been worried about herself.
She’d gone to see a therapist and a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist she didn’t much care for. He didn’t seem interested in her, and she’d sat there and answered his questions, and at the end of the session he’d written her prescriptions. Just like that. When she started to take the medicine, she felt loopy and in her own world, and she wanted to tell everyone that this wasn’t going to work.
Dr. Baer was her therapist, and at first Martha thought she wasn’t going to be of any help either. But she kept going, and little by little, Dr. Baer began to grow on her. It was strange, like she didn’t even notice anything was changing, but slowly she seemed to feel the tiniest bit better, then a bit more. The medicine seemed to balance out, or at least she didn’t feel so out of it anymore. Things weren’t perfect, but she slept less and got dressed more often. And one day she realized that her father had been right. Things had gotten better somehow.
A few months after that, she’d felt good enough to apply to J.Crew, and she’d gotten the job and worked hard and done well. It had really all been going well—until today. Today, Martha couldn’t stand all the people yelling at her about sizes and sales. She couldn’t stand the Candaces of the world thinking they could act however they wanted to, like they were special somehow. Today, for the first time in years, Martha almost wished she was a nurse again.
MARTHA LEFT DR. BAER’S OFFICE, but stood right outside the door and leaned against the brick wall. She needed a minute. Even though it was August, she was chilled and she pulled a cardigan out of her bag and put it on. The air-conditioning in Dr. Baer’s office was insane. Dr. Baer was always warm (hot flashes, Martha assumed), and now, because Martha had been forced to sit in the freezing room, she probably had a cold.
Early on, when Martha first started seeing Dr. Baer, she used to go home after each session and write down what her therapist had said, so that she could remember everything. Martha wanted to remember all the advice that Dr. Baer gave. She was always so calm, so practical. Martha used to carry that notebook around with her, so she could read Dr. Baer’s words whenever she wanted. It made her feel in control.
Now, after so many years of therapy, she was able to hear Dr. Baer’s voice in her head wherever she went. When she was at the store, about to buy ice cream, she heard her say, “Sometimes we comfort ourselves in physical ways instead of emotional ways.” When Martha turned down an invitation to anything, she heard Dr. Baer say, “It’s scary to put yourself out there. But sometimes you need to be uncomfortable to live in the world.”
But this visit was different. Martha got the feeling that Dr. Baer was less interested in her problems. She seemed to sigh a lot, to tap her pen before she addressed Martha. And at the end she said, “You know, Martha, it feels to me that you’ve had time to recover and now you may just be hiding. Maybe it’s time to push yourself. Find a job that challenges you more. Maybe go back to nursing. Move out, take a trip, do something that will get you going.”
This seemed to be inappropriate shrink talk. All Martha had been saying this session was that she was having some problems with her family. She was complaining about how it seemed to be her curse that whenever she tried to help people (like her sister) they acted like she was butting in. Dr. Baer had sighed and said something about small problems seeming large under a microscope. What was that supposed to mean?
At first, Martha hadn’t wanted to see a shrink, but her parents hadn’t really given her a choice. For the first few visits, all Martha did was cry. Dr. Baer just sat with her, handing her tissues and waiting. Dr. Baer was a petite woman with short brown hair and thick-framed glasses. She was compact, and looked like she worked out for many hours a day. She handed Martha tissues with purpose, pulling them straight up and out of the box, in one quick motion.
Martha took them, always taking notice of how muscular Dr. Baer’s arms were. She didn’t even know why she was crying, exactly. She