The Doctor Is In (18 page)

Patrice went to the dresser and picked up the bracelet, admiring the glittering diamonds as she held it up in the light. “Ooooh, this is pretty. How much did this set you back?”

“It was under a grand. I wanted to treat myself to something nice. You have to do that once in a while, you know?”

Patrice nodded in agreement.

“I’ve only worn it one time,” Raine said. “I don’t mind if you wear it for your date today. As a matter of fact, I insist.”

Patrice put on the bracelet, admiring it on her wrist. “Thanks, girl. It sets this outfit off just right. There ain’t no way he won’t notice me now,” she said excitedly as she sashayed out of the room.

Raine lay back on the bed, hoping that Patrice was right—and that Kasen might put the pieces of the puzzle together and get her out of this hell.

Like clockwork, Kasen was at work, preparing himself to do what he did best: make his patients feel good. Voncile wasn’t there yet, and after their last conversation, he wasn’t sure she was coming in at all. He had hoped she would call to let him know either way, but by ten o’clock after his first appointment was done, there was no sign of Voncile.

As he leaned back in his chair, Kasen thought about the fact that she was the third person to disappear from his life in a very short time. He didn’t like losing people. Even when a patient improved and decided they no longer needed therapy, he would feel some regret about not seeing them again. Now that it was people he genuinely loved and cared about who were gone, he was feeling pretty damn terrible. He wished he could be one of those people who brushed it off and kept moving during hard times like these, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his losses.

He had dreamed about Raine the night before. No matter how much he wanted to pretend he was over her, he knew he wasn’t. He missed her terribly. In his dream, she wasn’t happy either. She no longer wanted to be with the person she was with, and she came to Kasen, telling him she was pregnant by her lover. Kasen was disgusted, and as he started yelling at Raine, he woke up in a cold sweat. The dream had seemed so real that Kasen was still a little on edge this morning. He wondered what the dream meant. As a therapist, he knew it wasn’t a coincidence that he was dreaming about Raine being pregnant by someone else when Voncile was pregnant—supposedly by him—in real life. What was his subconscious trying to tell him?

Without even thinking about it, he picked up the phone to call the one person he would normally talk to in a sticky relationship situation like the one he was in: Omar. He quickly came to his senses, though, and dropped the phone back on the receiver. Talk about messed up: not only was he mad at Omar for the way he had been behaving lately, but he also had to consider the fact that Omar could possibly be the father of Voncile’s baby. This was one twisted web they were all caught up in, and he didn’t want to confront Omar about it over the phone. He would go to his house again later.

Just as Kasen hung up the phone, Patrice Davenport appeared in the doorway. He recognized her right away, even though she looked quite different from her first visit. She was still an attractive woman, but the caked-on makeup made her look casket ready. The bright red lipstick and fake lashes were a bit much.

Kasen stood to greet her. He didn’t want her to run away again, especially since he was there to help.

“I know I don’t have an appointment,” she said, “but when I tried calling, no one answered.”

“My secretary is out for the day, but you came at a good time,” he said. “My next appointment isn’t until twelve thirty. Please, come in and have a seat.”

“Thank you for seeing me. It’s been rough since my last visit,” she said as she took a seat in the chair in front of his desk.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” Kasen said, picking up a notebook and a pen as Patrice launched into a lengthy, explicit description of numerous sexual encounters she’d had recently. It sounded like the woman was having more sex than a porn star.

She concluded her story with, “I mean, why does sex have to feel so good to me?” She massaged her hands together as if she were nervous. “I keep running from one man to the next, and every time a good-looking man strolls by me, sex is all I think about. I can’t control my thoughts, and I need to figure out a way to focus on something else for a change.”

“First of all, it’s okay that sex feels good. It’s supposed to. What you need to be asking yourself is why do you to run from one man to the next? Let’s explore what is missing in your life and how you might fill that void with something other than sex. I want you to dig deep, Patrice. You have to go real deep in order to get to the root of your problem. Are you ready?”

