4. Kai
Kai
Julia Hayes looks at me the way new patients sometimes do when the person standing in front of them bears very little resemblance to whoever they imagined after reading my credentials online.
There’s always a moment. Sometimes it’s barely noticeable, just as a slight pause before they shake my hand.
Other times their surprise is so obvious that I can practically watch whatever image they built of Dr. Kai Blackwood collapse behind their eyes.
Years ago, one woman actually admitted she expected someone older, softer around the middle, and significantly more grandfatherly, which was probably the politest way anyone had ever told me I looked wrong for my profession.
I’ve never taken offense. At thirty-seven, six feet and change, with enough time spent in the gym to make three-piece suits considerably more expensive than they need to be, I’m aware I don’t fit the stereotype.
The tattoos stay covered beneath long sleeves during working hours, my hair remains considerably more civilized than it does beneath a motorcycle helmet, and the glasses help.
Although apparently not enough to make me look like the comforting middle-aged therapist people seem determined to expect.
Julia is having that moment now. She doesn’t say anything, but surprise passes openly across her face before she catches it.
Her green eyes move over me once, quickly and without anything I would mistake for attraction, before returning to my face with the alert concentration of someone recalculating a situation she had already prepared herself for.
Whatever version of me she expected, I’m clearly not it.
The photograph attached to her intake form hadn’t done her justice either.
It captured the obvious details well enough.
Auburn hair falling past her shoulders, pale skin, the faint scar beside her right eye, and two small beauty marks near the beginning of her brows.
What it failed to capture was the quiet intensity of her attention or the way anxiety seems to live beneath every careful movement she makes.
There’s exhaustion beneath her eyes and tension held high across her shoulders, but neither makes her look fragile.
She looks contained, as though something warm has been sealed beneath layers of caution and is still burning despite everything that has tried to put it out.
A nickname little ember came to mind almost instantly and so naturally that it takes me a moment to recognize how inappropriate it is.
“Julia,” I say, crossing the room toward her. “I’m Dr. Kai Blackwood. It’s good to meet you.”
Her attention drops briefly toward the hand I offer before she takes it. Her fingers are cool, and her handshake is polite but cautious. Firm enough that there’s nothing timid about it, yet brief enough to tell me she has no interest in allowing unnecessary contact with a stranger.
“Nice to meet you,” she says.
Her voice is softer than I expected, though there’s nothing uncertain about the words. I release her hand immediately and gesture toward the seating area.
“You can sit wherever you feel most comfortable. The chair, the sofa, or somewhere else if neither works for you.”
Her gaze moves toward the sofa first, but only for a second.
Most patients choose it because it looks less formal and offers enough space to shift away when a conversation becomes uncomfortable.
Julia considers it, dismisses it almost immediately, and chooses the lounge chair across from mine instead.
She lowers herself onto the front half of the cushion, keeping her purse beside her right foot and both feet positioned firmly beneath her.
The bottle Mara gave her remains clasped between her hands while she settles, her posture so carefully arranged that she could stand and be halfway to the door before I had time to ask where she was going.
Prepared to leave before we’ve even started.
When I’m confident enough she is settled, I take the chair opposite her, then unbutton my suit jacket and allow it to fall open over the vest beneath it.
Her attention follows the movement only long enough to track where my hands are before returning to my face.
Not with interest but with the concentration of someone trying to predict what’s expected of her.
That’s when I notice the crescent-shaped mark below her right thumb when the cuff of her sweater shifts.
The bruising is recent, darker along the center where her teeth appear to have broken the skin, and the placement is too deliberate to have happened by accident.
Julia catches me looking and immediately tugs the sleeve farther down, hiding the mark beneath soft blue fabric as though covering it makes it disappear.
The movement should register as nothing more than information, an injury requiring context, a possible grounding behavior, an indication of distress I need to assess before deciding what it means.
Instead, something violent and entirely inappropriate stirs beneath the calm I’ve spent years perfecting.
Who did this to you? Who made you hurt like this?
