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The psychiatrist smiled forgivingly and gestured to me. “Liz, this is Poe. Poe, this is my new intern, Liz Nite. Do you mind if she sits in on our session?”
The young woman turned to me and immediately smiled warmly, shyly. I wondered what in God’s name a girl like that would have to be shy about. I hesitated, forcing a fake smile for Liz’s benefit. “Um…sure. That’s fine, I guess.”
Liz’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. It’s just for the sake of experience. A capstone on my psychiatric training. If you’d rather not, I understand completely.” Her voice was very quiet and high…dainty. The kind of voice that I imagined could sing like a bird.
I gritted my teeth and shook my head. “It’s fine. Stay.” Liz seemed interesting. The sort of girl that was that immaculately beautiful did not get to be so self-conscious without an angelic morality or a dark history. If nothing else, perhaps her reaction to my session would be entertaining. She did not seem the type to handle horror stories well.
Liz seated herself unobtrusively in another fluffy armchair in my peripheral vision, leaned against the bookcases. She crossed her legs gracefully and produced a pen, dutifully beginning to take notes on her legal pad. Grey returned his attention to me encouragingly. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“Do I ever want to talk?”
Dr. Grey shrugged nonchalantly. “How is the writing, then?”
I bit my lip, still staring at my hands. “Better. It’s still not near what it was. It’s coming.”
“You haven’t picked up the novel yet, have you?”
I tightened my eyes, shaking my head. “I’m trying to work on another new one. More to try and stimulate my ambition than anything. It’s terrible, though, of course.” I was already beginning to forget Liz’s presence. She made a good observer, simply sitting out of sight and mind, taking notes.
“Why don’t you pick it back up? It’s almost finished and it’s brilliant. I told you myself that it’s the nextCarrie. A career launcher. The style rivaled Edgar Allan Poe. You know my taste in literature is very selective, too; I don’t give praise lightly.”
I shook my head, the dejection weighing heavily on me, like a weight attached to my heart. “No. I can’t. I don’t want to ruin it. The ending is the most important part.”
Grey sighed sadly, a rare betrayal of emotion on his part. “Are the medications at least worth it? Do they help?”
“Not enough to be worth the loss, but…I’m scared to try to go off them again. I’m afraid to lose control.”
“Have you been feeling out of control?”
“Yes. But again, that’s not so new.”
“Something is bothering you, though,” he philosophized. “Something…new.”
I stared at the spines of the books on his floor-to-ceiling shelves, seeking a title I would recognize, but in vain. Grey kept mostly psychiatry manuals and texts on his shelves, interrupted by medical thrillers I had never heard of. “I lost my job at Starbucks.”
“Really?” He used “surprised” words whenever I revealed new developments in my life, but he never once sounded genuinely surprised.
“Yes,” I answered tersely. “I was sick too many days in a row.”
“Where are you applying now?”
“Everywhere. I’d like to get in at Barnes & Noble or one of the small bookstores, but that’s not likely to happen.”
“What else has changed?”
Everything had changed. My entire world had been dumped upside-down in the past few days. It felt like years since I’d been sitting miserably in this office. “Plenty. I met someone new.”
“Who is that?”
“His name is Caleb Frost. He’s a homicide detective.”
“Where did you meet him?” I caught the slightest trace of a smirk at the corner of Grey’s mouth and I suspected he was surprised there was a cop in Baltimore that I wasn’t already acquainted with. Grey was well aware of my history with law enforcement.
“Starbucks, originally. Then I ran into him again at the library.” I did not want to tell Grey about the incident at my apartment and I hoped he wouldn’t weasel it out of me. If I did not give it away in this session, it would be gone by the next and laid to rest.
“And what are your thoughts regarding him?”
Hoping to God he was still alive. “He’s…intelligent. Interesting.”
