SERENDIPITY: CH. 2:SARAH RETURNS
FRIDAY 16TH JUNE
“Welcome once again, Miss Smith, I'm glad you came back.”
“Call me Sarah, please. I'd be a bit foolish not to have come back, wouldn't I? Out of interest, what do your accountants say about that contract? It looks like a quick route towards poverty to me.” She was relaxed and in a good mood, John was pleased to see.
“Well, they're not particularly impressed, but I think they put the cost down as public relations,” he lied smoothly. He and Kate had agreed he could hardly tell her he was paying.
“But it's got a gagging clause! I'm not allowed to tell anyone that you're taking me on as a client for free!”
“Well, we can't upset the other clients, can we!”
“So, just how much would I be charged if I was a millionairess?”
“Oh, you know I couldn't possibly tell you that, Sarah, commercial confidentiality! You couldn't afford it, but they can. Let's leave it at that, OK?”
“Oh, all right. Let's leave it. Just how is this going to work? Oh, and do I call you Dr. Williams?”
“You can call me John, please. What I think is that this isn't going to work without some kind of real trust. That takes time. You can't turn it on and off like a switch. I think we need to spend time talking together and maybe I make some suggestions which you take seriously. Do you want the sessions to be here always? Sometimes Kate took me to other places and then we'd debrief about what I felt, but doing that leaves the safety recorders here.”
“Safety recorders? Oh you mean the microphones? They're to give us a dumb witness to these private sessions, aren't they?”
“Yes, mics and cameras. They're there to make sure that the proper boundaries don't get crossed. And of course they can help us remember what was said later on, if we want to. The recordings are scrambled on their way to storage using three voice prints: mine, yours, and Kate's. No one can play them back without two of the registered voices authorising it, and if Kate's voice is used then she has to register lots of forms at the court stating why. She's not allowed to just let me listen again because I feel like it.”
“Wow. I didn't realise it was that serious.”
“Well, you know there have been cases, accusations. They came up with this system a while ago and it seems to work.”
“So, we leave here, the system stays here, and I'm putting myself at your mercy, something like that?”
“Yes, and I'm putting myself at your mercy too. You could accuse me of all sorts of things and it'd be my word against yours, depending on who was around to witness it.”
“Wow, just like normal people.”
“Yes, but it happens, Sarah. It's happened in the past. This job... it has its risks and there's an imbalance of power. There have been cases of bad things happening. You know that. Seemingly perfect safety, and then bang.”
Quietly. “Yes. I know that. Bang, you're alone, they're dead.”
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Very poor word choice. You lost your family. I lost my wife, our unborn baby, my leg, other bits too. I'm roughly thirty percent artificial you know.”
“I'd heard once and forgotten. I looked you up after last time. You're a regular bionic man, aren't you.”
“Yes, that's me, titanium foot firmly in mouth today though. I'm sorry.”
“This could be hard on both of us couldn't it?”
“Yes, you're right. Kate worries it'll be too hard. Undo all her years of work.”
“But you're taking the risk. Why? Why try and help me?”
“Because... I think I need to. I feel very strongly that I won't heal properly unless that little girl who screamed is healed too.”
“I'm not a little girl any more.”
“No, you're a young woman who has a great life before her, if only she could be healed of the incurable.”
“You know, I think Kate's right. You're a nut-case too.”
“Hey, you can't say that! You've not even talked to me for half an hour!”
“Ha. I'm perceptive. I can tell a nut-case. You're one.”
“So do you want to risk being psychoanalysed by a nut-case, or would you rather trust Kate?”
“You'll do. Kate seems like a busy lady.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Want a cup of something? Tea's good.”
“Everything is better after a cup of tea, isn't that what they say?”
“Lot of truth in some of those old sayings. Want one?”
“Yes, please. Milk, no sugar.”
John moved to the hot tap, selected boiling and poured it into the teapot. He was quietly optimistic about how that had gone. His deliberate mistake had touched a nerve, but not brought collapse. There seemed to be a lot of strength and self-confidence in Sarah Smith. He was sure there was hope there, she wasn't giving up, no matter how it had sounded the first day.
While the tea brewed he started on the the cups and asked, “You said last time that you'd tried everything. What sort of things did you try? Can you tell me more?”
“There were some groups at the university, normally small, so they were OK. The primal scream group was interesting. Let it all out they said, so I did. I freaked them out. Too real, they said. Then there was the meditation guru's group, he said he wanted to help us find our inner self. After a few sessions it seemed to some of us that the inner us he was after was strictly skin deep.”
“So you've met abuse of position. Did you report him?”
“We tried, but we didn't have evidence, just strong suspicions. We couldn't prove anything to the university.”
“That's sad, they should have taken it seriously. When was this? It might be worth alerting the authorities, even an anonymous tip-off to watch him, if you think it's real.”
“It was my first year. I'm afraid we're too late. He absconded with some of his group last summer. Last I heard they'd caught him, but...”
He poured the tea and gave her some. “Yeah, they should have paid attention to you, shouldn't they. Try anything else?”