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs so that her skirt hiked way up, revealing her lace panties. “Yes, I’m ready . . . but I want you to dig deep too. I can’t even have a friendly discussion with you without thinking about you being inside of me. I want to fuck you so bad, Kasen, and I’ve been thinking about it every day since I left here. I think the way for me to overcome all of this is for you to let me play out some of the things in my head. I’ll talk about how much I value myself and reveal what I think is bringing all of this about once your dick is deep inside of me. That’s a sure way to get me to tell it all.” She uncrossed her legs and spread them wide to put her goodies on full display.

Kasen responded with silence. He knew that some people had severe sexual problems, and this woman clearly needed some help. If he approached her the wrong way and she felt rejected, she might get up and bolt from his office like last time. He was mulling over the right way to respond.

“I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” Patrice said. “I can tell by the look in your eyes. I wholeheartedly apologize for coming here and speaking my truth.”

“I’m not offended,” Kasen said. “Actually, I—”

“Oh, what a relief.” Patrice closed her legs again and leaned far across the desk toward him, laying her hands on top of the pad where he’d been writing notes.

Kasen’s eyes zoned in on the bracelet on her wrist. Suddenly, something in him just snapped.

“Where in the hell did you get that from?”

Patrice followed the direction of his eyes, pulling her hands back casually as she said, “Oh, this? I bought it for myself. Sometimes you just have to do something nice for yourself, you know?”

Kasen wasn’t satisfied with her answer. His subconscious mind was screaming at him to keep pushing. “What store did you buy it from?”

Patrice started wringing her hands and gave a nervous laugh. “I forgot. Why?”

Kasen moved quickly around the desk, and before she could react, he had grabbed Patrice’s hands.

“Doctor Phillips, what are you doing?” she protested.

Kasen didn’t answer. He flipped the bracelet over to reveal the engraving on the other side. It was a tiny heart, along with a date—the date he had given the bracelet to Raine. He had asked the jewelry designer to engrave it on the one-of-a-kind bracelet so that Raine would always have a reminder of the first time he said the words “I love you” to her.

He tightened his grip on Patrice’s arms as she struggled to break free.

“Where in the hell did you get it from? Do you know Raine? Is she the one who gave it to you? Tell me now!” he said through gritted teeth.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patrice shouted. “I told you I bought it for myself!”

“No you didn’t. I had it special made, and now you’re going to tell me how you got it before I—”

Patrice stopped struggling and slumped down into the chair. “Fine. I get it. You’re a big, tough man and you’re going to hurt me. Some healer you are,” she said, insulting Kasen’s professionalism in a way that caused him to snap out of his rage and let her arms go. He still hovered over her, though, not allowing her to stand up and leave.

With his chest heaving and his heart pounding, he begged Patrice for more information. “Look, I’m sorry about what just happened, but that bracelet belonged to someone very special to me. Someone who disappeared from my life without a trace. I shouldn’t have put my hands on you, but I need to know where she is. Please tell me whatever it is you know.” Kasen couldn’t make sense of the whole situation, but he had no doubt that Patrice knew much more than she was letting on.

Patrice sat still, with her mouth clamped shut.

“Please,” he asked again. “I loved her with all my heart.”

This seemed to surprise her. She looked up into Kasen’s eyes, and he could have sworn she was about to cry. “I’ve never had a man love me like that. I want that kind of love.”

“I know you do,” Kasen answered, speaking calmly because he felt like he was close to getting her to open up with the truth if he could just avoid scaring her away. “I’m sure you can find the right man, and I will help you do that. You can come for as many sessions as you want. Every day of the week, if need be. But first I need you to tell me what you know about Raine.”

Patrice looked at him silently for so long that Kasen was scared she was not going to speak again. Finally, she started explaining.

“She was with a dark-skinned brotha at a gas station,” Patrice said. “He smiled at me, so you know me with my sex addiction, I approached him. I didn’t know he had a woman in the car until I gave him my phone number. That’s when she jumped out.”

Kasen frowned, wondering who was the man she was with. Was that who she had run away with?

“Raine tried to step to me, yelling about, ‘stay away from my man!’ She’s a little crazy, you know. But I’m no wallflower myself, so when she reached out to slap me, I grabbed that bitch and started swinging.”

