Amelia’s heart thudded in her throat. When she had last stepped into a therapist’s office for the first time, it had ended up changing her life—and not in the way she had expected.
The door of Dr. Scarpa’s office opened and a pleasant-looking woman appeared. For the life of her, Amelia couldn’t remember what she’d thought of Jill’s appearance when she’d first greeted her. She’d been just as nervous, if not more, so appraising her therapist’s looks had hardly been a priority.
“Amelia Shaw?” Dr. Scarpa asked.
Amelia followed her inside. Her office was decorated in a much more clinical way than Jill’s. No ostentatious art on the walls. No cozy furniture. The mood was completely different—almost austere.
They exchanged a few niceties before Dr. Scarpa cut to the chase. “Doctor Becket—I mean, Jill—emailed me earlier this week to disclose your relationship.”
Amelia and Jill had agreed that Jill should be the one to inform her colleague. Jill had assured Amelia that was not a burden that should fall onto her. She also wanted to do her best to reduce any awkwardness between Amelia and her new therapist, because having to change mid-therapy was already awkward enough.
Amelia nodded. As far as she knew, Dr. Scarpa hadn’t emailed Jill back to reassure her.
“I could pretend it never happens and that we psychiatrists are immune to developing feelings for our clients, but that would be untrue,” Dr. Scarpa said. “I know Jill and I trust her judgment. It was good that she stopped treating you. That was the right thing to do.”
“Yeah.” Jill had asked Amelia to call her as soon as her first session was over, or to leave her a voicemail if she was in session. Not to break privilege, but just to let her know how Dr. Scarpa had reacted to the news of their relationship.
“How was it for you?” Dr. Scarpa asked. “To have to interrupt your treatment?”
“Well…” Amelia paused. “There are worse reasons to pause therapy for.”
Dr. Scarpa stroked her chin. “I bet.” She didn’t look like the type that smiled too much, but she did manage a tight-lipped smile at that. “But don’t make the mistake of confusing falling in love with healing. They might feel like the same thing, but they’re not. We need to address the root causes for your burnout.”
“Of course.” Amelia remembered how, during the two and a half sessions they’d had together, she’d ranted at Jill about the state of the world and the general utter blah-ness of it all.
Dr. Scarpa might be very right. Falling in love was not the same as healing, yet Amelia felt a whole lot better regardless. Amelia knew it was down to a bunch of chemical reactions in her brain, but then again, her burnout had also been the result of a chemical reaction. Only this morning she’d been trying to find specific research on whether the feel-good chemicals of falling in love could counteract the detrimental effects of the relentless cortisol cycle that made a burnout so devastating to deal with. Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t been able to find any research papers on the matter. Few serious scientists would consider researching something so frivolous as falling in love.
Amelia could be her very own study of one, although she knew very well that studies of only one person could never hold any scientific value. Nor was she going to run tests on samples of her own blood and saliva to prove a point. It was one of her greatest worries that she could come to rely on Jill for her mental well-being. But above all else, she also really wanted to enjoy the sensation of falling in love without overanalyzing it and correlating it to her burnout and the decrease in symptoms.
She paused before answering Dr. Scarpa. “Obviously, falling in love with Jill has made me feel a lot better about myself, but I’m very much aware of it, and awareness can be a great teacher. It’s not only been great to fall in love, but it’s been such a relief to feel something else than all the dread I’ve been submerged in for months. And the mere fact that I’ve been able to fall in love, which isn’t something that I’ve previously allowed myself to do so easily, has been a bit of a revelation. Perhaps even a revolution.”
“How so?” Dr. Scarpa didn’t make any notes while she waited for a reply the way Jill did.
“Falling in love has never been easy for me. Partly because I’ve always put my job first, but also…” It was hard for Amelia to remember why it had been so difficult for her to surrender to another person’s affection now that she was with Jill. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s something I can learn to articulate in here.”
“Sure.” Dr. Scarpa said. “Would you like to address that now or tackle the burnout first?”
Amelia could talk about Jill for days on end, but she didn’t much feel like unearthing the patterns that underlay her life in romance. She didn’t want to break the spell just yet. “I have been thinking about going back to work. Not to my old job. Let me rephrase that. I would like to go back to work and I would like that to coincide with a change of career.”
“Any idea which direction you’d like to go?”
Dawn had mentioned teaching but Amelia didn’t much feel like retraining so substantially, nor had she ever felt that particular kind of calling—and whenever Dawn talked about her job, it came across like a calling, how else could she put up with the negative aspects of it? “I have a few ideas, but it’s still early days. I do see myself going back to work in the new year, so I can put this horror year behind me once and for all. Although”—her lips pulled into an inadvertent smile—“it hasn’t all been bad, of course.”
“But you feel ready to go out there again? When you picture yourself in an office or”—she looked at her so far unused notepad—“in the lab, that feels okay to you? What does it do to you physically when you actively visualize being at work again?”
“I can’t imagine going back to my old job. I loved it for a long time, until I didn’t. In fact, I’ve written my letter of resignation. I just need to email it.” Amelia did feel a twinge of guilt toward her former boss and colleagues. Sending an email was so cold and distant. She should at least call or, if she felt herself capable—and maybe that was what she’d been waiting for—stop by her old place of work. “It’s a chapter of my life I need to end, I know that much. It’s time for something new.”
“And to answer my question?” Dr. Scarpa nudged.
“To answer your question, if I get the job I’m thinking of applying for, then the only physical sensations generated when I imagine working there are a bunch of nerves and a humongous amount of excitement.” Amelia hadn’t told anyone—not Jill, not Dawn—about the change of career she was hoping for. She didn’t want to get her own hopes up even higher by involving other people. And she suspected that any company or organization might think twice before hiring a new employee with a previous record of burnout, although she was fairly certain that, despite said burnout, she could get some excellent references from her soon-to-be-ex-employer.
“You’re going to keep me in suspense?” Dr. Scarpa said, that almost-smile playing on her lips again.
“I just don’t want to jinx it.”
“Maybe we can talk about it next week?”
“Or the week after,” Amelia said.
“Okay.” Dr. Scarpa looked at her notepad again. “I read in the file that Jill sent me that you’re crazy about soccer.”
Crazy? Would Jill really have used that word to describe Amelia? Were psychiatrists even allowed to use it? Amelia made a mental note to quiz Jill on that later. The fact that she could, that after this session was over, she would go to Jill’s house, where she could quiz—and kiss—her all she wanted, filled her with a warmth previously foreign to her.
“It’s my hobby and I am, indeed, very passionate about it.” Amelia had, semi-successfully, tried to get Jill excited about the English Premier League, which was her own favorite. Any further attempts to recruit her for the Darlinghurst Darlings had been met with hysterical laughter. Jill was the type of woman who looked her best with a flute of Champagne in her hand rather than a ball at her foot, although Amelia believed she could convince her that one didn’t have to exclude the other. “I’ve put myself forward to take on some more responsibility.” Amelia had had a chat with Kate to discuss whether she could become assistant-coach, to which Kate had replied that if Amelia wanted to coach the team so badly, she was very welcome to the job of first and only coach.
“I do love Sam Kerr,” Dr. Scarpa said.
“Sam Kerr is a f—” Amelia stopped herself from swearing in her brand-new therapist’s office. “She’s a legend.” And one of the reasons Amelia subscribed to an expensive European soccer TV package. If Amelia was experiencing any doubts at all about resuming her therapy with Dr. Scarpa, her admission of loving Sam Kerr was more than enough to dissolve any remaining ones.