Chapter 6 June - Dr. Moore & Neve （Not That Way）
JUNE: DR. MOORE the jagged pieces of it still scattered all over the hospital floor.
It was the patient’s second attempt… She had failed him.
Helena let her forehead hit the cool pane of the glass and closed her eyes.
Such a close call. And would there be others?
Would she fail again? She might. Goddess knew she wasn’t all powerful—
“What a stunning confession coming from the most brilliant psychological mind of a generation, Doctor.”
Helena jolted, her face bumping into the window fully before she mustered enough grace to turn around. She didn’t really need to, as she knew that voice. Hours and hours that filled weeks and months and years with this particular woman.
Neve Blackthorne stood on the doorstep of her penthouse holding what looked like a string of fairy lights.
“Am I going mad? Or are you?” Helena blinked at the wide smile that stretched Neve’s lips. A rare sight.
“How did that quote go, Doctor? We are all mad here?” Neve clicked her way into the open-plan kitchen and set the string on the counter. “And you’ve diagnosed me years ago anyway. So the question really only pertains to you. Are you going mad?”
When Helena just sighed and allowed her shoulders to sag, Neve made herself at home and poured two glasses of Lagavulin from the carefully arranged bar. She took her time, as much to peruse Helena’s whiskey collection as to give them both a few more minutes.
“Should I be bracing myself?” Helena finally pushed herself off the window and reached for the drink.
“Depends.” Neve took a sip and narrowed her eyes, the appraisal obvious and unashamed.
But then, Neve Blackthorne never did anything by halves, and shame wasn’t an emotion Helena had seen often in those violet eyes.
Eyes that crinkled with lines of real feeling for once as Neve smiled gently.
The violet held Helena’s gaze a second longer before the chin motioned imperiously towards the sofa.
“You’ve had a long day, Doctor, take a load off.”
Helena wanted to be stubborn. And petulant. And refuse on principle, because this day, of all days, she had no desire to be bossed around, but then her feet moved seemingly of their own accord, and Helena pretended not to see Neve smirk. Yes, yes. Nobody refused the Wicked Witch.
“How do you know about my day?” The moment she uttered the words, she realized the question was foolish. Neve knew everything. Sure, LA was massive and not all things interested her, but this patient had been someone they both knew.
To her credit, Neve did not answer, letting Helena’s thoughts do the unspooling. When their eyes met again, Neve’s were somber.
“You have the most annoying habit of communicating with your gaze alone.” Helena took a larger sip of her drink, the whiskey burning away the remnants of the day.
Neve’s bark of laughter was unexpected.
“I see you have been holding out on me during our sessions. Annoying?”
Helena let her head drop onto the back of the sofa. The ceiling above her offered no suitable distraction, and so she kept speaking.
“Can’t call you that in therapy. Can’t call you all the other names that come to mind. Obstinate, for one. Since you are here and I haven’t called you.”
“Would you have?” Neve’s quiet inquiry hung in the air between them.
Ah, the million-dollar question. When had their roles reversed? Who was treating whom here?
“No, I wouldn’t have. It would’ve been highly inappropriate to mix the professional relationship with…
” She wanted to give this situation a name.
Neve Blackthorne coming to her apartment and bringing gifts, plying her with drinks, asking her about her day, simply because she’d had a terrible one. It was all too…
“Friendship.” The word sounded foreign in Neve’s cold, cultured tone. And yet… “Would it be so bad if you listened to your own advice and let someone in? Allow someone to lend a shoulder? Just for this evening.”
Helena sighed.
“Is Audrey away again?”
Neve’s smirk was downright devious.
“Do you really think I have nothing better to do tonight, Doctor? It’s insulting to both of us. I heard you had a horrible day. And I wanted to help. Is that so hard to believe?”
Helena’s second sigh in as many minutes was heavier.
“I guess “physician heal thyself” is not always applicable. I’m sorry. You’re right.”
Neve set the tumbler on the coffee table and sat next to her.
“Now I know for a fact your afternoon was shit. An apology and an admission of that magnitude in one fell swoop. Do you want to talk about it?”
