Chapter Three
Alfie
The rest of the week was awful. Mia has become a robot for all intents and purposes. Gone is the early morning banter, the between-session check-ins. She’s clocking in, clocking out, and barely finishes her goodbyes before the door is swinging closed.
Dr. Adams this. Dr. Adams that. I fucking hate seeing the disappointment in her face, knowing that I put it there.
And it’s not even just disappointment, it’s suspicion and she has every right to be questioning me right now.
Not only did I put her in physical danger by following Vincent, I endangered her career too.
If I get caught following patients for real, and Mia gets wrapped up in it, I’d never forgive myself.
So here I am, standing outside Mia’s apartment, which I found in her employee file, uncomfortable in the knowledge that some idiot had just propped open the security door to her building with a sandbag.
Steeling myself with a deep breath, I knock, my eyes flitting down the peeling red paint on the door.
A loose door handle seems to be all there is between me and the inside of Mia’s apartment.
The door swings open, and there stands a small Latina woman with bright pink hair. She’s blowing bubblegum the same color as her curls as she gives me a languorous look up and down before twisting her head to yell out, “Mia, babes, your favorite man is here.”
“Oh, is it Ben?” she yells out.
Ben?
Who the hell is Ben?
“Or is it Jerry? I’m hoping for both because I could certainly take on a pint of the two of them now.” I hear the pad of her feet against the floorboards as her roommate grins.
“Oh shit. Alf—Dr. Adams. What are you doing here?” she stammers.
“Are you free to talk?” I ask, straining to keep my eyes on her face and not on her bare legs. She’s wearing the shortest shorts known to man and a baggy T-shirt, which she’s tied up in a knot at the front, cinching at her waist.
She glances at an imaginary watch on her wrist and plasters an exaggerated look of confusion over her face. “Oh, is it within office hours and I didn’t realize? Is it Monday morning already?”
Her friend turns to her. “Nope, still the weekend.”
“Mia…”
“It’s Miss Sinclair, as we discussed. Now anything you have to say can be said on Monday, Dr. Adams.”
As the door slams in my face, I quickly move my foot to block it.
“No, you did not. I will scream until my abuela in Mexico can hear you if you don’t move your goddamn foot,” the terrifying woman snarls.
“It’s okay, Lana, let him in. He’s like a dog with a bone when he wants something.”
I give her a stiff smile and step through the entrance.
The apartment is small, with two bedrooms leading off from the hallway, the kitchen and living area practically one space as a two-person couch faces a TV that has been precariously mounted to the wall.
There is color everywhere. The couch is a velvet, dusty pink with yellow and lime green throw cushions, artwork hanging from the wall in pops of greens, blues, and purples.
It’s so Mia… her personality is scattered everywhere.
The soft plushie taking residence on the sofa, the perfectly thriving plants, psychology textbooks haphazardly strewn across the coffee table.
It’s so lived in. Compared to my house which is styled, and homely, sure.
But the plumped up couch cushions don’t have the same indent that Mia’s do.
As Lana heads to turn off the stove, the scent of spices warms my lungs.
She eyes me up and down before moving to what I guess is her bedroom.
“Yell if you need me.” It’s not directed at me, despite her persistent stare down.
“I will,” Mia mutters before taking a seat on the couch, drawing her legs up and tucking them beneath her.
“What do you need that was so important you had to bother me on my day off, Dr. Adams?”
Dr. Adams. God, I hate it when she calls me that. The soft lilt of her voice hums as if she whispered into my ear. The punishment I’ve inflicted on myself to encourage her to act a little less informal has my blood heating.
“First off, I want to apologize for my behavior this week. I hadn’t planned for you to be there when I followed Vincent, and I know it was wrong of me to involve you.”
“And it was wrong to stalk him…”
It was hardly stalking, but I’m not sure pointing that out is going to make my apology go down very well.
“Right, yes, of course,” I add.
“How many times have you followed him?”
“Once or twice.”
