Chapter 13
Katana
Vale’s footsteps grow louder, matching the pounding of my heart, before he steps back inside, his white jacket rumpled, hair out of place like he’d been running. He gives me a distracted, tense smile and breathes once, hands flattening on the edge of his desk as if to steady himself.
“Katana, I’m so sorry. There was an incident in Ward B with one of our patients. I had to go.” He forces a smile that trembles at the edges. “We have about three minutes left of our session.”
Three minutes. The number tacks itself to my ribs like a weight.
I wanted more time to stall, to deflect, to find a way to say nothing. Three minutes is a trap.
“Okay,” I say. My voice shakes a little, and I clamp my hands together in my lap to stop them from shaking.
“Tell me,” he says, settling into his chair with the professional patience he wears like armor. “How have you been sleeping? Eating? Any nightmares?”
He’s starting with the obvious, the routine questions, the ones used to ease into prying. I let him have those easy things. They’re safe. I can give him vague answers.
“I sleep on and off,” I say. “It’s an adjustment being here. I eat during meal times. The food here is… consistent.” I force a small, humorless laugh that I hope reads as self-effacing, not evasive.
He nods, his pen poised over a pad. “And your family—how have things impacted you? Your relationship with your mother?”
A memory spikes of the knife in my hand, the blood on the floor when I opened my bedroom door. That was the moment I realized my mom’s life was about to end, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
For a second, my lips part, the words desperate to escape. But I press my lips together, holding it in.
This is the line Micah told me to take. The mundane thread. I pull at it and weave something bland but true. Sorrow without confession.
“My mom struggled,” I say. The words come like practiced steps.
“When I was a child, she drank a lot and did drugs. She wasn’t always there for me.
Some days she was fine; other days she wasn’t.
I missed school and got held back.” The memory sits behind my teeth like something I don’t let out often.
It’s safe; it doesn’t tell him the whole story of my life.
Vale’s pen pauses. He leans forward, his gaze searching, moving from my clenched fists then back to my face. A practiced psychiatrist’s curiosity is in his eyes. “When you say ‘wasn’t always there’—can you tell me what that looked like? Specific incidents that stay with you?”
My throat tightens. My tongue forms the first syllable of “Ted” before I clamp it down. If I say his name, it’ll all be over. Vale will dig and dig until he finds the blood under my fingernails. He’ll realize I’m a monster, too.
I let the silence drag. The room narrows to the desk, the ticking clock on the wall, the tiny space between his question and my answer.
If I say the right thing—if I give him small, emotional, manageable stories—he’ll file them away as trauma to be processed.
If I say the wrong thing—if I tell the truth—he will tilt his head and find the fracture.
So I tell him about the empty mornings.
“I remember morning light through the kitchen window, cereal bowls on the table, and the bus passing without me because Mom couldn’t wake up. I remember promises that weren’t kept.” I keep my voice even, my answers not picking at the giant scab covering my black soul.
His pen scratches over the paper, making my skin crawl. It’s as though he’s already written a conclusion.
Does he see more than I’m saying? Or is he testing me, waiting for me to crack?
His questions feel rehearsed, like bait on hooks. I wonder if he already knows something and is trying to trick me into saying it out loud.
“Addiction is a rough thing to live through. My mom needed help, but never got it.”
He nods again, but there’s impatience flickering at the edges of his composure. He wants a crack—anything to prod and see how I jiggle.
“People who hurt others sometimes hurt first. Do you feel anger toward those who failed you?”
The words burrow under my skin, and for a heartbeat, the truth surges up, hot and sharp: I wanted to kill him.
My mouth opens—then I bite down hard, my teeth clacking, the words dying before they escape. My nails dig into my palms. A reckless part of me wants to let it out—release the rage that could explain everything and destroy me in one breath.
But I remember Micah’s whisper and his knuckles against my cheek. I really believe he’s looking out for me.
“I felt angry,” I say, carefully. “But mostly sad. I learned to look after myself to survive.”
Three minutes bleeds down to two.
Vale’s shoulders tighten. He studies me like a man trying to coax a song from a closed throat. “If there was one thing you could change about your past, Katana, what would it be?”
I breathe and let the safe thing out. “I’d make sure Mom had help. I’d make sure someone got her to the doctor. So I wouldn’t feel so alone.”
He writes that down—neat, clinical. He looks at his watch, and the corner of his mouth lifts with professional regret. “We’ll pick this up next time. Good progress today.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. He has an expression of someone who believes time is on his side.
Maybe he thinks I’ll slip eventually. Maybe that’s what he’s waiting for.
He stands, already reaching for the door. Relief and dread twist together in my chest.
I rise, steadier than I feel, relieved the session is over. He didn’t probe deeper. He didn’t ask the question that would have made me say the words I keep buried.
As I step into the corridor, the fluorescent lights feel harsher, as if the whole building knows I lied just enough to survive. My hands still tremble, but I kept my secret.
For now.