Her pen stopped. The silence was immediate. I regretted saying that.
Sophia looked at me slowly. “Do not compare me to him.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
No, she didn’t. Not fully. No one did.
The nurse called my name before I could apologize properly.
Céline Martin.
I stood. The name followed me into the consultation room like perfume.
The doctor was a soft-spoken woman in her forties with tired eyes and a calm voice. She asked questions I answered carefully. Sleep. Appetite. Panic symptoms. Recent stressors. Family history. Current safety. Whether I had thoughts of harming myself.
“No,” I said immediately.
She did not react. Good doctors, apparently, knew how not to punish speed.
Then she asked about my father. The room seemed to cool around the word.
I told her enough to be believed and not enough to be known.
Estranged. History of alcohol abuse. Unstable. Recent unwanted contact. Fear of harassment. No immediate physical threat on campus, as far as I knew.
The doctor listened. Took notes. Asked whether campus security had been informed.
“No.”
Sophia, sitting beside me, looked like she wanted to answer for me. The doctor’s gaze was gentle but direct.
“Would you consider making a report, even if only to document the contact?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
Because paperwork made things real. Because if I said Daniel Martin’s name to campus security, someone might ask why Selena Martin had become Céline. Someone might ask too many questions. Someone might look somewhere they should not. Because every official record felt like a door that could open in both directions.
“I want to see if he contacts me again first,” I said.
The doctor did not look pleased, but she did not push. Instead, she referred me to the campus psychiatrist, who had an opening that afternoon because, as the receptionist said with disturbing cheer, someone had cancelled.
Sophia called that great luck.
* * *
The psychiatrist’s office was warmer than the doctor’s exam room, with bookshelves, a lamp, two chairs, and a window overlooking the wet courtyard. He was older, with silver hair and round glasses, and spoke in a voice that made everything sound less urgent than it felt.
He asked many of the same questions. I gave many of the same answers. This time, however, my body was more tired. The repetition wore down the edges of my control. When he asked what happened when the call came, I described the way my hands went numb, the way the room seemed to move away from me, the way I locked the door twice and checked the window even though no one could climb three stories in the rain.
I did not tell him I had texted Vincent. I did not tell him that safety had a voice in my phone and that I hated how much I wanted to answer it.
At the end, he prescribed a small amount of benzodiazepines for acute panic episodes and told me to use it only as directed. He also recommended follow-up counselling, campus safety documentation, and not isolating myself.
That last part made Sophia nod so emphatically I wanted to kick her ankle.