“Well, there were the self-realisation groups, where I realised they were all about being selfish, and the self-actualisation groups where I was left with the feeling that what with all the computer psych time I'd had I'd probably actualised around age fifteen, and the me within me was already me. I don't know, have I got the two groups confused? I can't remember. It all either seemed so much common sense or so much waffle that I didn't learn much at all.”
“And you don't like waffle?”
“Oh please, I'm at least part way to being a physicist. Concrete answers and testable theories for me, not waffle. I'm one of those strange people who think there's such a thing as absolute truth that things can get tested against.”
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“OK, OK! I hear you. So was there anything else you tried?”
“Hmm, yes, I actually tried the whole church thing too. Prayer, paying attention in sermons, the lot.”
“Oh yes? And did you learn anything there?”
“Not really. Lots of platitudes about doing good and being nice, but not much real practical content to the sermons. Prayer seemed disappointing too, like the people there weren't really listening to the words they were saying.”
“Oh... I wonder... Which church did you go to?”
“St. Mildred's. It's where I went with my parents.”
“Hmm, I suspected. Things change over the years, and St. Mildred's lost a lot of good people and a very good minister in the attack. I've heard they're struggling. Would you consider another church? For instance St. Paul's, or the Gateway Fellowship?”
“Comparative church analysis? Wow. You know? I didn't expect this topic at all, here, now. I don't know, I presupposed everyone here was an atheist. But, urm, don't both those churches have a reputation of being, urm, rather over-keen? And they're crowded too, I'm sure. People keep mentioning them, they must be huge.”
He laughed to soften his words. “Listen to yourself, Sarah. Welcome to the muddy thinking human race! 'Give me reality,' she says, 'I believe in a concept of absolute truth.' But she thinks that it's more suspect to believe in an ultimate reality whole-heartedly than half-heartedly. Surely, if God is real, then some kind of real commitment to Him makes sense, and if He's not, then why a halfway commitment to a system built on fallacy? Outright denial makes more
sense than that. The only sensible third option is honest enquiry until you're
convinced one way or the other.”
“OK, you're right, I admit my humanity. But they're big, aren't they? Lots of people there?”
“Sunday morning, maybe a hundred and fifty or so. Evening services are smaller, perhaps forty. And the Gateway have an upstairs balcony thing. Would that help — extra distance from most people?”
“Maybe. It sounds pretty close to what I can cope with though.”
“You know, I'm going to need to understand what you go through when you have one of these attacks, aren't I? 'My head explodes' is vivid but...”
“Not very explicit?”
“Exactly. Would you be able to explain it to a poor nut case who isn't very good at mind reading?”
“But is doing a reasonable job at it, all the same. And you're trying to stick to recent history, aren't you? Safer that way?”
“For both of us, maybe. I take it the programs didn't?”
“Not exactly. Tell me about your childhood... That sort of thing.” Tears came to her eyes and she quietly added. “I had a happy childhood, then there was a bang... and it wasn't there any more.” And the tears fell like gentle rain. Quietly. Inelegantly. Honestly.
John waited, and thinking of all that ended for him too, on that terrible day, his tears flowed too. There wasn't anything to say, just to be able to cry was important. Somehow, tears help. Minutes passed, but he wasn't counting. Sarah needed to know there was no pressure here. It needed to be a safe place for her if her coming was going to be any use to her. As her tears slowed, he poured another cup of tea, and she gratefully accepted it, along with the tissue he offered. “Things look better after a cup of tea, don't they?”
“Often they do. Often they do. And tears help sometimes too.”
“But you were asking about my exploding head, when I side-tracked us.”
“Yes, please. If you could tell me.”
“I'm not quite sure. It almost feels like pressure or a terrible noise. If I leave, the pressure goes. If the crowd grows, the pressure becomes pain. If I can't leave, I don't know. It's not happened recently. I think I used to black out, screaming.”
“So, does it feel like you're being trapped, or...” He wasn't at all sure he should finish that thought, let alone ask it.
“No, not trapped, more like everyone is shouting and I can't understand them.”
“Shouting, not at you, but just too noisy for you?”
“Yes, that's it. They're noisy, and I can't shut them out.”
“That's not a normal crisis trauma you've got there, Sarah. Anger, panic, fear, those are normal. I guess by your reaction you know that?” She nodded. “Another line of enquiry... When did you first get this? Straight afterwards?”
“No, later. I think they were about to put me into mainstream school, at least
the program was asking me about schools.”
“So, we're talking, three or four years afterwards?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I'm building a collection of data and then I'll try and find a hypothesis which fits... You don't want me to let Schroedinger's cat out of the bag before I've even started, do you?”
“Oh, all right, you collect your data.”
“Thank you. Hmm, knowing these programs... They had you visit shops, public places with your guardian?”
“Yes, smaller ones to start with, then bigger, then small shops at Christmas, then bigger ones each year. I remember really trying to get one program to prescribe a Christmas shopping trip to Hamblehams' toy department. Hey, I remember, that was the last Christmas before I got the first attack. We went there, and I got to the front of the queue, and there was just one of the dolls I wanted left. I've still got it. That crowd was heaving. There must have been three hundred people in that queue.”
