Group Therapy

There’s one of those old-fashioned filter coffee machines in the corner of the room. It sits on a trestle table with a set of paper cups and a plate of biscuits. A drip of condensation snakes its way down the inside of the glass jug, which catches the light from the florescent strip lighting in the ceiling. I’m staring around the room trying to get my bearings, I must have nodded off, I’ve been doing that lately. Comes with getting on a bit I suppose. 

We’re sitting in a circle, this group and I, on orange plastic chairs. There’s a lady talking, with weird dangly earrings and a bunch of papers perched on her knees, and I groan inwardly. I get it. I’ve been here before. This is some kind of awful Driver Awareness course I’ve been put on in exchange for not losing my licence. What did I do this time? Speeding? Couple of beers maybe? 

The lady with the papers must be the guidance counsellor, she has a name badge stuck to her blouse with the name Yvonne scrawled on it in black marker. 

‘So,’ Yvonne says, earrings jangling ridiculously, ‘how’s everyone’s week been? Mary? How about you?’ 

Everyone turns to face a round, middle-aged lady with a tidy bob, whose name sticker confirms she is in fact, Mary. Not the type to lose her licence, I wouldn't have thought. Wonder what she’s in for. She knots her small hands together and shifts uncomfortably.  

‘Oh, I’ve had a great week, thanks,’ she says. 

‘Have you?’ asks a guy labelled Simon a few seats away. 

‘Yes, I have.’ 

‘That’s great,’ says Yvonne. ‘No slip ups at all?’ 

‘None,’ says Mary. 

‘Really?’ says Simon, ‘Then how come I saw you at that burger place on Tuesday night?’ 

Mary flushes and her eyes go wide. ‘I didn't! I wasn't! I mean, I have, but I didn't...’ 

Yvonne frowns and crosses her legs, clutching her slipping papers as she does so. ‘Is this true, Mary? Have you been following your ex-husband again? It’s ok to have regression, guys, it’s only natural, but we must be open about it, we must be able to talk about it if we want to move forward.’ 

Eh? Hang on a minute. What’s this got to do with driver safety? This sounds like some women talk that I’d rather not be a part of. 

‘I’ll have you know,’ says Yvonne, ‘this group is my seventeenth in a row where I have successfully rehabilitated every single member, a seventeen-group streak! Not that it’s important, but I am up for an award. Mary, we can fix this and get you moved on. Let’s talk about it, what can we do to get past this?’ 

Mary looks tearful, her cheeks are still pink. This is too much. I clear my throat and half raise my hand. 

‘Yes! Ian, welcome to the group. You have a suggestion?’ 

‘Oh, God. No. I actually think I might have snuck into the wrong room. Is this Driver Awareness?’ 

‘No, it isn't. You’re in the right room, it’s all in your welcome pack. Did you have a quick look through?’ 

‘My what?’  

I pat my pockets down and feel like an idiot. Welcome to what? Why do I feel so fuzzy, why can't I remember what the heck is going on? 

Then a memory flashes across my mind, it's only a split second, but painfully vivid. It’s the inside of the cab of my work Ute, my arms flailing, the world through the windscreen tipping violently and then rolling over and over like a washing machine. A can of Red Bull flies by my face, spilling its contents behind it like a plane's contrail, it’s closely followed by half a sausage roll.  

Oh dear. Guess I really ballsed-up this time. I wonder what state my Ute is in, and if I even have a job to drive it to, I was on my final warning. And that sausage roll cost me seven dollars from the servo- now that’s criminal. 

‘Ah! Another late comer!’ says Yvonne, ‘Welcome.’ 

Yvonne is talking to another girl now, a sulky-looking, skinny young lady who I didn't even see come in. In fact, she's sitting on another chair like the rest of us even though I could have sworn all the seats were taken. I think I need to cut down on the Red Bulls. 

‘Did you read through your welcome pack?’ Yvonne asks the new girl. 

‘My what? What is all this? I didn't sign up for any meeting.’ 

‘Why isn't anyone getting their welcome packs?!’ Yvonne despairs. 

A guy on my left gulps from his paper coffee cup. ‘Janine on the front desk is away,’ he says. 

‘Oh, God. Right. Well, you’re dead, dear.’ 

‘What?’ says the sulky girl. 

‘What?!’ I say. 

