John Ross and Pamela, S1 E8 – Revelations

John Ross drank another sip of coffee and looked at a sleeping Pamela. The sedative she'd been given caused her to sleep thru the morning. But now he had to wake her. The psychiatrist's office had given her an appointment for one o'clock.

He prepared himself for the worst. He sat on the side of the bed and took her hand, rubbing it gently. "Baby."

Pamela opened her eyes.

"Pamela, honey. Can you get dressed? I made an appointment for you to see a psychiatrist."

"Uh-uh. No. No more psychiatrist." She sat up hastily.

"Please, baby. We need help."

She looked at him. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid of everything now."

"Baby, I'm going with you. I promise to never leave your side."

They got to the doctor's office, and even the fifteen minutes in the waiting room seemed like an eternity. Pamela wouldn't let go of his arm.

Pamela had refused to eat anything, saying, "I'll get something later at Mama's." John Ross took note of the fact that she was willing to eat Mama's food, while the hotel food didn't appeal to her. Maybe he could start sending out for food from there. He had no doubt as to the healing effects of Mama's food. Perhaps it even had aphrodisiac effects. Flashes of last night's sweet moments kept resurfacing for him. He used them to calm his nerves.

A thirty-something woman came out of her office to greet them. "Hello, I'm Dr. Emanuele. You can call me Gina, if you like. I've cleared my afternoon for you. Come right in."

They sat on a couch across from the doctor. Pamela held his hand very tightly and wouldn't talk. In fact, she didn't make a lot of eye contact with the doctor.

John Ross took the lead. "My wife, as far as I can understand, is very afraid. She suffered a serious panic attack last night—"

"What was happening at the moment she suffered the attack, what triggered it?"

Again, Pamela volunteered nothing, so he had to go forward. "We had just made love."

"Anything unusual in that?" the doctor probed.

"It was the first time we'd been able to. You see, my wife suffered a breakdown…" he swallowed hard, "after an attempted suicide…she's was in an institution, a psychiatric clinic for three months and has been out for about a month.

"And her doctor let her travel like this?"

John Ross was beginning to feel the magnitude of his ill advised removal of Pamela from her psychiatrist's care. "No. He…he didn't. We…I didn't ask him. I…we just thought we had to escape…from the pressures back home. Dr. Macnamara wouldn't have agreed—"

At that moment Pamela got up abruptly, and started pacing the office, saying "Ahhh…No, no, no. I don't want to go there. I can't take this." She repeated these expressions over and over, getting more agitated by the moment.

The doctor immediately got up and went to her. "Pamela, are you feeling scared right now? Tell me."

"Yes, yes, yes."

John Ross intervened, "She can't handle the whole thing about the suicide, Doc. Only under hypnosis. That's what the Doc was doing with her. Hypnosis."

"J-John Ross. Where are you?"

"I'm here baby. I'm right here."

"Pamela, listen to me," the doctor took one of her hands and walked with her. "Listen to the sound of my voice. I'm going to count backwards from 5, and then you're going to relax. Okay?" she looked at John Ross, on the other side of her and said, "Be ready to catch her. Now, Pamela. Five…four…three…two…one."

Pamela collapsed like a rag doll in his arms.

"Put her on the couch here, next to you. Let's talk to her, see what's causing such fear."

"I can tell you what she's afraid of." He said, the sadness squeezing his heart. "Me."

"Pamela. Tell me what you feel." The doctor went directly to the point.

"Don't let him come in here," she said, and John Ross flinched.

"Allright, we can send John Ross out. Is that what you want?"

"No, I want John Ross to stay."

"Okay, he's right next to you. He can hold your hand if you want him to," she motioned for him to do so.

"Now, Pamela. Tell us who you don't want to come in."

"The do—the do—the doctor."

"What doctor?"

"Do—do—he wants me to call him Stan."

"Is this Doctor Stan Macnamara?" She scribbled quick notes.

"Yes"

"Are you afraid of him?"

"Yes."

"Pamela. You won't feel any fear now, of Dr. Macnamara. But tell us why you don't want him in here."

