Chapter 4
When I finally crept back into our bedroom, Marcus was exactly where I'd left him, turned toward the wall with most of the bed empty behind him. An unconscious invitation or a deliberate statement, I couldn't tell anymore.
I didn't join him. Instead, I curled up in the armchair by the window and watched his sleeping form as the city lights painted shadows across our walls.
I met Marcus when he was twenty-seven, fresh back from his second deployment in Afghanistan. He'd been referred to my practice by a VA counselor who'd given up trying to break through his defenses. Most veterans came to therapy reluctantly, but Marcus had been openly hostile during our first session.
"I don't need to talk about my feelings," he'd said, slouched in the chair across from my desk like a teenager in detention. "I just need the nightmares to stop."
But he was drowning, anyone could see that. The hypervigilance, the startle response, the way his eyes darted to every exit in my office before he'd even sit down. Classic PTSD presentation, complicated by what I suspected was survivor's guilt and untreated depression.
It took months to earn his trust. Traditional talk therapy wasn't working, so I started making house calls, meeting him in environments where he felt safer. Completely against protocol, but Marcus was different. He needed someone willing to meet him where he was, not where a textbook said he should be.
"You're the only one who gets it, Doc," he'd told me during one of our sessions in his tiny studio apartment. "Everyone else looks at me like I'm broken."
"You're not broken, Marcus. You're surviving."
The line between professional and personal had blurred so gradually I didn't notice it happening until it was too late. Or maybe I'd chosen not to notice because somewhere along the way, I'd fallen for my patient.
"I want to get better," he'd said during our last official session. "Not just for me. For you. You deserve someone who's whole."
I should have referred him to another therapist. Should have maintained my professional boundaries and let someone else guide him through the final stages of his recovery. Instead, I'd crossed a line I'd sworn never to cross.
"Age is just a number when two people connect like this," he'd whispered the night we first kissed. "You saved my life, Sophia. Nothing else will ever matter more than that."
I'd believed him. God help me, I'd believed every word.
For five years, I'd believed that our love was stronger than professional ethics, stronger than societal expectations, stronger than the voice in my head that warned me about power imbalances and transference. I'd convinced myself that what we had was special, that the rules didn't apply to us.
Now, sitting in the dark watching the man I'd sacrificed my professional integrity for, I finally understood the truth. I hadn't saved Marcus. I'd enabled his dependency on me, and when I couldn't be everything he needed anymore, he'd found someone who could.
Someone younger. Someone who looked like me but without all the complications.
Someone who wasn't stale.
The irony was almost laughable. I'd spent my career helping people recognize toxic relationship patterns, teaching them to identify emotional manipulation and dependency. Yet I'd missed all the warning signs in my own marriage.
Marcus stirred in his sleep, mumbling something I couldn't make out. For a moment, I felt the old impulse to go to him, to smooth the worried lines from his forehead the way I used to when his nightmares were at their worst.
But I stayed in my chair. Because for the first time in six years, I was thinking like a psychologist instead of a wife.
This relationship had become toxic. The power dynamic had never been healthy to begin with, and now it was actively harmful to both of us. Marcus was using me as an emotional crutch while seeking physical and romantic validation elsewhere. And I was enabling his behavior by accepting the crumbs of affection he threw my way.
Time for an intervention.
Time for a treatment plan that didn't include staying married to a man who thought I'd passed my expiration date.
The decision settled over me like a diagnosis finally confirmed after months of uncertainty. Clear. Clinical. Necessary.
Tomorrow, I'd start treating this marriage like what it had always been: a case study in professional boundary violations and their inevitable consequences.
Marcus could keep Emma Wilson and her youthful energy. I was getting my self-respect back.