“Hi-” Dr. Heimirsson stopped talking when Lennox entered the room after Nollaig, waving a hand in the air as per usual.
“Heyya, doc” he said cheerfully. The therapist’s jaw seemed to drop to the floor as his eyes floated between the people standing in front of him.
“Ah, we-” Nell began without thinking. She lost her train of thoughts after those two words. She didn’t want to get expelled nor kicked out, that’s what was filling her mind and lot letting her talk with sense.
“We ran into each other in the elevator” Lennox lied casually. Nell wanted to slap herself; why couldn’t she just make up something like that instead of making everything look suspicious and awkward?
The doctor opened his mouth as if to say something, and Nell guessed he was still unsure as his eyes urged them for a real explanation from behind his glasses.
“Did you come together?” he frowned.
“Yes. Five precious steps from the elevator to your door. What a great walk” Lennox walked pass Nollaig and perched on the back of his chair. He looked at her from the corner of his eyes, the devilish grin beginning to form. It was all a role, someone he was used to playing as, she comprehended. “Shall we begin now?”
Nollaig turned around as soon as she heard Lennox’s steps crossing the door.
“Hi” she smiled sweetly. He just nodded at her as a reply. That was weird. Nell was used to him being cold inside the consult, but he always had seemed to be a completely different person on the outside. “Are you okay?”
“Better than ever” he cocked his head to the side, avoiding eye contact with her.
“You know-” she cleaned her throat. She felt insecure of her next choice of words, but she would exploit if she didn’t say it out loud. “If you ever need someone to talk to -about anything- I’m right here. I can help.”
“Why do you all want to talk to me these days?” Lennox rolled his eyes, and Nell knew he wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. She didn’t understand.
“I just... If you need-”
“I need nothing” he sighed, irritated.
“We’re not in the consult, I’m not telling you this as a psychologist” Nell bit her lip. She felt as if she were running out of options, of things to say.
“And yet you’d tell my therapist whatever I told you” he pointed out, his eyebrow arched. “So I was mistaken, we’re the same outside. You a shrink, I a patient. No, I’ll think I’ll pass, thank you.”
“Lennox-”
“I should go now, it’s getting late” he was already walking away when he waved his hand in the air. “Goodbye.”
“Can I sit in the floor?” Lennox asked. He was already there before the therapist had time to even think of replying. Dr. Heimirsson sighed.
“I have to waste fifteen minutes of each of our sessions to get you to sit down-”
“I like walking” Lennox tried to cut in, the corners of his lips already twisting upwards.
“-and now you want to sit” the doctor finished.
“Are you complaining about me sitting down and not sitting down in the same sentence?” Lennox tilted his head. “Sounds counterproductive to me, doc.”
“At least, sit on the couch, please?”
“You have a great view. If you’re not letting me move the couch then I’ll move myself” Lennox offered the therapist a devilish grin that was probably adding up to his head ache.
“You will sit in your place when Miss Sterling arrives, alright?”
“Maybe” Lennox shrugged. “Where is she anyway?”
“On her way” Dr. Heimirsson leaned against the fireplace, pinching the bridge of his nose. Lennox could tell he was tired and probably not in the mood for games, but that only made him want to keep pulling the string. “This is what happens when you’re early.”
“Can I have her number?” that seemed to made the psychologist’s head ache go away for a moment, long enough for him to look startled. “In case I have an emergency or lose my mind or whatever it is you people think I could trigger” Lennox kept teasing. It was worth it only to see the look on Heimirsson’s little eyes.
“You can have my number if you ever have an emergency.”
Nollaig had had to run away from the tedious secretary that had kept on insisting on looking for her name in what seemed like an endless list of them. She wondered if the old woman had gone after her when she hurried into Dr. Heimirsson’s consult, catching her breath. She was about to explain why she was late and how she had gotten confused with the name of the streets, when she saw the doctor’s eyes falling on the stain on her sweater. She bit her lower lip.
“I’m terribly sorry” her eyebrows curled down, but she tried to force a smile, both for the doctor and for the patient sitting in front of him, who was eyeing her over his shoulder, though she had her own eyes fixed on her teacher. “People these days don’t bother looking at the front when their walking and-” she interrupted herself. Nell had been half joking, trying to break the ice before the tension in the air got too bad, but then she saw him. She gulped. She recognized the plaid shirt of the same boy she had run into before. “Oh, shit” Nell put a hand over her mouth the moment she realized she was cursing without thinking.
