Coventry: A Journey
an excerpt

Mia had spent the morning looking over her notes from the very casual first session with Maddie and conversation with Jack the day before. She was not going to lie to the young woman; Jack had spoken true. This process was not going to be easy. It was a classic case of complicated bereavement, accentuated by Maddie’s vocation and her willingness, even eagerness, to put the needs of others before her own. Add to that a bit of post traumatic stress disorder, and Mia knew they had their work cut out for them. Thankfully she wouldn’t be working on the case alone. She was teaming up with her friend Jack who was going to handle the psychological side of things while Mia helped with the spiritual. Given Maddie’s vocation and temperament, a mixed therapy seemed like it would be the best and most necessary option.

When Maddie arrived, Mia greeted her warmly and offered her a bottle of water, keeping things light. While they had a lot of heavy work before them, work that could easily push both of them to their breaking points if she did not move slowly and with care, Mia knew that the first thing she had to do was earn Maddie’s trust. Although she had opened up a little bit in their first meeting, it would take time for Maddie to feel safe enough to get to the really difficult work she needed to do. When Maddie had put her backpack on the floor and settled, feet tucked under her in the overstuffed chair she’d curled up in the day before, Mia smiled gently and spoke softly.

“Jack and I have talked, of course,” Mia said. Maddie nodded in understanding. “And I was thinking it might be nice to take things a little easier today,” she said. “That way we can get to know each other a little more.”

Maddie nodded, still not quite recovered from the after-effects of realizing just how close she had gone to the edge without being consciously aware of it. There was a sadness in her eyes that hadn’t been evident for several years, so well had she hidden even that behind the mask she fought so valiantly to keep in place. When she spoke, her voice belied the emotion she had held in check for so long. “Alright.”

Watching Maddie’s body language and hearing her voice, Mia wondered briefly if perhaps she should start at another point in the story, if even this question she had planned would be too much for Maddie’s psyche in its present wounded and vulnerable state. She and Jack has talked extensively about Maddie and where to start, and they both felt it would be best for Maddie if the first session was with Mia and had a more concentrated focus on the happy memories Maddie had. Still, seeing Maddie today, Mia couldn’t help but wonder if just diving in wouldn’t be better. But she ultimately decided to stick with the plan. Start with the happier memories. Hopefully in bringing them up, she could build a cushion on which Maddie could fall when the shit hit the fan.

“Tell me about how you met him,” she said.

“Phillip?” Maddie asked. Mia nodded.

Maddie shifted position in the chair so that she was hugging her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. There was the smallest flicker of a smile in her eyes as she thought about that night.

“It was late August,” Maddie said. “We were finishing up the crash language course at General, getting ready for the fall term to officially start.”

“General is…?” Mia asked.

“My seminary,” Maddie said. “The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church. It’s in Chelsea in New York City.”

Mia nodded and made a note on her notepad.

“It’s set up on what they call a close,” Maddie said. “Meaning everything is connected, or at least very close together, around one central area. When you’re inside in the courtyard, it’s so easy to forget you’re in New York, it’s so calm and peaceful.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Mia said.

Maddie nodded. “Because everything is so close together, if something happens in one of the buildings to set the fire alarm off, everyone evacuates. That’s what happened August 21. My friend Mike was trying to learn how to use the thurible. He and gravity had… issues at the best of times, so him practicing in his carpeted dorm room wasn’t the best idea he ever had. Sure enough, the piece of charcoal fell out and started smoldering on the carpet. It didn’t actually catch fire, but it made a hell of a lot of smoke. We all evacuated and were hanging out on the street. Also, because it’s residential and the building concentration is so dense, an alarm draws a lot of fire station attention.” She chuckled slightly. “It sounds so silly now…”

“What?” Mia asked.

“What I did,” Maddie said. “I don’t even know why I did it. Except it was hot. I knew we were all hot. I mean, it was August in the city. High temperatures, higher humidity. You know? Just icky.”

