Page 70 of The Stranger in the Mirror

“Cassandra? Where are you?”

There was no answer. I turned the door handle and entered to find Cassandra sitting at the dressing table, a book in her hands.

“Cassandra?”

She spun around and glared at me. Her face was puffy and her eyes red from crying. “I can’t believe this. You beast!”

I flinched. “What are you talking about?”

“Shut the door. I don’t want Valentina to hear.”

I obeyed, and started to go to her, but she put up a hand. “Don’t come any closer.”

She was completely unhinged.

“What is the matter with you?”

She stuck her chin out defiantly. “You lied to me. All that time, I believed my husband hurt me, and you tricked me into believing it. I left him because of you, mytherapist! What kind of man does what you did?”

It was then that I noticed she was holding my personal logbook from her file. How had she gotten it? Everything important had been locked in my safe. The room began to spin. I sat down on the bed, taking deep breaths.

“How did you get that?” I said finally.

She laughed, a bitter sound. “That’s your first question? How did I get it?”

“I can explain.”

“Oh really?” She looked down at the book in her hand and began to read aloud:

August 17:Cassandra Dryer, 27-year-old female, married, presenting with acute depression brought on by 3 miscarriages over a period of 2 years. Family history: Orphaned at age twelve, foster care until age eighteen, six different homes.

September 9:Husband emotionally absent and unsupportive. Intuition tells me he is not only emotionally but physically abusive as well, perhaps the cause of Cassandra’s miscarriages, although she does not admit this. A careful step-by-step program will give her the strength to leave the marriage. It will take meticulous guidance and support. Swiftness is critical, so I will need to see her several times a week, perhaps even daily. If she stays with this man, she will die, just as all of her unborn children have died.

September 30:Disclosure of sexual abuse at age fourteen, first foster home. Hypnosis has revealed more than one abuser over four years. Working on memory erasure to eradicate trauma. Explained the potential pitfalls of this treatment, but she’s insistent. She has not shared any of this past abuse with her husband. Becoming clear to me it’s because he is also abusive. She feels ashamed and, on some level, has chosen a man who mirrors her earlier abusers. Despite her insistence that he has never physically harmed her, it is clear she’s adept at repression. I’m convinced that he has abused her, that he is in fact the reason she keeps having miscarriages. Her depression will never go away if she stays with him.

She glares at me, turning to another page, and continues reading.

October 20:Implantation of false memory of Zane pushing her down the stairs, causing miscarriage. In a few more sessions I’ll implantenough false memories of his abuse to make sure she never wants to see him again. We will work together to modify in her memory the horrible things that happened to her growing up but leave the planted memories of her abusive husband intact. She will need to remember those in order to leave him and live with me. Only I can save her, I see that now. And this way, she’ll always be grateful that I saved her.

She looks up from the book to me, and her eyes narrow with contempt.

“You’re taking that out of context,” I tell her, pleading. “Your husband did hurt you. I love you, Cassandra, we have a family.”

“Don’t!Ihave a family. You have nothing after today. I’m going to report you to the medical board. You’ll never be able to do this to anyone again.”

“You have to understand, I didn’t do anything except love you.”

She threw something at me. A book. I picked it up, and dread filled me. My father’s book:False Memories: The Unreliability of the Brain.

She had started talking fast. “I stopped by my office to see about going back part-time. They’d been holding a box Zane dropped off. There was a note from him inside. They hadn’t known how to get in touch with me, so they’d kept it for me all this time. Your father’s book was in the box, along with my diary. I called Zane, and he told me how you made sure he couldn’t get in touch with me.” She gave me a venomous look, and her fists were convulsed with suppressed rage. “That horrible day you had me ‘remember’?” She puts the wordin air quotes. “The day Zane threw me down the stairs? That was over the Fourth of July weekend. Zane was out of town that whole time.” She walked over to me with her diary and pointed. “It’s all here. He wasn’t even around on that other weekend when you made me believe that he’d raped andbeat me. You made me believe my husband was abusive, when he never did anything wrong! I ruined his life and my marriage because of your lies. I can’t believe I came to you for help, and you brainwashed me and then seduced me.”

I felt like I was stuck in mud. Her words were flying at me too fast for me to process them, much less defend myself. The only way for me to get out of this was to hypnotize her again, then administer more sodium amytal, but there was no way I could start the hypnosis session when she was in that state. I had to try and calm her down, prevent her from taking any rash actions, and then maybe I could do it when she was sleeping.

So I said the only thing I could think of. “I know it looks bad. But I can explain. He did abuse you. Maybe not physically, but emotionally. The same way my father withheld emotion from my mother. She killed herself because of that. You were depressed. It was your husband’s fault. I was saving you.”

“Savingme? By implanting false memories? Making me believe things that weren’t true?”

“I was trying to help you.”

---