22. Kai #2
She notices and continues without needing to be prompted. “I didn’t spend the drive over there telling myself I had been guilted into going, because I hadn’t. I picked the day. She still had feelings about that choice, but I wasn’t sitting there secretly resenting her for making it for me.”
I nod slowly. “That sounds like progress.”
“It feels like progress.” She says it without immediately qualifying the statement.
No but. No explanation about why she probably doesn’t deserve credit.
Something warm settles behind my ribs. For all the fucked-up reasons I have for wanting Julia in this room every week, this is the one I cannot dismiss.
Therapy is helping her. Not because I am some exceptional psychiatrist who has unlocked a woman nobody else understood.
She is doing the work. She is paying attention to patterns she spent years treating as facts, and every week she comes back willing to look at something she would rather avoid.
I’m simply helping her hold the flashlight.
The problem is that somewhere along the way, I started wanting to be here for the rest of it. Not just until she no longer needs me. That is considerably harder to justify.
Julia shifts slightly, drawing my attention back to the room. “What?”
I blink. “What?”
“You did it again.”
“Did what?”
“That thing where you disappear into your head and apparently forget I can see your face.”
There is no accusation in her tone. If anything, she sounds amused.
“I was thinking.” I say, arranging the glasses on my face although they were fine.
“Dangerous.” She snorts.
“Occupational hazard.”
Her eyes stay on me another second before she lets it go.
That should be the end of it. Instead, I become painfully aware of the fact that she is looking directly at me and doing absolutely none of the things she does when she finds one of Ghost’s letters.
There is no sudden color warming her cheeks.
No bite to the inside of her lip. No expression that tells me she is imagining something she would never say aloud.
Of course there isn’t, I’m her psychiatrist. I should be fucking grateful.
Instead, a ridiculous flicker of jealousy runs through me…
toward myself. Apparently that is where my life has arrived.
Ghost gets the version of Julia who reads a sentence and presses her thighs together.
Dr. Blackwood gets insurance forms and emotional growth.
Same man — entirely different effect. It is so stupid that my mouth almost twitches.
Julia notices that too. “Whatever you’re thinking, I feel like I should be offended.”
“You shouldn’t.” I tell her, offering a courteous smile.
“That sounded convincing.”
I deliberately reach for my notebook before she can examine me any more closely. “How has your sleep been?”
She laughs softly at the obvious change of subject, but the sound fades into something more thoughtful as she considers the question.
“Mostly good. It still depends on the day, I think. If work has been insane or something happens with Mom that gets into my head, I can still be awake longer than I want, but lately there have been more nights where I just go to sleep and stay asleep.”
“Any nightmares?”
“Not often.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.” She nods slowly, then adds with a touch of dry humor, “I’m assuming this is where you claim professional credit for all of it.”
“I was planning to.”
“Obviously.” The smile she gives me is warm enough that jealousy of Ghost feels even more absurd.
I don’t need her to blush for me here. I shouldn’t want it. Unfortunately, wanting things has not been especially responsive to professional ethics lately.
We spend the rest of the session talking about ordinary things, which is becoming more common now.
She tells me about work, including Daniel threatening to ban somebody from the break room for reheating fish and Tessa trying to convince her to attend some singles event with a theme Julia considers “an act of aggression against single people.”
There are no catastrophic memories today.
No dissociation or a moment when I have to pull her attention back into the room.
She talks, laughs occasionally and disagrees with me twice without apologizing either time.
The second time, I catch myself thinking how fucking proud I am of her.
That thought is clean, simple. Everything else about us may be a disaster waiting for enough pressure to become visible, but this part isn’t.
She is getting better. I want her to keep getting better and that is exactly why the idea of transferring her has become harder rather than easier.
If she were doing badly, I could make the argument that my feelings were interfering with treatment and that somebody else might help her more effectively.
But she isn’t. We work well together. She trusts me.
I know when to push and when to stop. She has begun trusting her own reactions because I have spent months teaching her that they are allowed to exist. Handing that work to someone else now feels like abandoning her halfway through something that is finally starting to move.
That is the professional explanation, the other one is considerably shorter.
I don’t want another therapist sitting in this chair with her.
I don’t want someone else learning the way she jokes when she is uncomfortable or how she rubs the side of her thumb when she is trying to decide whether to answer honestly.
I don’t want to stop seeing her every Thursday.
That part has nothing to do with treatment, I know the difference. I simply hate it.
When I glance toward the clock, Julia catches the movement and sighs. “That look never brings good news.”
“We’re almost out of time.”
Her tone turns theatrically disappointed. “Every single week. You should really work on that.”
“I’ll see what I can do about linear time.”
“Thank you. Finally, some initiative.”
I close the folder, and she reaches down for her bag.
As she stands, the sweater shifts over one shoulder before she adjusts it with an absent tug, and my eyes follow the movement for half a second longer than they should. Not enough for her to notice. Enough for me to. The reaction is immediate.
This is what I mean. In this room, she is Julia Hayes, my patient, and there are rules around the way I look at her because there need to be.
At night, the same shoulder could appear through a window and I would spend twenty minutes imagining my mouth against it.
Two lives — same woman, same man trying and failing to pretend he can keep them separate indefinitely.
“Same time next week?” I ask as she reaches the door.
Julia glances back at me, one hand already around the strap of her bag. “Unless I achieve total emotional wellness before Thursday.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Her mouth drops open in mock offense before she laughs. “Rude.”
“I meant statistically.”
“That did not help.” Her cheeks are faintly flushed from laughing.
Not Ghost flushed but I’ll still take it.
“Have a good weekend, Julia.”
Her expression softens as she opens the door. “You too.”
Then she is gone. I sit there staring at the closed door for several seconds before Mara’s voice carries faintly through the wall and reminds me another patient will be here soon.
There are easier women. The thought has crossed my mind several times over the past few weeks, usually when I am doing something particularly pathetic, like standing in wet leaves waiting for Julia to finish washing dishes.
I know women who would have dinner with me tomorrow if I called.
Women who know my name, women I could touch without jeopardizing a medical license.
None of them are Julia. That seems to be the end of the argument every time.
Hours later, I am standing beneath the trees behind her house with my hands tucked into my jacket pockets and the ridiculous awareness that I have been waiting for her to read one letter for almost forty minutes.
I left it earlier in the evening, before she got home, then rode far enough away that the bike wouldn’t announce my presence before doubling back on foot.
Tonight, impatience wins. Julia found the envelope as soon as she came home.
I watched her pick it up from the porch, glance toward the trees and carry it inside.
Then she ignored it. At first I assumed she was changing clothes, then she started dinner.
Apparently the man anonymously requesting access to her home ranks below pasta.
I have never been more offended by garlic in my life.
She moves around the kitchen wearing soft black pants and an oversized sweater that slips off one shoulder whenever she reaches for something.
Music is playing because I catch the occasional movement of her head, and at one point she uses the wooden spoon as a microphone for about four seconds before realizing what she is doing and looking toward the window. I laugh out loud.
There she is. Not Julia in my office, sitting across from me while we discuss her mother and sleep patterns.
Just Julia at home, believing she is alone enough to sing into kitchen utensils.
The letter waits on the small table near the entrance.
I wait with it. Eventually she carries dinner into the living room along with a glass of wine and, finally, the envelope.
My attention sharpens immediately.
“About fucking time.” She can’t hear me from here, but saying it makes me feel marginally better.
Julia settles onto the couch and tucks one leg beneath herself, then balances the plate on the coffee table before picking up the envelope.
She turns it over once, running her thumb across the wax in the little habit she has developed over the last few letters, and something inside my chest tightens.