I re-read your letter today. I keep it in a drawer in case of emergency. Sometimes when I miss you, it helps to pull out that letter and see your handwriting. I imagine the way your hand moved across the page, and recall the feel of it in mine when we prayed together. The paper had none of the warmth that was in your fingers, but it has all the warmth that is in your heart. Spilling out for me in that short note. All your humor and passion and anger and sorrow—the things that kept us returning to each other when the world felt cold. That’s why I keep it. To remember how it felt to be with you.
I miss you. I miss your laughter. I miss talking about nothing and about everything. I miss how my reverence ignited next to yours. I miss feeling seen. Feeling heard. There are other people now who have stepped into that role, but it’s not the same. These people deeply love me, and as much as I love them in return, it’s not like it was with you. I don’t know how it’s possible for a piece of my spirit to be inside another person, but that’s what it feels like. You have a piece of me inside of you. I recognized it. I touched it. I longed to reunite with it.
I have this whole separate space now, apart from you. And though there are similarities between our lives, they move in different spheres, only crossing when we make the time for them to overlap. What was once easy has become hard, especially when one of us is not feeling like our best self. I know I haven’t been lately. The rough patches were easier when I was with you, because you were right next to me. And now even though I know I could call you, there is a great canyon between us. You in your sphere. Me in mine. We do not overlap now unless we carve out the place where we will meet.
Sometimes I wonder where you go, what you do, who you talk to now that you don’t talk to me as often. Did you find someone to fill that space, or are you filling it with digital and liquid demons? I’ve done that. I am doing that. I think I know what you would say about it. I know what I would say to you if I found out you were spending your time the way I’ve been spending mine.
It feels like I’ll never stop missing you. I know it’s only been a little while since you went away and that I need time to heal from your departure. I also know that next month, next year, next decade, I’ll be better. While that gives me some hope, it makes me a little sad too. It means that there will be a time when I won’t miss you as much, when I won’t wish I could see you, hear your laugh, feel your hand in mine. I’ll remember you fondly like I remember being a kid at Christmas, especially if there was snow. I’ll remember you like my long-departed grandparents, who lived in that big white farmhouse that I loved. When this hurt ends and I come to the end of this road, you won’t be standing there, and that will feel like progress. But that’s not what I want at all.
That’s why I re-read your letter today. To keep you close to my heart. To cherish you. Because I love you.
“Mr. Sanburn?” The woman’s voice was watery through the ringing in his ears. He was awake, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything. Everything was white. The woman called to him again. This time turned his head towards her voice. Her dark hair contrasted with the pure white of her coat, her blouse, her name tag. The letters meant something he didn’t immediately recall. He stared, searching his memories.
“Greta,” he said to himself, as his brain put together how to read.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Sanburn?” Greta asked. She lowered her face and inch or two nearer to the table, her eyes warm with compassion.
Sanburn lifted himself slowly, propping for a moment on his elbows before sitting all the way up. Greta pulled back, waiting patiently for his answer. He assessed himself. His head felt strange, but his whole body was relaxed. He felt lighter than he had been felt when he entered the room earlier that day. “I feel good,” he said, surprised.
“You look like it,” Greta said. “We can always tell if the procedure had an effect.”
Sanburn slid his legs off the table, dangling them for a moment before letting the rest of his body roll off the side. His feet on the floor, he raised his head high, turning his face upwards for just a moment, placing his hands on his hips and trying to really feel his own feelings. Yes. Definitely lighter.
“I’ll take you to Dr. Guldenshuh now,” Greta said, grasping the handle of the instrument cart. She waited for him to take the first step before following him from the procedure room.
The hall was just as clinically white as the procedure room had been. Greta parked the cart against the wall, just outside the procedure room. “This way,” she instructed, walking ahead of him to the left. He followed slowly, amazed at the transformation. Just that morning he had been morose, nearly talking himself out of coming. He had contemplated staying in bed, not showering for the third day in a row, and subsisting off stale cereal while he doom-scrolled through the latest news. It seemed impossible that had been just this morning.
Dr. Guldenshuh’s office was at the end of the hallway. Greta stopped outside of the door and waited for his approach. He had been lagged behind her, lost in his wonder. When he arrived beside her, she smiled tenderly, almost motherly, then turned the handle. “After you,” she said.
Sanburn moved through the open doorway into the office. Dr Guldenshuh sat behind her desk, her glasses at the end of her nose, writing furiously in a notebook. “Hello. Have a seat,” she said, not even looking up. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Unlike the rest of the facility, the psychologist’s office was rich and warm. She had large, lush, dark wood furniture. The wingback chairs looked like they belonged near a fireplace in a manor house. There was a glorious high pile carpet laid across the floor. Sanburn felt safe in this office. It reminded him of home—not his home, but a home he would like to have.
