Note: I'm not a therapist or psychologist. Anyone who is one is welcome to yell at me about how I've mangled what's going on here.
Nervously, Phineas entered the office. A young man sat at the desk; he smiled at Phineas, asking, "Can I help you?"
Phineas checked the appointment on his phone. "Hi, I'm here to see Corinne Delgado?"
The young man looked at the schedule, and said, "You must be Mr. Flynn. I'm Jamie, nice to meet you. Here's the intro paperwork," he handed over a clipboard with a sheet of paper on it, "and I need your insurance card." Phineas gave him his temporary card and retreated to a chair to fill out the form. The first side was basic current health and similar, but the back started with a simple question: "Why are you here?"
Phineas thought for a moment, and wrote, Because I abandoned my family in a panic and didn't come home for a year afterwards, and I need to make sure I never do that again.
The rest of the form discussed elements of his mental health, as well as family history. My biological father abandoned my mother after I was born, and was never seen or heard from again.
He handed the form to Jamie, who put it in a folder and handed back his insurance card. "Just have a seat, she'll be with you in just a couple minutes."
Phineas sat and nervously poked at his phone while he waited. After a few minutes, a large Hispanic woman came in and said, "Phineas Flynn?"
Phineas got up and followed her into a cozy, wood-paneled office, with a desk to one side and two comfortable-looking chairs across from each other; she took one chair and gestured him toward the other.
"So. The summary you give here," she held up the form he'd filled out, "is fascinating; why don't you tell me the whole story. Don't worry about justification or anything, just give me what happened from your perspective."
He took a deep breath. "Isabella and I were friends growing up - we lived across the street from each other. We'd been interested in each other for years, and started dating in high school. We did a long-distance relationship through college, and then moved in together after graduation, a little over two years ago. Beginning of last year, she got pregnant accidentally. I told her I'd support whatever decision she made, and she decided to keep the child."
He looked over at Corinne, who was taking notes quickly. "Okay. And?"
"I had been planning to propose to her, but I didn't want it to seem like it was because of the pregnancy, so we agreed not to do a formal engagement until after the baby was born. So last September, she gave birth to our daughter, Rebecca Annette Flynn."
"Do you have a picture of her?"
"Right here," Phineas said automatically, pulling out his phone. He'd taken pictures on the evenings he'd spent at Isabella's apartment, and showed her his favorite, the first time Becky had smiled at him. She still wasn't 100% sure about this strange man, but she was warming to him slowly.
"Oh, she's adorable. A year old now?"
"Yes."
"Okay. So what happened after she was born?"
"I'm not sure. I really don't remember it that clearly, to be honest. I was stressed because of the baby, and whether I could support a family, and the engagement...I wasn't sleeping."
Corinne pushed her glasses up and leaned forward. "Not sleeping how? What do you mean?"
"I wasn't getting any sleep. I'd lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, listening to Isabella breathing. I took the overnight feedings, because I was awake anyway, and then I wasn't sleeping during the day either."
"How long did you go without sleeping?"
"I don't know. A week, maybe a week and a half? I'm not entirely sure if I ever slept after Isabella and Becky came home."
"Okay. So you hadn't slept for over a week. And then what happened?"
"It's...all a blur. Isabella took Becky off to her two-week checkup, and...I had to get out of there. I left a note, left all my stuff, and ran. Car, wallet, keys, phone, everything. I didn't want them tracking me down through my stuff. The next thing I really knew, it was two days later, and I was waking up in a truck stop in Boise, Idaho. The driver said I'd passed out just after I got in his truck."
"So what did you do then?"
"I kept running. I decided what I'd done was unforgivable, and kept going. I went out to Seattle, then slowly roamed down the coast. Eventually I got to San Francisco. I remember...this would be about two weeks ago now. I was standing on the Golden Gate Bridge, and thinking that I should just go over the edge. That my father had run away and vanished, and maybe that was the best thing I could do for them."
"Something stopped you. What was it?"
"I saw a family walking toward me, and the little girl looked like...well, what I think Becky will look like when she's about that age. Three, maybe four years old. And I realized that...I really needed to see that. That she deserved a father who'd be there for her. I knew I had a little over a week to get back for her birthday, so I got started down I-80."
"Did you think about calling someone and arranging for a plane ticket or something like that?"
Phineas sat back, thinking. "No, not really. That would have been smart, I suppose, but I didn't want to tell anyone before Isabella."
"Okay. So you came back?"
"I came back. Fortunately, just as I thought I'd never make it back in time, I met up with a trucker named Frank in Reno, and he was driving back to Danville. He gave me a ride all the way back, made sure I got food and was freshly showered and had clean clothes when we got back. I need to find him and thank him."
"So how did everyone take you coming back?"
"Isabella...I don't know. I think she'd been hoping it could all be back the way it was, and then I showed up, and it couldn't. She's...less angry now. Becky's still getting used to me, but we're making progress.
"My brother gave me a hug and welcomed me back to the company. My sister yelled at me and cried. My mother...well, after what my biological father did, having me show up again was, like, the sun coming out after a year of darkness. My father was mostly supporting my mother.
"Isabella's mother still wishes I'd never come back, to be honest."
Corinne nodded, and pointed her pencil into her notepad. "You mentioned your biological father. What happened there?"
"My mother was a pop star, a one-hit wonder. Lindana - you might have heard of her?"
Corinne's eyes lit up. "Oh, God. I loved that song."
Phineas grinned briefly before sobering up again. "So on her way down from fame, she met up with this guy, Tim Patrick. She got pregnant, but they didn't get married. That was my sister, Candace. And then...well, he was out of town a lot for work, but a few years later, along I came. And then he lost his job. I was about six months old, and he went out for a walk...and never came back. She got a letter from him a week later, surrendering any custody claims, and saying he was gone."
"And he never returned?"
"Never. We have no idea what happened to him. My sister looked into it a bit, but didn't get anywhere. A couple years after he left, Mom met Lawrence - my father. Stepfather, I suppose, but he's always been my father, and his son has always been my brother."
"So your family was worried you'd taken after Tim?"
"Yes. Mom said seeing me again was the biggest relief she'd had in her life."
Corinne sat back in her chair, flipping through her notes. "Okay. My professional guess on what happened, based on what you've said, is that you had a mental breakdown due to stress and lack of sleep. Basically, deprived of sleep, your brain stopped working normally and instead went into...well, fight-or-flight mode, more or less. Then, when you finally slept, you started coming out of it, but were still running scared, so you couldn't rationally realize that going back then was your best solution. By the time you were fully functional again, it had been long enough that the fear was ingrained.
"It took something stronger than the fear - your love for your family - to break through and bring you back. Did you doubt you were doing the right thing on the way back?"
"No. I was afraid of what would happen, but...I knew I had to do it."
Corinne pushed up her glasses. "I think we should keep working together on this. I think our top priority is making sure you never get to that level again, so if you go even one night without sleeping, I want you to call me. Okay?"
Phineas nodded.
"Beyond that, I want to try to give you coping strategies so that if this does happen again - and, let me say, in my professional opinion I consider it unlikely - you recover faster and can come home faster."
"Thank you. Making sure this doesn't happen again is all I want."
"It would be easier if you had somebody keeping an eye on you, as well. Would that be something that Isabella could do?"
"No, but my brother can. I wouldn't want to impose something like that on Isabella. It's not like we're going to be involved with each other except through Becky."
"You think the relationship was damaged beyond repair?"
"Even if it wasn't, I don't think I deserve its repair."
Corinne looked at him for a long moment, then wrote something down.
