| Primary Characters: | Dr Rosen, original character |
| Rating: | MA |
| Spoilers: | Yes, both seasons. |
| Warning: | m/m sex, sex with minor, adult topics |
| Description: | Dr Rosen has a session with his own therapist. He has to talk about Dani, but soon he finds himself remembering his own past. |
”You did what you did to me, now it’s history I see…
Things will happen while they can, I will wait here for my man tonight…”
Lee Rosen stood for a while unseeing in the hallway outside the door to his therapist’s office. Even when he came to, he felt reluctant to enter, though he knew that it was part of his job to keep in close contact with his own psychiatrist. He wanted to be working, to find the man who had killed his daughter, not sit around like a patient. But he knew that if he didn’t show up, things would only get worse. He might even be suspended. His own work depended on his own psychological well-being, so there really was no choice.
He raised his hand and knocked. Better get it over with. The sooner he was out of here, the sooner he could get back to work.
”Come in.”
Dr Samuel Ismail was sitting in his chair behind his desk, as usual. He smiled and nodded in greeting. Rosen began to relax slightly. He wouldn’t have kept coming here for over seven years if he hadn’t had some sort of faith in the man’s work.
”Hello, Lee. I’m sorry about the circumstances, but you know the drill.”
”Yes, I do. Hello, Sam. Well, let’s get it over with then.”
”How do you feel? Honestly?”
”How do you think? Honestly.”
”Fair enough, but you have to do better than that.”
”Alright. I feel devastated, but that’s just stating the obvious. Lost. Part of me wants to give up and die.”
”I’m really sorry about that, Lee. But we have to talk about this. About Dani. We don’t have to start with her death, we can start further back. Anywhere you like.”
Rosen considered. It was extremely painful to even hear his daughter’s name mentioned, let alone dive down into his rich collection of memories connected to her. He shied away from touching on any of them, knowing that if he started, he would most likely break down and he’d be here all day and all night too. Sam wouldn’t let him go until he felt they’d had some sort of closure to the session. As a colleague he understood and knew that it had to be that way. If he didn’t ‘pass’ he wouldn’t be allowed to continue working until he could function again, if ever.
”Could you ask questions? To get me started. It’s – so hard.”
”I can understand that, Lee. Well, once you told me that Dani had a drug problem. That she was on the street for a few years. Could we start there?”
Rosen sighed. So like Sam to pick one of the two or three most painful moments in Dani’s life. Maybe it would have been better to choose for himself. The early memories were happy. He thought he could just about bear to go into them.
”Very well. Yes, it’s perfectly true. I found her and tried to bring her back a number of times.”
”In what condition was she?”
Rosen rubbed his eyes. This shock tactic was probably working out well for Sam. He might even use it himself under certain circumstances, but at the moment he would have loved to be treated more gently.
”Bad. What do you think? She was skinny, her arms full of needle marks. When I looked into her eyes, it wasn’t Dani. I mean, she was, but then again she wasn’t, if that makes sense.”
Sam nodded encouragingly.
”How did that make you feel?”
Despite their shared professional background, Rosen began to feel the first stirrings of anger. Sam could have taken it easy on him, this first time.
”To repeat myself yet again: how do you think? How the hell do you think it made me feel?”
Sam kept quiet and waited. Rosen’s anger died almost as quickly as it had appeared. He might as well do his best. It wasn’t just a wish to get back to work. Deep down he knew that this would – eventually – make him feel a little better, impossible as it seemed at the moment.
”I – hated it. Knowing what she was going through, night after night. Not knowing who would come and pick her up.”
”Pick her up?”
”I – told you that she was a prostitute, didn’t I?”
”Go on.”
”Not knowing what tricks would show up that night. How dangerous they might be. And – what he would demand of you. It could be simple, nothing much to it. Or – it could be not only humiliating, but incredibly painful too. Physically, I mean. Emotionally – how long it took to – take possession of your own body. To be yourself again. What you might not understand is that they take away your – identity. How you turn into something else while it lasts and for a long time afterwards too. An object, not a human being. Then back to your usual spot to wait for the next one. You need at least three or four per night, preferably more, to get by.”