‘Dead,’ says Yvonne. ‘Now-’ 

‘Oh, for god's sake!’ cries the sulky girl, ‘This is because I bought that cocaine, isn't it?!’ 

‘No, it’s because you t-boned a semi-trailer speeding through an intersection, but I should imagine the two events are linked, dear. Now-’ 

The sulky girl throws a welcome pack that the person next to her had just handed her, ‘This is bollocks!’ 

‘Hang on a minute,’ I say, ‘this isn't right.’ 

‘I know, I know,’ Yvonne says, ‘back to Mary.’ 

‘No, I’m not dead, there’s been some kind of mistake.’ 

The others roll their eyes and murmur-laugh, the same way they do when you do the ‘See you next year!’ joke on New Year's Eve. 

‘Mary,’ says Yvonne, ‘what is it, do you think, that keeps you anchored to your old life?’ 

‘It’s not my old life, it’s my life!’ says Mary. 

‘Ah-ha! Exactly. This is exactly the kind of mindset we’re trying to overcome in these sessions. Old life and new life. When we linger in the old life that is called...?’ 

‘Haunting,’ everyone says drearily. 

‘Haunting,’ confirms Yvonne, her earrings nodding along with her. ‘We’ve done a whole session on this, and aside from it being incredibly tacky, it is damaging to our journey. We need to really pull together here and be strong. Revisiting your past life is not helpful, it’s...? Everybody say it with me...’ 

‘Delaying our development,’ they all drone. 

‘Yes. Mary this is your life now, the sooner you come to terms with that, the sooner you progress.’ 

Mary looks down at her hands folded in her lap, they have finally stopped knotting together and are still. ‘I know, I just... I wasn't finished.’ 

‘Ah, but you are finished.’ 

Everyone ‘Hm’s’ thoughtfully as if she has said something very profound. I feel like I’m at a mad hatter’s tea party. I catch the eye of the sulky girl who looks just as nonplussed as me.  

What on Earth is going on here? I’m dead? We’re all dead?! I’m forty-six years old, I’ve spent thirty of those slogging my guts out at work for stuff-all wages and it’s all over? No retirement, no grandkids. Oh god. Sharron. She is going to be livid, I was meant to take her on a cruise for our anniversary. 

‘Ok,’ says Yvonne, ‘Let’s brainstorm here. What are some good coping mechanisms to detach ourselves from our past life? Anyone?’ 

Mary looks up, a frown creasing her brow under her bob. ‘Hang on, how did you know I was at the burger place, Simon?’ 

Yvonne stops in her tracks. We all turn to the guy who has Simon scrawled on his sticker. Simon blinks instead of saying words and pulls his welcome pack to cover his round belly, as if it will make him invisible. 

‘Simon?’ says Yvonne, her sharp eyes pierce him with an interrogative stare. 

‘Uh...’ says Simon. 

‘You can’t haunt other ghosts, Simon, that’s just... well that might just be stalking. Do you have anything to say?’ 

‘I...’ 

The sulky girl finally erupts. ‘I don’t care about any of this rubbish, I’m not dead!’ 

‘I care,’ says one group member. 

‘Me too,’ says another. ‘Tell us, Simon!’ 

Simon cracks under the pressure. ‘I love Mary!’ he blurts. 

The group gasps.  

‘Christ alive,’ I say. ‘How long does one of these sessions go for?’ 

Yvonne is pinching the bridge of her nose trying to compose herself, I suspect there’s nothing in her papers about in-house haunting. She is quickly losing control of the room. There is now a heated back and forth discussion about who knew and didn’t know that Simon had fallen in love with Mary, in which Mary sits silent and open-mouthed, Simon cries behind his big, beefy hands, and the sulky girl shrieks about no one caring that she’s dead.  

A session, it turns out, goes for however bloody long Yvonne sees fit, and in the case of these oddballs with all their emotional baggage, that's a very long time. It feels like I’ve been here a week. I’ve heard all about Mary’s ex-husband, and how she ‘only ever wanted to be loved’, and Simon and his life as a lonely bachelor and how he ‘only ever wanted someone to love’. It’s enough to turn a stomach if you ask me. And this is only the tip of the ice burg. I zone out right around the time a young man labelled Marcus starts talking about his cats and start assessing my own situation.  

