~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ch18, I Present, Dr. Rachel Swen
The doctor stood outside the door. Her long, loosely curled, light blonde hair was blowing around her face as she waited. She'd cancelled many important appointments to see Jane and to help Maura who was feeling very upset at all that had happened. The doctor intended to guide Jane back to confidence in her memory as well as confidence in Maura. The truth of it all was that with Jane's memory returning as it already had, her only real mission was to assess Jane's current emotional condition and give her the tools to manage her ailment. She would help Jane to understand what had happened to her. Lastly, she felt the need to help her know that Maura's actions were from the purest form of love.
Jane stood at the knock, knowing it was finally time, she steadily made her way to open the door. She looked down at her clothing, regretting not dressing for the doctor's arrival. She smoothed the wrinkles in her cotton t-shirt. In the hour since her uncharacteristically emotional and brutal verbal assault of Maura, Jane had come down and concluded she really needed help. She needed to understand to get past what had happened to her. She needed to never talk to Maura like she just did, ever again. Jane opened the door.
"Hi." She awkwardly held the door open, Jane wasn't feeling talkative. The stranger standing before her was about to know more about Jane than she really felt comfortable revealing, but knowing she must, Jane felt nervous. So much was on her mind about the way she'd behaved toward Maura, her mixed up memories and what all that's happened meant. She was additionally concerned as to why her emotions and behavior seemed so much out of her control. She reached her hand up and pushed it through her hair. Jane let her eyes walk up from the ground to stop at the doctor's face. Dr. Swen's incredibly blue eyes coupled with the near platinum blonde hair made Jane wonder if the woman was a model as well as a doctor.
"Hi." Grinning widely with her stunningly perfect teeth, and dimples that made her look young, the tiny, forty-ish woman standing outside responded to Jane. "I'm Dr. Rachel Swen, Maura's friend. You must be Jane. I am so glad to finally meet you." She tilted her shoulder to push her bag back as she offered her hand to Jane.
Jane pulled her hand back down from her hair and timidly reached forward to shake the doctor's still gloved hand, "I am Jane, in the flesh. Maura said you'd be here today." She continued to look into the doctor's eyes. The delicately featured doctor was still standing outside in the cold. Jane snapped from a brief trance and offered, "Please, come in. May I help you carry your bags?"
"No, thank you, I only have this one, I'll just be here til the afternoon today." The doctor kept her smile as she stepped into the space Jane made by moving away from the door. She began to remove her scarf as she entered. She admired Jane's striking, handsome features. Dr. Swen knew instantly why Maura was so smitten. Once inside the cottage, she looked around to see the coffee tin on the counter, Jane's tossed papers on the floor and the blanket on the couch. Jane's hair was wild and her eyes were hesitant. Dr. Swen wanted to put Jane at ease right away to start the relationship properly.
As she removed her white cashmere gloves, she started with small talk, "I love this cottage. I hope you've enjoyed your time here. I always find it to be a special escape from the helter-skelter life in the city." Dr. Swen observed Jane who still appeared skittish.
Jane turned her head toward the big window, "Yeah, its nice to be around the waves of the ocean. I've always liked that." Jane's pounding heart began to relax. She could hear in her mind Maura telling her to be polite. Not that Jane needed guidance, beautiful women always brought out the best in Jane. And Dr. Rachel Swen was instantly among the most beautiful women Jane had ever seen. "Dr. Swen, would you like to sit? May I bring you something to drink?"
"Yes, Jane, I might like some water. Do you mind if we talk here? The cabin is small and we don't have many options. Would you prefer to wait for Maura?" The doctor sat on the living room couch and removed her thick woolen jacket and held it on her lap. She waited for Jane's response.
"Maura is in the back, I'll let her know you're here." Jane knew Maura was upset. She felt awful for saying all she'd said. It was something she couldn't stop. "Doctor Swen? Do you mind if we talk a bit before I tell Maura you've arrived?"
"Of course, Jane. I'd like to speak with you alone for a bit, too. What is it?" The doctor had already been filled in before her arrival. She already knew that Jane was upset with Maura as Maura had painfully repeated Jane's words to the doctor on the phone before she arrived. The doctor had a plan and that plan started with working with Jane first about the memory loss, then she intended to help Jane to forgive Maura.
Jane brought the water and handed it to the doctor. Jane started to sit at her usual spot on the opposite end of the couch from the doctor, but opted instead to sit on the chair and brought her blanket to cover her legs after she sat. She was apprehensive but knew she needed this doctor's help. The distance the chair offered gave Jane a little less anxiety. Jane looked at Dr. Swen, trying to put into words all that she was feeling.
The doctor waited a moment too, "Jane, did you have something you wanted to talk about before we bring Maura out?" Dr. Swen wanted Jane to lead the discussion, to be the one in control of the conversation. Jane needed to be put at ease so she'd be more accepting of what the doctor might suggest to her later on.