”So Dani told you a lot about all that?”
Rosen’s eyes kept staring back in time, and was he was only half listening to Sam. With an effort he recalled himself to the present. A question. He’d been asked a question.
”No, we never discussed it afterwards.”
For a while, silence reigned, while Sam digested Rosen’s reply. It was at least two or three minutes until the next question. This time Sam’s voice held a slightly different note.
”Then how did you know how she felt? What she was going through?”
Again, a deep silence fell over the office. All you could hear was the sound of traffic from the street outside. Rosen realized that he’d fallen into the trap Sam had so skillfully set. Maybe this session was never meant to be about Dani at all. He glanced over at Sam, as if to say, you got me there. Then he shrugged. They might as well talk about this as anything else, but then again, he really didn’t want to. It wasn’t fair.
”I see. I gave myself away there. Very well done. How clever of you. All that was a very long time. In the 70’s.”
”Tell me more.”
”I’d rather not. It’s got nothing to do with – any of this.”
”Maybe not, but it’s all the more to do with you and how you’re feeling, so please try. You know how it works.”
Rosen sighed. He didn’t say anything for so long, Sam began to gently prod him again.
”Lee?”
”I’ve never told anyone about this.”
There was another long drawn out pause, so Sam tried again.
”How did it happen?”
”What? Oh. When my father died, I got a stepfather. To begin with, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary about him. He was working most of the time, like men did in those days – as we still do, I guess. I missed much of Dani growing up and maybe that was why – but I digress.
He was rarely home. Then my mother became sick, seriously ill, so sick that even to a teenager, like me, it was obvious she wasn’t going to make it. It was important to me that she didn’t worry about me, so I probably exaggerated how well I was doing at home with my stepfather, so she wouldn’t have that on her mind, the last couple of weeks of her life.
That wasn’t quite the way it turned out. It didn’t take my stepfather long to come into my room at night.”
Again, there was a long moment of silence, only interrupted by the sounds of elevators going up and down and the occasional raised voice further down the corridor and of course the traffic noises coming through the windows. You could even hear the soft swishing of the air conditioning.
Sam tried again to encourage Rosen to go on.
”Yes?”
”I’m sure you can guess what he did.”
”Probably, but try to put it into your own words.”
”Oh. Well, ok. He got into bed with me and – raped me.”
Rosen’s voice faded and again, Sam felt it necessary to push a little.
”Go on.”
”It happened maybe three times before my mother passed away and we had the funeral. That’s when I took off. Packed a few things into my backpack and left. Of course I was under eighteen and didn’t have my high school diploma, so I couldn’t get any jobs. I might have been able to deal drugs, but I didn’t know anyone who could get me started.
But there were potential tricks everywhere. Men who took an interest. It – got me in trouble sometimes with some of the other boys who didn’t like the competition. And of course, some of the tricks beat me up once in a while. But there were tricks enough for everyone. There was an unlimited demand, you might say. You’d be surprised at who you could run into out there. Cops, priests, teachers and married men with children. Sick bastards. Not just because they were after minors, but because of what they did to us. They tied us up. One of them hung me up upside down and – you don’t need to know all the details. I think that’s when I became interested in becoming a shrink.”
Rosen shook his head. This at least was a sidetrack.
”So I learned. Found the right sort of clothes and learned to show myself off, not go along with the worst of them and picked up the trade, as it were. To begin with I didn’t know anything. How to -”
Rosen laughed dryly. There wasn’t a trace of humor in his laughter.
”I knew how to – satisfy myself, so I had the basics of course. But most of them wanted more. A lot more. And no simply didn’t exist. I might be able to refuse to go along a few times, but not too many. If you did, no one would want to pick you up anymore. So all I could do was get used to it. You never forget.”
That last part came out more quietly, as if he was talking to himself.
