Page 8 of Dark Ugly Places

Dr. Constance’s eyes manufacture a look of studied empathy. “You want to help your daughter. That is normal. Perhaps you think that by helping her, you can help yourself, too.”

A lot of the things she says are like this. They mean something in here and sound really good. Profound even. But when I repeat them to myself later, it’s like all the meaning has been wrung out. The words fragment and sputter lifelessly, just empty puffs of air.

She braces her hands under her chin and appears momentarily fraught with careful concern. Outside, a siren blares and grows louder, then fades. She waits for it to pass.

“You don’t look well, Nicola,” she says carefully. “What’s happening with your claim?”

I shrug. “I need to ask Steve. I don’t think they have anything yet on the driver.”

Constance shakes her head. “Not the hit and run, Nicola. I mean your personal injury claim. You and Emmy.”

I shift uncomfortably in my seat, the same sinking feeling forming in my middle. I know she’s right, of course, and we’ve covered this a lot over the last six months. I am supposed to “let go” of the hit and run. I am supposed to move past it in order to focus on my and Emmy’s healing. I am supposed to be grateful that we had uninsured motorist coverage in our policy that could pay out, since the driver fled the scene and was never found.

The police seem to have stopped searching. Since Steve, my attorney, works on contingency, no one can be held accountable, and therefore, he can’t get paid. It’s a vicious trap of the legal system. No culpable party to bear the weight of the wrongful death in the eyes of the law, and therefore, no resolution for the victims beyond a few paltry physical therapy visits and appointments with lien doctors like Dr. Constance. If this were before, I would have hired an attorney to sue someone, anyone. The city of Beverly Hills, maybe. But these days, I don’t have the money. So, I’m left to try and convince Steve to take the suit forward on contingency, which means doing a ton of legal work without a guarantee he’ll ever get a payout. As of yet, no such luck.

Constance leans forward and lets her hand fall across the table to me. She pats its surface as if she’s patting me, but we never touch. “What about your treatments?”

She means the series of trigger point injections meant to help with the pain, combined with the nerve blocker meds I stopped taking after the first day when I fell asleep at my desk and woke up shivering violently with Nubia standing over me, a hotel blanket on my shoulders. “Almost finished,” I tell her.

“Will you do another round of physical therapy?”

“I don’t think I can.” A light flashes in the corner of my eye from a passing bus down below. The brakes seize and squeal, and my stomach knots with bile.

“As soon as you finish your treatment, you let us know.” She glances up at me as she scribbles a note.

“Right. I will.”

It seems like a small detail, but the truth is, we can’t move forward with our personal injury claim until we finish treatment. And Dr. Constance, just like all the other lien doctors, won’t get paid from the insurance company until we do.

“And how are the panic attacks?”

I pause to think for a moment. What I really want to tell her is that it’s always there, the PTSD, the panic brimming beneath the surface, waiting to come spewing forth. But I don’t. The hum of the air conditioner for a moment is the only sound in the room.

“Let me ask it another way,” she adds, sensing my unease. “Have you had a panic attack lately?”

Yes. I don’t know. Maybe? A full-blown attack is what she’s looking for, the kind where my heart explodes in my chest, where my entire body falls slack, where I cannot move or speak.

“No, I haven’t,” I tell her.

“Good, that’s very good.” She seems pleased now and leans back in her chair. I can tell where she’s going before she asks it. It always ends up here. My PTSD isn’t new, she tells me, but it has reignited thanks to the unlucky turn of events that killed my husband and changed my family forever. It’s been around for a while, in fact. Since I was a child.

“So tell me, Nicola. How are your emotions? Are you still angry at the man who hit you?”

I flinch. My dead leg sticks to the cool plastic of the chair. I unstick it with my hand and feel the underside of my moist thigh.

How to answer?

She flips open the manila folder, puts on her glasses, and scans several pages with the tip of her index finger. “Here,” she says, trying to jog my memory. “You said that you saw someone’s shoe come out of the driver’s side door and step out. I asked you what kind of shoe, and you said, ‘A black polished shoe. Like a man’s shoe.’ You say you did not see his face, but you felt very angry, vengeful even.”

“I said that?” I rack my brain, but I have zero recollection of telling her how I felt that day, even though it’s clear I must have.

I recall the visual again now, the expensive look of it, black and too polished against the asphalt-colored ground. The encounter with Jason Redfern flashes into my mind before my brain returns to the same thought.

Should you tell her?

Should you?

Should you?