8. Kai #3
First version was, she would become relentlessly useful.
She would clean things that were already clean, cook when nobody was hungry, scrub counters when they were already spotless.
None of it had anything to do with cleanliness.
It was movement that kept her from feeling whatever would happen if she stopped.
The version that scared me the most as a child was the times she disappeared. Sat quietly with her arms wrapped around herself while bruises darkened beneath her sleeves and I tried to decide whether asking what happened would make things better or worse. She always said the same thing.
“I'm fine.”
I’ve learned that sentence from her. But growing up on the reservation, I also quickly realized it was a way of life.
She wasn’t the only one. Some had it even worse, to the point where being fine didn’t fool anyone.
Because it wasn’t just the bruises in places you can hide them from plain sight.
Broken jaws, lips split in half… Life on the reservation resembled nothing like the quiet, safe little suburbs like this one.
Alcohol addiction, drug addiction, criminal behaviour. Take your pic.
So when that sentence came out of my mothers mouth, it was to calm me or as an answer to an occasional question asked by women who just wanted a confirmation that their fate was no worse than hers.
Sometimes I would see her watch someone notice a bruise.
Her expression would shift for barely a second, a tiny spark of something that looked dangerously close to hope.
Maybe this time. Maybe ask again. Maybe don't accept the first answer.
But they'd just look away, and whatever courage she'd managed to gather would leave with them.
“Sometimes I think I wanted somebody to ask twice.” Julia's voice from the session cuts through the memory so sharply that my chest aches.
Fuck.
I close my eyes behind the visor. She's not my mother.
Every rational part of my brain knows that.
Julia is not helpless. Reducing her to some subconscious attempt to rescue a woman I couldn't save would be both insulting and clinically idiotic.
She's smart, capable, sarcastic enough to make me work for almost every honest answer. She’s strong in ways she doesn't seem to recognize because she's spent most of her life confusing strength with how much pain she can carry quietly.
My vision zones in on her as she shifts beneath the blanket. She rests her one arm up over her stomach while the other disappears beneath her cheek. She looks small. I immediately hate that thought. Not because it’s not true, but because I know how hard she works not to be.
My little ember.
The possessiveness slips into the thought so naturally that I barely react anymore. That's probably another problem that needs to be added to the growing fucking list.
I should leave. My patient is home. She's physically safe.
Whatever happened on the road no longer matters, and there's no remaining professional justification for me standing between trees watching her through a window.
I know exactly where the line is. I'm standing on the wrong side of it and yet I don't move. I’ve convinced myself I would rather be the fucking creeper standing outside than risk something happening to her tonight.
That argument sounded considerably better, and more sane, while she was driving.
Now that she's safely inside, it collapses under the weight of what I'm actually doing.
I'm watching her because I want to. Because knowing she made it through the door wasn't enough.
Because seeing her lie down isn't enough either.
I want to know whether she'll eat, whether she'll sleep.
Whether she'll call someone or whether she'll cry once there's nobody around to see it.
I want to know what she does inside these walls when she isn't performing fine for anyone.
That last thought should scare the shit out of me because this is stalking.
There’s no way of sugarcoating the situation I would point out in therapy instantly.
I would set boundaries immediately. Reject any possibility of justifying it.
Am I doing that now? Fuck no. What I am doing though, is standing in the fucking woods outside my patient's house after following her through Minneapolis. Terminology isn't the problem anymore.
The fact that I am aware of what the problem is and still standing here is, in itself, an even bigger issue.
But watching her settles me. Watching Julia move, roll onto her back and staring at the ceiling settles me.
After a session like the one we had today, she needs someone to look after her.
Someone to keep an eye on her after she spent an hour remembering a childhood she had apparently convinced herself she'd already understood.
Tell her.
My brow pulls together inside the helmet, but the thought lingers while I watch her through the window.
Tell her what, exactly? That she isn’t alone?
That somebody noticed the way she disappeared today and didn’t believe her when she said she was fine?
I have no fucking idea. I can’t call her or text her without doing it as Dr. Blackwood, and whatever this is has already moved far enough outside the walls of my office that bringing him into it feels wrong in ways I’m not prepared to examine tonight.
Because that would mean I would have to consider referring her to someone else and I was not prepared to do that.
But there are other ways to tell someone something.
The idea of a letter comes and goes almost as quickly as the thought itself, leaving just enough behind that I know I’ll remember it later.
Right now, I don’t let it become more than that.
Instead, I stay where I am until Julia moves again.
She turns onto her side, pulls the blanket higher beneath her chin and, sometime later, the restless shifting stops.
Her breathing settles into a slow rhythm I can barely make out from this distance, but I wait longer anyway, until I’m certain she’s asleep.
Only then do I push away from the spot I was standing at, and make my way back towards the street, without starting the bike.
The engine is too fucking loud, and the last thing I want after standing here long enough to watch her fall asleep is to be the reason she wakes up again.
The ridiculous thing is that I came here because I needed to know she was safe.
Now I know. And somehow, leaving her feels harder than following her here ever did.