"Because he makes me do things I don't want to do."

"What things? Can you tell me what?"

Her voice shrunk into a wail. "He makes me have sex with him."

John Ross received a jolt so strong he jumped up from the couch. He grabbed his chest with one hand and held onto the doctor's desk with the other. He thought he would pass out.

"Calm yourself," the doctor whispered. "I know this is hard, but you have to."

She went back to questioning Pamela, taking note of the details of the doctor's sexual abuse. The graphic descriptions nearly caused John Ross to retch. Finally, the doctor said. "Pamela, you will never have to go back to Dr. Macnamara again. He will not come near you. You don't have to be afraid of him anymore. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Now, listen to me. You are going to come out of the hypnosis now, when I count backwards from five you will not remember what we talked about, but you will feel at peace. You are just going to sleep for a while, okay? And when you wake up you will feel refreshed."

She brought her back out. "Excuse me a moment, John Ross."

When she came back into the room she brought an assistant. "John Ross, Pipa is going to sit with Pamela while you and I go into the other office. Just slide her body down so she can sleep comfortably. There. Follow me now."

After one last look at his wife, John Ross followed the doctor out into a smaller, more personal office.

He sat on the chair and proceeded to cry his eyes out. The doctor didn't interfere. She gave him a box of tissues at some point and slowly he got himself under control.

"How do you feel?" she asked quietly.

"Like I could kill that doctor with my bare hands," he said.

"That's understandable. It is a crime and a severe breach of medical ethics. We can talk about what needs to be done there. But first, let's talk about you and Pamela."

He was still rubbing his eyes from time to time. The tears just wouldn't stop coming. "Pamela can never know," he said.

"On the contrary, she has to know. Her unconscious mind already knows."

"Doc. After all that she's suffered, this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back."

"John Ross, whatever she has suffered, her mind has found a way to cope. She is still here. That shows she is a strong person. It may be necessary to keep certain things from her and reveal them gradually."

"So, what do I tell her?"

"The truth, as much as possible."

"But Doc…that other son of a bitch doctor said she was too frail to handle the truth. The stuff that caused her to attempt suicide. It was me. My cheating on her.

That's the reason she was under his care, because she took a bunch of pills when she found out I'd cheated on her with her best friend. It's my fault all this has happened to her."

The doctor was thoughtful. "John Ross, I have to tell you that surprises me very much. You seem very much in love with Pamela. What caused you to cheat on her?"

He looked at a loss for words. "I…I've been sleeping around with every piece…every woman in my path, since a young age. It just…just didn't mean anything to me. None of those women ever meant anything to me."

"But Pamela is different."

"Pamela is the love of my life."

"Then why would you risk that? People don't usually risk what's important to them unless they're addicts."

"Well, there you go then. I'm a sex addict."

"Well, that's not so clear. We'll have to explore that too. That will be part of the course of treatment if you want a healthy marriage."

John Ross laughed, sarcastically. "Doc. I'm not looking to get a damn thing out of this for myself. I deserve to rot in the blackest hell for what I've done to that woman out there. I just want her to have a clean slate, so that she can walk away from me and never look back."

The doctor considered this, then said, "John Ross. Apparently, for Pamela, you're not just part of the problem. You're part of the solution too. Happiness, the happiness you want for her, may only exist if you're part of her life. She seems to depend on you."

"Yeah, but that's a false security. Because the moment she remembers what really went down, she's gonna hate me."

"Well, that's a risk we'll have to take. You must have been willing to risk it, otherwise you wouldn't have brought her here."

"Oh, yeah. And I've told her that myself."

"So she knows some of this already?"

"I told her a week ago that I had cheated on her and that's why she tried to commit suicide."

"What was her reaction?"

"She said," he sniffled, "after a week of thinking about it, she told me she could forgive me. Because she loved me." He squeezed the bridge of his nose, to staunch the flow of tears..

"I see, so last night, was a sort of reconciliation." The doctor said, piecing things together.

"To which she had a violent reaction." He added.