She felt the heat rushing to her cheeks as the doctor sighed and told her to sit down on the chair set beside him. Nell obeyed, trying to dismiss every bad thought. You’ve worked hard to be here, don’t start thinking you don’t deserve it now. She didn’t dare to contemplate the ways the day could be even worse, just in case.
“You’re moody today” Doctor Heimirsson pointed out. Nell could feel it too, the aura of arrogance that had settled over Lennox. It was usually a game to him, but that day, all the smiles and smirks and sarcasm seemed forced and fake. “Has something happened?”
“You ask me that every week” Lennox sighed. “Do you really think my answer is going to change from one week to the next one?”
“There’s something troubling you. We have to figure that out and fix it.”
“There’s nothing to be fixed. Let’s talk about something else” Lennox briefly stared at Nollaig. It was the first time in the whole day he acknowledged her existence. She gulped, feeling suddenly nervous. “Do you know she has a boyfriend? How cute.”
Nell felt her eyes opening wide, her hands getting tense, her cheeks burn. She felt suddenly embarrassed. She hated making her love life public. Even her parents didn’t know her boyfriend, and they had been together for five years already.
“That’s completely unprofessional and out of the topic” the doctor exclaimed. She thanked him in silent, cause she knew the lump in her throat wasn’t going away any time soon.
“Why can’t we talk about her for once?” the boy snapped back. There was something going on with him, his frustration was so big it could reach Nell. She wondered if it had something to do with what he said the other day: his dad. “You have her there sitting and saying nothing. Let’s let her talk, why not?”
“Because it’s not of your business” the doctor’s voice was hard and cold as ice. Lennox held his gaze, and eventually leaned back on his seat, trying to look as relaxed as possible. But Nell knew the battle wasn’t over yet.
Nell had already met the doctor that would supervise her instruction days before to set the terms of these practices. She wasn’t allowed to talk, whisper, draw her attention to something else, add an opinion and absolutely no talking about the patient outside the mental health center. She was allowed to take notes and look at the doctor’s, ask question when the patient was gone, but never about personal things about the patient in question, unless he’d talked about them in front of her. So that’s what she did. Sit there in silence, and hoping there was no other way she could mess this up.
“This is the student that’s going to be present in our sessions from now on, Lennox” Dr. Heimirsson began. “I could only talk to your sister about it, and even if she told us you agreed to it, I need to confirm.”
The boy’s amber eyes moved over to Nollaig then, and she realized then. She knew him from more than the coffee incident. Everyone knew him. She shut her lips tightly. She wondered if it was possible that this guy could read everything that was going on in her mind, because he scouted her up and down, an impish smile drawing on his lips.
“I confirm it, then. Let her stay” Lennox laid back on his couch, his expression careless. “This shall be fun.”
“Kellan says you seem more relaxed lately” Heimirsson laid back on his chair, his notes untouched on the table as always. Nell had arrived early; she now knew the therapist read everything on his notebook before their weekly session, and wrote everything he had learnt when they were done.
“I told you she was just being dramatic. You don’t listen” Lennox offered a devilish smile. Nell had started to think he tried to tease the doctor so they would run out of time quickly without him having to look for a way around the questions he was asked.
“Why don’t we talk about your parents for a bit today?” the doctor proposed affably.
“Why don’t we talk about yours?”
“They live in Georgia with their three dogs. Your turn” both Lennox and Nell’s eyes opened wide at that answer.
“Nice try” Lennox whistled.
“How old were you when you were adopted?”
Lennox didn’t smile when he replied: “You know that already” Nollaig didn’t, and she felt guilty that she was interested in it. But maybe it was part of the job. So far, nothing had seemed off about Lennox, but what if-?
“I want you to tell me, not your sister” Heimirsson kept on insisting. Lennox opened his mouth, his frown getting deeper, and Nell got ready to get another joke or sarcastic reply that would make the doctor write a line on his journal about Lennox not wanting to cooperate. But he closed his mouth, sighed, and fixed his gaze on the window.
“I was seven” his voice was so low now, they could barely hear it. “I was seven, and he left me. I wasn’t adopted. I went to the only place I could go to.” He- His father. Nell felt as if she was stepping in holy ground.
“But-”
“Time’s up” Lennox stood up, cutting the psychologist before he could ask something else. Nell had been left speechless, astonished. The more she discovered about him, the more intrigued she felt. This side of him didn’t fit with the one he showed her. She wanted to ask him too. She knew she couldn’t, but…
He was out the door before she could even think of making eye contact with him.
