Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
“Fine,” she mutters. “You want to know something about me? This is completely unprofessional and unethical…”
“Give me something, Doc. I’m over here, spilling my guts to you every week. Do you know how hard this is for me? We have more than a doctor-patient relationship, and you damn well know it.”
“Ted was my high school sweetheart,” she says with a sigh. “He was the captain of the basketball team. I was a cheerleader.”
“You don’t seem like the cheerleader type.”
She rolls her eyes. “I was back then.”
“Do you still have the uniform?”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Why?”
“Because now that I have a visual, all I can think about is you in that short skirt and tight top.”
“Duke,” she warns. “I already said too much.”
“We already crossed the line, Doc. Why not jump over it?”
She gasps, looking away from me. A minute passes before she says, “Duke, I can’t…”
“Do you think I talk to anyone who asks me about my past?” I get up from the chair, closing the distance between us. She peeks up at me, her eyes watery. “Don’t pretend like there’s nothing between us. I know you feel it. We kissed, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”
“I’m trying to keep this professional. I want to wait until our time is up before we explore anything further. This is my job, my livelihood.”
“I don’t see the problem.”
She sighs. “It’s not easy for an outsider to work with professional sports teams. I’m not like you. I don’t have a famous father who can pull strings for me. It took a lot of hard work to get to this point in my career.”
Even though I should be hurt by her words, I don’t allow them to phase me. She hates herself for crossing the line with a patient. Her anger isn’t directed at me.
“Why did you become a doctor?”
“To help people,” she says without hesitation.
“No, there’s more to your story.” I lock eyes with her. “You chose psychology for a reason.”
“My mom,” she admits. “She was the reason, okay?”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She killed herself.”
Chills roll down my arms from her confession. I understand what it's like to lose a parent.
“I’m sorry.”
She sniffs back a few tears. “She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. For most of my childhood, she was in and out of different facilities. Her moods would spiral so out of control, she spent weeks at a time in the hospital. She had a disease. The doctors could never get her medicine right. Even when they did, she would stop taking it as soon as she felt better.”
Lila wipes the corner of her eye. “And then, the spiral would start all over again. Some people fall so deep into their depressive states that they have suicidal thoughts. My mother did anything to keep herself sane, which meant prescription and even street drugs. It was hard, my childhood, and I was the parent in our relationship. I took care of her from an early age. I tried to hide her problems for as long as I could. And maybe that was part of the problem. We were on our own, and I was so afraid social services would find out and take me away from her.”
“What did you do when she went into the hospital?”
“My aunt would take me for short periods, but she had six kids already and didn’t have enough room for me to live with her full-time. After my mom’s final stint in the hospital, a nurse started asking too many questions. I ended up living in a foster home for a while. My mom couldn’t handle life without me. The weekend I was supposed to see her for our supervised visit, she swallowed an entire bottle of Oxycodone. When she didn’t show, my social worker had the police bust down her door. They found her on the couch and pronounced her dead on arrival.”
“Shit, Lila. I’m sorry. I thought it was bad when my mom died, but you had it so much worse.”
“To answer your question, that’s how I ended up marrying that asshole. Ted was a way for me to put my old life behind me and have a real family. We went to college together. He went to law school, and I got my Ph.D.” She leans back in the chair, her arm rested on the edge. “Enough about me. I want to know more about you and your family.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about your mom,” she says.
“She passed away from cancer when I was in high school. You already know that.”
“How do you think that impacted your role in the family?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You went from older brother to caretaker of your siblings overnight.”
“You already know this.”
“Yes,” she says, “but I’m missing something. I believe your mother’s death and your father’s abandonment is the source of your anger.”