"Zoe Walker?" A middle aged woman asked as a she walked out of her office. Zoe looked over at her, desperately hoping that she didn't recognise the woman that she was meant to be meeting. Upon realising that the woman standing looking around expectantly was in fact a stranger, Zoe stood and walked into the office.
"So Mrs Walker..."
"It's Dr Hanna." Zoe interrupted.
"I'm sorry my notes say Walker but I'll get that changed, I'm Dr Wilson but you can call me Susan. Anyway, this is an introductory session, to begin I'd like to get to know you a bit better."
"I'm a consultant down in the ED." Zoe began and then realised that there was very little to her life other than that. "That's it really." She mumbled, as she wondered what had happened to the fun Zoe that she used to love.
"Family?" Susan prompted.
"I'm on my own really, I very rarely see my parents, I can't have kids and my husband just left me so it's just me nowadays." Zoe said bluntly, not meaning to be rude but she still hadn't dealt with the immense anger she felt at herself.
"You sound very angry Zoe, can I call you Zoe?" The therapist asked, and watched as Zoe slowly nodded. "Can you tell me who you're angry at?" Zoe could list plenty of people she was annoyed at, she was annoyed at Max for leaving her but everything boiled back down to her.
"Myself." She whispered.
"Why don't you tell me about your husband?" Susan asked, before handing Zoe a tissue as she saw tears prick at the younger doctor's eyes.
"His name is Max, he was a porter in the ED. We met about two and a half years ago and fell into a relationship about 2 years ago. I left when I thought it was getting serious but I came back to him a couple of months later. It was a few months before we moved in together and then he proposed out of the blue one day. People thought we were crazy, I was a consultant and he was a porter, I'm 10 years older than him too, we fell in love though. We planned a wedding in just a week and we got married, that was six months ago."
"What happened?" Susan asked, seeing numerous things that could have gone wrong with their relationship.
"I cheated." Zoe replied. "I got very drunk on my hen night and slept with someone else. What kind of person wakes up with another man on her wedding day? I told him at the wedding reception, I didn't intend to but my friend brought it up. That makes me a horrible person."
"Not necessarily."
"Anyway, there was an explosion at the wedding and I nearly died. Max helped to save me and then we got to the hospital and it was clear that he still hated me. We tried to resolve it but he left two months ago." Zoe continued, sobbing more as she continued the story.
"What happened to make him leave?"
"He couldn't trust me, he panicked every time I went out without him, and he couldn't touch me. He just looked so hurt all the time, we tried but those whole four months we were broken. We were kidding ourselves thinking that we could fix it, our relationship broke the night that I slept with a stranger. Sometimes it's better to let the flame go out before it burns you both. He was the one and I ruined it, he left and I stayed."
"If he was the one then why did you cheat?" Susan asked.
"I don't know, I was scared of commitment. I didn't think I deserved to be happy. I was drunk." Zoe cried.
"And now do you think you deserve to be happy?" Susan asked.
"Now I know I don't deserve to be happy. I broke Max's heart, he loved me so much and I consider him the love of my life and I hurt him more than I could put into words. I don't deserve happiness, I just cause hurt and upset and I wish I'd realised that before Max."
"What would you have done differently?" The therapist asked as it neared the end of the session.
"I'd say not fall in love with Max but he just had this charm, I didn't try to fall in love with him, I actively tried not to but you just couldn't not. I wouldn't cheat, I'd realise what I had and I'd realise that I deserved my happy ever after life everyone else. Unfortunately I realised too late and lost everything I wanted. I lost the one."