7. Counter-Treatment
Counter-Treatment
Matthias
Strauss gives me access to Bliss under the clean fiction of research.
It helps that he wants my approval badly enough to mistake access for collaboration. By morning, he has already arranged three individual observation sessions, one cognitive recall assessment, and permission for me to review her medication response notes under his supervision.
His supervision is less constant than he thinks.
Men like Strauss trust systems more than people. Badge access, dosage logs, nurse schedules, tablet permissions, and locked cabinets. Every control makes him feel safer, which means every control creates a place he stops looking closely.
Bliss enters the research suite with Nurse Larkin at her side and grey paint beneath her nails.
No blue today.
That worries me more than it should.
“Good morning, Bliss,” Strauss says from the doorway.
She gives him the small, compliant nod that makes my hands want to curl into fists.
I don’t let them.
“Dr. Cross will run your session today. I’ll observe from the adjoining room.”
Bliss looks at me, and the same flicker moves through her eyes. Brief. Fragile. Present.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hello, Bliss.”
Strauss leaves us with Nurse Larkin near the door, tablet in hand. I begin with harmless questions. Sleep, appetite, headache, nausea, and dreams. Every answer is flattened by the drugs, but not empty. Her pauses tell me more than her words.
While she completes the first recall exercise, I review the medication tray waiting beside the nurse.
Patient number. Not name.
Morning dose already logged.
My window is small.
I adjust nothing in front of Larkin. Instead, I ask for a timed response test, request water, and use the interruption to trigger a correction in the tablet record. A minor one. A flagged duplication in the sedation schedule. Enough to make Larkin frown, step out, and call pharmacy.
Strauss watches from behind the glass.
I keep my posture relaxed.
Bliss traces a circle on the page in front of her.
“Am I doing it wrong?”
“No,” I say. “You’re doing exactly what I asked.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
Now there’s something like suspicion in them.
Not fear but awareness.
When Larkin returns, the corrected tray holds one reduced dose and one capsule I added from my own supply, catalogued under the institute’s generic supplement code. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that will shock her system or announce itself in the monitoring data.
Ten years of research led to this framework.
The mistake would be speed.
Memory doesn’t return because someone kicks the door open. It returns when the mind believes the room beyond it can be survived.
Bliss swallows the medication with water.
My pulse stays even.
Strauss sees compliance.
Larkin sees routine.
I see the first thread loosen.
Afterward, I ask Bliss to identify objects from a set of cards. Cup, chair, tree, ocean.
She stops at ocean.
Her fingers hover above the card.
“Do you prefer that one?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s all right.”
Her brows pull together slightly, as if all right is a language she no longer trusts.
Then she whispers, “La mer.”
The nurse doesn’t catch it.
I do.
The change has begun.
Meridian Memory Institute, Rural Oregon. 1400 hours
The first change isn’t dramatic.
That’s why Strauss almost misses it.
Bliss sits straighter during the afternoon session. Her eyes track movement with less delay. When Nurse Larkin places the grey palette beside her canvas, Bliss looks at it for several seconds instead of reaching for the brush.
“Is there a reason I can’t have other colors?” she asks.
Larkin glances at Strauss.
Strauss’s smile arrives smoothly. “We’ve discussed this, Bliss. Reduced stimulation supports recovery.”
“But I don’t want to paint grey.”
The words are quiet, and every clinician in the room knows they’re not the answer Strauss trained her to give.
My attention stays on the notes in front of me, though every part of me is listening.
Strauss steps closer, careful and calm. “Wanting is not always the same as needing.”
Bliss frowns at the tray. “That sounds like something people say when they don’t want to give you a choice.”
Nurse Larkin’s pen stops.
Strauss goes still for half a second before his smile returns.
There she is.
Not fully. Not safely. But enough.
A spark through chemical fog.
“Bliss,” Strauss says, “resistance often means we’re nearing protected material.”
“Maybe I just hate grey.”
The corner of my mouth almost moves.
I stop it in time.
Strauss looks toward me, and I know exactly what he’s searching for. Concern. Agreement. Confirmation that the patient is destabilizing.
I give him none of that.
Instead, I glance at Bliss’s canvas, then at the notes beside her earlier recall task. “Emotional resistance can indicate treatment engagement.”
Strauss studies me.
I continue before he can decide whether to disagree. “She’s not refusing the exercise. She’s expressing preference within it. That suggests increased executive participation, not deterioration.”
The phrase does what I need it to do. It gives Strauss a scientific frame that flatters his treatment instead of challenging it.
His posture eases. “Yes. Precisely.”
Bliss looks between us, unimpressed.
That may be the most encouraging sign all day.
Strauss turns back to her. “Then perhaps we compromise. You may choose the order of your greys.”
Her face falls.
Not much.
But enough.
I make a note I don’t need.
Patient demonstrates emerging preference and frustration response.
What I mean is: Bliss wants color.
What I can’t write is: She’s beginning to want herself.
For the rest of the session, she paints badly on purpose.
The grey lines are uneven. The composition refuses balance. Twice, she changes direction after Strauss praises something, dragging wet paint across the part he liked most.
By the end, Nurse Larkin looks worried. Strauss looks thoughtful.
I look at the canvas and see more life in that ugly, stubborn mess than in every obedient painting in her file.
When Bliss hands over the brush, her fingers are stained grey again, but her eyes meet mine for one brief second.
This time, the flicker looks almost like defiance.
Strauss thinks resistance is something to manage.
