8. Kai
Kai
The heavy office door closes behind Julia with a muted thud.
I remain standing in the doorway of my office long after there is any reason for me to be there.
Usually, this is the easiest part of the rhythm.
When a patient leaves, I give myself a minute, sometimes two, to separate whatever they carried into the room from whatever the next person is about to bring.
Then I go back inside, finish my notes, reset, and move on.
Today, for some reason, my feet don't move. All I can see is Julia standing in front of me a few minutes ago with her purse hanging from one shoulder, her eyes technically focused on my face while some part of her remained so far away that I could feel the distance between us. Physically, she knew where she was. She was aware of what day it was. She wanted to go home. She answered every orientation question I asked her, which should’ve been enough to settle the trained part of my brain and recognise when a patient is safe to leave.
Only I knew better. Mentally, she was somewhere else. And that place was not safe.
“You planning on standing there until tomorrow?” Mara's voice pulls my attention away from the closed door.
I turn toward her. Her eyes are fixed on me with the same expression she has worn every time she's caught something I would've preferred to keep to myself over the last six years.
“What?”
Her brow lifts. “You tell me.”
“Nothing to tell.”
The answer earns me a look.
I exhale and drag a hand over my jaw. “Nothing happened that isn't part of trauma work.”
“Pretty sure that's what we do here, Kai.”
I give her a look. “I know what we do here.”
“Then why do you look like you want to punch a hole in the wall with your fist?”
I stare at her as words start forming in my head.
Because a twelve-year-old girl stood barefoot in a pantry while her mother showed her fucking cum on her father's underwear.
Because she was taught to know how her father's tennis clothes were supposed to smell.
Because she was forced to listen to an adult fall apart before she was old enough to understand why the adult shouldn't have been falling apart “on her”.
Because she looked at me with half the fucking light gone from her eyes and still tried to convince me she was fine.
But I don't say any of that.
“We went deeper than I expected,” I told Mara instead. “I misread where her tolerance was.”
Mara's expression grows a shade more worried. “She dissociated?”
“Yes.”
“Badly?”
“Enough.” The single word comes out harder than I intended.
There hadn't been a clear warning. That's the part I can't stop turning over.
Julia spent most of the session engaged.
She was insightful enough to recognize several of her own patterns before I needed to point them out.
She was stubborn enough to argue when she thought I was wrong.
We talked about her father last week without anything approaching the reaction I saw today, and nothing in her intake suggested that asking about her mother would be the thing that pulled the floor out from underneath her.
Her father was supposed to be the obvious wound. But it was her mother that had been living inside it and I hadn't seen that until Julia started talking.
Mara studies me for another second. “She’s okay to drive?”
“She was oriented when she left.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
I give her a look, but Mara knows better than to push when my expression changes. Unfortunately, she also knows me well enough not to care.
“I asked her to stay longer,” I say. “She wouldn't.”
“Of course she wouldn't.”
My jaw tightens because the certainty in Mara's voice pisses me off precisely because she's right.
Julia wanted the safety of her own house, her own silence where no one was watching her while she tried to put herself back together. I understood that when she said it. I understand it now. It still doesn't make letting her walk out feel any fucking better.
I glance at my watch. “Do I have anyone else today?”
“No. She was your last one.”
The relief is immediate.
“Anything that can't wait until morning?”
“No.”
I nod once and turn toward my office before Mara can read more into the question than I'm willing to explain.
“Kai.”
I stop but don't turn around.
“Be smart,” Her voice is quieter this time.
A humorless breath leaves me. “Always am.”
“That's not what I meant.”
No. It isn't.
I close my office door behind me and head toward the narrow closet beside the bathroom where I keep spare clothes for days I ride into work.
The black suit jacket comes off first, followed by the vest and shirt, each piece folded with considerably less care than it deserves and my OCD will have to fucking deal with it.
I pulled on black jeans and the heavy black hoodie shoved onto the shelf above my helmet.