As he listened to her story, he was having a hard time imagining Raine reacting with such violence. The Raine he knew was way too classy to get into it in a gas station parking lot like that.

“Anyway,” Patrice continued, “her dude grabbed her up pretty quick, threw her back in the car, and they were out. When I looked down, I saw the bracelet on the ground. I took it and I kept it. That’s it. End of story. You happy now?” she said, sounding sassy now.

Kasen may have been a fool at times, but he wasn’t a damn fool. “Bullshit!” he yelled in her face. “Stop lying and tell me where you got the damn bracelet from! You came to my office for a reason. Tell me what the hell is going on!”

Patrice leaned back to put a few inches between them. “I just told you,” she said nervously.

“Uh-uh.” Kasen shook his head. “It’s bullshit and you know it. At what point during that fight did she stop and tell you her name?”

“What? Now I think you might be crazy, Doc.”

“You had a fight at a gas station with a random woman and somehow you know her name is Raine, and somehow you happen to show up in my office right around the time Raine disappears? Ain’t that much coincidence in the world.”

Suddenly, Patrice was out of her chair, taking a totally different approach to this situation. Now she wasn’t cowering and afraid of Kasen. Before Kasen even knew what was happening, she had popped her breasts out of the top of her tight shirt and pressed herself up against his body. She hiked up her skirt and yanked her panties to the side. Her behavior was so sudden and so bizarre that it took Kasen a minute to respond.

“Patrice—” he started, reaching around her back to try to pull her skirt back down. She wiggled just the right way so that instead of grabbing the hem of her skirt, he grabbed her ass cheeks.

“Mmm, that’s it,” she moaned.

“Oh my God!” Voncile’s voice suddenly came from the doorway.

Kasen froze when he heard her. His head was spinning. How could Voncile show up right now, of all times? Deep down he knew that all of these strange coincidences were somehow related, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around what that connection was.

In spite of Voncile’s presence, Patrice kept doing her thing, grinding on him and grabbing his hand to put it on her breasts. “Squeeze my titties,” she commanded.

“What the hell is going on here?” Voncile shouted as she rushed into the room, shoving Patrice out of the way.

For someone who claimed she was no wallflower, Patrice sure backed away from Voncile in a hurry. She looked scared as she put her clothes back in place to cover herself up. Without another word, she jetted out of the room.

“How could you do this to me, Kasen?” Voncile said, standing in front of him sobbing. “I’m pregnant with your child and this is how you treat me? Really?”

Kasen was so overwhelmed by all of this that he couldn’t even speak. He felt like he was in some crazy alternate universe.

“So now you’re fucking your patients, huh, Kasen?” Voncile said with a twitching eye. “I thought you said you needed to be alone for a while.”

Kasen dropped down into the chair with so much on his mind: Raine, Omar, Voncile, the bracelet, and now this situation with Patrice and the bracelet. He didn’t have enough energy to explain to Voncile about what she had just walked in on. There was no question that he had made some really bad mistakes lately, but he just didn’t understand: Why was this happening to him? He felt cursed.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now. Please leave, Voncile. I will contact you later.”

“No! I want some answers now!” she screamed at full volume. “How long have you been fucking her? Don’t sit there being a coward! Why don’t you get it all out in the open? Is she the only patient you’ve been screwing around with, or are there more?”

Voncile’s shrill voice gave Kasen a severe headache. There seemed to be no end to her madness, so he shot up from the chair and grabbed his jacket, brushing past Voncile as he exited the office. She followed behind him, ranting and raving.

“Where is the got-damn respect for the mother of your unborn child? I deserve to have some answers, Kasen!”

He headed to the stairs, and she stayed on his heels, refusing to give up. “Kasen, do you hear me talking to you? Why are you ignoring me? What in God’s name did I do to you to deserve this?”

Kasen got in his car, slamming the door behind him. Through the windshield, he could see Voncile’s tear-stained face. She looked like a madwoman with her hair all over the place, snot running from her nose, and mascara smudged under her eyes. Too caught up in his own pain, he didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for her. He revved the engine then sped off, swerving to avoid hitting her as she lunged toward the car. As he exited the parking lot, he let out a roar to release some of his pent-up rage.