Page 121 of Letters From A Stalker

Julia shifts slightly, drawing my attention back to the room. “What?”

I blink. “What?”

“You did it again.”

“Did what?”

“That thing where you disappear into your head and apparently forget I can see your face.”

There is no accusation in her tone. If anything, she sounds amused.

“I was thinking.” I say, arranging the glasses on my face although they were fine.

“Dangerous.” She snorts.

“Occupational hazard.”

Her eyes stay on me another second before she lets it go. That should be the end of it. Instead, I become painfully aware of the fact that she is looking directly at me and doing absolutely none of the things she does when she finds one of Ghost’s letters. There is no sudden color warming her cheeks. No bite to the inside of her lip. No expression that tells me she is imagining something she would never say aloud.

Of course there isn’t, I’m her psychiatrist. I should be fucking grateful. Instead, a ridiculous flicker of jealousy runs through me… toward myself. Apparently that is where my life has arrived. Ghost gets the version of Julia who reads a sentence and presses her thighs together. Dr. Blackwood gets insurance forms and emotional growth. Same man — entirely different effect. It is so stupid that my mouth almost twitches.

Julia notices that too. “Whatever you’re thinking, I feel like I should be offended.”

“You shouldn’t.” I tell her, offering a courteous smile.

“That sounded convincing.”

I deliberately reach for my notebook before she can examine me any more closely. “How has your sleep been?”

She laughs softly at the obvious change of subject, but the sound fades into something more thoughtful as she considers the question.

“Mostly good. It still depends on the day, I think. If work has been insane or something happens with Mom that gets into my head, I can still be awake longer than I want, but lately there have been more nights where I just go to sleep and stay asleep.”

“Any nightmares?”

“Not often.”

“That’s good.”

“It is.” She nods slowly, then adds with a touch of dry humor, “I’m assuming this is where you claim professional credit for all of it.”

“I was planning to.”

“Obviously.” The smile she gives me is warm enough that jealousy of Ghost feels even more absurd.

I don’t need her to blush for me here. I shouldn’t want it. Unfortunately, wanting things has not been especially responsive to professional ethics lately.

We spend the rest of the session talking about ordinary things, which is becoming more common now. She tells me about work, including Daniel threatening to ban somebody from the break room for reheating fish and Tessa trying to convince her to attend some singles event with a theme Julia considers “an act of aggression against single people.”

There are no catastrophic memories today. No dissociation or a moment when I have to pull her attention back into the room. She talks, laughs occasionally and disagrees with me twice without apologizing either time. The second time, I catch myself thinking how fucking proud I am of her. That thought is clean, simple. Everything else about us may be a disaster waiting for enough pressure to become visible, but this part isn’t. She is getting better. I want her to keep getting better and that is exactly why the idea of transferring her has become harder rather than easier. If she were doing badly, I could make the argument that my feelings were interfering with treatment and that somebody else might help her more effectively. But she isn’t. We work well together. She trusts me. I know when to push and when to stop. She has begun trusting her own reactions because I have spent months teaching her that they are allowed to exist. Handing that work to someone else now feels like abandoning her halfway through something that is finally starting to move.

That is the professional explanation, the other one is considerably shorter. I don’t want another therapist sitting in this chair with her. I don’t want someone else learning the way she jokes when she is uncomfortable or how she rubs the side of her thumb when she is trying to decide whether to answer honestly. I don’t want to stop seeing her every Thursday. That part has nothing to do with treatment, I know the difference. I simply hate it.

When I glance toward the clock, Julia catches the movement and sighs. “That look never brings good news.”

“We’re almost out of time.”

Her tone turns theatrically disappointed. “Every single week. You should really work on that.”