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My brow furrows. “Psychoanalysis? I thought you agreed long ago I was not good with Freudian methods.”
“You’re terrible with them.” Her smile is sincere. “But it would be a shame to allow a challenge to deter you from a great discovery just because of a little fear.”
“Challenge myself,” I repeat, hearing the fear distinctly in my voice. “Is that doctor’s orders?”
Her dark eyebrows raise. “In fact, it is. You don’t need me to tell you what to do, or give you permission. If your patient is sentenced to death, you have to accept it, and accept that it is not a reflection on you or your life. The danger isn’t whether or not you’re developing personal feelings for your patient. That can be remedied. A few sessions together and we’ll resolve them and you’ll go on with your career.”
I hang on to her last words, waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s always a downside.
She leans in close. “The danger is in discovering the why. There are certain doors our minds close to protect us. Whether it’s blacked out memories or denial—” her gaze doesn’t waver “—we’ve chained those doors closed for a reason. Once you break the locks, there’s no going back. You may have to accept a new reality for yourself, and that can be dangerous.”
I knew in asking Sadie here I wouldn’t be able to cont
inue to hide the truth. She’s mastered her abilities. “I’m scared that I’ve already begun the process.”
She reaches across to take my hand, and I let her. It’s the kind of comfort you offer someone when they’ve lost a loved one—the pure desolation of one’s soul. Although Sadie is here with me, I’m embarking on this journey alone.
I’m not afraid of what lies beyond the blackness. I know what’s there lurking, waiting. Threatening. I’m afraid that once I set the truth free, I’ll lose the last of my humanity.
“Tell me what happened before the wreck. Let me be your anchor.” Sadie’s hand closes over mine, holding on to me tighter.
Her question lashes out like a whip, cracking the seams of time, and the past bleeds into the present. First, a hazy red at the corners, then the blood covers my memories.
So much blood.
If Sadie knew the truth—if she knew the whole story—then her advice to pursue a deeper connection with my disturbed patient may be different. Beneath my professional obligations, a voice whispers from the dark recesses of my mind. A warning. To protect myself, I have to escape Grayson.
He’s a danger.
I swallow hard. Once I begin, I don’t stop until I have no breath left to tell another soul. “He wore a key around his neck…”
8
Gravity
London
There are laws which can be broken, and then there are laws we must obey. How does one person decide the fate of another human being based on these laws?
With that question in mind, a sort of internal countdown has begun within me, a ticking hand on Grayson’s trial clock. With less than a month to form my analysis, the problem of rules presents itself:
Which rules do we obey? Those of man, or those of the universe?
On a long enough timeline, the rules of man change, and they change quite often. What was once considered a sin punishable by death is now a simple social media update, an expression of sexual preference, politics, religious belief. A hundred years from now, sin in its current state might be a laughable pastime, the way we look back on our ancestors who once believed the world was flat. Or the way we resent the ignorance of the Salem Witch Trials.
Our justice system and our beliefs are a direct reflection of our politics, based on what we’re willing to accept—what society as a whole can accept. But then there are rules to which we can’t argue, like those governing our existence.
There’s a natural phenomenon, a force, that attracts anything with mass toward each other. The gravitational pull we take for granted every day is a law obeyed without question.
Gravity.
Two objects colliding together, unable to stop the crash from happening, because the rule is unbreakable.
Relatively, Grayson’s actions, his sins, have created a black hole in the justice system. He’s careening toward his fate at supersonic speed, and there’s no outside force strong enough to stop it.
Not even me.
“London?”