Jane leaned back and scrubbed her face with her hands before looking again at the doctor. "I know I lost my memory and and I know I believed Maura was my wife." Jane wiggled in her seat and tucked the blanket around her legs. She wanted a shield. "I know that's not true now. I just don't get why Maura had to lie to me. Why didn't she just tell me?" Jane nervously raised her voice as she imparted that last question.
"Jane, can you tell me how you are feeling? Right now, what do you feel?"
"About Maura?" Jane's focus was on the woman she'd hurt so terribly that morning.
"Yes, we can talk about Maura, but right now, I want you to tell me how you feel about your memory loss. What are you experiencing right now? Later on, I'd like you to take me through what you remember before and about Maura, but right now, I want to know how you're feeling and I want you to tell me what you know is real today."
Jane felt like a bottle of pop that had been shaken and the top was about to be removed. She was almost afraid to even start talking about what she was feeling because once she started going, she wasn't sure what was even gonna come out of her mouth. The doctor sensed Jane's hesitation.
"Jane, I understand that when you were knocked unconscious, your brain took a turn and created a world where you believed you and were already married. Do I have this right?"
Jane nodded in the affirmative.
Dr Swen sat up straight and leaned forward toward Jane, keeping eye contact as she spoke, "What you've experienced is a condition called Dissociative Amnesia. It is more common than you might think. You are lucky that your memory has restored itself in a little over two weeks. Some people who experience this type of memory disturbance take months or more to regain their normal memory." Dr. Swen didn't want to overload Jane with medical talk. "Tell me what you're thinking and feeling this morning."
Jane started with the most prominent feelings she felt at that moment. "I feel like I'm not in charge anymore of my own head. That I can't trust my own thoughts. I feel like nothing is solid. Is this what it is to be crazy? If my mind can make up stuff that isn't even real, then how do I even know what is real?" Jane was again raising her voice. She took a breath to compose herself. "I'm feeling terrified that I can't keep my temper any more and I cry, like all the time." She shook her head and covered her eyes with her hands. "I said some terrible things to Maura earlier and I wish I hadn't." Dropping her hands to rest on the blanket, she opened her eyes and frowned back at the doctor. She begged. "I need to know why Maura brought me here and why she," Jane found the topic difficult, "I need to know if Maura did what she did because she loves me for real or if she did it because she was trying to cure me or something from my memory loss. I don't even know what I'm saying." Frustrated, Jane looked away again and studied the fabric of the carpet in the living room to avoid eye contact with the doctor. "Why would she let me keep believing we were married? I feel humiliated. Embarrassed. Like an experiment."
Dr. Swen was surprised at Jane's candor given the discussions with Maura about Jane's tendency to keep her emotions shielded. She decided that Jane's recent emotional changes could be used to her advantage to get to the bottom of what Jane was experiencing at the moment.
"What else, Jane? What else do you feel right now?" The doctor let the silence fill the room to let Jane feel compelled to replace it. She was well-practiced in eliciting feelings from her patients.
After a moment, Jane couldn't help but fill all the empty space with her feelings. She didn't even recognize one of her own very effective interrogation techniques being used on her, "I feel angry and betrayed. I feel like I've been made a fool." Jane gripped the edge of that blanket covering her legs. "I don't understand." Jane's eyes went immediately back to studying the carpet again. "Why couldn't Maura just tell me?"
The doctor hoped to keep the discussion of Maura separate, but Jane was fixated. To Dr. Swen, this question 'why couldn't Maura just tell me?' was a notable revelation. She decided to change her tactics. It seemed now to the doctor, all of this hinged on Maura and what Jane feels toward her.
"Jane, what do you remember before you were knocked out? Now that you've had a few days to process since your memory began to return, and according to Maura, to be majorly intact, what do you remember leading up to the attack?"
"I was chasing a perp. I don't know what you mean."
"I just want to baseline what you were feeling before all this, to understand your frame of mind in the days leading to your head injury, in particular as it relates to Maura."
As much as Jane hated to reveal the private fantasy life she'd been living for the past few years, this was probably the only and best person to talk with. Jane decided to may have to let her deepest, darkest secret out into the universe if she had any hope of reclaiming what was left of her life.
"Dr. Swen, I'm a real mess." Jane pulled her legs up onto the chair under the blanket. "I feel like a freak even telling you this, but I don't even know what I'm doing anymore."
After a pause, "What is it, Jane? What makes you think you feel you're a mess?" The doctor leaned back and made herself less intimidating to Jane by relaxing against the back of the couch as she waited for Jane to explain.
"A few years ago, I started to develop feelings for Maura." Jane shook her head, she couldn't even believe she just said that outloud. "She did something to me. I don't even know, she just walks into a room and makes everything brighter." Again, Jane looked at the carpet. She bit her lip, closed her eyes and shook her head again before she went on, "It's like when I first met her, I felt this connection, like we were meant to be." She pushed her legs back off the chair and put her feet on the floor, she needed to feel a bit more grounded. "Look, I know, she's straight. Well, I thought she was straight. I don't even know…"
The doctor took a drink of the water. Jane was surprisingly open. She let Jane continue without interrupting.
