Chapter 51
Anna slaps Martina hard in the face, and Martina yelps, an instinctive sound of pain, and begins to cry.
“Stop,” I try to say, but it just comes out as a croaking sound.
It feels like a nightmare, running from a monster with the air thick as syrup, screaming without a voice.
Martina’s head has fallen forward. Anna is staring at her, unmitigated hatred on her face.
“Come on, Doctor,” she says, her voice a parody of the syrupy-sweet tone she’s been speaking in so far. “Don’t be like that.”
She grabs Martina’s soaked hair and tugs at it, so hard it brings a groan from my throat, and Martina’s head snaps back, her eyes wide in fear.
“Please,” I hear Martina try to whisper. “Stop.”
“Good girl!” Anna coos. “Look at that. I knew I could get you to pay attention.”
She reaches down and tugs at the rope tying Martina to the chair. It’s thin twine, and I can see it cutting painfully into her skin, digging welts into her arms.
“All good?” Anna asks her. “Comfortable?” The smile on her face isn’t a smile at all. It’s what children see in the dark.
“Please, Anna,” Martina whispers. Her lips are swollen and bruised.
Anna walks around the desk, slowly, and as she reaches Martina’s chair, she shoots me a conspiratorial little glance.
A wink of a smile.
Then she sits down, and she clasps her hands together in front of her, in a pitch-perfect imitation of Martina herself.
“So, Martina,” she says. “Are you ready to begin your session?”
“Why are you doing this?” Martina asks, and she begins to cry again.
Anna pauses. Her eyes linger on Martina, lit with a strange, glowing joy; she’s drinking her in, this broken vessel of a woman.
Then she sighs, and she shakes her head. Her blond hair, now dry, dances on her shoulders, the movement dizzying to my drunken eyes.
“Where to begin, Martina? You’ve ruined so many lives. And what’s more, you take absolutely no responsibility for it.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Here at the Himlafall Clinic, we take responsibility very seriously. Remember?”
Her voice grows sharp, the last word like the crack of a whip.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Martina whispers. “Please, I’ll do anything you want. Just let me go. You can have whatever you want. Just please, stop this.”
Anna sighs, her shoulders rising and falling.
“See, this, right here, Martina, is the problem. You won’t acknowledge your own fault in things. You prefer to just look away.”
She looks over at me.
“Right, Isobel?”
She doesn’t wait for me to respond.
I have to get up. I have to stop this. But I can’t remember how. My body isn’t mine; it won’t respond to my commands.
“How about we start with one of your favorite exercises, Doctor?” Anna sneers. “How about we start with you telling me what you think you’ve done wrong.”
Martina opens her mouth. Her lips are red with blood, in a horrific parody of the lipstick she usually wears.
“I don’t know.” Her voice is raw with tears and pain. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Anna studies her, coolly and cruelly, savoring the moment.
“Doctor,” she then says, ever so softly. “I want you to understand what you’ve done. That’s all. I want you to acknowledge the damage you’ve done.”
Martina stares helplessly at her. I see her fingers flexing at her sides, swollen and useless; her back bent, her chin quivering.
“I just wanted to help people.” Tears and blood are dripping off her face.
“BULLSHIT!” Anna screams at her, making her jump.
Anna has sprung up from her chair, and she’s breathing hard, chest pumping, teeth bared.
“Bullshit,” she repeats in a lower tone of voice.
A vein is pulsing in her forehead.
“You don’t want to help people,” she continues.
“You just want to help yourself. You want to take people’s money, and you want to take their love, and you want to take their lives away from them.
You twist them, and you gaslight them, and you distort the truth.
You’re poison, Martina. You poison people.
You’re a toxic narcissist, and the truly disgusting thing is that you don’t even realize it. ”
By the end, her voice has grown soft and smooth as silk. She’s almost purring.
“Ask Isobel.” She indicates me with a slight tilt of her head. “I heard her talking on the phone. She understands it. She sees you for what you really are.”
She looks over at me, something like pride in her eyes.
“I heard you talking to your friend. Saying all the things I had felt for so long.” Her eyes fill with tears.
“I almost gave up and left, you know.” She puts her hand over her heart.
