Dear Hubby, Bro & BFF. You All Watched Me Break? Now Watch Me Leave Chapter 09
Word of the complaint spread quickly through the local counseling community.
To protect itself, the center where Paige had interned immediately released a public statement announcing that it had terminated her internship and severed all ties with her.
Her graduate advisor also distanced herself online.
[I have never instructed or authorized any student to subject a patient to forced exposure. The individual involved should not attempt to implicate anyone else.]
Paige was completely isolated.
Out of sympathy for me, Mason took screenshots of Paige’s private messages and posted them in their group chat.
One was a transcript of a voice message.
[Natalie’s basically our pet now—mine and Colin’s. We can train her however we want, and she still has to thank us for it.]
The group exploded as soon as the screenshot appeared.
People who had once praised Paige for being blunt and honest began bringing up old incidents. Every cruel comment she had ever passed off as “just telling it like it is” was suddenly viewed for what it really was.
Once the tide turned, everyone piled on.
—
Late that night, Paige posted a long defense on social media. She claimed she was being smeared, that I had taken her words out of context, and that Colin was the one behind everything.
No one defended her.
Instead, someone dug up an old photo she had posted of herself outside the storage room, grinning and giving the camera a thumbs-up.
The caption read: [Helping my bestie build her mental resilience. This is so rewarding]
It only made her look worse.
A week later, I received a package containing a letter. The handwriting was messy, and the paper was stained with tears.
Most of it was Paige begging me to withdraw the complaint.
[Natalie, I’m begging you. This field is my entire life. If I lose my training status, I won’t even be able to finish grad school. I know I was wrong. Punish me however you want, but please don’t take away my whole future.]
When I finished reading, I set the letter aside.
I didn’t respond, and I didn’t withdraw the complaint.
That same week, Derek contacted me through my attorney and asked to speak with me.
“No. If he has something to say, he can tell you.”
—
The next day, my attorney forwarded me an audio message from Derek.
“Natalie… I saw the evidence.”
“I didn’t know Paige wasn’t qualified to do any of that on her own. Colin told me it was legitimate treatment, and I believed him.”
“That day on the video call, I saw the state you were in, and I still said those horrible things.”
“It never occurred to me that you weren’t the problem. They were hurting you.”
“Natalie, if you never want to see me again, I understand. I just need you to know that I was wrong. I’m so sorry.”
I listened to the recording twice, then deleted it.
I remembered him watching from the other end of the video call as I trembled on the storage room floor after losing control of my bladder.
He had watched me being tortured and felt embarrassed by me.
When I escaped, he called me dramatic.
Then he tried to force me to go back.
None of that could be erased with the words “I was wrong.”
I asked my attorney to give him one message.
“I don’t need an apology, and we don’t need to speak again. From now
—
on, we go our separate ways.”
I later heard that Derek went looking for Colin.
He cornered him outside his office building, grabbed him by the collar, and started shouting.
“You told me you were helping her! You fucking lied to me!”
Colin didn’t fight back. Derek punched him once, and blood from Colin’s nose soaked the front of his shirt.
It changed nothing.
The divorce was finalized soon afterward.
Colin voluntarily gave up his claim to all our marital assets. The apartment, the car, and our savings were transferred to me.
On the day the divorce became final, Colin sat alone in the half-empty apartment.
The bathroom curtain was still there, along with the screw holes left behind when he removed the locks. The sunflower mural Natalie had painted on the dining room wall remained untouched.
He removed every lock he had put back and placed them all inside a shoebox.
Then he set the box in the middle of the storage room floor, closed the door, and locked himself inside.
The room was dark, cramped, and completely silent.
—
He lasted five minutes before wrenching the door open and stumbling out. Dropping to his knees, he began to dry-heave.
He couldn’t endure even five minutes.
Yet every time Natalie had been trapped behind one of those doors, he had stood outside smiling.