*
Charlotte had trouble speaking about that afternoon. But, one morning, after I had found my way around the barricade, she gathered herself and managed to convey the following: Bob was a hero when we found Jenny bleeding in that bathroom. I told him to leave after I called for help, but he refused. He didn’t care. In that moment, I saw a man no one else sees. He may be greedy and whatever else people say, but he risked everything to save my child. He ripped a towel in half, slid it around her wrist. He told me to grab an end and pull. The towel was thick, and it was hard to get it tight. He screamed at me, “Pull!” and I did and finally it was tight and he made a knot. We did the same to the other wrist. God, we were both covered in blood. Soaked in it. My feet were slipping on the floor. When we had done both wrists, I called 911. I told him to leave but he refused. I cradled her head in my lap. I started to cry, not like before with the screaming cries, but just tears, you know? Bob was crying as well. He looked from my face to Jenny’s face, back and forth like he didn’t know which one was causing him more pain. He stroked Jenny’s face and then he looked at me and stayed looking. He said, “You listen to me! She is going to make it! Do you hear me? She will!” We heard the sirens coming. I yelled at him again to leave. I begged him. He kept saying “No!” but finally he understood. I didn’t care about his career or his wife or his reputation. All I cared about at that moment was Jenny and my family. He could not be there when the police arrived. He cried harder as he stood up, stepping around the blood. “I love you,” he said. And then he left.
Jenny did survive. And that is where I come in.
Chapter Seven
My name is Dr. Alan Forrester. I am a psychiatrist. In case you are unaware of the various credentials that exist among mental health professionals, I am the kind that went to medical school. I am a medical doctor, an M.D., graduated from Johns Hopkins University summa cum laude. I completed my residency at the New York–Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell. In my twenty-two years of practice, I have received numerous awards and distinctions, but I find no sanctuary in paper certificates, the kind you have undoubtedly seen hanging on the walls of your own doctors’ offices. Cream stock, Latin words written in calligraphy. Fine wooden frames. They remind me of the trophies my son used to collect after each sports season. Cheap and reflective of nothing more than the need to secure future enrollments. Nothing attracts customers like the promise of an award. They are advertisements, and those who display them publicly are nothing more than human billboards.
Mine is a profession of constant challenges. Whatever has been achieved is, by definition, in the past, and it will likely have no bearing on the successful treatment of the next patient who walks through my door. Yes, it is true that experience makes us better at our various trades, and mine is no different. I am certainly a more capable diagnostician now than I was at the start of my career. But I have found that the diagnosis is the easy part. It’s the treatment—the careful, balanced, meticulous management of pills and therapy—that poses the most significant challenges and requires as much humility as skill. Every brain is different. And so must be every course of therapy. I never presume to know what will work. And by “work” I mean help, because that is what we aim to achieve—the helping of a human being to escape the pain inflicted by his own mind.
You may conclude me a braggart, but I have been successful in helping every one of my patients with a single exception. This has been true in both my private practice at 85 Cherry Street in Fairview as well as my more gritty work at the men’s correctional facility in Somers.