“And no panic attack, no exploding head?”
“No, nothing, just too many sweaty bodies wrapped up for winter in an over-hot
building. Not a glamorous scent.”
A look of confusion crossed her face. “But.... but I was in that enormous crowd, without any problem. How? How come I got worse? Did I have some kind of shock that made me relapse?”
“I can make inquiries if you authorise me to. It can happen. Or maybe it is a unique late onset post trauma syndrome.”
“Please do try and find out. I'll give you full authority. But you don't sound convinced. What else could it be?”
“Well, you know Sherlock Holmes' version of Occam's razor?”
“You mean 'once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth?' But we haven't eliminated anything yet.”
“No, but we might, and it looks likely that we'll have fewer options by the time the searches come back. We need to look at all possible causes, not just the obvious ones. Perhaps you're here under a false diagnosis. Perhaps you're doing really well in terms of trauma recovery, and this is something different.”
“Wow. But if it's not linked, what is it? What are the other options? You've given me lots to think about.”
“Hey, you've done it, not me. I'm just a nut-case with a pair of ears.”
“So how come no one has suggested this before?”
“Computers, you know, sometimes get the weighting wrong in their analysis. Perhaps someone declared that you'd suffered so much you might get any symptom, and the computer gave your trauma an excessive weight. But I see someone who's healed pretty well, so I'm asking different questions.”
“I feel kind of excited about the next session. Does that mean it's a good time to break and I talk to Kate?”
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Half an hour later, John was walking and thinking. He prayed for wisdom. He hadn't hit the panic button, but... should he have? As he left the path into the park he reviewed the session. They'd been getting on well. Too well for only their second meeting. Sometimes it had almost been like old friends chatting, making fun of each other. That wasn't normal. The whole thing, now he looked back on it wasn't normal. He wanted to help her, yes, that at least was normal, but the rest, he'd wanted her to like him too. It was clear in retrospect. Kate had been right. He was too emotionally involved in the case. Normally he hated going through old case notes, but he'd wanted to do it for Sarah. Warning signs missed there, he said to himself.
He knew he shouldn't counsel her. He was too interested in her case, too close to her suffering. Romance? No, he
didn't think so. But he couldn't keep a professional attitude to her either.
That much was clear. He wanted her healing and her friendship too. Her smile and her tears were too important to him. There was just too much shared pain to be professional. That settled, he sat on the bench, and prayed once more: “Father, thank You for saving me once more from pride and disgrace. Be with Kate and Sarah as they talk. Give them wisdom too.
I don't know what Kate's going to say when I tell her, except that she warned me. Lord, I can't honestly be Sarah's counsellor. Let her find the help she needs. Let her not be hurt by my rejecting her as a client. Lord, you know I don't want to reject her as a friend. And Lord, you know where she stands before you. If she made a commitment to you as a child, bring her back home to you. If she never took that step, Lord, call her, I pray, call her to trust in your work on the cross. Let her seek forgiveness and a right relationship with you, oh precious Lord. Let her find her home in you, let her find the healing only you can bring.”
He sat a few more minutes. Calmer now than he'd been for weeks, he realised. It wasn't up to him. Time to go and break the news.
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Sarah was waiting when he got back to the office, they both spoke at once.
“Sarah, you're still here, good. I'm sorry, I don't think I should carry on as your counsellor. It's not you...”
“Hi John, we've been talking and we don't think you should be my counsellor. It's not you...”
Each looked at the apologetic expression on the other's face and as they processed what the other had said they smiled and completed their planned words in unison, “... it's me “, with laughter. Too much laughter for what they'd said; it was the laughter of relieved tensions.
“Hey “, protested Kate, “stop reading each other's minds, you barely know each other! I'm glad you've realised you can't counsel her, John.
I said from the beginning you're too concerned about this woman to keep the professional distance you should, and it sounds to me like Sarah's emotionally involved too.
So scram, the pair of you and please work out at your own pace just what the dynamic is between you. Sarah, I'll see you next week. John, I've got Sarah's authorisation, and since it was your great idea, you can read
lots of exciting accounts of bruised knees and bumped elbows etc. and try to correlate that with the first onset of her symptoms. Good luck. Here's the data dump. Have a happy weekend. I want the answer on my desk first thing on Monday.”
John groaned, then had a thought. “Urm Sarah, do you want to help? It shouldn't take more than five to six hours.”
“That long? You're not using your computer very well, are you? Never heard of filters?”
“I'll swap you filters for home-made pizza and as many cups of tea as you like.”
“OK, you make the pizza and I'll come up with some filters. Uh. Does pizza make it a date?”
“More of a working group, I'd have thought. I think you need more creativity for a date. Kate, can we use the office facilities? Neutral territory but no prying eyes?”
“Ah, I hear some sense at last. Much better than at one of your homes, and you can't collate this stuff in public. OK. But right now, the two of you go for a walk or something, so I can stop being a matchmaker and get some paying work done.”