A Tune Silenced

A Story by Treble

White walls. White curtains. A white desk waited past the glass double doors leading to an open room lined with hallways. A lady sat there, frantically going back and forth between two computers, a pen in her shaking hand. As the double doors made way for my colossal figure, I watched a young girl walk up to the lady at the desk. The lady smiled at her, gesturing to the hallway on the right. It led to the inpatient cancer rooms. As the desk came closer and closer, my legs began to shake, and my knees buckled. I paused midway, turned around, and almost walked back to the doors. Then I saw his innocent face covered in cuts and bruises and turned around again, this time determined to pay him a visit.

“Hello. I’m here to see my son, Casper. He was bullied at school physically, so they’re doing some exams on him and keeping him overnight.”

She typed on one of the computers. Every click seemed closer to the imminent doom that was seeing my son hurt. “Ah, yes. Ten years old?” I nodded. She pointed to the left. “Go down that hallway and make a right. Five doors down, you should see the sign for room 127. That’s where he’s staying. They will be moving him to an overnight bed closer to the evening, but that isn’t for another three or four hours. He’s only allowing you and his father to visit him, so you should show the nurses your ID. Good luck, and I hope he feels better soon.”

I nodded and mouthed thank you. Air came out of my mouth, but the sound was lost in the back of my throat. As I walked down the hallway, I peered through some of the windows that weren’t blocked. There were small children in miniature hospital gowns and teenagers drawing and reading in bed. I went around the corner and peered into the window five doors down. It was him alright. A nurse came out of the room and asked for my ID. After I showed it to her, she allowed me in.

Walking up to the bed was harder than sky diving for the first time. My feet didn’t want to move, and my throat formed a lump the size of a baseball. Turning around for a moment, I took a few deep breaths, shook out my hands and fixed my wrinkled floral dress. Then I walked the rest of the way to him.

I sat on the edge of the bed and curved the palm of my hand around his curls. Slowly, he opened his eyes and, without a word, wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me closer. Willingly, I scooted myself over the coarse blue crinkly bed. “Hey, baby. How do you feel?”

He looked up at me with the brown eyes that were full of life. “I feel fine. My arm hurts, but the doctors said it’s just a sprain. Mom, you help kids through pain, right?”

I tilted my head and frowned. “Yes, I do. Why? Are you in pain?”

He put his small hand on my arm. “I’m fine. It’s not about me. I heard nurses shouting at one point today about the patient in room 131. They were saying that the patient must have been in a lot of pain to do what she did. If she’s in a lot of pain, you can help her, right? You can make her better, can’t you?”

I smiled. “I wish it were that easy. She has to come to me. And it takes a while to help with the hurt in here.” I put my hand over my heart. “But I promise that if she comes to me, I will do my very best to help her.” We talked for about fifteen minutes, and then a nurse came in with an exam tray. He told me to exit the room so my son could have privacy. I kissed Casper on the head and told him I’ll be back tomorrow.

Closing the door behind me, I looked both ways to figure out where the exit was and walked the other way. 128. 129. 130. Then 131. To my surprise, the door was wide open as the doctors fiddled with the machines. My eyes shifted to the circulatory machine. It was off. Slowly, it clicked in my mind. They weren’t fiddling with the machines. They were unhooking them.

My glance froze on the patient’s face. I’d know those freckles anywhere. There was something distinct about them. In the next moments, a scream must have escaped me, because one of the doctors came over to me and escorted me out of the room. My feet were floating on wood.

I called my husband to take a taxi here so he could drive me home. He raced here, no questions asked, and silently drove me home. I collapsed into the depression of our very old couch. He sat next to me with some space in between. All of a sudden, I was wailing into my hands, my elbows on my knees, my entire stature resembling that of a chair with no back. He came closer and held my upper body against his chest. “Honey, what happened? Did something happen to Casper?”

I shook my head. “No, Casper is fine. But Sarah is dead.” The last two words came out between gasping breaths.

