My Michelle.- Complete Story!

Chapter 24 - Redressing the balance.

 About an hour later a showered and refreshed Michelle knocked on Dr Morris' door.  

"Come in." called the familiar voice. "Michelle?"

"I just came to say that I'm ready when you are."

"No problem," she said smiling, "take a seat."

 "Here?"

 "Yes – it's not unusual to work in here. If you're comfortable with that?"

"Fine." Michelle took a seat as the Helen made a quick phone call. A few minutes later there was a gentle knock and another person entered the room. Michelle recognized the woman as another doctor. She greeted Helen cheerfully and sat down.

"Michelle, this is Dr Prescott, she is a colleague of mine. I was hoping you would be agreeable to either her or me as your first contact after the issues yesterday. There's always one of us on duty."

Michelle looked a little surprised but agreed.

"Do you agree to her having access to our previous session recordings?"

"If necessary, yes."

"Ok, today we had originally said we would discuss your pregnancy with Jess. Are you still happy to focus on that or would you like to review what happened yesterday afternoon?"

"I was hoping to move on from yesterday ...we've already discussed it earlier...and to be honest, I don't really want to be reminded of what I did yesterday. I feel very ashamed of my actions already."

"Then in that case, if you're happy to, then we'll move on. Yesterday our discussion focused on your early life and then you talked about your marriage to a violent man. Then we talked about your daughters.

How long after your marriage ending did you and Paul become involved with each other?"

"That depends on what you mean by involved to be honest. I met Paul about a month after deciding to leave Ian. We met through a mutual friend and then we became friends. We were friends for around three months when he told me he wanted to be more than friends. After that we kept our distance because I wasn't ready for a serious relationship. I really liked him but it was far too soon for me after....well after everything that had happened. I was scared of trusting again amongst other things but I also wanted to be in charge of my own life and not answerable to anyone else. I needed time to make my own decision. Then we saw each other again and I finally admitted to him that I cared about him but why I was reluctant. We took things really slowly, not getting serious too soon. Friends before anything else."

 "How would you define serious?"

"I moved into his house but although we shared a bed we didn't ...well ...you know?"

"You didn't have intercourse?"

"No, I wasn't ready and Paul respected that" Michelle smiled as she remembered. "He was so patient and loving. I know now that I let it happen too soon when I met Ian, something I regretted looking back because I know emotionally I wasn't ready for that kind of relationship. With Paul...well waiting made it amazing! What I experienced making love with Paul for the first time, I never felt during my whole time with Ian, even when things were good between us. I know we're both glad we'd waited in the end."

"How long was it after that that you discovered you were pregnant?"

"We got engaged after about eighteen months together. Then a few months after that I worked in Europe for four months. I conceived almost immediately I returned."  She grinned, "Not surprising really as we never got out of bed for over a week! So I'd say nearly two years."