He doesn’t understand what I understand.
Resistance is memory with its fists up.
And Bliss Fontaine is starting to swing.
Meridian Memory Institute, Rural Oregon. 1530 hours
Strauss leaves us alone for the private session because he believes trust has been established.
It has. Just not with him.
The research suite is smaller than the group room, with one window looking into the pines and another into the observation booth.
The second window is dark, but darkness doesn’t mean privacy.
Nurse Larkin may be on the other side. Strauss may review the recording later.
Every word needs to survive being overheard.
Bliss sits across from me with a worksheet in her lap and a pencil held loosely between her fingers. She hasn’t answered the last question. Instead, she’s been studying my face as if I’m another canvas they’ve told her to make sense of using the wrong colors.
“You look at me like you know something I don’t,” she says.
I set my pen down.
The safest answer would be clinical. I know your file. I know your treatment history. I know your baseline markers.
None of those answers will help her.
“I do,” I say.
Her fingers tighten around the pencil. “What?”
“I know you paint in color.”
Her breath catches.
I keep my voice quiet, even, plain enough to pass as therapeutic affirmation if anyone reviews the recording.
“Real color. Extraordinary color. Red that feels alive. Blue that looks like it has weather inside it. Gold that makes the whole room warmer. Your work doesn’t ask permission to be seen.”
Her eyes fill before she can look away.
“I can’t remember how.”
The words are so small they nearly disappear between us.
But they don’t.
They stay.
I lean forward slightly, keeping the table between us because boundaries matter more here than tenderness ever could. “You will.”
Her lashes lower, tears collecting and falling onto the worksheet. She doesn’t wipe them away. Maybe she’s forgotten she’s allowed to. Maybe she doesn’t want to move in case the sentence disappears if she does.
“I tried,” she whispers.
“To remember?”
“To paint something else.”
I think of the blue beneath her nail. The ocean card. The way her mind reached for La mer before the drugs could close around it.
“I know.”
Her gaze lifts quickly. Too quickly.
I have to be careful now.
“That wanting is important,” I say. “It means the pathway is still there.”
“Pathway,” she repeats, and I notice the edge of annoyance in her voice. “You sound like him.”
A fair strike. I accept it.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
That surprises her more than the science did.
I fold the worksheet closed and slide it aside. “Forget pathways. Think of it as a room you used to know in the dark. The furniture is still there. The walls are still there. Meridian turned out the lights and told you the room was gone.”
Bliss breathes shakily.
“And color?”
“Color is you finding the switch.”
She looks toward the blank paper, then at her hands.
“I want blue,” she says.
It’s the clearest thing she’s said since I arrived.
I write one line in my notes, large enough for Strauss to read later.
Patient shows positive engagement with controlled color reintroduction.
Then I open my case and remove a single blue pencil.
Bliss stares at it as though I’ve handed her a key.
Meridian Memory Institute, Rural Oregon. 1630 hours
Every adjustment I make carries two risks.
The first is pharmacological. Too much, too quickly, and I could undo weeks of careful work by forcing memories back before her mind is ready to hold them.
The second wears a white coat. If Strauss discovers I’m reducing his protocol and replacing part of it with compounds developed through ten years of research, my cover evaporates.
Best case, I’m escorted off the property.
Worst case...
I don’t spend time imagining worst cases.
They’ve never improved the outcome.
Bliss sits opposite me while I review her chart. The changes are small enough to hide inside ordinary variation. Slightly improved alertness. Better sustained attention. Increased emotional response. Emerging independent preference.
Exactly what I’d hoped for. Exactly what Strauss believes his own treatment is producing.
I check her pulse as part of the assessment.
“May I?”
She nods and offers her hand.
My fingers settle lightly against the inside of her wrist.
Her pulse is stronger than yesterday. More responsive. The suppression is beginning to loosen its grip.
I count the beats. One. Two. Three.
Bliss turns her hand slowly beneath mine.
Before I understand what she’s doing, her fingers slip between my own.
She holds my hand.
There’s nothing accidental about it.
The room becomes impossibly still.
She watches my face with clear, searching eyes, as though she’s trying to solve a painting she’s seen before but can’t quite remember.
I don’t move.
For one impossible heartbeat, neither does she.
Then I gently close my other hand over hers, not to keep it there, but to ease it free.
“Bliss...”
My voice comes out quieter than I intend.
She doesn’t look embarrassed.
She looks curious.
“Did I do something wrong?”
The question hurts more than it should.
“No.”
I manage a small smile.
“You did something very human.”
“Then why...”
Because every instinct I possess wants to forget where we are.
Because you’re beginning to return to yourself.
Because you’re my patient.
Because your mind is still healing.
Because any answer except the right one would be a betrayal of everything I’ve worked toward.
I let her hand go.
“Not like this,” I say gently. “Not while you’re in here.”
She studies me for several long seconds.
The artist is still there. I can see her looking past my words, searching the spaces I deliberately leave untouched.
At last, she nods.
“I think...” she says slowly, “…you’re sad for me.”
A thousand responses present themselves. Only one belongs in this room.
“I want you to get well.”
She accepts that answer, though I suspect she knows it isn’t the whole truth.
When she leaves, I remain seated long after the door closes.
The medication adjustment doesn’t frighten me.
Strauss doesn’t frighten me.
What frightens me is how easily one gentle touch reminded me that Bliss Fontaine is no longer just the woman I’m trying to save.
She’s becoming the woman I must not allow myself to want.
Not yet.
Not here.