He stroked my hair and waited for my breathing to steady again. “Who’s Sarah?”

I cried into his green checkered shirt while he wrapped his arms around me, making me feel secure. Barely able to speak at this point, I managed to whisper, “A client.”

He gasped. “B-But you work with teenagers.” He stammered.

I looked down at my shoes and muttered, “Yes.”

I pushed him away gently, got up, and began pacing. It occurred to me in that moment that as a therapist, I was supposed to be calm, cool and collected. I was none of those. In my desk drawer lay an orange stress ball that I’ve had since my childhood. It was what got me through the death of my parents, through Casper getting bullied, through any client’s emotional difficulties that left me uneasy at the end of the day.

In that moment, it occurred to me that even though I’m a therapist, I’m not invincible to heartache. I’m human. The next day, I would have to therapize so many more clients with the lingering thought that there was one I could not save. Could I keep being a therapist knowing that a 15-year-old girl did the very thing I was supposed to prevent her from doing?

I went to put the battered and beaten orange ball back into its drawer, but the act of putting it in felt like letting go of Sarah. So I held on. I taught so many young boys and girls to accept, but I myself denied. I heard a soft, breathtaking voice say, “Sweetie, maybe you could talk through this in your therapy appointment tonight?”

I froze. I couldn’t talk about it. I wasn’t ready to make it reality. I wasn’t ready to admit that I was supposed to help Sarah want to live, and she killed herself. “No. I can’t.” There was a deafening silence that followed, squeezing my chest tighter and tighter until I thought it might explode. Every thought, every action, felt contradictory to my job. I tried to help people for all these years with managing their emotions, but now I was a wreck.

I called my supervisor. “Cassie, I quit.” Three words that broke my heart, but that I felt would save so many kids from an incapable therapist. She tried to talk me out of it, but my mind was set. My husband got up from the couch and pulled me into an embrace.

We stood in silence for some time, and then he said, “Les, how will we pay for Casper’s hospital visit with just the money I make? I’m a school teacher.”

I cursed. How could I forget about my son? I thought about what I would tell my clients to do in this situation. “I’ll get a different job.” He nodded.

Since I must give two weeks of notice when quitting, I went to work the next day. When I got home, there was a new level of excitement in the air, and I couldn’t grasp why. My husband kissed me on the cheek, and I smiled at the familiar warmth of his lips. I went up the stairs, and then I understood. Casper was home.

I ran into his room, scooped him into my arms, and gave him kisses everywhere. “Mom, I’m not five! Stop it!”

I put him down and said, “So because you’re ten, I have to stop loving you? Never!” He was gone only for two days, but it seemed like an eternity to me, especially with everything going on.

He grimaced and showed me a drawing he made of the three of us in the hospital. “Look, that’s you, and that’s me, and that’s daddy.” They were stick figures, but they were the most precious stick figures in the history of art. None of us exactly had art genes in us, so Casper’s artwork meant a lot to me. Then I saw something in the background of the drawing that brought a tear to my eye. The sun resembled my special orange stress ball. “Mom? Why are you crying? Did I draw something bad?”

How do you explain to your ten-year-old that the sun he drew in his loving picture of his family reminded you of the stress ball you held when you found out about your client’s death? “No, sweetie. I’m crying because I’m happy. I love your drawing.”

He frowned. “Mom, crying means you’re sad. Why are you sad?”

I smiled as brightly as I could. “Casper, sometimes people cry when they’re happy. When I graduated high school, my mom got me a kitten because she knew that the college I was going to allowed pets. I cried because I was happy.”

He nodded. “Mom, can I get a kitten?”

My mouth kept trying to form different words, until finally, I said, “That was not the point of what I said.”

“But I want to cry from happiness too. You said a kitten made you cry.”

I laughed. “Okay, you can get a kitten if you can scoop the poop from the litter box and if you can reach the top cabinet, since that will be where we’ll keep the food. Also, you’ll need to pay for everything for the kitten. Food, litter box, toys. Think you can do that, little man?”