Mia laughed gently and nodded. “I know what you mean.”

“So anyway, we knew things were under control, that there was no fire. And I was on the other side of the close, so I ran back to my room and grabbed the big bundle of water bottles I’d gotten earlier that day. There were cookies in a bag by the door, so I grabbed that as well. I started offering it to the firefighters who were standing around until they got the all clear to leave. Since there was actual smoke, it was taking a little longer.” She shook her head at the memory. “I was always a dorky kid like that. Always giving people things.” She looked over to Mia who nodded as she made notes. When Mia said nothing, Maddie continued.

“And then I got to where he was standing. The others had generally been polite. Most had said thanks without really looking at me. But he was different.” She laughed and shook her head. “It sounds so cliché. Like a movie or something. But it’s true. His hand brushed mine, and our eyes met. I can’t explain it, but somehow in that moment I knew. I just knew. But we still didn’t exchange names. He just looked into my eyes and smiled and said thank you. Then they got the all clear and loaded back onto their trucks.”

“When did you learn his name?” Mia asked.

“About a week later,” Maddie said softly, a genuine smile crossing her face at the memory. “I was studying in the library and my friend Leigh came to get me. She said there was a guy waiting in the courtyard to see me. I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone. I didn’t know if Christopher or Edward was in town and for some reason had decided to look me up, or who it might be.”

“Christopher and Edward?” Mia asked.

“My step brothers,” Maddie said. “We’re not close. Christopher was 18 when my mom married his father. He was in college and divided holidays between our house and his mother’s. Edward was 25 and already married.”

Mia made a few more notes and nodded. “Ok, sorry. Go ahead.”

Maddie settled back in the chair a little bit more. “I asked Leigh who it was. She said she thought it was one of the fire fighters from the week before, but he wasn’t in gear so she wasn’t sure. Apparently he had described me to her, including the water and cookies part. She had told him she would try to find me. Really she knew exactly where I was, but she wanted to give me an out. I thought about taking it, but I knew if it was the one I was thinking about, the one who, if I was honest with myself I’d dreamed about since that night… I knew I had to take that chance.”

“What did you do?” Mia asked. “Did you go alone?”

“Leigh walked to the courtyard entry with me,” Maddie said. “She waited inside where she could see me. If I wanted out, she would have come out with some kind of excuse to ‘rescue’ me.” Maddie smiled. “But she didn’t have to. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was who I’d thought, and instinctively I knew I was safe.”

Maddie reached down and picked up the backpack she’d set on the floor in front of the chair. Curious to see what she might have brought with her, Mia sat back in her chair. Maddie unzipped the bag, reached in and pulled out a smallish brown teddy bear. She put it in the chair between her legs and the arm, then set the backpack down on the floor once again. Sitting up, she crossed her legs and set the bear in the space in her lap.

“He had some flowers with him,” Maddie said. “And this bear. I named him Micah. I don’t know why. It’s not like we were up to the Prophets in Old Testament. It just came to me.” She fiddled with the bear’s ears for a moment. “He was so cute. I mean, how he was acting. Not that he wasn’t…” She felt a blush rising in her cheeks. “I can’t lie. Phillip was hot.”

Mia laughed out loud, grateful for the bit of levity this session had in it. She was more confident that she and Jack had made the correct decision starting here rather than with that day a little over a year later. Accessing the good memories would give Maddie safe emotional space to work through everything that was coming. “You’ll have to show me pictures sometime,” she said.

Maddie nodded. “I will. Anyway… He stood up and handed me the flowers. Then he stammered something about he knew I would probably think the bear was silly and I didn’t have to keep it and if I wanted him to go and… He probably would have kept rambling forever, but I cut him off with a smile. ‘I’m Maddie,’ I told him. He stopped and took a breath, then told me his name was Phillip. We sat down on the bench to talk, and I signaled to Leigh that it was ok, I felt safe.” Maddie’s voice took on a far away quality as she spoke about that day, but she spoke freely, easily. Not with the voice weighed down by emotion as she had the day before in her brief recounting of everything that brought her to this point.