Helena’s laughter sounded strange to her own ears, but it was sincere. Neve was making her laugh. How odd, when all was said and done. Out of all the people in her life, it had to be this woman, a patient, who was with her. Who sought her out, who came to help.
“You being here, what does it say about me? And how did you even get past the doorman?”
Neve lifted a perfectly manicured eyebrow.
Yes, that second one was another stupid question.
Neve Blackthorne could probably walk past all the guards at Fort Knox and carry out the entirety of the country’s gold reserve, and nobody would’ve dared to tell her anything. Also, there was no “probably” about it.
“It says nothing much about you, Doctor.” Neve’s eyebrow lowered, as did her voice. Helena didn’t even realize she had voiced her earlier concern. “Maybe it says more about me, and my inability for decades to make friends.”
Helena reached out and patted the long fingered hand lying on the couch cushion.
“You are emotionally stunted, Neve, but not that stunted. Somehow, despite your so-called inability to make said friends, your house is almost always full these days.”
Neve’s tone was surly when she spoke. “I have no idea how that happened. Suddenly, there are all these people.”
Helena laughed again. It felt good. “And you care about all of them. Secretary Nox and her wonderful wife. DeVor. Jameson Walker. Chiara Conti. Fascinating women. Beautiful people.”
“Juliette Lucian-Sorel. And her unquestionably beautiful wife.”
If Neve had slapped her, Helena thought the impact would’ve been less instant. And yet, here she was, gasping for breath in her own penthouse, watching violet eyes assess her every move. Neve stood and brought over the string of lights with a permanent marker.
“Tell me about Lucian-Sorel, Doctor.”
Helena balled her fingers and refused to look at her. Still, it felt churlish not to answer.
“There is nothing to say.”
“That is one of the first, biggest, and most barefaced lies you’ve ever told me.”
Helen felt her shoulders sag. She might as well admit defeat.
“It is. Because she was as far from nothing as a woman has ever been to me. She was everything.” Helena gulped air as if it was going to be sucked out of the room any second now, and words just kept falling from her mouth. “She was everything and yet not enough. Have you ever felt that, Neve?”
“I have. You heard me speak of Elinor. She meant a lot and yet she wasn’t enough.” Neve’s voice was soothing, encouraging.
“Yes, but maybe a little more than that. Because you have met your “enough,” your Audrey is both your everything and your all. All you need, all you want. Juliette might’ve been my all, if I had ever allowed her to be.
If my ambitions had ever allowed her to.
But I wanted to work. I wanted to research and to heal and to practice, and I needed to be here. And she? Her place was in Paris.”
Neve tsked quietly, and Helena turned sharply to witness a flicker of impatience on the cutting features.
“If Audrey had been on Mars, I’d have moved.” Neve’s words were sharp, none of that earlier soothing quality to them. “Eventually.”
Helena smiled at the addition. Both of them remembered all too well when Neve couldn’t make herself pick up the phone, write, hell, speak to Audrey, not to mention be together.
And still, Helena knew the words not just sharp, they were also true. Eventually, Neve would’ve gotten out of her own way, or Helena would’ve shoved her hard enough to make her see the truth. Neve loved Audrey. And Neve would’ve moved to Mars to be with her.
“Then maybe she wasn’t my Audrey, Neve. Because I left and didn’t regret it. Much.”
It was Neve’s turn to smile at the last word. And that gesture held sadness. “But you did regret it.”
“I regretted many things. I regretted that I never had the courage to give myself fully. Like Katarina did, because above all, Juliette deserved that. I regretted not putting her first, not dedicating my life to that love, again, like Katarina did, because she walked through life half-dead when she didn’t have Juliette.
And I regretted that I envied Katarina that sacrifice, that intensity, that self-denial.
And I regretted that it could have never been me.
And all of the above might or might not be entirely psychologically unhealthy. But then, who am I to make that call?”
Neve’s lips twitched, the sadness gone now.
“Only the utmost expert on the issues of healthy and unhealthy relationships. Still, she gave you—”
Before Neve could gleam underneath so many other doors and windows and see through her carefully crafted facade, Helena dug into her “utmost expert” bag of tricks and offered a misdirection.