Page 3 of Borrowed Pain
Most Sundays, the warm water and familiar sounds of my brothers moving around Ma's kitchen soothed me.
My work phone buzzed, the one I used for client emergencies.
A call, not a text.
Sunday. 7:30.
I almost let it go to voicemail. Almost.
The buzz came again, and my hand moved to my pocket. Occupational hazard of working with people in crisis—you never really stopped being on call, even when you were technically off duty.
"Work?" Michael asked, glancing at my phone.
"Probably nothing," I said as I strolled toward the back door. "Give me two minutes."
The porch was cooler than the kitchen. I shivered slightly in the October air, sharp with the promise of rain. I inhaled thefaint, lingering scent of coffee beans from Grounds For Thought three blocks over.
Lights flickered on in neighbors' windows, and the distant hum of Sunday night television filtered through thin walls.
I hit the voicemail button, expecting to hear the shaky voice of a client having a panic attack or someone looking for an appointment first thing Monday morning.
Instead, I listened to a voice I didn't recognize, digitally distorted, but unmistakably deliberate.
"Dr. McCabe, you don't know me, but we must talk about Iris Delacroix. About what really happened at Riverside. About why she's not the only one."
The phone nearly slipped from my fingers.
My blood turned to slush.
Iris… Iris Delacroix.
I hit replay, my thumb shaking against the screen. Surely I'd misheard. It was a call intended for someone else, some other Dr. McCabe dealing with a different crisis.
I listened again. Whoever it was had planned the call down to the digital distortion that made them impossible to identify.
They knew about Riverside.
The full conversation with Iris returned. It was 2:30 AM, eighteen months ago, a voice so thin and shaky I'd barely recognized it as the woman who'd been making such progress in our sessions.
"Miles, I shouldn't have gone there. Something's wrong. Something's really wrong."
"Where, Iris? Gone where?"
"Riverside. The place they told me about. They said it would help, said it was the next step, but Miles—"Her voice cracked. "They're doing things. Things that aren't... this isn't therapy. This isn't helping."
"Iris, slow down. Tell me exactly—"
"No. No, I can't. I signed things. Legal things. But Miles, promise me you won't write this down. Promise me you won't put this in my file."
God help me, I'd promised. She'd sounded so broken and terrified. I thought I was protecting her.
I'd kept that promise even after they found her body on the pavement outside her apartment building a week later, even when the police asked if she'd mentioned anything unusual in her last session. When her sister called, desperate to understand what had driven Iris to jump,
I'd kept my word and hated myself for it every day since.
The phone screen blurred. I gripped the porch railing so hard my knuckles bleached white, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts that fogged in the cool air.
About what really happened at Riverside. About why she's not the only one.
