10. Kai
Kai
The surprised cancellation leaves me with forty-three minutes I didn’t ask for and with absolutely no responsible way to fill them.
There are patient notes waiting to be finished, two emails from the hospital I should answer, an article Mara has been reminding me to review since Monday and a stack of insurance forms occupying the corner of my desk with the kind of quiet hostility unique to administrative paperwork.
It’s something that Mara could handle in a heartbeat but one of them concerns the evaluation for Daniel Morris, requested by the judge who’s taken over his custody case, so I wanted to take care of that personally.
This is the type of administrative work that requires my undivided attention.
Instead, I sit behind my desk with my glasses pushed higher on the bridge of my nose and stare at absolutely nothing.
In the six days since Julia Hayes left this office dissociated enough that I followed her home like a fucking psychopath, my focus shifted to things it has no business shifting.
I have returned to her street twice. There is no clinically appropriate way to finish that sentence.
I know because I’ve tried and failed miserably every time.
I was checking on a vulnerable patient, which sounds marginally better until one remembers that vulnerable patients generally aren’t checked on from the seat of a motorcycle half a block from their homes without their knowledge.
I happened to be in the neighborhood vastly worse, mostly because I was only in the neighborhood for her.
Minneapolis has approximately four thousand miles of road, and somehow I managed to select the one passing Julia Hayes’s house on two separate evenings. Remarkable coincidence. Perhaps I need therapy. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to suspect I shouldn’t be trusted to choose the therapist.
Mara, apparently, has reached a similar conclusion.
She hasn’t said anything since the afternoon I followed Julia home, which would almost be preferable to what she has been doing instead.
Every time I leave the office wearing anything remotely appropriate for the motorcycle, she looks at me.
Not her usual “see you in the morning” glances.
Looks. Knowing looks. The kind that starts at my face, drops briefly toward the helmet in my hand and returns with enough silent accusation that I’m beginning to wonder whether six years of working beside psychiatrists has allowed her to develop diagnostic abilities through osmosis.
Yesterday, I made the mistake of asking what her problem was.
She told me she didn’t have one. Then she looked at the helmet again. I haven’t asked since.
The irritating part is that riding has always been normal for me.
Long before Julia Hayes sat in that chair and made me start behaving like someone I would ordinarily recommend for intensive outpatient treatment, the motorcycle was where I went when there was too much noise in my head.
Even when I was a kid. Especially when I was a kid.
The loudness of dirt bikes was the perfect way to silence everything in my head that needed silencing.
Some people meditate. Some run. Some apparently sit cross-legged in rooms filled with candles and listen to Youtube meditation channels that tell them when to breathe.
I ride because there is something uncomplicated about needing to pay attention to nothing except the machine beneath me and the road ahead.
Speed doesn’t leave much room for overthinking, and outside this office, I’ve always preferred my life the same way.
I work more than I should, ride whenever Minneapolis weather allows it and occasionally when common sense suggests it doesn’t, and have dinner at Mara’s often enough that her seven-year-old stopped considering me a guest years ago.
He mostly treats my arrival as an opportunity to exploit the one adult in his life who is considerably worse at saying no to him than anyone else, a fact Mara enjoys reminding me of with an amount of satisfaction bordering on offensive.
Women have existed too. They still do. I’m not celibate, emotionally unavailable beyond repair or secretly waiting for one extraordinary woman to teach me the transformative power of romantic love.
I like women. I like sex. I simply prefer both without the expectation that I’ll eventually start leaving a toothbrush at somebody’s house and attending brunch with people whose names I’m required to remember afterward.
Control has always mattered there too, although in a considerably less clinical way.
In bed, I prefer being the one who sets the pace, gives the instructions and decides when control changes hands.
The women I sleep with know that before anything happens, just as they know the rules, the boundaries and exactly how to stop everything if they want to.
I’ve never had much interest in chaos masquerading as passion.
If someone gives me control, I take the responsibility that comes with it just as seriously as I take the pleasure.
My work already demands enough emotional access that I’ve never felt compelled to build a private life requiring the same.
I like going home to the quiet. I like knowing where everything is, what tomorrow looks like, and that nobody will interpret my silence as evidence that something is wrong.
It is an orderly life. Or it was. Now I apparently spend part of my free time determining whether the lamp in Julia Hayes’s living room is on. So there’s that.
The first time I returned to her street, I stayed on the bike.
I told myself I was only riding, which was technically true in the same way that standing outside someone’s bedroom window is technically taking in fresh air.
I passed her street once, circled two blocks and came back because apparently dignity had already gone home for the evening.
Her car was in the driveway. The lights were on downstairs.
Then I saw her through the large front windows, moving around the kitchen in an oversized shirt with her hair piled on top of her head, carrying something from one counter to another.
That was it — no crisis, no dissociation and that was enough.
Julia was home, alive and apparently capable of feeding herself so I kept riding.
Two nights later, I went back. There wasn’t even a convincing lie that time.
I parked near the edge of the woods, far enough away that the engine wouldn’t announce me.
I walked to my usual spot and stood there longer than any sane man should..
The fact that I already have a usual spot hadn’t escaped me either.
She never appeared at the window that evening.
I saw the living-room lamp come on, then go dark nearly an hour later.
And somehow that was enough, which might be the most concerning part of all of this.
My professional life is built around understanding behavior, identifying patterns and recognizing when someone has begun rationalizing something unhealthy because admitting what they’re doing would require considerably more honesty.
If a patient described my behavior to me, I wouldn’t need a second session. I would know exactly what to call it.
The letter idea? Exponentially worse or potentially better, and the fact that I couldn’t decide, and still can’t, is precisely the problem.
The thought followed me home that first night and has remained lodged somewhere behind everything else I’ve done since.
No phone call from my office. No message.
Nothing carrying Dr. Blackwood’s name or requiring Julia to respond to the man sitting across from her every week.
Just words on a paper. Something she could read alone, without having to answer them, explain herself or reassure whoever wrote them that she was fine afterward.
I still haven’t written it. I’ve thought about what I would say often enough that the distinction is becoming increasingly pathetic.
Tell her.
The voice returns with irritating persistence.
Tell her someone noticed.
Tell her somebody is watching.
My fingers tighten around the pen lying between them.
There is a version of this where I throw the idea away.
There is another version where I stop riding past her house, return exclusively to the role I am qualified to occupy in her life and accept the fact that wanting something does not entitle me to reach for it.
That version of me has been making excellent points all week. He is also losing.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the window.
A knock against my door interrupts whatever diagnosis I’m about to assign myself, and Mara appears with her tablet tucked against her chest, closing the door behind her.
I look at her. Mara smiles sweetly which makes me uneasy because she does that only on special occasions.
Or when she’s about to call me out on my bullshit.
“Your cancellation has been filled,” her tone doesn’t hint at that, though. “Mrs. Feldman called back and can come at four instead.”
“Fine.” Mine, on the other hand, is careful.
Her eyes travel over me for a moment, taking in the suit, vest and tie before returning to my face.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just nice to see you dressed like a psychiatrist again.”
I stare at her. She smiles sweetly. Again.
“And Julia Hayes is here.”
Everything inside me sharpens and her eyes narrow slightly. This was her tactic all along but I keep my expression neutral.
“You’re looking at me, why?”
“I often do that when speaking to people.”
“Mara.”
“Kai.”
I wait. She gives me another second of that infuriatingly perceptive stare before apparently deciding to leave, pressing me further for another day.
“She’s early. About ten minutes. I told her she can wait.”
“Thank you.”
Mara starts to leave, then pauses. “You okay to continue?”