So, how was your week?
Fine. How was yours?
It was okay.
How you're feeling about your dad?
- April... - What?
I'd rather talk about you.
Surprise, sur-fucking-prise.
I'm just worried about what happened last weekend...
may have changed our relationship.
We have no relationship.
In Treatment, S02E27 April: Week Six
I've dumped people for less than what you did to me.
Are you thinking of dumping me?
I don't know what I'm doing here.
Maybe you wanted to convey your anger toward me in person.
Maybe I just wanted to get out of the hospital for a few hours.
Does anybody know that you've left?
Do you think I just hopped a fence or something?
Call the doctors if you like. You're all such good friends now.
I'm doing fine, so they let me out for a few hours. I have to...
check back in tonight.
I had to tell her.
- Why? - She's your mother and you were delirious.
You could have waited until I came out of it.
- And what if you never came out of it? - Then someone would have called her eventually.
You put me down as your emergency contact number.
- So? - So you empowered me to make a decision
on your behalf if anything happened to you.
I had a bad fever. It wasn't like I was in heart f--
You had 105° F. They were packing ice onto you when I arrived.
I talked to the doctors, Paul. I know what happened.
Really?
I understand that you're angry with me.
I didn't make this decision lightly.
And if I had to do it again, I would do exactly the same thing.
Wow.
Has my insurance covered everything?
You don't have to worry about that.
Well, I'm leaving and I'm not coming back,
so if I owe you anything speak now.
April, please, don't go.
How could you? It was the one thing, the one thing that I asked you not to do.
I didn't think it was right to let you lie there alone
on the brink of death.
You really don't understand, do you?
You, you don't understand what you were to me.
What did she say... when you called?
At first she...
she just, she just didn't understand, she...
she even didn't know you were seeing a therapist.
I asked her to meet me at a coffee shop,
so we could discuss it in person, but...
she... she refused.
She's paranoid.
I offered her to go to her house. She hung up and
I called her back and
I asked her if she'd meet me at the hospital in an hour.
She showed up?
Are you surprised?
Did you meet her in my room?
No, in the lobby.
How did you recognize each other?
She looks just like you.
You just...
walked up to her and said, "Hi, I'm Paul Weston.
"Your daughter has stage-three non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,
"and she's dying on the fourth floor."
I explained that you'd come to see me several weeks ago with the diagnosis of lymphoma
and that you'd begun chemo therapy.
What did she say when you said "cancer"?
She seemed...
stunned.
Did she cry?
No.
Is she angry -- at me?
Definitely not. No.
She hates being the last person to find something out.
She did have a hard time believing
you would keep something like this from her.
What did you say to that?
I told her she'd have to speak to you.
- How long was this conversation? - A couple of minutes.
It wasn't me she wanted to see.
She wanted to see you.
I woke up and she was sitting there.
I thought...
I thought for a moment that...
I was at home...
and it all had been a bad dream, like...
I was still a child, and...
I was sick, and...
my mom was taking care of me...
and I've never grown up, and...
I've never gone to school, and...
I've never gotten cancer.
I closed my eyes, and...
I guess I fell asleep.
When I woke up she was still sitting there...
glaring at me, like I had gotten sick deliberately.
You broke my heart.
Worse than Kyle.
I'm sorry.
That was never my intention.
Kyle set me up for coffee last week.
He's been harassing me so I finally went just to shut him up, like,
"I'm still alive, I'm in chemo."
"Just leave me alone."
He just seemed so young to me.
Like a baby.
I was thinking,
"I don't want a boy like you, I want someone like Paul... a man."
What was it like to see him again?
I don't wanna talk about Kyle. I brought him up, bec--
Fuck it, never mind.
I thought you were a man.
So, today, I'm... your betrayer?
But last week you were equally certain that I was generous and good.
Can you see how dramatically your opinion of me has changed?
- Yes. - And can you make sense of that for me?
I guess I never really knew you.
