Outside In

Chapter 3-5

Maggie’s question interrupted Cam’s reflection. “So what happened?”

“That was it. She wouldn’t return my calls, wouldn’t answer the door, my letters came back marked “Return to Sender.” Cam got up and started pacing again. She could feel herself start to perspire. “I understand her words. I just can’t, maybe I just won’t, understand her actions. I’d just gotten out of the hospital. I was still on crutches. There I was. The whole City of Baltimore is turning out to honor me with the City’s Medal of Valor for saving these kids’ lives. They think I’m the hottest thing going. Imaging that! A woman doing what the men were standing around only talking about. I’d been wounded rescuing this little boy from a hostage situation, and my lover tells me she can’t stand it when I get hurt, so we’ll have to end our relationship.”

“Why? What made her do that?” Maggie pushed, “Don’t you think, perhaps, that she was afraid?”

“Afraid? I was the one that was out there in the street getting shot at.”

“And she was in the Emergency Room both times that you were shot while on duty. Maybe she was afraid of losing you.”

“Losing me? She pushed me away.”

“Losing you. As in ‘watching you die.’ Do you think that maybe it was easier for her to push you away on her own terms than risk the chance that one day they’d bring you in on a stretcher and she’d have to be an unwilling, and perhaps helpless, witness to your death?”

Cam stopped. Maggie made it all seem so logical, so easy to understand.

She sat on the couch. The clock above Maggie’s desk said 2 A.M.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Maggie suggested. She knew that Cam was practically out on her feet.

“In a minute.” Cam shook her head. “I want to think this through. All she ever said to me was ‘I don’t want to have to be there for you’. Maybe she wasn’t talking emotional support. Maybe she was talking as my doctor.” Cam put her head in her hands.

Maggie watched her with admiration. This was a courageous young woman. Maggie knew she’d pushed many of Cam’s buttons and yet, every time she did, Cam took the challenge and came out a stronger person.

It was Maggie’s job to find the weak spots. To push and prod until she and Cam both knew where they were, then to shore them up and strengthen them.

It was also her job to help Cam break down walls so that when she had to put up new ones, she’d be able to do it without bumping into herself.

In the past two weeks, she’d put Cam through many years’ worth of psychoanalysis. She’d known people who’d seen their psychiatrists twice a week for seven or eight years and hadn’t made the strides Cam had in seven or eight sessions.

“What do you fear most?” Maggie’s question seemed to come out of the blue but Cam knew that it was the last question of the night. Maggie always ended with that question to give her something to think about until they met again.

“Tonight? Tonight I fear…what my family is going to think. If I can’t tell them what I’m doing, well—I’ve never kept anything from them. Hell, the night I came out, I went right home and told my grandmother that I was a lesbian.”

Maggie smiled. “How’d she take it?”

Cam was embarrassed. “I don’t remember. I was drunk at the time.” She laughed with Maggie. “I vomited in her rose bushes. I think she was angrier at that than anything else.”

“Well, that’s one way of sidestepping a confrontation. A good avoidance technique is sometimes the better method.”

Cam smiled under Maggie’s dubious praise.

“What else are you afraid of?”

“What else? You mean two fears in one night?”

“This is the graduate level course, twice the work.”

Cameron hesitated, thinking it over.

“What about you sister?” Maggie asked. “From what you’ve told me, I think she looks up to you. You took over as mother. How will she handle this? What if it looks like you’re doing something terribly wrong?”

Cam frowned. “I don’t know, Maggie. I have to believe that what I’m doing is more important. She’ll still have David and the boys, and our grandmothers. They have a very tight family. I miss being with them sometimes. I just have to believe that they’ll be there for me, no matter what.” Cam stopped. “You know, sometimes I think that Mom’s still around, looking after us. I think she’ll keep everything together.”

“Maybe. Think about it.” That was always the assignment Maggie left her with. “Actually, from what you’ve just said, you have thought about it. Try to feel it. How do you feel about it?” For Cameron that may have been the hardest assignment of all.