Casper’s jaw dropped open. “Mom, why did you cry from happiness? I’d be crying from sadness if I had to do that much work.”

I fought to keep a laugh down in my stomach, but it came out of my mouth. “That’s what I thought. Anyway, little man, you’ve got school tomorrow. But you can’t let the bullies hurt you like they did before. If they try to hurt you, what do you do?”

He thought for a moment. “Cry?”

I groaned. “You can cry if you want, but you need to do something else too. Crying won’t stop them. You need to scream so that a teacher can hear you and stop the bullies.”

“But what if I get in trouble for screaming? We’re not allowed to scream because it could bother classrooms.”

“Casper, you won’t get in trouble. If someone is hurting you, they’ll understand why you’re screaming. If they don’t understand, I’ll talk to them myself. But you can’t let people hurt you like that. Okay?”

He nodded and hugged me. I picked him up and put him on my back. Walking around with him clutching my neck and waist, I made airplane noises. It might seem like he’s too old for that, but it’s an inside joke for us. I then thrust him onto the bed and put the blanket on him, turned out the lights, and closed the door.

I sighed and wondered how long the image of Sarah lying cold and still in the hospital bed would haunt me. As I brushed my teeth, I played Pandora music on my phone. Try, by Colbie Caillat, came on. A tear fell upon the handle of my toothbrush. This was a song I had recommended to Sarah to help her with her body image issues. A month afterwards, she had come into her session without makeup for the first time. I thought something was wrong, but she told me she decided she looks more beautiful without makeup.

I spit out the toothpaste, washed the toothbrush, and put it back into its cup. In my room, I heard a soft snore. It made me smile until it stopped, and one of my two favorite faces turned towards me. “Les, your eyes are red. Have you been crying?”

I got into bed without a word and wrapped my arms around his waist. Kissing him on the cheek, I squeezed my eyes shut to let a final tear run down my cheek. Sleep and worry produced a nightmare. Over the next few months, I looked for any job I could find. I finally found a job working for a single mom with two kids.

I went to the house. A young woman, around 35 years of age, answered the door and ushered me in. She had the same freckles as Sarah. I swallowed the pain, got myself into therapy mode, and left my problems at home.

The day went by in a blur. As nothing seemed worth looking forward to, nothing slowed time down either. I dusted, vacuumed and wiped down the entire house. I helped a little eight-year-old boy make a sandwich for snack. I almost put sponges as the bread, but his laughter stopped me. I couldn’t get the woman’s freckles out of my mind. For the month before she died, Sarah said she was fine. She told me nothing out of the ordinary was happening, and she flashed me that beautiful smile.

How did I not see through that fakeness? How did I, as a therapist, not see that her life couldn’t possibly have been so ordinary all of a sudden? If I had picked up on the lies, would she still be alive? She had told me she appreciated me during her last session. I took it as her being her normal sweet self. How did I not see that she was saying goodbye?

I went to bed in the calamity of these thoughts. The next morning, I got up and found my arms flopped on the half-empty bed in front of my body that was on its side. I looked at the alarm clock. 7:40. 10 minutes to get Casper to a school that’s twenty minutes away, and I bet he hadn’t even woken up yet. I ran to his room to find a neat bed and no Casper.

Running downstairs in a panic, I picked up the scrawled note on the kitchen table. “Saw you were still asleep, so I got Casper ready for school and took him there. There’s some cereal in the microwave. Love you, Les.” I smiled and wondered laughingly who the woman in the relationship was.

Opening the microwave, I got a waft of the fresh smell of walnuts and oatmeal. Stuffing the food into my mouth, I gathered my purse, cleaning supplies and wits. My car had just been through the car wash a week ago, so it was still shiny enough to brighten my day. As I drove to the mansion, I prepared myself for seeing the familiar freckles. When I rang the doorbell, however, a little five-year-old girl opened the door and called for her mom. Then the freckles greeted me. I closed my eyes a moment as she turned to her little girl, and I took a deep cleansing breath.

