Read Online Get Me Out of Here by Rachel Reiland - Free Book Online

answered at any time, but none whatsoever about his personal life. I was, at all times, to be candid. If he sensed that I wasn't, or was hiding behind defenses, he would interrupt and redirect the conversation. It was not his policy to take phone calls from patients while in session with another patient, nor was it his policy to allow after-hours calls to turn into therapy by phone. I had fifty minutes of his undivided attention and focus to explore my feelings in session, and I would need to learn to make good use of that time rather than act out the emotions elsewhere.
    Free association? Somehow the context seemed anything but free.
    In the final minutes of the session, as he glanced at a digital clock on the table that only he could see, he handed me a three-page report to review before our next session. It was the result of a multiple choice, fill-in-the-dot psychological profile test I'd taken and barely recalled from my first full day as a hospital inpatient. As I read the first paragraph, I was gripped by nausea. I could tell that I had flunked it.
    Before I could read further, Dr. Padgett smiled, nodded his head, and said, “That's all for today.”
    It was a phrase I would learn to despise with all of my being.

    After finding a chair in a relatively private corner of the hospital lobby, I proceeded to read the entire report. I couldn't say what I had expected, but it wasn't the stinging barrage of labels I read in that report. I could have handled words such as “tough,” “misunderstood,” “erratic,” or “unruly.” Instead this bitingly clinical text literally ripped my character to shreds. Manipulative. Seductive and promiscuous. Overdramatic. Demanding to be the center of attention. Overdependent. Histrionic—at times, hysterical. Severe mood swings. Clear suicidal tendencies, as well as sociopathological ones .
    It took all the self-control I could muster not to vomit on the floor. I was shaking. I was in shock. I checked the cover page again to make sure that this report was about me and I hadn't somehow been handed someone else's. I noticed that the report had been compiled by the same psychologist who had conducted group therapy. Weebles. My hurt and shock transformed to righteous indignation. Weebles had framed me because her group sessions were ineffective whinefests. Because she was really just a pushy bitch who didn't want to hear from those who wanted to talk and stomped on the privacy of those who didn't. Just because I wasn't going to play along with her group orgy of touchy-feely talk. Because of all that, she'd decided to get even and nail me with the test results. She'd made me look like shit. Cheap, dirty, low shots. Fuck her!
    And Padgett, it dawned on me, went right along with her. The sonofabitch. He'd lied to me, led me on, betrayed me. How could I have trusted him? How could I have been so stupid to think that he cared?
    Still shaking, now with rage instead of shock, I headed for the nearest pay phone in the lobby foyer. While fumbling angrily for Dr. Padgett's card and a quarter, my purse strap broke and the leather bag fell to the floor. With the coin and card in hand, I kicked my purse, catapulting it against the other wall, its contents spilling out on the rug. Finally, I put the coin in the phone and dialed.
    “Dr. Padgett's office.”
    “I need to talk to Dr. Padgett. Now!”
    “I'm sorry. He's in with a patient now. Can I take a message?”
    Another goddamned patient. How much was he toying with that one's mind? Jealousy washed over me at the thought that he could be in with anybody besides me.
    “Listen, I need to talk to him now! No, no, wait a minute—fuck it. Go ahead; leave him a message. You tell that bastard he can take his therapy and shove it up his ass. You can cancel my appointments now. I'm finished with that lying sonofabitch, and you can tell him that too.”
    “Excuse me, ma'am…. Ma'am? Please hold for just a minute.”
    The phone clicked, and Dr.