How have I ended up here? If that really was my short, uneventful life, could I have done more? Should I have? Spent more time with my family, or put a bit more effort into making old Shaz happy? Taken her on a few more nights out, a nice holiday every now and then? I can't even remember the last time I treated her to a bunch of flowers, poor old mare. 

The sulky girl is getting worked up again. 

‘Just calm down,’ Yvonne tells her, ‘We are all going to get a chance to talk. Go and have a biscuit.’ 

‘Urgh, as if! I bet they’ve been there for a thousand years.’ 

Marcus with the cats rolls his eyes, ‘Oh, what, are you worried you’re going to get food poisoning? You’re dead.’ 

I think I’ve had about enough. I half raise my hand again. 

‘Yes, Ian.’ 

‘Hi, yes, I think I’m cured, or whatever.’ 

‘You think you’re ready to move on?’ 

‘Yeah, that. If it means I don't have to do this anymore,’ I gesture around the room. Poor Yvonne looks like she wants to come with me. She sighs. 

‘Alright, fine. I usually like to do a bit of a graduation ceremony, I don’t suppose you’re interested, are you?’ 

‘Not in the slightest, mate.’ 

‘Fair enough.’ She points me toward the door. ‘Go and see Janine at the front desk, she will sign you out.’ 

I hear the ruckus continuing as I shut the door behind me, Mary has gone to sit next to Simon and they are holding hands, someone else is crying about a cat, that has to be Marcus, and the sulky girl is climbing furniture and waving her phone around trying to get signal. Good luck to them.  

A pang of sadness hits me as I make my way to a foyer. I think about Sharron back home, I wonder how she took the news. I think about my old ma, think about her stuck in a nursing home one day with no one to go visit her. I think about the little things I liked. Salted caramel Magnum ice creams, Friday nights down the pub with Sharron. Watching the sun come up on those early trips to the worksite. No more of any of that now. 

I get to the front desk and it’s empty. Of course, Janine is away. I rap my knuckles on the desk, not knowing what to do. There’s a huge clock behind the desk with a glass face and big brass hands. Not telling the time though, it’s stopped. To the right is a door with a little hand-made congratulations on your graduation banner above it. The N at the end has come unstuck and dangles down sadly.  

I guess I’ll see myself out, then. I’m about to open the door when a thought strikes me. Checking behind me that the foyer is clear I stroll up to the clock and give it a once over. It reads four-fifteen. Right about home time for me if I’d done the early shift. Could that have been the exact time of the accident? I squint closely at the glass cover over the clock face, hinges on one side and a clasp at the other. Maybe it just needs a little... tinkering. A harmless adjustment. 

I check behind me again and then reach for it. It’s a stupid idea, a whim, if you like. But whatever it is, my stubby fingers, engine oil still under my short nails, reach for the clasp, and before I know it the glass cover has swung open. The minute hand feels electric or static or something, and I get a weird vertigo feeling as I gently wind it back, round and round, minute by minute, until it sits neatly at the twelve. Four o’ clock. 

Stupid idea, really. It was just a whim. 

‘Eleven fifty, mate,’ says a voice behind me. 

I jump and spin around. ‘Eh?’ 

The bloke rolls his eyes. ‘Eleven fifty. Hot sausage rolls are seven dollars now. I don’t make the prices, I just sell the stuff. It’s eleven fifty with the drink.’ 

 I look down at my hands. They’re resting on a counter either side of a can of red bull and a sausage roll. I look back up at the young bloke and for the second time that day feel like an idiot as my poor brain tries to keep up. The young bloke is wearing a BP Garage shirt and standing in front of a till waiting for me to tap my card or get the hell out of the line. The foyer is gone, the clock is gone, the door and the banner too. It’s all been replaced with the servo I visit almost daily for a little pick-me-up after I clock off- a fact that I adamantly deny every time Sharron asks. 

‘Mate,’ says the young bloke. 

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say, reaching into my back pocket and tapping my phone. I step away from the counter, and no one tries to stop me. I walk out of the sliding doors cautiously, still no one stops me. I am free to go. I feel the sun on my face and I know that I'm really here. Whatever the hell that was back there, this is real.  

Did I just... cheat death? 

I go back in and get a salted caramel Magnum and a bunch of flowers. 

I don't know what the hell has gone on today, but I know one thing for a fact; I’m going to be very bloody careful driving home.