3. Julia #3
“I’m Mara. We spoke on the phone. Dr. Blackwood is finishing with his previous patient, but you’re right on time. You can sit wherever you’re comfortable.”
“Thank you.”
I choose the small sofa across from her desk and lower myself onto the edge rather than sitting back, placing my bag on my lap in front of my core like a shield. Mara answers the phone almost immediately, her voice shifting into the calm efficiency of someone who has done this a thousand times.
“Yes, Mr. Reynolds, I can move you to Thursday at two. No, that’s not a problem.”
She types while she speaks, checks something on another screen, and waves at a delivery driver without losing track of the conversation. I watch her for several seconds before realizing I am staring.
When our eyes meet, I smile automatically. Apologetically. She returns the smile, although something in her expression sharpens with quiet attention.
“Would you like something to drink while you wait?” she asks after ending the call. “Coffee, tea, water?”
“No, thank you. I’m okay.” The answer comes too quickly. A second later, the dryness in my mouth becomes impossible to ignore.
“Actually, I’m sorry. Could I have some water?”
Mara doesn’t react to the apology, but I notice the way her eyes remain on me for half a beat longer than before.
“Of course.”
She returns with a cold bottle and hands it to me without making me feel as though changing my mind created an inconvenience.
I take it with both hands.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The inner office door opens a few minutes later, and a stocky man steps into the waiting room with his jacket hanging from one fist. His face looks tired and angry in equal measure, his shoulders were held stiffly as if he was leaving behind a conversation he did not enjoy.
His gaze lands on me for a moment. There’s nothing threatening in it, but the weight of his attention makes mine drop toward the water bottle in my hands. He leaves without saying goodbye.
Mara watches the door close behind him, then turns toward me. “Julia, you can go ahead.”
My heart reacts as if she announced an execution.
I stand and my fingers tighten around the bottle.
First sessions always feel like exams nobody explains how to pass.
I worry I will describe things incorrectly, leave out the wrong detail, or fail to look damaged enough for someone to understand why I am there.
There is always a part of me that is convinced I need to prove the pain before I am allowed help with it.
Mara walks me toward the open doorway and gives me a small nod.
“You’re fine,” she says quietly, as though she can see exactly how close I am to fleeing. “Just go in.”
The office beyond her feels nothing like the waiting room.
It is darker, quieter, softened by warm lamplight and muted gray-green walls.
Shelves filled with books line one side, while a large window looks out over Minneapolis, the city spread below beneath a pale afternoon sky.
There are no family photographs or personal decorations, nothing that tells me who belongs to the man who works here.
For a moment, I notice only the room and its contents. Then movement near the desk draws my attention. A man straightens from where he has been setting a file aside, and every version of Dr. Blackwood I had imagined disappears at once.
I expected someone older. Not elderly, exactly, but reassuringly ordinary and vastly older than the man in front of me. A man in his late fifties with thinning hair, soft hands, and the kind of face that made people confess things without feeling embarrassed afterward.
The man in front of me looks less like someone preparing to unpack thirty years of trauma and more like he is about to acquire my company through a hostile takeover.
He is tall enough that I have to lift my chin when he approaches.
His charcoal three-piece suit is fitted perfectly across broad shoulders and a chest that has no business existing beneath psychiatric credentials.
His hair is black and straight, falling neatly across his forehead without looking styled, and thin-framed glasses sit against features too sharp to qualify as comforting.
There is something striking about him that goes beyond being handsome.
Something controlled. Every movement appears deliberate, from the way he closes the distance between us to the calm placement of his hand when he offers it.
“Julia,” he says, and his voice is lower than I expected, steady without sounding rehearsed. “I’m Dr. Kai Blackwood. It’s good to meet you.”
His handshake is warm and firm, but he does not hold on longer than necessary.
“Nice to meet you,” I manage, silently congratulating myself for not saying anything idiotic.
His eyes move briefly over my face, not in the careless way men sometimes look at women, but with an attention that feels far more unsettling because it seems to register everything.
The tension in my shoulders. The bottle held too tightly between my fingers.
The fact that I remain standing near the door instead of stepping farther into the room. He gestures toward the seating area.
“You can sit wherever you feel most comfortable. The chair, the sofa, or somewhere else if neither works for you.”
I choose the lounge chair across from his, mostly because the sofa feels too exposed and sitting anywhere unconventional would require a personality I do not currently possess.
He waits until I am seated before taking the chair opposite from me.
As he settles back, he unbuttons his suit jacket with one smooth movement and lets it fall open over the vest beneath it.
Everything about him feels measured. Not cold.
Contained. The distinction should not matter at all, but somehow it does.