Chapter Four
Canadian Intelligence Service Headquarters
Ottawa, Canada
Jack walked slowly toward the office of Yesenia Verdugo, one of the CIS clinical psychologists. Her office was on the second floor of the headquarters. He stopped before he reached the door and hesitated to knock. He didn’t want to deal with the pain again, the anger, the overwhelming feelings of sadness and grief that Verdugo had a subtle way of dredging up to the surface. “You’ll have to deal with them, Jack, one day or another,” she kept telling him in her soft voice with its distinctly Spanish accent. “You have to live with yourself, so you better start doing it.” Jack sighed. Easier said than done, Doc.
He gathered his courage and knocked on the door.
“Come in. It’s open,” Verdugo called from inside.
He entered hesitantly and looked around the familiar office. It was spacious with two gray armchairs and a matching L-shaped sofa, an oval glass-topped desk, and a huge bookshelf. A large window drew in plenty of light. Jack looked at a couple of spruce trees whose branches covered a small corner of the window. A bouquet of roses sat on a small coffee table, and the walls were elegantly decorated with pictures of waterfalls, lakes, and mountain landscapes. A soft glowing light fell from recessed fixtures mounted in the ceiling. The entire friendly atmosphere was designed to invite the patient to relax.
Jack felt quite the opposite. His body stiffened, and his face twisted in a painful expression. He stood by the door with his hands tightened into fists. He looked around in confusion, as if he had made the greatest mistake of his life.
“Welcome, Jack.” Verdugo stood up from behind her desk. “Please take a seat.” She gestured at one of the armchairs. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“Uh, no, I’m okay.”
The psychologist was in her late thirties. She was dressed in a black pencil skirt that accentuated her hourglass figure, a blue blouse, and a pink cardigan blazer. Her blonde hair flowed down her slender neck. Verdugo was wearing a pair of square-shaped black-framed glasses and very little makeup. “I heard the good news,” she said in a voice full of excitement. “You’re coming back to the agency…”
Jack shrugged. He walked slowly and plopped himself onto the armchair. “Well, not exactly. I still have to go through the return evals. This… this is one of those.”
Verdugo nodded. “I understand.” She picked up a notepad and a pen from the coffee table and sat across from Jack. “How have things improved since the last time we met, which was…” She looked at her notepad. “Yes, six days ago.”
A line appeared between Jack’s brows. He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’d say it’s been the same.”
Verdugo smiled. “Which in itself is an improvement. There has been no regression, which is always good. Any acts of violence?”
“No.” Jack shook his head.
“Thoughts of violence?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Once, twice a day.”
“Toward yourself or others?”
“Others, always others, never myself.” Jack’s voice rang with a hint of sadness.
“When do they happen? What triggers them?”
“Early in the day. Memories.”
Verdugo wrote in her notepad. “How do you overcome those thoughts?”
Jack smiled. “I work out. Go to the gym. Punch the heavy bag until my knuckles hurt.” He looked down at his folded hands.
“Do you verbalize your thoughts? Write them down?”
“No, journaling is not for me.”
“Did it help to get them off your chest?”
“I didn’t try.”
“Okay. Fair enough. Bursts of anger?”
Jack grinned. “Define ‘bursts.’”
Verdugo cocked her head toward Jack. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded. “Yes, a few times a day.”
“How are you dealing with them?”
“There aren’t many things left I can break…”
Verdugo gave him a measured look. “Have you been going out?”
“I have. Went out this morning.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“Walked. Went to the store.”
“Have you been going to church?”
“No.”
“Any other social gathering?”
Jack thought of Nora and shook his head.
“Why haven’t you? You committed to trying.”
“I did, and I tried. But… it feels hollow, meaningless.”
“Describe that for me.”
“I just did.”
“I don’t understand. Can you explain it, rephrase it for me, please?”
Jack sighed. He knew Verdugo would insist on his verbalizing his feelings. It was her usual approach. If we talk about how we feel, we bring our pain out in the open. We acknowledge it. It’s the first step toward acceptance. Then, we can work on solutions. He thought about how to word his answer. Verdugo stood between him and his mission. He didn’t want to lie to her, because he liked Verdugo. She genuinely tried to help him get his life back together. She wasn’t just doing her job. She truly cared about Jack. He could feel it. Maybe even more than she should, considering he was her patient.