Turning back, she said, “Hello, Leslie. Come on in. Today, since the house is fairly clean from your visit yesterday, I’d like you to help little Ashley with her coloring and reading before she goes to afternoon kindergarten. I’d also like you to make her lunch before she leaves and her snack before she gets back home. Please walk her to the bus stop and back home from the bus stop at 3:30. Logan, my eight-year-old boy, should be back from third grade around the same time, so you can meet both of them together. When he gets home, I’d like you to help him with his writing, as he tends to struggle with putting sentences together coherently. If you have any questions, feel free to call me at my cell. I’ve got to get to work now, but I’ll be back in the afternoon to make sure all is well with my kids and to give you your check for today.”

She walked to her car in an elegant sunset colored layered gown with two inch black heels. Closing the door behind me, I knelt down to Ashley and asked her what she has to color and read. She took my hand in her little palm and led me to her room, where her desk was covered in pages of half-colored elephants, suns and hello-kitties. “I need help with this elephant and this tree.”

I nodded and replied, “Mhmm, and what do you have to read?”

She had a naughty smile on her face. “I don’t have anything to read.”

“Oh, really? Because your mommy told me you have reading homework. Now come on, let’s see it. Unless you want mommy to find out that you’re not doing your homework.”

She shook her head vigorously and rushed to find her Dr. Seuss book. “Teacher told me to read this with mommy.”

So I sat down on the bed and put her on my lap. I worked with her through the entire book about the fish out of water. Though it was pretty literal, I started to connect Sarah to this story. Sarah felt like a fish out of water. How did I not see it? In the middle of my thoughts, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me over to her desk. “Now can you help me with my elephant?”

I laughed and picked a pink crayon out of the box. She shook her head, so I put it back. I then took out a yellow crayon. She shook her head even harder and whined, “I’m not a little kid anymore. I don’t like pink, and I don’t like yellow.”

Looking into her bright sapphire eyes, I asked, “So what do you like?”

She said, “I like black and brown and grey.” I sighed. This was going to be an interesting elephant.

Two hours later, she had finally finished her coloring. It was 11:00, so it was time to make her lunch. I put together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with baby carrots and apple sauce. Then I squeezed these items into her Tom and Jerry lunchbox and gave her the Mickey Mouse backpack her mom had gotten ready for her the night before. She came skipping down the stairs with her little black shirt and grey pants and demanded that we go to the bus stop.

At the bus stop, we waited for fifteen minutes before her bus came. She hugged me, then ran up the stairs onto the bus. She waved to a little boy near the back of the bus. The driver closed the doors, and the bus curved around the bend. I walked back into the house and wondered what was now going to keep me busy enough to not think. As I walked into the kitchen, I realized that I still had to make Logan and Ashley’s snacks. For Ashley, I grabbed a fruit punch juice box from the pantry and got celery and ranch dressing from the fridge. For Logan, I got a microwavable chicken noodle soup ready and poured lemonade in a glass. Great. Now came the wait.

I browsed the internet for news stories and came across one story about a 14-year-old boy who created an anti-bullying club for his school and raised money for victims of bullying to pay for their hospital visits. At least the extra time restored some of my faith in humanity. The afternoon went smoothly, with Ashley’s sass and Logan’s homework struggles. At home, Casper was sitting on the couch with his daddy. I smiled at my two favorite guys.

I raised an eyebrow and asked, “So if Casper is sitting on the couch with his daddy, who’s doing homework?”

Casper replied, “Daddy already helped me finish it. I’m done.”

“That’s my boy. Who wants pizza for dinner?” Of course, Casper sat like an adult, and his dad sprang up and raced to the kitchen.

I put my hands out in front of me to stop him. “Easy there. I have to order it first.”

He went red in the cheeks and nodded. “I knew that. I was just running into the kitchen because I forgot to turn the stove off.” He walked over to the stove. “Oh, would you look at that. Looks like I did remember to turn it off.”