Maybe you're so angry at me you're,
you're having a hard time seeing this situation from my perspective.
- Don't lecture me on empathy. - I am not talking about empathy,
I'm talking about perspective.
You feel deeply for people whom you believe are on your team,
because they are, in your mind, basically extensions of, of yourself.
You feel their pain as if it's your own pain,
but you do have a hard time understanding someone
who's approaching from a different perspective.
You were using your "perspective" to fuck me over.
I thought you were in serious trouble, and your mother deserved to know.
Why? You have no allegiance to her. You've never met her.
- As a father myself -- - I'll tell you what happened: you got scared.
- You didn't wanna be my emergency contact. - April, that --
- You didn't want that responsibility. - April, that is --
If I had a patient who asked me not to call her mother,
- I would never have called her mother! - You don't have children!
It's so easy to betray you,
it's so easy to let you down.
I make one mistake, not even a mistake,
one decision that you don't agree with,
and that's it for you.
I'm worthless because I'm weak.
And that's a quality you can't accept in others because
you can't accept it in yourself.
But you know that nobody can live up to your standards,
because you can't even live up to them.
This is life, April.
There are days that are just...
classless and cruel.
But it is the only life that you've got.
Leah lets me down...
all the time.
How?
Little things...
And she's a flake.
She will show up an hour late or...
forget we made a plan at all.
But that doesn't bother you?
No.
And what's special about your relationship with Leah?
I know she loves me.
She's known me since I was six.
Before I had done anything.
So, she loved you when you were a child.
She let inside before you'd closed the gates?
- That's so depressing. - Is it?
To have one person who really knows who you are?
I used to be really different.
In what way?
I was a total mess, this really emotional kid.
I would cry at the drop of a hat.
I used to write my parents hate mail
and leave it on their pillows at night.
"Dear mom and dad,
"these are all the things you did today that upset me.
"Please respond."
And -- did they respond?
My mother would tell me that I
had to get tough...
I couldn't let my emotions show on my face.
Yeah.
You know, when I was in...
when I was in grad school, I had a professor who,
who said something I still remember.
He used to say that,
for better or for worse,
that maturity in modern American society had become
synonymous with a lack of emotions
and not feel anything too deeply.
That's true.
But some people naturally have
more heightened emotional responses than others.
I think that you're one of those people.
So, you've been working hard to change your nature.
Just... it's probably a futile enterprise.
But the continual effort to do that
could make you very angry or insecure.
You think I'm insecure?
Do you?
There's no good way for me to answer that question.
If I say no, I'm a narcissist. And if I say yes, I'm a loser.
Well, the way I see it: if you say no...
you're perfect.
If you say yes...
then you're human.
Why do you think your mother told you to
keep your feelings to, to yourself?
She wanted to keep me from getting hurt.
Is it possible that it had something to do with, with Daniel?
What do you mean?
Daniel couldn't control his emotions,
and he became, he became violent when, when he was upset, you know.
So, maybe a heightened emotional response from you,
even though it was an appropriate reaction to a given circumstance,
maybe it reminded your mother of Daniel,
and in some way it scared her.
The world is a messed-up place.
She'd -- just try and teach me to protect myself.
But maybe she didn't give you time
to get to know yourself first,
to know who it is that you are protecting.
You think I don't know myself?
I think that you've been operating for a long time in reaction to your mother.
At the hospital she was so mad, she wouldn't even look at me.
She just kept coming in and out of the room, bossing the doctors around, I just...
I just wanted her to leave.
Maybe she wasn't actually angry.
Maybe she was scared.
- It doesn't matter. - Doesn't?
No, Paul, not when I'm hooked up to three IVs.
The only thing that matters in that moment
is that my mother is there and I can't deal with her.
My dad came by later and...
He was perfect.
Me, I was freezing, so...
he went out and bought me a down blanket. And...
Now whenever he comes he brings me... something special.
There's this dark chocolate that I love.