”So I’m sure you can understand how it felt to know that my little girl, my baby, had been forced to do exactly the same things I had. I would have done anything in my power to protect her from that, but I couldn’t. I failed as a father.”
”How did you get out?”
”I actually had a bit of luck there. After I turned eighteen I happened to run into some social workers who were helping homeless kids, drug addicts and prostitutes. They helped me get back to school, to finish high school. Since I turned out to have a head for studies -”
”Did you do drugs yourself?”
”That depends on how you define ‘doing drugs’. I wasn’t like Dani, if that’s what you mean. Of course we smoked pot when we could get it and sometimes we popped some pills. You can’t have any idea of how it was. The fear. The humiliation. Sometimes hunger and cold. The drugs were a windfall. Some tricks brought their own drugs and we did it together. Once I tried LSD, for instance, but it didn’t agree with me. I woke up maybe hours later, in the gutter, with most of my clothes gone. I always suspected it wasn’t just that particular trick who had had a go, it was several others. And the money was gone, if he ever bothered paying me. Not just for that ‘date’ but for the entire evening. I think even my shoes were gone.
It was lucky for us that AIDS wasn’t even on the map back then, as far as we knew. This was before it was even the ‘gay plague’. Sure we could get – other things, but there were free clinics. Antibiotics. I was lucky though. I only got sick once, and that was just – never you mind. It was curable. Though after I went to med school – I found out that there was a lot more I could have caught. AIDS too. Since no one knew what it was or how it spread.”
Rosen laughed bitterly.
”If anyone on my team found out about this -”
”You know nothing I hear will leave this room.”
”Of course I know that. Do you think I would have dared to tell you all this otherwise? My ex knows I was homeless for a while and a runaway, but I’ve never dared to tell her all about it. She can probably guess, but she’s from a completely different background – and she’s never said anything.”
”No one will find out, Lee. You don’t need to concern yourself with that.”
Rosen went on as if he hadn’t heard his therapist.
”Bill – well, I think you can guess what he would think about it. Clay, Cameron – the same. Gary – wouldn’t even understand what this was about. And the women – well, you know how young Rachel is. Maybe Nina – who knows? But I prefer to remain the way I am in their eyes. The wise old man with all the answers. If only they knew.”
He sighed.
”But all that was a very long time ago. And I got away. Got out of it myself, with just a little help from those social workers. All I needed was a chance.”
”And Dani never knew?”
Rosen shivered.
”I certainly hope not. I never said anything. My wife would never have said anything either.”
”But you don’t think Dani was unusually understanding?”
”I don’t know, but I doubt it. You never think about this sort of thing in connection with your parents. Or what do you think? Would you be able to imagine something like that about your parents? I wouldn’t.”
”Exactly. You’re right. Thanks, Lee. I think this will do for now. But get in touch if you need to talk. Don’t forget that what happened to Dani earlier or now wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it. And you know that the same thing goes for what happened to you all those years ago. It was your stepfather’s fault, not yours. Whatever adults do to children is their fault, not the children’s.”
”Sure. But that doesn’t help me now. I couldn’t save Dani -”
”Lee -”
”Yes, yes.”
”If you need more time -”
”No, this is enough. I have to get back to work.”
He had to pull himself back together. If he wanted to do what little there was still to be done to get Dani justice, he would have to get a grip. Focus. There was time enough to dwell on all the painful memories later. This was more than enough for now. He couldn’t take any more reminiscing. Besides, his team was waiting for him.
”Good. I’ll let you know about your next appointment. And remember – get in touch if you need me. Any time. I mean it. Under these circumstances I would be justified in suspending you, but I’m going to give you a chance to – finish this. That could change if I get any hint of you not being able to cope. I’m taking a chance on you, Lee. Don’t let me down.”
”I won’t, Sam. I promise. I can handle this. What sort of psychiatrist would I be if I couldn’t put my own personal life behind me and focus on my work?”
”A human one?”
Rosen nodded, his mind already on the next phase of their investigation. The man who had killed his little girl wouldn’t get away. They’d find him and – Dani would have her justice.
FIN
© Tonica