“I don’t even remember what all we talked about there in the courtyard,” she said. “Probably a lot of everything and nothing. Before we knew it, the sky was starting to get dark. I’d missed chapel. Thankfully Evening Prayer wasn’t required. I liked it, but I wasn’t going to get in trouble if I missed here and there. I looked at my watch. I’d missed dinner. The refectory was long closed. Phillip looked at his watch too. He gasped and apologized. He said he hadn’t meant to stay that long, but… But would I like to go somewhere and get dinner?” Maddie grinned. “Not only was I starved, I really liked him and wanted to get to know him better. So of course I said yes.”

“Where did you go?” Mia asked.

“This Irish pub in the Village,” Maddie said. “It’s called Fiddlesticks. They’ve got great food and they really don’t rush you out like some places. Well, unless it’s something like St. Patrick’s Day when anything remotely Irish is jam packed. It’s quiet, but not one of those places where you really feel like you’re on a date. I mean, it was a date, but we were just getting to know each other. So we wanted it to feel more like friends hanging out than some romantic place. Plus Fiddlesticks was more in our budget than someplace like, oh I don’t know, Pastis.”

“So dinner was good?” Mia asked, not wanting to push Maddie out of her comfort zone, but wanting to keep her on track.

“It was,” Maddie nodded. “We talked for a couple more hours. He asked me about seminary. The whole process fascinated him. He was Episcopalian too, so he wasn’t so freaked out by the idea of a female priest. But he’d never actually known anyone who was called to the vocation. He wanted to know everything.”

“I’ll be interested in hearing about that sometime as well,” Mia said. It would help to give her even more insight into her new patient. Maybe an inkling of how she’d managed to survive everything she’d been through, some sense of a source of that strength. She knew Maddie might not feel very strong right now, but if there weren’t some strength inside her, she would never have made it this far and would have given into the darkness that engulfed her the other night. People in far easier circumstances gave up all the time. What was it that kept Maddie sane?

“Sure,” Maddie said. “Now?”

Mia shook her head. “There’ll be time enough for that later on as we keep working together.”

Maddie nodded. “So anyway, we stayed there, eating and talking for three, maybe four hours. It was really late when we walked back to the Close. I could get into my building from the street side, so we walked over to that door. We stood there for a minute just looking at each other and then I realized what was going on. He was freaking out thinking about kissing me. Not so much because of me, but because of the whole seminary thing. I smiled and told him it was ok. That I was human. That broke the tension. He learned forward and kissed me.” Maddie looked out the window for a minute. “And it was wonderful. I mean, I didn’t have a lot to compare it to. It’s not like it was my first ever kiss, but it was the first one in a while.”

“Any particular reason?” Mia asked. She wasn’t making any judgments, but it could prove useful information in working through everything Maddie would have to uncover in their work together.

Maddie shook her head. “No, nothing specific,” she said. “I just was more the nerdy keep to myself kind of kid. I didn’t have a car in college. I mean, I had some dates here and there. But nothing serious, especially when the guys figured out I wasn’t one of the easy to get ones. I mean… Like I said, Phillip was my first. And even then it was a while, like eight months or so before we did. It really wasn’t anything religious, though I’m sure my bishop would definitely prefer it if it were.”

“Does he know?” Mia asked.

“She,” Maddie said. “And she knows most of it. But not quite everything. I know I’m not the only one who’s kept things. And it’s not like we weren’t engaged. I just didn’t have the ring.”