"But wait, John Ross, let's not jump to conclusions. I suspect there are more pieces to this puzzle. Listen, I want to help you both. To help Pamela face the trauma and you to understand what drives you to self-destructive behavior."

When they left Dr. Gina's, Pamela wanted to go straight for Mama's place and he didn't protest. He needed to distract her, so she wouldn't ask him questions. Because even though the doctor had advised him to let Pamela know the truth if she asked for it, he didn't know how little or how much he could spill at once. The truth felt like a live grenade in his hand.

Mama Joy was warm and funny, "Well, now. Look at what the cat dragged in again. You didn't get enough of my cooking last night?"

"No, never." Pamela laughed.

"And you, Mr. John Ross."

"I told you, Mama. I follow her," he faked his smile.

Pamela went to the lady's room. Mama said to him, as she prepared their drinks. "You can use a little rum in your juice, can't you?"

"Yes, a very stiff shot."

"Ah-hum. Has the Devil got you sore?"

"I'm presently trying to keep the Devil from drowning me." He said, and he thought he was being sufficiently cryptic.

But it seemed that was exactly the kind of language Mama Joy understood. "Well I got a better cure for that."

"Tell me what it is."

"Redemption work," she said.

At that moment Pamela came back and they both sat at the counter eating two platefuls served up fresh. He didn't get a chance to ask Mama what she meant by "redemption work."

Pamela, who seemed a whole lot lighter than this morning, got to get into the kitchen and chop some herbs and vegetables according to Mama's instructions.

John Ross sat on the steps of the back porch, trying to grapple with what he had learned that morning. Mama Joy came out and as he got up to let her through she said, "Follow me, dear."

"Me?"

"Yes. I'm going to show you something."

She led him back in the yard and stopped in front of a fallow bed. She picked up a shovel stuck in the ground and handed it to him. "Here, turn that ground. And while you do, ask for it."

"For what?" he said.

"For redemption." She patted him on the back. "That's right, ask for it. It'll come. I promise you."

He started then, digging the bed from left to right and back again. He took off his shirt after a while and applied himself, with all the anger and despair that were dogging his mind. How could he ever redeem himself? He could kill the man with his bare hands but it would not erase the fact that it was his fault that she had fallen prey to him in the first place. He stomped that spade into the ground with a savage force, and ripped the spadefuls of earth from the ground to turn them over and pound them back into it. He chopped the clods with the sharp edge and looked at the sky. But he could not ask for it. He was unworthy. He hated himself.

Late at night, when Pamela had fallen asleep, he took his cell phone out on the terrace, to a place where he couldn't be heard. He called his cousin Christopher.

"Hello?"

"Christopher."

"John Ross, what's going on? People are asking about you guys. Pamela's doctor's office is driving Aunt Annie crazy."

"Christopher." John Ross tried again.

"What's the matter? Is everything alright? John Ross talk to me, man."

"It's Pamela."

"What's the matter with Pamela?"

"It's a long, long story." John Ross rubbed his forehead.

"Well, spit it out. I'm here for you, man."

"You can't tell a living soul. Not yet. We're getting the law involved."

This time Christopher didn't interrupt. He just listened. John Ross told him the whole truth, but without embellishment.

"No, man. No. It can't be true. She's been through so much already," Christopher said.

"It's true, man. And it's all my fault for letting that guy near her in the first place."

"You couldn't have known John Ross. It's not your fault. How can you say that?"

When he didn't get an answer he asked, "I'm afraid to ask, man. How's Pamela?"

"She doesn't know. It all came out under hypnosis."

"Oh my God. So you can't tell her? That must be very hard."

"Why do you think I'm calling you? I needed someone to talk to, I'm ready to bust. I want to kill the son of a bitch so bad."

"I got your back, cousin. We'll get him. What do you want me to do?"

"Well, right now the Doc here is reporting him to the psychiatric board in the United States. I don't know what kind of investigation they do. But maybe we can do our own investigation. Quiet like, on the side. Get Bum to start digging."

"All right, I'll do that. Stay strong, John Ross."

John Ross hung up the phone and he looked at the sky, at the stars. He contemplated them a long time but he still couldn't ask for redemption.