Just Around the Corner

And that was just what he feared would happen to him. Only it would be a hell of his own making, right here on earth, in this place of shelter where everyone else had family and friends and knew the comforts afforded by love. It was going to be his own private hell. Even in this journey of everlasting destruction, he would be all alone.

IT WAS LATE on the first Tuesday night in November, and Phyllis had just arrived home from Phoenix when the phone rang. She’d been at a pet-therapy session with Cassie and a woman who’d been brutally raped by a colleague while working in a nursing home.

Sighing, she picked up the phone, a portable. “Surely you’ve seen a doctor by now.” The voice didn’t bother with introductions or hellos.

She considered lying, but that wasn’t her style.

“I have.”

“When? Today? Is that where you’ve been all evening?”

If he’d sounded like someone who was checking up on her—instead of like someone who was driving himself crazy with frustration—Phyllis would’ve been able to handle the conversation a lot more effectively.

“I went last week,” she admitted. “Today I’ve been in Phoenix with Cassie Montford, helping her with her pet therapy. We went to see a woman in Phoenix who’s crawled so deeply inside herself that she’ll respond to nothing but one of Cassie’s dogs. We’re using the dog Angel to help her learn how to trust enough to interact with human beings again. If we don’t succeed, she’s going to live the rest of her life shut away in an institution.”

Phyllis wasn’t usually a babbler, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she didn’t want to give Matt a chance to say what he’d called to say. She’d managed to put him out of her mind for hours at a time this past week. She didn’t need him back there.

“Have you had any success?” he asked when her words finally stopped.

Sinking into the couch in her tiny living room, Phyllis leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Yeah, just tonight,” she told him, feeling strangely comforted.

Cassie had Sam at home, waiting to hear all about it. Phyllis had no one.

“She’s been petting Angel for weeks without reacting at all. Tonight, for the first time, she looked at her and there were tears in her eyes.”

“And that’s good?”

“It means she’s in there—and that she’s starting to come out. She’s going to need a whole lot of reassurance before that can happen, though.”

“She didn’t cry before?”

Phyllis said no, started a technical explanation of hysterical amnesia and paralysis, and her own understanding of the things she’d read in the abused woman’s eyes, and then abruptly stopped herself. She’d learned long ago that people didn’t want to hear any of these things. She must be more tired than she’d thought.

“And you could tell she was searching for reassurance just from that one look at a dog?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Phyllis said softly. “Her mind’s been protecting her for a long time. She’s lived inside a place that exists only in her own head, and she’s afraid to come out. She’s going to need constant reassurance that when she does, there’s a safe, protected environment waiting for her.”

“And you can provide that in weekly visits?”

“Of course not.” Kicking off her shoes, Phyllis pulled her feet onto the sofa, tucking them beneath her. “We’re just the door through which she’s going to travel. The environment is right there waiting for her. She has a team of counselors working with her. People who’ve been around her, speaking with her, for months. At least one of them is with her twenty-four hours a day.”

“What about her family? Do they come to see her?”

“Her sister does. Everyday. The two of them lived together before Ella was raped.”

“Isn’t it hard sometimes? Dealing with stuff like this?” He asked a question Phyllis rarely allowed herself to ask. “Seems like it could be…painful.”

“It is,” Phyllis said, remembering the year before, when she’d had Tory Sanders living with her. Under her guidance, Tory had been coming to terms with her abusive past, as well as grieving for her dead sister—Phyllis’s best friend, Christine. “But then the light goes on in someone’s eyes and suddenly I have all the energy in the world,” she continued. “I’ve learned that when I’m feeling discouraged about a patient’s recovery, I need to focus on the eventual appearance of that light, to look for it in the tiniest of signs, and I find myself getting little bursts of energy.”

“Like tonight.”

“Right.”

“You’re amazing.” There was wonderment in his tone, and Phyllis felt an impulse, irrational but overpowering, to dismiss Matt’s approval.

“I also spend most of my working hours in a classroom lecturing to healthy students,” she reminded him. “Cases like this happen much less frequently.”

“So what did the doctor have to say?”