Page 65 of The Broken Places

She met his eyes. “Not all of them are looking for mercy. Some of them kill and rape and hunt.”

“Yes, and in those cases, it’s too late. I respect what you do. You stop those people. You take them out of society. But it’s not too late for everyone. Dr. Sweeton helps the ones he can. We keep them safe during their treatment. We treat them with respect.”

“I saw it, Ambrose. I walked in.”

“I know. And it shocked you. But you weren’t looking at it with the right vision.”

She gave her head a shake, as though denying his words. And he understood. He did. Because if he’d walked in on the treatment at any phase of it without knowing what was going on, it would seem to him like a drugged-up, unclothed person was being taken advantage of. It looked strange and hard to make sense of. But that was because there was literally nothing like it. The doctor had come up with the protocol, and the plan, and it was something no one else had ever done. “When you do, if you do, you’ll see that it’s the most loving, beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It’s how it looks to give someone back their own mind.”

“God, you sound like a cult,” Lennon said. “This isn’t normal.”

“Neither is a four-year-old girl being pimped out by her mother. Her small body being ripped apart while the person who is supposed to protect her watches on. You can’t know what that type of ongoing trauma, beginning at that young of an age, does to a person’s mind and body, the way it damages them, the way it controls them.”

She seemed to deflate a little at that, though her posture said she still didn’t trust him. “Not everyone who’s experienced trauma becomes twisted,” she asserted.

“Humans are different, of course. But all people who’ve suffered that way struggle. Maybe they don’t all become drug addicts or prostitutes, but they all carry that trauma with them in some way or another. And for those people, maybe there are other ways. Maybe they can talk it through and breathe it out. But for many, they simply can’t. If they could, our streets wouldn’t look the way they do.”

She chewed at her lip for a moment and then let out a small vacant laugh. “Like insane asylums?”

He felt a breath of relief. She was resisting, but she was also agreeing. He didn’t expect her to be on board with the project the moment she learned of it. He expected her to want answers and demand that there was accountability. The woman he’d come to know, even in such a short time, would want nothing less than that. And still, it might not be enough. “Unmonitored insane asylums, yes. No one benefits fromthat. They’re human. They’re the walking wounded, and mostly, it’s through no fault of their own.”

She moved back to the couch and sank down on it, and he followed, sitting down next to her but not too close.

When she met his eyes, he was stunned by the fierceness in her expression. God, he respected her so much. Her mind and her compassion. He wanted nothing more than for her to understand this. Not only because he believed in it to his core, but because it was so intensely personal. And now, so was she. “You can’t take on that kind of responsibility,” she said. “It’s not right, Ambrose. These people can’t legitimately consent.”

There was some truth in what she said. Many of the people who had gone through the treatment were so deeply wounded, they might have agreed to anything. And so the people who ran the project, in some ways, were their advocates. But they hadn’t been chosen by the patients, merely assigned by Dr. Sweeton, and Ambrose understood the ethical concerns. He just believed the good outweighed the bad. No, it was more than that. He knew what it was like to be freed from the prison of self-harm and self-hatred. To finally live a life that had meaning. He knew that firsthand. “There isn’t one who isn’t deeply grateful. I’ll introduce you to all of them.”

“Yes, there is. There is one.” It only took him a second to realize she was speaking of Nancy.

He ran his tongue over his teeth as he thought about that. “I don’t think she’d say that. It’s her legacy, Lennon, and it’s a hell of a lot better than the one she would have had.”

“You don’t get to speak for her.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t. But I do get to speak for myself.”

She blew out a breath, her empathetic eyes searching his face. He wondered if she realized how much care was emanating from her expression, and he wondered if she’d attempt to hide it if she knew. “You went through it.”

“Yes. You didn’t know me then, but if you did ... I’d be the poster child for someone who needed this treatment.” He let out a laugh that sounded more like a cough. “I’m thankful every day that Dr. Sweeton gave me what he did. Those with less-ingrained trauma go through a two-day treatment protocol, but I required the maximum seven days. And I came out of it ... free. That’s the best way I can describe it. I took what he gave me, I built on it, and I gained control of my life. I made something of myself.”

She studied her hands, fisted in her lap, for a moment before looking up. “You lived on the street?”

“Sometimes. I crashed wherever I could. I lived day to day, hour to hour. I had no plan because I couldn’t make plans. I couldn’t ...” He raised his hand and made a grabbing motion in the air. “I couldn’t grasp anything. I couldn’t hold on to it for longer than a few hours. Then cravings would set in, ones that would be stronger than any ideas I’d come up with to start down a better path.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s difficult to describe if you haven’t lived it, and especially if you haven’t experienced both a disorganized mind and one that’s clear. And I don’t mean clear of substances, I mean clear of the knots formed from surviving trauma. Dr. Sweeton would put it in more clinical terms if you spoke with him, but that’s the best way I can describe it.”

She chewed at her lip again, obviously troubled. But he also saw the glint of curiosity, or maybe understanding, in her expression and also in her silence, and it caused a seed of hope to begin to grow. “He’s eloquent and passionate when he speaks about it,” she murmured.

He moved just a little closer, and she met his eyes, but she didn’t move away. “Lennon, please. Don’t put this project in jeopardy. I’m begging you. It’s making the world a better place. It’s saving lives. It’s freeing people. And that freedom—that goodness—doubles and triples and quadruples and on and on, because the people Dr. Sweeton treats go on to help others in so many ways, and to raise children who are emotionally healthy instead of broken, like them.”

She sighed. She seemed somewhat depleted all of a sudden, and he didn’t know if that was good for his cause or not. “You’re not God, Ambrose. Dr. Sweeton isn’t God.”

“No one’s trying to be God. Is a doctor who performs open-heart surgery trying to be God? He or she is simply trying to save a life and repair a broken body.”

She shook her head but brought her hand up and massaged her forehead for a moment, as if the conversation was hurting her brain. “That’s different and you know it.”

“What I know is that ethics laws haven’t caught up to the state of mental illness and PTSD in this world.”

“That’s what the doctors who performed ice pick lobotomies told themselves too.”

“The results of that spoke for itself. We’re not monsters, Lennon. There are over five hundred people who would happily stand in testimony of what Dr. Sweeton gave to them. Their lives. And he risked his own to do so.”

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