I'm halfway through tying my sneakers when I finally stop pretending I haven't already decided what I'm doing.
I'm going after her. Not to interfere. Not to cross any fucking line that can't be uncrossed.
I'm just making sure she gets home safely.
That's it. A patient left my office after a significant dissociative episode, insisted on driving herself home and has no immediate support waiting for her. Being alone after ripping open half her childhood was not necessarily a high risk but driving in such a state? I wasn’t so sure.
She'll be fine.
Of course she will, but I’m starting to hate that fucking word. I grab my helmet with more force than necessary, and leave the office. Mara looks up the moment I step back into reception, and her eyes move from the hoodie to the helmet hanging from my fingers before returning to my face.
There is something in her expression that I can’t quite read, but I don’t have the time to decipher what that is.
“Going for a ride?”
“Yes.”
“Right now.” It doesn’t sound like a question, more like a suggestion I reconsider my choice.
Not. Fucking. Happening.
“That's usually how going for a ride works.”
Her mouth flattens into a thin line and I already know I’ll have to apologise for that. Later, though. Instead, I reach for the door.
“That's what I'm afraid of,” she says.
My hand stills against the handle. For a second I consider telling her she's reading too much into it. She knows I ride when I need to clear my head and have done exactly that hundreds of times before. But I also know that the lie wouldn't survive her face, so I don't bother.
“I'll see you tomorrow.”
“Kai.”
I glance back. Whatever she wants to say seems to change before it reaches her mouth.
“Be careful.”
I give her a small nod and leave. By the time I reach the underground garage, irritation has settled into every muscle in my body.
It’s directed at everyone. At Julia for being stubborn and insisting on going home.
At myself for not stopping her leaving. At Mara for noticing.
At the fact that I'm thirty-seven years old, licensed, educated, and fully capable of listing every ethical reason why what I'm considering is unnecessary.
Yet none of those reasons has been convincing enough to make me take the elevator back toward my office instead of the garage.
My bike is parked in my assigned spot across from the visitor section. I know Julia's address because it's in her file. The only thing I don't know is what she drives. That becomes irritating the second I scan the visitor spaces and realize several cars are pulling out at once.
“Fuck.”
I put my gloves on and reach for the helmet just as headlights sweep across the concrete. A black Ford turns out of one of the visitor rows and passes several yards in front of me.
For half a second, all I see is the windshield reflecting fluorescent garage lights but then it passes beneath the brighter fixture near the exit and I catch her. Dark green sweater. Chestnut hair. Something tight inside my chest releases before I can stop it.
There you are, little ember.
I swing one leg over the bike, pull on the helmet and start the engine as her taillights disappear up the garage ramp.
By the time I emerge onto the street, she's already moving with traffic so I stay back.
Not because I'm hiding. And that's the first lie, of course I'm fucking hiding.
The last thing she needs after the session we just had is to glance into her mirror and discover someone's following her.
So, I keep several vehicles between us as much as traffic allows it, closing the distance only when I risk losing sight of her.
At first, she appears to be driving normally.
The speed is steady, she stays centered in her lane.
Brake lights respond when traffic slows.
Nothing that would justify me being here.
Not until I get close enough at a stoplight to see her face reflected in her driver's-side mirror and my stomach drops.
Her eyes are forward, but there's no awareness in them.
She's looking at the road without really seeing it.
I know that look, the look of autopilot and functioning without any awareness of what is happening outside of your own bubble.
I spent too many years watching it appear on my mother's face before I ever learned the word dissociation.
Julia moves when the cars ahead move. Brakes when the lights ahead of her turn red.
Follows the lane with the mechanical precision of someone relying almost entirely on habit.
Technically, she’s functional, but mentally she’s somewhere else, and my skin crawls because I know where that is.
Because I’m the one who dragged her back there.
“Jesus, fuck, little ember.” I curse inside the helmet.