I went to see Glenn at his apartment when I thought I might need another plan to save my son. And to make sure he never came near my family again. There was more than one way to accomplish this.
It was not until I went through my son’s phone that I realized Glenn had gone to that party to harm Jason, that he had been stalking him through social media. Before that moment, I had na?vely believed that he had simply gone where there were children so he could find a victim, any victim. It had even crossed my mind that Teddy Duncan, the twelve-year-old boy next door, had been the target. Glenn knew I was twelve when I was attacked.
I am a better doctor to borderline patients now than I was when I first met Glenn. I understand the depths of the disease, the extent of their obsessions with an individual. And the lengths they will go to affect us. Before I left Glenn alone in his apartment, I told him poisonous things. And the poison is what killed him.
“You failed, Glenn. You did not hurt my son, and this gift you think you gave me was unsatisfying. Jenny is a girl. I was a boy. She was fifteen. I was twelve. I will not see you again. After today, I will not see you. There is nothing you can do that will ever change that. There is nothing you can do that will ever make you important to me.”
There was another story I had told Glenn. It was about a patient at New York–Presbyterian. It was not my patient. I was doing my residency, which involved more observation than actual treatment. One of the patients I had been observing killed herself. I recall being concerned about her but saying nothing to her primary doctor. I did not want to be wrong and look foolish. She tore her gown into long pieces, tied them together, and hanged herself from the hinge of the bathroom door. I told Glenn that I had never forgotten this woman, even though she was not my patient. I told him that she would weigh on my conscience until the day I died.
Glenn Shelby was a dangerous man. A monster. My monster. I know that I helped to create him with my indulgence. With my carelessness. And then, I suppose, I killed him.
I could not cure Glenn Shelby. Maybe God can.
I am guilty. Hate me if you must. I have tried to show you the mitigating facts. Charlotte, Tom, Sean. I gave them back their lives, and none of that would have been possible if we had not had the collision. If I had not told my story to an unstable patient. If Jenny had not been in those woods with him. If I had confessed the moment I learned the truth. Hate me. Despise me. But know that I have weighed everything on the scales. And know that every night I fall asleep. And every morning I wake up and look in the mirror without any problem whatsoever.
I do not see the Kramers for therapy anymore. After a productive summer with Jenny, she was able to go back to school. Like Sean, the memories she found hiding within her helped to put the ghosts to bed, and she began to respond to more traditional trauma treatment. By that fall, she was ready to move on with her life.
I always find joy and pain when a patient is cured. I miss them.
I see the Kramers in town. We are all very friendly. Tom and Charlotte seem happy. Jenny seems happy, normal. I see her laughing with her friends.
Sometimes when I am with my wife, when she wraps her arms around my waist, she will touch the scar on my back. Sometimes when she does this, I picture Jenny and I know I’m not alone anymore. The pain is gone. I have healed myself.
My practice has picked up now. I have become a memory-recovery expert of sorts, and I sometimes get patients from across the country. I am thinking of opening a clinic. The trauma treatment continues to be used. I have written papers, spoken at conferences. I have become somewhat of a crusader against its use, and I have done my best to curtail its administration. I see its appeal. It seems so easy, doesn’t it? To just erase the past. But now you know better.
I always say the same thing to these patients when they first come to me, convinced they are doomed to a life with their ghosts, with their lost car keys never to be found. It gives them comfort when I tell them. It gives them comfort to know that all is not forgotten.
Author’s Note
While the drug treatment in this novel does not currently exist in its entirety, the altering of both the factual and emotional memories of trauma is at the forefront of emerging research and technology in memory science. Researchers have successfully altered factual memories and mitigated the emotional impact of memories with the drugs and therapies described in this book, and they continue to search for a drug to target and erase those memories completely. While the original intention of drug therapies to alter memories was to treat soldiers in the field and mitigate the onset of PTSD, its use in the civilian world has already begun—and will likely be extremely controversial.