"So, how was your week ?" "Fine." "How was yours ?" "It was okay." "How are you feeling about your dad ?" " What ?" " I'd rather talk about you." "Surprise sur-fucking-prise." "I'm just worried that what happened last weekend may have changed our relationship." "We have no relationship." "April" " Tuesday 12 PM" "I've dumped people for less than what you did to me." "Are you thinking of dumping me ?" "I don't know what I'm doing here ?" "Maybe you wanted to convey your anger toward me in person." "Maybe I just wanted to get out of the hospital for a few hours." "Does anybody know that you left ?" "You think I just hopped a fence or something ?" "Call the doctors if you like ;" "you're all such good friends now." "I'm doing fine, so they let me out for a few hours..." "I have to check back in tonight." "I had to tell her." " Why ?" " She's your mother and you were delirious." "You could've waited until I came out of it." " And what if you never came out of it ?" " Then someone would've called her eventually." "You put me down as your emergency contact number." " So ?" " So you empowered me to make a decision on your behalf." "If anything happened to you." "I had a bad fever." "It wasn't like I was in heart failure." "You had 105." "They were packing ice onto you when I arrived." "I talked to the doctors Paul." "I know what happened." "Really ?" "I understand that you're angry with me." "But I didn't make this decision lightly." "And if I had to to it again, I would do exactly the same thing." "Has my insurance covered everything ?" "You don't have to worry about that." "Well, I'm leaving and I'm not coming back, so if I owe you anything, speak now." "April, please don't go." "How could you ?" "It was the one thing - the one thing - that I asked you not to do." "I didn't think it was right to let you lie there alone, on the brink of death." "You really don't understand do you ?" "You don't understand what you were to me." "What did she say ?" "When you called ?" "At first she... she just, she just didn't understand." "She didn't even know you were seeing a therapist." "I asked her to meet me at a coffee shop, so we could discuss it in person." "But she... she refused." "She's paranoid." "I offered to go to her house, she hung up, and I called her back." "I asked her if she'd meet me at the hospital in an hour." "She showed up ?" "Are you surprised ?" "Did you meet her in my room ?" "No." "In the lobby." "How did you recognize each other ?" "She looks just like you." "So you just... walked up to her and said :" ""Hi, I'm Paul Weston," ""your daughter is stage three non-Hodgkins lymphoma and" ""she's dying on the fourth floor."" "I explained to her that you'd come to see me several weeks ago with a diagnosis of lymphoma, and that you'd begun chemotherapy." "What did she say when you said "cancer" ?" "She seemed... stunned." "Did she cry ?" "Was she angry at me ?" "Definitely not." "She hates being the last person to find something out." "She did have a hard time believing you would keep something like this from her." "What did you say to that ?" "I told her she'd have to speak to you." " How long was this conversation ?" " Couple of minutes." "It wasn't me she wanted to see." "She wanted to see you." "I woke up and she was sitting there." "I thought..." "I thought for a moment that..." "I was at home, and that it all been in a bad dream." "I was still a child and..." "I was sick and... my mom was taking care of me." "And I'd never grown up... and I'd never gone to school... and I'd never gotten cancer." "And I closed my eyes, and..." "I guess fell asleep." "When I woke up she was still sitting there." "Glaring at me, i'd gotten sick deliberately." "You broke my heart, worst than Kyle." "I'm sorry." "That was never my intention." "Kyle took me out for coffee last week." "He's been harrassing me." "So I finally went just to shut it up, like" ""I'm still alive, I'm in chemo." ""Just leave me alone."" "And, he just seemed so young to me." "Like a baby." "I was thinking :" ""I don't want a boy like you, I want someone like Paul." ""A man."" "What was it like to see him again ?" "I don't wanna talk about Kyle." "I brought him up because..." "Fuck it." "Never mind." "I thought you were a man." "So today, I'm..." "your betrayer ?" "But last week, you were equally certain that I was generous and good." "Can you see how dramatically your opinion of me has changed ?" "Can you make sense of that for me ?" "I guess I never really knew you." "Or maybe you're still angry at me you're having a hard time seeing this situation from my perspective." " Don't lecture me on