He said, “I feel I can’t trust anyone. The church folks, they mean well, but they don’t seem to be there when I really need them. My friends… well, the people I thought were my friends… have all abandoned me.”
Verdugo nodded and flipped a few pages back in her notepad. “What was the reason you’d say they did that?”
Jack frowned. He pursed his lips and tightened his facial muscles. “Doc, we’ve gone over this many times. You know why.”
“Let’s talk about it, Jack.”
He sighed. “I needed their help to find my family. They… they didn’t help.”
“Why was that?”
“How the f…” He stopped himself and drew in a deep breath. “How the heck would I know?”
Verdugo gave him a warm look from over her glasses that had slid down her small nose. “What reasons did they give you?”
“It is too difficult, costly, illegal. They hid behind every excuse they could find. The bottom line is that they didn’t care.”
“Is that how you truly feel?”
Jack held Verdugo’s piercing gaze for a long moment. When he replied, he said, “I don’t know how I feel, but I know I would give my life to find the disappeared daughter of a friend…” He shrugged and looked out the window.
Verdugo said nothing for a long moment, letting the silence give Jack the time he needed to regain his composure. When he returned his eyes to her, she said, “I know it’s tough, Jack. I’m not just saying this. I’ve been there myself. We’ve talked about this. You know how I lost my husband.”
Jack nodded. Verdugo’s husband was killed in a car accident a little over ten years ago. It had been the catalyst that had convinced her to pursue a career in clinical psychology. Verdugo had never remarried.
She said, “Some of your friends did what they could. True, some of them were real jerks and turned their back on you. That’s life; that’s reality, and we must accept it. But there were a few that stood by you, as much as they could. It wasn’t enough, in your view, and I understand that. But it was all they had to offer.”
Jack didn’t like to hear her words, but deep down, he knew there was a tremendous amount of truth in them. He remembered Gilson’s invitations to come over to their house for supper, which Jack repeatedly had turned down. A handful of friends had offered their support, which he had refused.
Verdugo continued, “These people were part of your life, Jack. They’re ready to return, if you’d only let them.”
“I… I don’t think I can.” He shook his head and waved a dismissive hand. “Not at this time, anyway.”
Verdugo smiled. “As long as you realize there’s help, we’re making progress. You can do this, Jack. In fact, you’re already doing this. You’re accepting the reality.”
Jack didn’t think so, but he wasn’t going to argue with his psychologist. She had the power to sign the paperwork that would allow him to return to the agency. He wasn’t going to deceive her, but he also had no intention of telling her she was wrong.
Verdugo crossed her legs and smiled at Jack. “Let’s focus on a few strategies on how to deal constructively with your feelings of anger. You can overcome this situation, once you start believing in yourself. No one can help you, Jack, if you’re not willing to help yourself.”
She explained to Jack the importance of seeking and obtaining closure with the past. It was obvious that Jack wasn’t ready, but Verdugo encouraged him to start working toward it. She noted that the distance he was putting between himself and others so that he wouldn’t get hurt again was the same distance that kept away the ones who cared about him. Jack thought again about Nora, his neighbor, and her supper invitation. Perhaps I can still make it, he thought. He frowned, shook his head, and tried to concentrate.
Verdugo told him nothing he didn’t already know, but Jack found comfort in her words of advice on how to rebuild his shattered trust. He’d have to start working on it, something he had pushed to the side for a long time. He sighed. Not now. I’m not ready. I can’t do it at this moment.
The meeting concluded with Verdugo highlighting Jack’s next steps toward his “re-bounce,” as she called it. Jack asked, but Verdugo told him that she’d have to assess his entire progress, including the previous sessions, before giving a complete evaluation. Jack left her office with homework, including working on his self-esteem. Well, if I return to full active service, that’s a big plus, right? He nodded to himself as he descended the stairs, ready to head out for the physical assessment, which included, among other things, a parachute jump.