“Especially when you asked about me. I got scared. Thought you might be a cop, or a private investigator, or something. Come looking for me. That’s why I wrote that stupid note.
I’m sorry about that, by the way, but I freaked out.
“But then, when I heard you talking to him, saying all that about Dr. Martina … I knew I was right. I knew I had to keep going.”
“No.” I shake my head, “I didn’t—”
“You did,” Anna insists. “Please, Isobel. You have to learn to receive praise and affection when it’s given.”
“I swear…” Martina’s voice wobbles. “I swear I never meant to hurt anyone. I was doing my best. I was just trying to do—I was just trying to help people see themselves and their lives for what they really are. The way I wish someone had helped me.” She’s sobbing.
“Maybe I did it wrong, maybe I made mistakes, but I never wanted to hurt anyone,” she weeps. “I care about my patients. I care about all of them.”
“Well.” Anna reaches over the desk and grabs ahold of Martina’s chin with long, elegant fingers. She tilts it upward, and she does it carefully, so she can look into Martina’s eyes.
“In that case,” she says, “how come you didn’t recognize me when I came back, Doctor?”
Martina is staring back into her eyes, hypnotized.
“I did,” she tries to say. “Of course I did. I was so … proud of the progress you’d made.”
Anna stills. She looks at Martina. Searching.
And then her grip grows stronger, and Martina groans in pain.
“No.” Anna’s words are barely more than a breath. “No, you didn’t. I know you didn’t.” She smiles.
“Because that other fucking hack of a doctor you had working here told me I’d never be allowed back in here.”
Anna lets go of Martina’s chin, wrenching her head to the side and making her cry out.
“I didn’t really think it would work, you know,” she notes, almost as if to herself.
“I changed my hair, dyed my eyebrows, but I have to admit there was a part of me that really thought you’d know it was me.
I thought you would see right through me.
Because you see people, right? That’s your whole thing.
I think a part of me was actually hoping you would.
Because at least it would prove that I was someone to you.
Even if that someone was not welcome here. ”
Anna’s mouth twists, and I see her eyes filling with tears.
“But I wasn’t, was I? I was no one. You didn’t even care enough to read my patient file after I left.
I just told you I’d been here, gone through your program, and you accepted it.
I quoted your stupid fucking books back to you, and you ate it up.
” She blinks rapidly. “All I ever wanted was for you to help me. I thought you would fix it. You told me you could fix it. You made me feel like you could understand. I wrote you messages, and you told me to come here. You told me you’d help me.
And I paid all that money, and I came to your little retreat, and you weren’t even here!
I wrote you on Instagram and told you I was coming, and you didn’t even answer it! You didn’t care!”
I try to get up off the couch, but I fall onto the floor, banging my knees and biting my tongue. When I look up, Anna is staring at me, her eyebrows raised in vague distaste.
“Isobel, you’re going to have to wait your turn.” She’s mocking me, but there is something darker underneath her derisive tone.
Then she opens the desk drawer and pulls something out. She snaps her fingers at Martina.
“Hey. HEY! Look at me!”
Martina looks up.
Anna holds the file up next to her face.
“Recognize this?” She smiles, as though posing for a picture.
“It’s mine! It’s my patient file from last year!
Took me a couple of weeks, but I finally found it a few days ago.
At first I was just trying to do … well, exactly what Isobel over there was doing, actually.
I was trying to find proof of what you’re doing here. How you’re harming people.”
Her smile hardens until it’s no more than a mask.
“But once I read what was in it, I realized it wouldn’t be enough,” she says, in a strange, strangled monotone.
She puts the folder down on the desk and opens it.
“Let’s read it. Shall we?”
Martina doesn’t respond.
Anna licks her finger and picks up the first paper.
“Here we go,” she says. “Patient: Susannah Wallin.”
Nina Sundin
Willmar Way 14
119 08
Stockholm
I know where you live, you fucking cunt.
You ruined my life.
I will come for you. You won’t know when.
You ruined my life and you are going to pay.
I see you through your window sometimes.
I wonder if you can feel me looking?
One day, very soon, you will turn around and I will be there.
I’ll be waiting for you.