empathy." " I am not talking about empathy." "I'm talking about perspective." "You feel deeply for people whom you believe are on your team, because they are, in your mind, basically extensions of yourself." "You feel their pain as if its your own pain." "But you do have a hard time understanding someone whose approaching from a different perspective." "You were using your perspective to fuck me over." "I thought you were in serious trouble, and your mother deserved to know." "Why ?" "You have no allegiance to her." "You never met her." " As a father myself..." " I'll tell you what happened : you got scared." "You didn't want to be my emergency contact." "You didn't want that responsability." "If I had a patient who asked me not to call her mother," " I never would've called her mother." " You don't have children !" "It's so easy to betray you." "It so easy to let you down." "I make one mistake, not even a mistake, one decision that you don't agree with." "And that's it for you." "I'm worthless because I'm weak." "That's a quality you can't accept in others because... you can't accept it in yourself." "But you know that nobody can live up to your standards, because you can't even live up to them." "This is life, April." "There are days that are just... classless and cruel." "But it is the only life that you've got." "Leah lets me down... all the time." "How ?" "Little things." "And she's a flake." "She'll show up an hour late or... she'll forget we've made a plan at all." "But that doesn't bother you ?" "And what's special about your relationship with Leah ?" "I know she loves me." "She's known me since I was six." "Before I had done anything." "So she loved you when you were a child." "She led inside before you closed the gates." " That's so depressing." " Is it ?" "To have one person who really knows who you are ?" "I used to be really different." "In what way ?" "I was a total mess." "This really emotional kid." "I would cry at the drop of a hat." "I used to write my parents hate mail." "Leave it on their pillows at night." ""Dear mom and dad," ""these are all the things you did today that upset me." ""Please respond."" "And did they respond ?" "My mother would tell me that I..." "I had to get tough." "I couldn't let my emotions show on my face." "You know, when I was in... when I was in grad school, I had a professor... he said something I still remember." "He used to say that, for better or for worse, that maturity in modern american society had become synonymus with a lack of emotions, to not feel anything too deeply." "That's true." "But some people naturally have more heightened emotional responses than others." "I think you are one of those people." "So you've been working hard to change your nature..." "Which is probably a futile enterprise." "But a continual effort to do that could make you very angry or insecure." "You think I'm insecure ?" "Do you ?" "There's no good way for me to answer that question." "If I say no, I'm a narcissist." "If I say yes, I'm a loser." "Well the way I see it, if you say no, you're perfect." "If you say yes, it means you're human." "Why do you think your mother told you to... keep your feelings to yourself ?" "She wanted to keep me from getting hurt." "Is it possible it had something to do with Daniel ?" "What do you mean ?" "Daniel couldn't control his emotions and he became violent when he was upset." "So maybe a heightened emotional response from you, even though it was an appropriate reaction to a given circumstance, maybe it reminded your mother of Daniel, and in some way its scared her." "The world is a messed up place." "She was just trying to teach me to protect myself." "But maybe she didn't give you time to get to know yourself first," "to know who it is you are protecting." "You think I don't know myself ?" "I think that you've been operating for a long time in reaction to your mother." "At the hospital, she was so mad she wouldn't even look at me." "She just kept coming in and out of the room." "Bossing the doctors around..." "I just wanted her to leave." "Maybe she wasn't actually angry." "Maybe she was scared." " It doesn't matter." " It doesn't ?" "No, Paul." "Not when I'm hooked up to three IVs." "The only thing that matters, in that moment, is that my mother is there, and I can't deal with her." "My dad came by later... and he was perfect." "I was freezing, so... he went out and bought me a damn blanket." "Now whenever he comes he brings me..." "something special." "There's this dark chocolate that I love." "It weighs a ton and I never get it for myself." "He brought me some." "And he sat by