an appointment for her next session now, she said in a somewhat distant tone, “I’ll call you,” even though she normally made her appointments in person. Adam knew that something had to change fast, because at this rate either all his patients were going to stop coming to see him on their own or he was going to drive them away.
At four o’clock, Adam went down the hallway to Carol’s office for his session with her, and he felt like he seriously needed it. Carol, waiting in her chair, didn’t say hello, just “Come in.”
She was slim, in her late fifties, always wore her gray hair in a neat bun. She’d been a mentor to Adam and also a confidant. He often discussed patients with her, and she always had sound, rational advice. He was eager to talk to her about everything he’d been going though lately, but first he felt like he needed to express his feelings about her and his other coworkers, so he said, “Before we start, I just want you to know that I feel incredibly attacked and judged by all of you.”
Carol, holding her pad, was sitting calmly across from him. “Attacked?” she asked as if surprised. “Why do you feel attacked?”
The problem with being in therapy as a therapist was that Adam always felt one step ahead of Carol. He always knew exactly where she was going with her questioning, what types of feelings she was trying to elicit from him. It was like being a football coach who had access to the other team’s playbook. It was still worthwhile for him to see her— expressing how he felt was important in itself, and simply talking about his problems always helped him understand himself better— but he felt like he’d never be able to make true progress in therapy because he’d always be slightly guarded and would never open up fully. Right now, for instance, he knew that she knew exactly why he felt attacked, but she was asking the rhetorical question to get him to express his anger more fully. He knew what she was doing because it was the same tactic he would take with his own patients.
Going along with it, just to express himself for the sake of expressing himself, he said, “I just felt incredibly judged by everyone, like I was guilty till proven innocent. I felt uncomfortable just being here yesterday.”