"It's just crazy. So I had this crush, thing, whatever. But the more time I spent with her, the stronger the crush became and I knew that I'd never have a chance to love her or well, that there would ever be a chance that she'd love me back so…" Jane took a breath to pause. Maybe she wasn't ready to tell all this. "This was all years ago, maybe it isn't even anything…" Jane was having a tough time getting it all out. "Doctor Swen, do you mind if I take a break for a bit. I feel like I've said too much already. I don't even know what's right in my head anyway."
The doctor knew to push, "Jane, this is going to be difficult for you regardless of whether we do this now or later. For me to make an assessment and recommendation to you, it's best you try to be as honest with me now as you can." Momentum was hers and she needed Jane to keep talking. "Jane, so you believed Maura could not love you back. How did you respond to that at the time?"
"I hid what I felt, what I feel. I couldn't risk losing her as my friend." Jane exhaled with a forceful puff of air. She winced at the pinching in her rib. She thought she might need her pain medicine, but Maura was in that room. She wasn't ready to face what she'd done to Maura.
The doctor noticed the wince and assumed the rib injury was still painful. "Jane, why would you think Maura would stop being your friend if you told her how you felt?"
Jane looked at her with a contorted face. She thought, only a straight woman would ask that question. "Maura dated men. Maura dates men. I'd never seen her with a woman. She never hinted that she'd date a woman…" Jane's voice trailed off, she did remember Maura suggesting something about a woman on a tv show that she found attractive. And there were the past two weeks that Maura and she shared a bed and more. She shook it off. "Maybe she's not completely straight, but at the time, I assumed she'd never look at me the same way again if I confessed my feelings."
"I understand. Your feelings were strong enough that you were afraid of rejection in addition to losing Maura as your friend." The doctor was pulling this from Jane so Jane could see it all for herself, the feelings, where they came from, how she dealt with them.
"Yes, that's it exactly." Jane started to loosen up a bit with the doctor. This pretty blonde doctor seemed to get it.
"Have you always liked women?" The doctor started to press a bit, to open the door to more.
Jane turned her face directly toward the doctor. "Seriously?"
The doctor raised her eyebrows and nodded her head to Jane. "Yes Jane. Is Maura the only woman you've fallen for?"
Jane paused, another secret of her was about to come out. "Well, no, I've dated women all my life. I've never felt as strongly for any of them. I keep that part of my life private. No one at work knows who I date." She felt that was a partial truth, so in an effort to keep it all on the table, she corrected, "I have been known to date a man from time to time, it keeps the chatter down."
"Chatter?"
"You know, the talk at the station that I 'might' like women. I really hate that people can assume anything."
"So you believe people at the station think you might be a lesbian and you don't like that."
"Yes, who would? I've been teased nearly my whole life. I don't wanna offer up any more ammunition."
"Do you think your concern about being 'outed' at work may have played a part in why you never revealed your feelings for Maura to her?" The doctor held eye contact. This was an important question.
Jane pushed her eyebrows together and initially felt offended, but after she thought for a moment, she did wonder if that played a part. "Do you think I blew it with the only person I've ever truly loved because I'm a chicken?" She lifted her legs back up to the chair and curled them in tightly under the blanket. "Damnit. I'm such an idiot."
"Jane, you are not a chicken, nor are you an idiot. Far from it, you are a woman who fell in love." The doctor looked toward the back of the cottage, toward the bedroom and back again. "You fell in love with your best friend. That happens and can be awkward and frightening. You also happen to have fallen for a co-worker. Also awkward and potentially not in alignment with work policy. You are completely in order being concerned and hesitating to not reveal your feelings given either one of these facts." The doctor stood up and walked over to the window. The sky was still heavily overcast and the waves were foaming. She turned to face the desperately in love confused woman. "Jane, you said earlier that you thought Maura couldn't love you back. Regardless of how you felt about dating someone at your work and letting everyone have the satisfaction to know you date women, how did the idea of Maura potentially not returning your feelings affect you?" The doctor was leading Jane directly to the key to everything. She was known around the world for a reason, she was very good.
That question hit Jane right in the heart. "I.." Jane stuttered. "I internalized everything. Not that I don't do that every day, but this was different. I still spent time with Maura. Wanted to spend time with Maura. It ached so much to be near her, but I couldn't help myself. I had to be near her, whether she'd ever love me back or not. And basically, I just gave in to the idea that she never could. In any case, protecting her became really important. Ridding the city of criminals was the best I could do so noone could hurt her. I intended to work so hard the entire department would become redundant. I just pushed any hope of love for anyone aside and dug deeper into my work." Jane still hadn't revealed the deepest secret to the doctor. She still held that card close to her chest, the one describing the intricate fantasy world she'd created in her mind. Her escape. Her refuge. Her fantastically impossible dream.
"Doctor Swen, this is the part that sounds the most crazy. I started to.." The sound of the bedroom door opening halted the conversation. Both women instantly turned to the source of the sound. Maura was awake.