Chapter 18
Saint
The sessions with Dr. Ward are a condition of my release.
Surprisingly, not Dr. Wick. She is hired by the Order, her notes filed in the Consortium archive, her loyalties distributed accordingly.
Dr. Ward is different. She was appointed because the Order considers her neutral, which means she reports to Silas and also, apparently, has a conscience about it.
She has rearranged the furniture in her office three times since my first session, which I find telling.
She is trying to find the configuration that gives her the most distance from me.
She hasn’t found it yet.
The office is in the east tower of the main administrative building, a real room, with a real window, a detail I don’t take for granted.
A desk. Two chairs positioned at the approved therapeutic angle.
A plant on the windowsill that she waters too much; the soil is always dark.
On the wall behind her, a framed print of something abstract in blues and grey that is supposed to be calming and succeeds only in being beige in a different color.
I sit in the patient chair with my arms resting on my knees and wait.
Dr. Ward sets her recorder on the desk between us, opens her notebook to a fresh page, and looks at me over the top of her reading glasses with the expression of a woman who has decided to be professional about this regardless of whatever this turns out to be.
“Good afternoon, Saint.”
“Doctor.”
“How has the week been?”
“Educational,” I say. “In the literal sense. I attended classes. I took notes. I ate in the dining hall like a functioning member of society. I did not dismantle anyone.” A pause. “That you know of.”
She writes something down. I watch her pen move and say nothing.
“Let’s talk about social integration,” she says, which is the clinical way of asking whether I have spoken to another human being voluntarily. “You’ve been on campus for several weeks now. Are you forming any connections with other students?”
“Define connection.”
“Relationships. Conversations that extend beyond transactional necessity.”
I consider this. “There was a girl in the east stairwell who had a fairly transactional approach to the interaction but seemed satisfied with the outcome, so I suppose it depends on your threshold.”
Dr. Ward’s pen stops moving.
“I’m sorry?”
“You asked about connections,” I say helpfully. “I’m connecting.”
She looks at me. I look back. Her expression has gone carefully, professionally neutral, which means she is deciding how to proceed with a patient who has just described a sexual encounter in the stairwell of an academic building with the affect of someone reporting on the weather.
“Is this something you want to discuss?” she asks.
“Not particularly,” I say. “You asked. I answered. If you’d like to move on, I support that. If you’d like more, I also had a connection inside the swim team’s locker room.”
She ignores it and moves on. I consider this a small victory.
“The Order’s progress report notes that you’ve been attending your full course schedule,” she says, returning to safer ground. “How are you finding the academic environment? Is it…manageable?”
“I find behavioral psychology interesting,” I say honestly. “The literature module is useful. The economics requirement is not, but I attend anyway because the condition of my release specifies full attendance and I am nothing if not technically compliant.”
“Technically compliant,” she repeats, writing it down. “That’s a careful phrase.”
“I’m a careful person.”
She looks up. We both sit with that for a moment.
“I’d like to ask about something,” she says, with the tone of someone who has been building toward a something for the past ten minutes.
“The Order’s observation report mentioned that you’ve been noted in the company of a particular student.
A first-year.” She consults her notes, which is unnecessary — she already knows the name, she’s read it several times before this session. “Amy Torres.”
Something shifts in my chest. Imperceptibly, I hope.
“Is that a question?” I ask.
“What do you know about her?”
The question lands differently than she intends it to. What do I know about her? A small container for everything I could say.
I know she sits in the sixth row with her pen gripped too tightly and takes notes like she’s afraid that stopping will let the walls move.
I know she waits until the floor above is quiet before she showers.
I know she has a history with a man that she hasn’t told anyone here and carries like a stone in a coat pocket, always present, always weighing.
I know the sound of her at three in the morning.
I know she answered a question about Plath in a way that suggested she has lived inside the poem rather than read it.
I know she is sharper than anyone on this campus gives her credit for.
I know that when she walked out of the library last week after I told her I had been thinking about something else, she didn’t run. She walked. Evenly. With her spine straight and her bag strap in her fist, and she didn’t look back, which took more composure than most people would have managed.
I know a great deal about Amy Torres.
But I say none of this.
“She’s a student,” I say. “We share a literature class.”
“The observation report also notes that you were seen together in the library.”
I look at Dr. Ward for a long moment.
“We were in the same library at the same time,” I say. “That’s not studying together. That’s both being in a building.”
“The report suggests—”
“The report suggests that whoever is writing the Order’s observation logs has a very exciting life if a shared library constitutes a noteworthy event.” I lean back in the chair. “It’s not unusual to study in a library, Doctor. That’s traditionally what they’re for.”
Dr. Ward regards me with the expression of someone who has noticed that the room temperature changed when she said a certain name and is now cataloguing everything that follows. She is good at her job. I find this mildly inconvenient.
“You went quiet,” she says.
“I’m quiet often. You’ve noted it in three previous sessions.”
“Not like that. Not—”
“Not like what?”
“She pauses. Chooses her words with the care of a person who knows she’s on uneven ground. “Pensive. You went pensive, Saint. There’s a difference between your baseline quiet and the kind of quiet that means you’re somewhere else entirely.”‘
I say nothing. Which proves her point, and we both know it.
“She’s Azriel’s charge,” Dr. Ward says carefully. “His assignment. You understand the distinction that’s supposed to maintain.”
“I understand every distinction the Order has drawn,” I say. “I find them interesting from an academic perspective.”
“That is not the reassurance you think it is.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a reassurance.”
She writes something. A longer note than usual. I watch the pen and wait for her to finish.
“I want to try something different today,” she says, setting the pen down.
“I’d like to do a physical baseline assessment.
Blood pressure, resting heart rate. Part of the new protocol the Order approved last week.
” She stands and moves toward the small medical cabinet on the far wall.
“If you don’t mind removing your shirt.”
I stand. I pull the hoodie over my head and drop it on the chair. The t-shirt follows. I stand in the center of the office in the afternoon light from the window and wait.
Dr. Ward turns from the cabinet with the blood pressure cuff in her hand.
She stops.
It is a brief stop, a fraction of a second, the pause of a person whose professional composure has been interrupted by something that was not in the briefing notes.
Her eyes move across my chest, my shoulders, the topography of three years of a body that had nothing to do but be itself in a contained space.
The scars. The muscle. The evidence of everything the ward couldn’t actually strip out of me.
She recovers quickly. But not quite quick enough.
“You like what you see?” I ask.
The room goes very still.
Dr. Ward sets the blood pressure cuff down on the desk with the precise movements of someone buying themselves a moment. She picks up her notebook. She picks up her pen. She does not look at me.
“I think we’ll end the session here,” she says, in the perfectly even tone of a professional who has made a professional decision.
“Do you need a minute?” I ask.
“That will be all, Saint.”
I pick up my t-shirt. I pull it on slowly, unhurried, the way I do everything. I pick up the hoodie. She is writing in her notebook, eyes down, jaw set and I allow myself the small satisfaction of having found the edge of her composure and stepped over it.
I walk to the door.
“Same time next week?” she asks, without looking up. Perfectly professional. A woman who has decided this interaction is over and is correct about that.
I open the door.
“You know where to find me,” I say.
I leave without closing it behind me.