Like, weighs a ton. I never get it for myself.
He brought me some.
Then he sat by my bed and held my hand, and...
he said, "April, you're a strong girl. You'll beat this."
That's all I need.
She's my mother. Why doesn't she know that?
He sounds very calm, your dad.
He can be, under certain circumstances.
Like -- hospitals?
What are you saying?
Well, that's what he does for a living.
It might be easier for your father to give you
what you need at the moment because he's had some practice.
But your mother...
was out of her element.
I don't understand. Are you for this woman or against her?
April, everything doesn't have to be black and white.
You're so over me.
Sorry?
You're -- so tired of this,
you just... want this to be done.
You wanna figure me out, fix my head,
so you can check me off your ledger.
What, what about my behavior gave you that idea?
- You turned on me. - How?
By calling my mother.
Ah, we're back to that again. So, what I did still doesn't make sense to you?
What are you talking about?
For five sessions all I've talked about is why I can't call my mother.
I was walking down Flatbush Avenue,
burning with fever with a non-existent immune system,
trying to hail a cab to take me to the emergency room,
and I still didn't call her.
You pulled rank on me, Paul.
You're like, "I've humored this chick for too long,
"I'm the adult, I'm gonna call the other adult
"so we can figure out how to...
"how to... fuck up the world together."
You don't think of yourself as an adult?
I guess I am.
But do you want to be?
Not really.
Maybe that's because you barely had time to be a child.
Your work here is done.
No. Our work here is only beginning.
Well, you're wrong.
You can check me off now. I'm in chemo,
my mother knows... whatever.
You keep using the term "check me off".
Does that mean anything to you?
My mother...
used to write a check on the back of my hand
whenever I did a good deed or aced a test or something.
She said I loved it when I was little.
But something changed as you got older?
I just... felt like she was...
you know, checking me off, like,
"April's fine. She's got a check. Don't need to worry about April."
Got so tired of those goddam checks I stopped telling her things.
Like what?
I don't know, I'd...
I'd raise money for autism research by running a 10 km.
But you wouldn't tell her?
She'd find out later from a teacher or school newspaper.
Can you give me another example?
When Leah's mom was dying, Leah couldn't handle it.
Neither could her dad, so...
I was over at their house three times a week, helping out, just...
buying groceries, making dinner.
But, again, your mother didn't know about this.
She found out at the funeral. Leah's dad came up to her.
It seems like you wanted your mother to know these things,
but you didn't wanna tell her.
Maybe.
And what would happen if she found out?
I always her little hero, her saving grace.
Her perfect child.
April, is it possible that I've become part of that pattern?
- What? - You got cancer.
You decided to fight it alone, just as you've always done.
You didn't tell your mother, but you came to see me.
You told me,
because maybe you knew on some level that I would eventually tell your mother...
and you would become her hero...
again.
That is so fucked up.
I don't think it is, April.
I think you saved yourself
the only way you know how.
I thought that the cancer would clean me out of all this bullshit.
I thought I would finally stop obsessing
over how to be the best at everything, and...
all the reasons I should hate myself and everyone else.
I thought I would...
finally start to think about the big picture, but...
it's just gotten darker inside my head.
I don't believe in anything any more.
I don't believe in love, nor...
my mother...
nor my body...
or you.
Because of all this stupid therapy, I don't...
even believe in myself any more.
I literally have no idea why I should get out of bed in the morning.
That's not a bad place... to begin, April.
Do you remember the dream that we talked about last week?
The one where I was dying?
Yeah, except that I think that dream could actually have been about...
rebirth...
about saying goodbye to the, to the old self
to make room for the new.
It could just be dying.
When will you get the results of the blood test?
I told you, end of the week.
Then you'll know for sure if the chemo is working.
Yeah.
Will you let me know the results as soon as you get them?
Sure.
Thank you.
Are we done here?
If you wanna keep on talking...
Not really.
Can you help me up?
Sure.