my bed and held my hand, and just said : "April," ""you're a strong girl." "You'll beat this."" "That's all I need." "She's my mother, why doesn't she know that ?" "He sounds very calm, your dad." "He can be, under certain circumstances." "Like hospitals ?" "What are you saying ?" "Well, that's what he does for a living." "It might be easier for your father to give you what you need at the moment because he's had some practice." "But your mother... was out of her element." "I don't understand :" "are you for this woman or against her ?" "April, everything doesn't have to be black and white." "You're so over me." "Sorry ?" "You're so tired of this." "You just want this to be done." "You want to figure me out, fix my head, so you can check me off your ledger." "What about my behavior gave you that idea ?" " You turned on me." " How ?" "By calling my mother." "Were back to that again." "So what I did still doesn't make sense to you ?" "What are you talking about ?" "For five sessions all I've talked about is why I can't call my mother." "I was walking down Flatbush Avenue burning with fever, with a non-existent immune system, trying to hail a cab to take me to the emergency room, and I still didn't call her." "You pulled rank on me, Paul." "You were like :" ""I've humored this chick for too long," ""I'm the adult, I'm gonna call the other adult." ""so we can figure out how to..." ""how to fuck up the world together."" "You don't think of yourself as an adult ?" "I guess I am." "Do you want to be ?" "Not really." "Maybe that's because you barely had time to be a child." "Your work here is done." "Our work here is only beginning." "well, you're wrong..." "You can check me off now." "Now I'm in chemo, my mother knows, whatever." "You keep using the term "check me off"." "Does that mean anything to you ?" "My mother... used to write a check on the back of my hand whenever I did a good deed, or aced a test, or something." "She said I loved it, when I was little." "But something changed as you got older ?" "I felt like she was... you know, checking me off, like..." ""April's fine." ""She's got a check." "Don't need to worry about April."" "Got so tired of those goddamned checks, I stopped telling her things." "Like what ?" "I don't know..." "I'd raised money for autism research, by running a 10K." "But you wouldn't tell her ?" "She'd find out later, from a teacher... or the school newspaper." "Can you give me another example ?" "When Leah's mom was dying, Leah couldn't handle it." "Neither could her dad, so..." "I was over at their house, three times a week, helping out, just... buying groceries, making dinner." "But again your mother didn't know anything about this ?" "She found out at the funeral." "Leah's dad came up to her." "It seems like you wanted your mother to know these things, but you didn't want to tell her." "Maybe." "And what would happen if she found out ?" "I was her little hero... her saving grace." "Her perfect child." "April, is it possible that I've become part of that pattern ?" " What ?" " You got cancer." "You decided to fight it alone, just as you've always done." "you didn't tell your mother, but you came to see me." "You told me." "Because, maybe you knew on some level, that I would eventually tell your mother." "And you would become our hero." "Again." "That is so fucked up." "I don't think it is, April." "I think you saved yourself the only way you know how." "I thought that cancer would clean me out of all this bullshit." "I thought I would finally stop obsessing over how to be the best at everything, and... all the reasons I should hate myself and everyone else." "I thought I would... finally start to think about the big picture, but... it's just gotten darker inside my head." "I don't believe in anything anymore." "I don't believe in love." "Or... my mother," "not my body," "or you." "Because of all this stupid therapy," "I don't even believe in myself anymore." "I literally have no idea why I should get out of bed in the morning." "That's not a bad place to begin, April." "Do you remember the dream that we talked about last week ?" "The one where I was dying ?" "Except that I think that dream could actually have been about... rebirth." "About saying goodbye to the old self to make room for the new." "I could just be dying." "When will you get the results of the blood tests ?" "I told you, end of the week." "Then you will know for sure if the chemo is working." "Will you let me know the results as soon as you get them?" "Sure." "Are we done here ?" "If you want to keep on talking..." "Not really." "Can you help me up ?" "Sure."