I laughed. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

A couple months went by with little reminders of Sarah bringing tears to my eyes, and my two favorite boys making me smile. Ashley was starting to read Dr. Seuss by herself, and Logan was able write three sentence paragraphs. I checked the mail and found an envelope addressed to me from Drew. Drew was a 17-year-old client I had for two years. Inside was a letter in his curly handwriting:

“Dear Leslie,

I would have written to you sooner, but I didn’t know where to send the letter, and I didn’t know that you had quit your job. I’m not sure what made you think that leaving the world of therapy would be best, but I can tell you it probably wasn’t.

I didn’t have any hope until you became my therapist. I had been through many before you, but I left each one after a couple weeks because it never felt right. But there’s a reason I stuck with you for two years. You made me question myself in the best way possible. You made me realize that I had potential, that I had a future, but it was all being blocked because I didn’t have faith in myself. I’m a senior in high school now, and thanks to you, college seems possible for me. I know you wouldn’t stop being a therapist without some big reason, and my guess is that you’ve lost faith in yourself.

So I wanted to remind you of what you told me a couple years ago when I thought I’d never get anywhere. You had said, ‘When you lose faith in yourself, it usually means some failure took that faith away. In reality, though, failure means you’re one step closer to success, because it takes failure to succeed. So when you lose faith in yourself, remember that failure is a reason to have faith.”

I’m not sure what failure made you lose this much faith, but I hope you consider that failure doesn’t make you a failure. You’ve helped countless clients, including myself, find a life to have, and if you quit being a therapist, those kids who need you will never get your help. Without you, I might never have found a good enough therapist. Please consider becoming a therapist again.

Sincerely,

Drew

It isn’t hard to imagine that his letter was tear-stained by now. I wasn’t even sure if these were happy or sad tears. He was actually thinking of going to college. He believed in a future for himself. I was so proud of him. But he was right. I’m no longer a therapist because of my own personal fears. My fears took away my chance to help teenagers for so many months. Someone out there needs me to help them through a hopeless state, and I’ve given up.

I struggled a few months looking for a new therapist job, and then one opened up close by. I applied, and due to my extensive experience, I got the job. That night, I got into bed next to my husband and told him the news. He exclaimed, and I clasped my hand over his mouth. “Shush! You’re going to wake Casper up!” Too late. I heard a knock on my door and said, “Come in.”

Casper climbed into bed and asked, “Dad, are you okay? That was a loud scream.”

Both of us laughed. “Dad’s just excited that I found a job.”

He frowned. “Don’t you already have a job? You’ve been helping Ashley and Logan, remember?”

I pulled Casper in between us and said, “Yes, but I found a job where I’ll be helping kids feel better again.”

He gasped. “Does this mean I won’t get to play with Logan anymore? But he’s awesome. He’s my best friend! Mom, you can’t do this. Please don’t do this.”

I stroked his curly hair. “Shhh, it’s okay. You can still play with Logan. I just won’t be working with them anymore.”

He nodded. “Okay, good.” That night, the three of us went to sleep in the same bed. For the first time since Sarah’s death, I felt at ease. Maybe quitting my job was what I wanted, but being a therapist was what I needed. Sarah would always be a reminder to be extra vigilant and make sure my clients are okay. She would always hold a special place in my heart. But as awful as the loss was, she could never make me give up on my wonderful clients, who come to me every day just to brighten their lives a little more and let the hope in.

© 2017 Treble

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I loved it! The characters developed well, and the scenes worked out great. I have a few notes though. The conversation between the mom figure and her son. There's fifteen minutes of conversation which is not described. Not like it's a big problem, since most readers can imagine what the content would be..
well moving on...

" I collapsed into the depression of our very old couch." something I do a lot...So I just had to note.. lol.

Back at the main character. A therapist, someone, who works with lot's of people, people with problems. Hearing someone out, someone who's in impossibly,great pain can be draining... But also it can be the seed of a relationship between them. The failure.... Devastation left inside her. A really well penned story. I love it.