14. Kai #4
I look at Julia and understand with uncomfortable clarity why the word carries so much weight for her. “So when you said earlier that no is important to you but sometimes means nothing, you weren’t talking about the word itself.”
Her eyes meet mine.
“No. I know what it means.” Her voice is steadier now. “I just know what it feels like when the person hearing it decides it doesn’t matter.”
For a few seconds, neither of us speaks.
I’m aware of everything in the room with unnatural precision.
The faint sound of the ventilation system, the late-afternoon light falling across the rug, the pen resting untouched beside my hand and Julia sitting opposite me in a denim dress while calmly describing the night a man taught her that her refusal could be treated as irrelevant.
Ghost whispers from somewhere beneath the discipline I’ve spent decades building.
Give me his name.
I ignore him. Barely.
“You said you’ve discussed this in previous therapy,” I say once I trust my voice again. “Did you ever reach a point where you stopped believing you should have fought harder?”
Julia is quiet for a while. “I think so.”
Not good enough.
She sees whatever passes across my expression because she gives me a tired little smile. “You don’t like that answer.”
“I’m wondering why it isn’t yes.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
She looks down toward her lap again, but this time there’s less shame in it and more thought.
“Because intellectually, yes. I know I was drugged or at least impaired. I know freezing and dissociating are real responses. I know saying no was enough. If another woman told me the exact same story, I would never ask why she didn’t hit him or scream.
” Her fingers tighten together. “But when it’s me, there’s still this stupid little part that wonders whether I should have found some way. ”
There it is. I lean forward slightly, not enough to crowd her.
“That part isn’t stupid. You learned before you were eighteen that no matter what happened you wouldn’t be believed or that it would be twisted into something to blame on you because the people you trusted reinforced this belief.
” Her eyes lift. “The man who assaulted you ignored your no. Then the first person you told effectively told you that your no wasn’t enough unless you could prove it with injuries.
You didn’t create that shame by yourself. ”
Something in her face loosens. Not relief exactly, but maybe recognition. I want to reach across the space between us. The impulse is almost physical. My hand remains where it is.
“You don’t have to forgive yourself for not fighting him,” I tell her quietly. “There is nothing to forgive.”
Julia’s breath catches. For the first time since she began telling me, her eyes filled completely. She blinks hard, looks at the window and laughs once beneath her breath as she wipes beneath one eye before the tear can fall.
“Well, fuck.”
I let the smallest warmth enter my voice. “Very clinical response.”
“That one is going in my chart.”
“I’ll phrase it professionally.” That earns me the faintest curve of her mouth, and I’m grateful for it because the alternative is standing up, crossing the room and doing something neither of us is prepared for.
She takes a few seconds to settle herself before looking back at me. “I’m okay.”
Normally, those words make me suspicious.
This time I believe them. Not because she is unaffected, because she is here.
Her eyes remain clear. Her breathing is controlled.
Her feet are planted against the floor, and there is no trace of the terrible distance I saw after we talked about her mother.
She has done this work before. She has already survived remembering it.
What she is doing today is allowing me to see it.
“I know,” I tell her.
My eyes drift toward the clock. We are nearly out of time.
I hate that.
That reaction can join the rest of the evidence in favor of immediate professional intervention.
“We have about eight minutes left,” I tell her. “I don’t want to open anything new today, but I do want to make sure you’re leaving here grounded after talking about this.”
Julia nods and reaches for the water bottle beside her chair. “I actually feel okay. Better than I expected, considering this wasn’t on my list of things I intended to discuss today.”
“You had a list?”
“Metaphorically.”
“That’s disappointing. I was hoping you color-coded it.”
“Only my trauma. Obviously.” The humor is gentler now, and I let it stay.
We spend the remaining minutes somewhere safer, reviewing what she plans to do after the appointment, whether she has anyone she wants to speak to and what she will do if the memories become more intrusive tonight.
She tells me she has work tomorrow, Tessa will probably call regardless of whether invited and she has enough mindless television available to avoid spending the evening staring into her own psychological abyss. I accept that as a reasonable plan.
When she stands, I stand too. For half a second, she pauses.
“Dr. Blackwood?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.” There is no joke attached. No sarcasm.
I meet her eyes. “You don’t need to thank me for believing you.”
Her expression shifts slightly. “I know.”
Then she leaves. I watch the door close behind her and remain where I am until the sound of her footsteps disappears toward reception.