“I wasn’t making any judgments,” Mia said, her voice soothing. She hadn’t meant to cross any lines. She’d worked with members of the clergy before, but none of them quite as young and as vulnerable as Maddie. She reached over and laid a hand on Maddie’s. “Really. I didn’t mean anything bad. And I promise you, nothing that’s said here leaves the room.” She smiled. “Think of it as your confessional.” Mia stopped suddenly. “Wait. Do you have those in the Episcopal Church?”

“Some do,” Maddie said. “Though if they’re still in use, it’s likely a parish that wouldn’t accept me on staff anyway. Those tend to be the very high church Anglo-Catholic parishes that still complain about the ‘New’ Prayer Book and women’s ordination.” She relaxed a little, resting against the back of the chair. “But confession is always an option for anyone who wants it. ‘All may, some should, none must’ is how it’s usually discussed.”

Mia nodded. “Thanks for clarifying,” she said. She glanced at her notes. “So he walked you to the door of your dorm and you kissed?”

Maddie nodded. “Like I said, it was magical. Wonderful. It just seemed to seal the connection that had started over bottled water and cookies.” She leaned on the arm of the chair, her chin in her cupped hand as she gazed out the window, her other hand idly stroking Micah the bear who was still in her lap. “We used to joke about how much it seemed like a movie. I mean, I’m not sure a scriptwriter could have written it any better than it happened. We would talk about how we’d probably be watching a movie with our children or grandchildren one day and something so similar would happen in the movie. Only it wouldn’t come close to the magic of that night.” Her voice had taken on the far away quality again, soft, distant, with a hint of sadness. “I know it was fast, but I fell in love with Phillip that night.”

Mia watched her newest patient as she spoke. Again, Maddie’s strength floored her. As hard as it was going to be, Mia knew she had to treat the current situation like a band-aid. The next session, it would be time to rip open half-healed wounds. She would do it carefully, yes, but there was no easy way around the journey Maddie had to make. No easy short cuts. Only by walking through a valley darker and scarier than she had ever been through would Maddie come out on the other side. She knew Jack would be doing the same, and Mia decided she would try to make her sessions with Maddie a little softer. Still, hard work had to be done.

Jack and Mia would walk beside her, but they couldn’t do the work. It would take everything Maddie had, but if the woman had made it this far, Mia felt sure that she would come out the other side. She would be changed and inside she would forever carry scars of her experience. But she would survive.

“Ok Maddie,” Mia said, leaning forward and making gentle eye contact. “I think we’ve done enough for today. I know tomorrow Jack’s going to want to start on the harder stuff. But as much as you can, while that’s going on I want you to think about what you told me today. Think about the good times.”

“It’s been hard to do that,” Maddie said. “They always turn to the bad ones.”

Mia nodded. “Try to hold onto the good ones tonight,” she said. “But if the bad ones come back and they’re too strong, I want you to call me. I mean, I know you’re living at Jack’s so you can go to him also, but…”

Maddie nodded. “I will,” she said quietly. She uncurled from the chair and slipped the teddy bear into her backpack as she slid her feet into her clogs. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me Maddie,” Mia said, standing and walking to the door with Maddie. “I’m just your guide and friend while you go through this. Like I know Jack said yesterday, it’s going to be hard as hell, but I have every confidence that you will get through this and you will come out the other side, stronger because of your experiences.”

“Thanks,” Maddie said, her eyes welling up slightly. As terrified as she was of reliving everything, she knew she had to. She had to or the next time her subconscious took over, she might not be strong enough to fight it.

Mia reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You have my numbers. If you need me, no matter what time, please call.” She smiled. “Now, I’m sure you’ve got some unpacking to do. Go settle in and relax for the rest of the day. Doctor’s orders.”

“Yes ma’am,” Maddie quipped almost playfully. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She pulled the door shut behind her and went down the stairs.

It was a bright, clear autumn day, and Maddie decided that a walk around her new environment might be just the right thing to settle her mind. She’d drop her stuff off at her new apartment, grab something to eat, and then take a nice long walk. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be hanging out by herself, at least not for very long.