Greta took a seat in one of the wingbacks, and Sanburn took the other. Dr. Guldenshuh shut her notebook, pushed it aside, and then began sifting through a file folder that had been laid on the corner of the desk. She studied one of the pages for a moment, nodding to herself. Then she looked up at him, smiling widely. “You woke very quickly,” she said. “I trust you are feeling alright?”
“Yes, I think I feel fine,” Sanburn said. “Maybe a slight headache,” he added, as Dr. Guldenshuh continued to stare.
“Very normal. I suspect it will subside by this evening.” Dr. Guldenshuh put away the folder. Then sat back in her chair. “I’d like for you to tell me about Andre, Mr. Sanburn.”
“Andre,” he breathed. “Andre was a wonderful man. A wonderful brother. I miss him terribly.” The words were true, but they lacked the dark agony that had punctuated them previously.
“Would you mind if Greta recorded your brain while we talk, Mr. Sanburn?” Dr. Guldenshuh asked.
“Of course not,” he answered.
Greta rose from her chair, and went across the room towards a shelf that held a variety of equipment. Sanburn knew from his previous sessions that these were instruments that helped them map his memories and his track his brain waves. Great picked up two small silver disks, along with a white backed tablet and returned to his side. He tuned his head to the side, allowing her to place one of the disks on his neck. Then he turned the other way, letting her repeat the process. The metal was cool against his skin. He enjoyed the feel of it. The thought surprised him. He enjoyed it? He couldn’t remember the last time he had enjoyed something.
Greta sat down again in the wingback next to him. She typed on the screen for a moment before she announced, “All ready, doctor.”
“Very good,” Dr. Guldenshuh said. She wheeled her chair out from behind the desk, rolling to rest next to Sanburn. He was comforted by her presence. “Now, tell me about Andre, please,” she said. Her voice was smooth and inviting. He smiled. He smiled. Then, he began to retell the stories she already knew.
Greta smiled to herself as she hung her lab coat in her locker at the back of the clinic’s breakroom. They had done good work today. She had thought Mr. Sanburn was beyond help when she first saw his scans. Dr. Rudolph was a masterful memory surgeon though. The way he had rewired Mr. Sanburn’s brain still gave her chills of excitement. She took her overcoat from the hook inside the locker, donning it slowly as she reminisced.
She turned at the sound of the lounge door opening. Dr. Rudolph was moving towards his own locker. He looked tired. He caught her eye. “Long day,” he sighed.
“What you did for Mr. Sanburn today was just short of miraculous,” Greta said.
Dr. Rudolph smiled, then shrugged. “Yes. He was a difficult case. I just hope that it sticks.”
Greta frowned. “What do you mean?”
Dr. Rudolph regarded her with a tense stare, almost looking as if he were calculating the benefits of answering her. “Greta, this work we do…it’s rarely permanent.”
Greta felt her heart sink, her stomach knotting. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Dr. Rudolph was still staring at her, his filled with sadness. “It works for them for awhile,” he said, “but they always seem to need to come back eventually. For another treatment.”
Greta tried to swallow her shock. “Dr. Guldenshuh has never mentioned this.”
He shook his head, then rubbed a hand over his face. “No, I suppose she wouldn’t want anyone to know.”
Greta was frozen, thinking about the science she had learned here. “Why?”
“Why what?” Dr. Rudolph asked. He moved to his locker and stripped off his white lab coat.
“Why doesn’t it stick?” she asked.
Dr. Rudolph’s answer was slow in coming. “Because they don’t learn how to do it themselves.”
“Learn what?” she asked.
He turned to face her. His overcoat was draped over his arm. “When we fix a patient in this way, they never unlearn all the toxic thinking that got them into the mess they’re in when they come through the door.”
“Toxic thinking?” Greta blinked. “Most of our patients have trauma, Dr. Rudolph.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. He moved towards her slowly. “And if we were practicing cognitive therapy 50 years ago, we’d teach them how to break the hold that trauma has over them. But now, we simply take it away. They learn nothing from it and end up back in the clinic waiting room.”
She thought about what she had seen over the last year working with Dr. Guldenshuh and Dr. Rudolph. “But…I’ve not seen any repeat patients.”
Dr. Rudolph smiled slowly, sadly. “This is the third time we’ve treated Mr. Sanburn within the last 8 years.”
All of Greta’s thoughts failed to coalesce as words. She simply nodded and looked away.
“But,” Dr. Rudolph continued. She looked back at him. “This is still better.”
“Is it?” she asked. “If it isn’t permanent, why?”
“Instant relief,” Dr. Rudolph said.
Greta nodded, understanding. “I see,” she whispered. She moved past him, feeling heavy. “Goodnight, Dr. Rudolph.”
“See you tomorrow!” he said brightly, as if he had not just shattered the pedestal on which he had stood.
Greta exited the clinic, moving out into the cold night, wondering how long it would be before Mr. Sanburn was back on the procedure table.
The Quick and the Dead 