"Let’s go over the story again” doctor Heimirsson left his notes over the table, rotating the ankle he had over his knee.
Blair sighed; they’d gone through this twice before, and she still wondered why he kept on asking her about it. She bit her lip, taking a wild guess at it. Maybe he was hoping she had left out a detail, something important that could help him make Willa talk. Or perhaps he was hoping Blair had been hiding something all along, and that it would slip out without her noticing if he was persistent enough. Either way, she didn’t care. She was patient.
“Where do you want me to begin?” she joined her hands at her lap.
“Why did you travel all the way from Scotland?”
“To find my sister” she replied. It had gotten to a point, she felt, that she always used the exact same words in the exact same order to tell this story. It was kind of exhausting. “She left Scotland when she turned eighteen, never told anyone why. So I waited until I was old enough to travel on my own, and I went after her.”
“And still, she didn’t tell you why she left?” Heimirsson insisted.
“No” Blair knew Heimirsson was aware of this. Willa’s version, according to the doctor, wasn’t very different from Blair’s story.
“But you went back, why?”
“She won some tickets, thought it would make me happy to go, rather than throwing them away” Blair shrugged, blocking the memories.
“And what happened there?” he narrowed his eyes, his fingers tapping his ankle. Yes, Blair realized, he was hoping Blair had left something out the other two times they had talked.
“We stayed at our parents’ house for two weeks” Blair’s muscles tightened with the tension, but she kept on replying as calmly as she could. She wondered if Willa had gone into specifics in this part of the story. “Didn’t go that well.”
“Why?”
“There was a boy she had counted on to support her, and he gave up on her the minute things got too nasty” Blair sighed. No one talked about him, or thought about him for that matter. He had been forgotten; two years had passed since, after all, but Blair knew at the time, it had affected Willa, one way or another. “Things with our parents didn’t go well either. They just kept on fighting, and fighting and fighting. But no one wanted to talk about Willa’s issues.”
“There was another friend with you there, am I right?” the doctor eyed his closed notebook, as if he could check it with a single look at the cover.
Blair smiled. A friend: Duncan.
“Yes, someone else was there too”
“Did he stay with you?”
“Yes. All along” she noticed she had been playing with a curl, wrapping it around her finger. “Willa and I had a talk when the two weeks passed. I told her I wanted to stay, that that was where I had my life, my future, but I wanted her in it with me. And she decided to stay” she lowered her eyes at the slight ache of guilt she felt. The talk had been more of an argument, with too many tears for Blair to feel satisfied when she had finally convinced Willa. “My... our friend, Duncan, he had to leave when the return ticket day arrived.”
“Did Willa stay at your parents’ house?” he asked. Blair exhaled; this appointment was getting too long, and she knew there was nothing else she could tell that could help. Of course, she wanted her sister to heal from her wounds, that’s why they had decided to get a therapist for her, but it was getting tiring to be called to go over the same thing again and again. She wondered if Willa would open up soon; weeks had passed and she insisted on keeping her mouth shut.
“No, she rented a place. I stayed at our parents’. I started my studies at university that year, and she looked for photography classes to make her resume look prettier” Blair could hear the clicking of the clock in her ears like a hammer. She had a date, and she hated to be late. She hadn’t forgotten. “We kept coming back to the States when our classes were over.”
And that was the end of the story. It always was.
“I want you to think about your parents now” Dr. Heimirsson announced. That was new; Blair frowned. “I want you to think about your relationship with them, and I want you to tell me if there’s any reason for your sister to not get along with them.”
“They’re strict” she tilted her head. “I guess that’s a reason, but I could always bear it. They were strict with grades, with the people we hang out with, with parties, with animals; they restricted technology in our house and prohibited certain pieces of clothing. They didn’t let us go to school when we were kids, and still educated us at home until high school.”
“Sounds like...”
Blair drew up her arm, rolling back her sleeve to take a look at her watch. Her eyes opened wide.
“I’m going to be late” she exclaimed. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Heimirsson. I wish I could be of more help but I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can tell you” she stood up quickly, holding the doctor’s gaze as she walked to the door. “I know you can heal her. She will open up, I’m sure of it. She wouldn’t have said yes to the psychologist if her intentions were to keep on holding it all inside. I’ve read your resume and I trust your methods. Please...” she grabbed the door handle. “Please, don’t give up on her.”
She heard the doctor say goodbye and the secretary calling for the next patient, and could even make out the surname Caden, but she was already running downstairs, straight to Bridgeport’s national park, where she was to meet her date.