She raises her eyebrows, her lips in a flat line of disbelief as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“Okay, with Vincent, maybe three or four. I knew he was escalating, and his sessions, he was feeding me bullshit ever—”
“What do you mean with Vincent?” she interrupts, her eyes widening.
Oh fuck.
“You’ve been following others?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.” I shake my head for all the good it does.
“Yes, you have. You could lose your license for this.”
“It’s for the greater good, I promise. I only do it when absolutely necessary.”
Not quite true, but I could probably justify all the times I’ve seen patients outside of our sessions.
“But why?”
“Why?”
She huffs, “Yes, Dr. Adams, why have you been following your patients around?”
Because I have zero control over anything except for what happens within the four walls of my office.
And even then, rogue seagulls can still disrupt the progress of a patient with one crunch of its beak on my window.
My patients deserve the best, and I can’t give them that if they’re lying to me.
But mostly, I work with some incredibly dangerous people, who have very dangerous people in their lives.
I want them to be safe, and I want the people around them to be safe.
If they give me an indication that they’re going to hurt someone, don’t I have a responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen?
I can help prevent crime by steering them in the appropriate direction.
I know it sounds insane. Hell, I know I sound insane.
But it works. I’ve prevented a woman from getting flashed this week, I’ve prevented another patient from stealing from their local store by setting off a fire alarm, I’ve even encouraged another patient to go to the same bar I knew another was going so that they could distract them from starting a fight with their ex-wife.
They’re now dating, and the ex-wife is none the wiser.
I want to be a good therapist. I am one. But there is more that can be done than the one hour a week I give them. Therapy should be looked at holistically, not just from the perspective of talking through our feelings. It should be implemented in our actions.
“I don’t want to waste my time with people who aren’t putting in the effort to enact change,” I lie.
The truth is, I want to be the best. My father is one of the most famous psychologists in the US. He wrote countless papers and articles on methods of therapy, running his own practice for thirty years. He did it all whilst being burdened with family obligations, his words not mine.
My mother, their three sons, all were deadweight that he was obligated to spend time with. Like unwanted fish in a bare tank, we weren’t entertaining to him or useful, yet he had to take care of us, regardless.
Imagine what I could achieve without the obligation of family life taking away my attention.
Imagine the strides I could make within the field.
All whilst not making anyone miserable in the process.
Because that’s what he did. He made my mother miserable whilst I whined for attention.
My younger brother Teddy took the middle-finger approach and acted out in rebellion, and our youngest brother Miles kept himself so small and quiet, he never dared ask for anything.
That was his true legacy, despite being the acclaimed Dr. Arnold Adams. He never really did live up to his prestige.
He’s still alive. Still working on his papers.
Luckily, Mom divorced him and hasn’t seen him in years.
I see him at the occasional psychology association event, but I tend to avoid them so I don’t run into him.
“I call bullshit. I saw the way you ran after him. You enjoyed it.” Mia stares at me, assessing, calling me out on my shit like she can smell it. She’s a goddamn bloodhound.
“You’re one to talk. You grabbed him by the underwear so vigorously it was like you were trying to create a new Panama Canal.” She turns away now, attempting to hide the smile that's pulling at her mouth. “Where the hell did you learn that, anyway?”
“I’m not sure anyone teaches someone how to give a wedgie, but I did grow up with four brothers, so you can probably give credit to them.”
“Huh, no wonder you’ve never had a boyfriend.” She flinches, the smile that was playing on her lips vanishes, and I feel like an ass. “Or…girlfriend?”
She huffs a laugh, and the tension in my chest eases a little. “Just into guys actually, but my brothers are all in Texas still. And even if they were here, if I wanted to date, I would just date.”
“So, your perpetual single-girl lifestyle is a choice then?”
Why am I asking this?
Because she’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, and you can't imagine how someone hasn’t snapped her up yet.
She purses her lips. “Let’s get back on track, shall we? Are you going to stop stalking patients now that you got your ass handed to you?”
I don’t want to lie. I detest liars, and I really couldn’t be so uptight about my patients lying to my face if I was just going to do the same to my employee.