Therapist’s office

Therapist's office
First appearance	New Beginnings, page 4 March 16, 2009
Related characters	Abbey, Daisy

The Therapist’s office is a counseling practice in Roseville where Abbey attends therapy to work through the abuse he suffered from his father. It occupies a suite in a shared medical building close enough to Abbey’s neighborhood that he walks to his appointments, and it has appeared on panel exactly once, in New Beginnings.

Description

Abbey stops outside the brick facade and reads its practitioners’ directory, which includes Mrs. Samantha Coop, a therapist.

The practice shares a brick-fronted building with several other medical offices, set on a sidewalked street with marked parking bays out front. A directory sign on the brick wall lists the practitioners by suite number, among them a therapist, “Mrs. Samantha Coop”, alongside a psychologist and an optometrist. Which of them Abbey actually sees is never stated.

Only the waiting room has ever been drawn. It is a wide, rather empty front office with a long row of identical upholstered chairs along one wall, a curved reception counter staffed by a long-haired receptionist, and a round wall clock hanging above the seats. Magazines are set out for visitors, and Daisy passes a whole session with one titled “FASHION”. The session itself is never shown; Abbey heads off-panel for his appointment and comes back the same way.

History

Abbey goes to counseling to work through the abuse he suffered from his father, Abraham. After Abbey broke down at the Carnival, Daisy resolved to make sure he got proper help, and Abbey agreed to try seeing a counselor over the summer break. He took the appointments seriously from the very start, turning down a week-long trip to Acapulco rather than miss one: “I just want to stick to the plan we set up, no excuses.”

The one visit shown on panel comes in New Beginnings, in a flashback Daisy narrates to Lucy. Abbey walks to the building alone, and the walk is intercut with his memory of the night his father fled the house. He is still standing outside, caught in that memory, when Daisy surprises him — she remembered which day his appointment fell on and came to see him in. “C’mon,” she tells him. “I know it’s scary, but it’ll be good to talk things through.”

Inside, Abbey checks in with the receptionist and disappears into the back. The only measure of how long the session runs is the waiting-room clock, ticking forward while Daisy sits and reads. When he finally comes back out he is withdrawn and exhausted, and Daisy hugs him tightly.

The building has not been drawn since, though Abbey continues to mention his therapy. Daisy falls back on the counselor’s advice to cool Abbey down when his temper flares. By junior year the subject has soured a bit, and Abbey admits he stopped discussing the sessions with Daisy because he felt like a burden. At New Year’s, he figures his therapist would be elated at his resolution not to be violent to anyone anymore. Years after the office visit, he tells Paulo he has been talking to her about him a lot: “If I can learn to stop hating people when they mess things up.. Then maybe I can learn to go easier on myself.”

Trivia

• The comic never gives the practice a name. Lucy calls the visit “Abbey’s appointment with the shrink”, Abbey starts out saying “counselor”, and years later has settled on “my therapist”.
• Veronica called the page of Abbey approaching the building “probably one of the hardest pages I had to draw”, noting there was “something oddly personal about it”.
• The authors’ commentary on the waiting-room page spares a thought for “Loyal little Daisy, spending her lovely summer’s day waiting around in a reception room.”

See also

• New Beginnings
• Abbey
• Daisy
• Carnival