I was early for the appointment.
A woman came out of a door to the right. She was dressed in a loose top and jeans, her hair pulled back in two bunches that stuck straight out on both sides of her head. She had a lip ring and a beautiful smile full of even white teeth.
“Hi,” she said. “Would you be Cathy Bailey, by any chance?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He’ll be ready in a minute. I’m Deb, one of the CPNs,” said the woman. She was still smiling. “Did you bring your questionnaires?”
“Oh—yes . . .” I rooted around in my bag.
Deb took them. “Saves time when you’re in there, you know.”
I waited. From down the corridor, out of sight, came the sound of a door opening and footsteps getting closer and closer until a man’s head appeared around the corner. “Cathy Bailey?”
I got to my feet and followed him. I kept thinking about Stuart. I thought about him all the way through the questions the consultant psychiatrist asked. Dr. Lionel Parry, his name was. He looked like a roughly shaved badger, a gray and black beard morphing seamlessly into gray and black hair at the sides of his head and growing copiously out of his ears. When he asked me how much time it took me to check the door, how much time it took to check the windows, the drawers, everything else, I thought about lying. It feels so goddamn stupid, checking the doors. I know it doesn’t make sense. But I can’t stop myself doing it.
So I told the truth. Sometimes it’s hours. Sometimes, I’m hours late for work and I have to stay late to make up for it. Social life? Don’t make me laugh. It’s a good thing I don’t actually want to go out in the evenings, isn’t it?
After that he asked me about Lee. I told him about the flashbacks, the sudden thoughts, like flashes of memory, of things he’d done. Things I’d tried to forget about. And all the rest of it. The nightmares, the panic attacks, the lying awake at four in the morning too scared to go back to sleep. The things I try to avoid: social events, crowded places, the police, red clothes.
He listened and wrote notes and looked at me from time to time.
I was shaking.
I wasn’t crying, not yet; talking about it was just making me feel shaky.
“I’ve been trying deep breathing,” I said, in a rush. “I’ve been trying to control the panic. It works sometimes.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Then you already know that you are in charge of this. If you can control the panic sometimes, then it’s just going to take practice and a few other techniques until you can control it all the time. You’ve made a start, you’ve done really well.”
“Thanks. It was Stuart, really, not me.”
“Stuart?”
“A friend. He’s a psychologist.”
“He might have pointed you in the right direction, but you made the choice that you were going to try to control your panic. Nobody could have done that except you.”
“I guess not.”
“And don’t forget, if you’ve done that already, it means you can do more. This means that you should be able to bring your checking under control too. It won’t happen right away, it will take time, but you can do it.”
“So what happens next?”
“I’m going to refer you for some cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition to that, I think you should try some medication to help with the panic attacks. They take a while to kick in, though, so don’t be concerned if you don’t feel the benefit immediately. You need to give it a good few weeks.”
“I tried drugs before. I’d rather avoid them if I can.”
“I’ve had a look at your notes, and the drugs they gave you in the hospital were different. These ones won’t make you feel drowsy or spaced out. I’d like you to try them because your assessment indicates that there may be some elements of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as well as obsessive compulsive disorder.”
“Stuart said it would be good if I could be referred to Dr. Alistair Hodge.”
“Yes, I was going to suggest that. He does a clinic here, or one at the Maudsley. You’ll get a letter and then you’ll need to give his secretary a call. You should be able to get to see him quite quickly, I expect. In the meantime, I’ll get Deb to give you the numbers for the Crisis Team, in case you need them. But I