The questions arrive before reason has the chance to correct them.
I already know enough from her intake to understand some of the pain sitting across from me.
I know her father killed himself on her birthday.
I know she has a history of panic attacks, complicated grief, and previous therapy that ended without resolution.
What I don’t know yet is what happened long before the bus, what taught a grown woman that putting her own teeth through her skin was somehow preferable over allowing anyone to hear her scream.
That distinction matters professionally because reactions like hers are learned somewhere. Privately, the fact that I want to know badly enough to feel anger about it is a fucking problem I’ll deal with later.
For now, I place her intake file on the table beside me, rest the notepad against my knee, and give her enough time to realize I’m not going to start digging into her head before she’s ready.
“Before we begin, I want to go over confidentiality, even though Mara included the information in the forms you completed. Almost everything you say here stays between us. The exceptions are situations where I believe you’re in immediate danger, someone else is in immediate danger, or a child or vulnerable adult is being harmed. Do you have any questions about that?”
“Is there a correct answer?”
“No.”
“Then I’m going to say no and hope that it wasn't secretly a test.”
“It wasn’t.”
“That’s exactly what someone would say if it was.”
The response is delivered with a nervous smile, but the humor beneath it feels genuine enough to catch me off guard.
“I’ll make a note that you’re suspicious of administrative procedures.”
“Only the ones involving signatures and legal language.”
“So all of them.”
“Pretty much.”
A quiet laugh nearly escapes me, though I manage to turn it into something closer to a smile.
“This first appointment is mostly about understanding what brought you here and deciding whether working together feels right. We don’t have to cover everything today, and you’re allowed to decline any question I ask.”
“So, I can plead the Fifth?”
“You can.”
“That feels like a dangerous amount of power to give me.”
“I’m willing to take the risk.”
Her lips twitch as she takes a sip of water. The cuff slips farther down her wrist this time, giving me another clear view of the bite mark before she notices and covers it again.
Don’t hide it from me.
The thought has nothing clinical about it, and I return my attention to her face before the impulse has room to become anything more.
“I read through your intake this morning,” I told her. “You mentioned that your friend encouraged you to schedule the appointment after a panic attack on the bus ride home from your trip.”
“Tessa prefers the word forced.”
“Was force involved?”
“More along the lines of emotional terrorism.”
“That sounds serious.”
“It was relentless. She kept saying things like, ‘I’m worried about you,’ and, ‘You can’t keep pretending you’re fine,’ which was incredibly manipulative.”
“She sounds dangerous.”
“She’s a menace.”
The warmth that enters Julia’s voice when she speaks about her friend reaches her eyes, changing her entire expression. The exhaustion remains, but it loosens enough for something brighter to show beneath it.
There you are.
The response inside me is immediate and almost embarrassingly simple.
Again.
I lower my gaze to the file for a moment, reminding myself that noticing changes in affect is part of my job. Wanting to provoke that particular smile again isn’t.
“What happened on the bus?” I ask.
“A song came on, and my nervous system decided we were under attack.” She delivers the answer lightly, though her fingers tighten around the bottle until the plastic crackles beneath them.
“The song was ‘In the Air Tonight.’”
Her gaze lifts sharply. “You really did read the forms.”
“I usually find it helpful to know why someone is coming before they arrive.”
“My last therapist asked me to repeat half the intake during every appointment.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He called it establishing context.”
“I call it poor preparation.”
That earns me another brief smile.
Little ember.
The name returns with more certainty this time, attaching itself to the spark in her expression as though it has always belonged there. I shouldn’t be naming her anything, especially not in my own head.
“Your intake says the song was closely associated with your father,” I continue. “It also says he died by suicide five years ago, on your birthday.”
The humor disappears from her face. She lowers the bottle into her lap and rubs her thumb along the edge of the cap without opening it.
“That’s the shorter version.”
“I’m assuming the longer version is what brought the panic attack.”
“Among other things.”
“Did the song take you back to the day he died?”