Thursday, February 15, 2007

Him and her and him, but not

Yesterday, driving home in the snow the ambulance passed going the other way. It was a tough night to be driving, accidents were everywhere.

Today, at eleven o'clock a woman sat in front of me and spoke to me about how she was taking care of her neighbor's daughter because the neighbor's boyfriend was in the hospital with a serious head injury suffered last night as the result of an accident he had while driving home in the snow. They doubted he would survive.

At six PM I saw the Dave, man who I had spoken about a while ago (Feb 2) as the guy who was being dumped by his wife. As he sat in front of me tonight he was more animated and much more expressive. He spoke to me about things that I had wondered about but not known.

Dave told me that one reason he could not become all the things that she was asking him to become was that he felt that she had already chosen the next man she was going to be with. Sadly, it was his step-brother. The son of the man his mother had been married to since he was fifteen and that man was nineteen. Dave had told me that that man, Rex, had been after his wife almost since their relationship had begun. The wife had always been attractive, and Rex couldn't believe that she would settle for Dave. In fact, in their session together they had told me that early in the relationship she had been unfaithful. She had actually left for a month with some other guy, but they said, that was all over now. She had chosen to come back to Dave.


They didn't tell me that the guy was a step-brother. And she didn't let on, to me or Dave, that their connection never stayed severed for long.

Now, as you have figured out, Rex is dying in the hospital. His live-in girlfriend is at his bedside. The woman he is having an affair with, who everyone else thinks is just his sister-in-law, is in tears on the other side of the bed. Dave is there, comforting his wife. Now, he seems to feel much closer to her.

He is upset that his step-brother will soon die, but he acknowledges there is some ambivalence in the way he feels. He is not clear what will happen next.

She called me soon after the appointment I had with Dave. She said she would like to talk to me by herself. She said she had a lot of things to figure out.

If I saw this on TV I wouldn't believe it.

5 comments:

TGS said...

Oh, my. Uh, I'm not even sure how I would personally handle this, so I don't even know what to say. Wait! I do know what to say: GOOD LUCK, THERAPIST! :)

Amanda said...

I've always felt that fiction is only a poor imitation of the truth.

Jay M. said...

WOW. wow.

That's one hell of a situation to be in. I don't want to make light of the situation, because it sounds terrible, but maybe you should start watching daytime television to prepare yourself for what might happen next. Something like The Young and the Restless

skinnylittleblonde said...

Nothing is stranger tahn the truth!
Geesh! How ironic, I wonder if it was Rex's ambulance you saw, as well?!
Coincidence...or not?
Hmmm....things don't look good for the marriage. Despite your patient's enthusiasm, she'll probably pick up on it & resent him for it. Eke...the webs people weave.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, life's stranger than fiction, yet, what never ceases to amaze me is that we still think that it's possible to get away with some of the dastardly deeds, bad, inapropriate, wrong or plain stupid choices we make. I believe that it all translates into writing the script for our own destiny, because what goes around...

Rex might not make it, but his legacy will live on, and that woman is now destined to carry the worst part of it.