Trine
Ican’t exactly find the closest psychiatric hospital and try to barge in, but I do know where the crisis center of the city is by heart. I normally only call them, but I can’t go back to my house.
I can’t go see my friends or pretend that everything is normal.
I feel like such an idiot. I can’t believe I just went into this without thinking about this, but that’s very typical of me.
This is the kind of situation I’ve gotten into before, far too many times. Except this time, it feels worse, mostly because these people literally bound me to a bed so they could exorcise me. I didn’t realize just how much it would affect me to think about how they’ve seen me.
I don’t know if I tried to kill any of them. Maybe I did to them what Tom tried to do to me, and Misha is trying his best to protect me. I don’t think they’re being evil. I think they were short sighted so they can protect me, but that means that they’re leaving huge swaths of information out, and I don’t appreciate it.
I pull into the parking lot of the crisis center. It’s packed, and I know that a lot of these people are in a far worse situation than I am. I stay in my car for a little while, my hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, until my knuckles turn white.
After I close my eyes, I steel myself to go inside. Even if I can’t help right now, at least I can take steps to get help. Dev asked me if I’d been to therapy, and I’ve been avoiding it for too long, trying my best not to freak out. I can speak to someone when I get in there.
It’s raining when I leave my car. In the distance, I can hear thunder roaring, and I have no idea how the weather turned from foggy to stormy so quickly. I don’t have much time to think about it because I need to duck into the building. Rain falls on me, flattening my hair, making my clothes stick to my clothes.
The doors open automatically before I walk in. The waiting room is packed, and there’s a long line to get seen by a receptionist. I consider whether I should stay here at all, whether I should wait, when I feel someone’s gaze on my back.
I know when I’m being watched, and right then, I’m definitely being watched.
Even though there’s a part of me that’s afraid, I tell myself that I’m overreacting. I’m trying not to just go by my instincts, mostly because my instincts have guided me to the absolutely wrong place so far. My instincts have made me land here, so I can’t listen to myself.
Slowly, I crane my head to look back to see who is staring at me, and my breath catches in my throat when I see the culprit.
It’s a man, probably somewhere around six feet three inches. He has a foam cup of coffee in his hand, a cardboard sleeve with a logo I’m not familiar with peeking out from between his long fingers. I stare at his hands, and then my gaze slowly takes him in, a barely hidden tattoo on his forearm that swirls up toward his neck, disappearing behind his tight sleeves.
He's wearing a dark blue polo shirt, probably a size too small, and then I slowly look up at his face. When I do, I have to resist the urge to gasp.
I know this man. I’ve seen him before.
He’s the man in my dreams.
His features are exactly the same. His coloring is a little different, though; this man is a redhead, with a smattering of freckles on his face, and despite the sharpness of his jaw, he looks like he’d be kind. But something about him; his proximity, his appearance, the fact that he exists at all—it’s all too much. I don’t know if I can deal with it.
I blink, trying to see if, when I open my eyes again, he won’t be there anymore. But he is, and he’s staring at me, as if he can’t believe that I’m real either.
He takes a step toward me. "Hi," he says, his voice soft, musical. He’s so close to me I can smell him, and there’s something under that fresh coffee scent and that aftershave. Something dark, and sweet, and slightly bitter.
Like a dying fire.
"Hello," I reply, forcing myself not to make that ‘hello’ a question.
"I…" he gestures toward the receptionist. "I work here."
"Oh."
"Did we have an appointment?" he asks, tilting his head. He seems genuinely confused. "I feel like I would’ve remembered that, but now that I think of it, there was a weird gap in my schedule."
"I don’t…I haven’t made an appointment," I say, dropping my voice to a whisper. If this man is a counselor and this opportunity just fell on my lap, then I would be an idiot not to take it. "But if you could squeeze me in, that would be great."
I don’t think this is protocol. We’re both aware of it, but it doesn’t seem to matter, since all he does is shake his head and gestures for me to follow him. So I do. I go past the glass double doors that he can only open with his badge, and we walk together into a dimly lit hallway with interminable doors.
They’re all brown. They all look the same. Just like they did in my dream.
"Wait," I say. I reach out to touch his shoulder but I stop myself before I do, mostly because I’m worried it’ll burn me to touch him. As if that made any fucking sense at all. "You are a therapist, right?"
"Yes," he says. "And you are…"
"Catherine Lange," I say. "But only my parents call me that. You can call me Trine."
"Okay," he says, a warm smile spreading on his face. "Nice to meet you, Trine. I’m Dr. Malon O’Mara, but you can call me Mal."
Something about his name makes my pulse jump. Why? What is it about this man that feels so weird? I try to shake the thought away. "Do you let all your patients call you Mal?"
He laughs under his breath. "Of course I do. Dr. O’Mara is my father." Then he winks at me, opens one of the brown doors, and I can’t think of anything to do but follow him inside his office.
I just try to resist the creeping sensation that I’ll be locked in.