It's like waking up from a dream.
"Agent Shaw?"
Your endless gaze lifts from the hardwood floor, to the woman sitting slender legs crossed in the armchair five feet away. A professional by the look of it. The heels, the dress, the waves of her brown hair neatly wrapped in a bun. Her whiskey colored eyes find you in the short distance and it's as if everything you were wondering of moments ago is lost. Easily forgotten like a dream and replaced with something new, something you can actually touch but never quite hold onto.
Something real, like this blue leather sofa you're sitting upon. This room, this office, this woman... it's all real. It must be, you hope in the least. How you came to be here and above all, why you've come in the first place, a clouded mystery. The answers you chase through the fog in your mind quickly disappear in the vanishing point inches from your eyes.
What's real and what isn't, soon it's neither here nor there. Like her smile that isn't so much a smile. It's hidden cleverly behind the guise of her pursed lips and still, you feel as if it could spring free without a moment's notice. You think it's her eyes that truly give her away, the impish glimmer flashing across them when she tilts her head. Or maybe it's you. You and what your mind conjures to believe. A false allure captured by the soft lights hanging above.
Like you, she sits calmly in her chair, gathering silence and staring with those eyes to no end. And suddenly, you're not like her at all. You twist in your seat, unnerved by the relentlessness of her gaze. Until the only question on your mind is who will bore the hole first? Her eyes through the back of your skull or your nails scratching the arm of the sofa.
It's like losing a small battle, looking away, but relief is a victory of it's own. The pads of your fingers smooth over the shallow grazes in the leather as you begin to acknowledge your surroundings. Bookcases line the wall behind her, shelves stocked with limitless volumes of self help and understanding. By the door is a picture, a warm and fuzzily painted landscape meant to instill likewise thoughts. But you narrow your eyes at all of this.
The golden placard on the desk puts your suspicions to rest. Dr. Caroline Turing, it reads and you hold back the offensive sound rumbling in the back of your throat. She's as much of a doctor as you are. Shrinks, therapists... those who use speech to bandage the mind and coping mechanisms to heal, they hardly deserve that title. Words aren't real medicine, at least not to someone like you. If she thinks for one second nodding her head and scribbling on a notepad will save you, she's mistaken.
But you notice she doesn't have a paper or a pen. Her hands rest pleasantly empty in her lap, long fingers woven lightly together instead of clasped. You bet they never tremble. You bet she's not even nervous being alone in a room with you. Other people are. Maybe they're wiser.
"Sameen," she says again. Soft, warm like the light of the room and so undemanding. By then your eyes had wandered to the window just beyond the desk, to the sky hiding behind the mass of tall buildings. Faint oranges and tinges of red peak over the tops of skyscrapers and you wonder if it's dusk, dawn, or if the world on the other side of the glass is on fire.
"Why don't we start small?" she offers, and your suspicions creep back up again.
We? As if you two are somehow in this together.
This... you're still not sure what this even is. It irks you for a moment that comes and goes as you squint to the rooftops in the distance. A nonsensical part of you searches for a sniper's nest in the canopies, for a telling flash of a scope aimed your way. You imagine a red dot in the center of your chest, a nonexistent bead on your heart, and consider a trigger pull from a mile away a better means to end this misery in the making.
Why don't we start small?
It all begins that way doesn't it? Small... insignificant... harmless. But you've grown accustomed to the belief things never follow through with that initial simplicity. That little thing, it always builds and builds into so much more. Higher, grander, levels upon levels rising with importance and greater threat. As you stare out the looking glass, you wonder, how many floors above the ground are you now for even placating such a harmless question.
She says, "Tell me a little about yourself, Sameen," and suddenly you're not agent anymore. You're something you'd rather not be. A patient. You're Patient Sameen now.
"Read my file."
You're thankful for that microsecond she blinks, shifts her eyes away towards the desk. That thick chaotic folder bowing the surface, it could only be your story. Heavy with only the things she needs to know. Any more and the legs would buckle and splinter.
"I have." She tucks back a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and that's when you really see her smile. Bashful but lively, showing all the cards of her sharp white teeth. "And to be honest, I'm kind of impressed."
And you shouldn't care whether or not she's impressed or downright appalled for the matter, but the flattery hits you all the same. There's a kind of fascination skirting the edges of her grin. If she has indeed read your file, then she knows all about what you do, and no morally sane person should ever look so proud. Like always, you resign yourself not to care, even as the undesirable spotlight beams your way.
"But what interests me more..." she begins, angling her head in a manner you find to be so cocky. "Isn't within the lines at all. I find subtext often reveals more than the context itself."
You wonder just what the hell she means by that, what about your life wasn't examined under the scrutiny of that personnel file. What about you could possibly be of interest to her? The time line of your years, it's all there. Printed records, factual and straight forward, but not incomplete. She looks to you, gazes a thousand passing days in silence like it will always bother you more. And that's when you realize what she really wants, something you're happily unable to give.
"You wanna talk about my feelings, don't you?" It's loaded and it isn't so much a question, it's the beginning of a cruel joke. Because you don't really have feelings. The punchline is which axis your personality disorder falls under. The rest, she can figure out on her own. That is her job, isn't it?
Years after putting the pieces together and you're still okay with admitting this bit of information she's probably going to turn around. You wonder what her reaction might be. If she's going to shake her head and say you're wrong, that you need search deeper within for something you know damn well isn't there, that it's impossible not to feel anything at all. But you do feel something. Anger. You can do anger just fine.
But she says none of those things.
"You're a sociopath. I know," she replies, never missing a beat. "You diagnosed yourself in medical school, didn't you?"
You almost clap your hands and applaud her, because that's not in your file at all. She's keen, you'll give her that. There's only a handful of reasons that would explain why someone like you was dismissed in the middle of a promising residency. Not a single person has ever cared to connect the dots except for one. The person who said you'd never be a doctor.
With your brows, you shrug. "Maybe I did. Is that a problem?" you ask, but it comes out too defensive. You have to be more careful. You have to control yourself. She's studying it all under a microscope; you and everything you say, it all gets trapped between two slivers of glass and magnified times ten.
The very thought is a sinking stone in your gut, an overwhelming sense of restriction and confinement.
But you're not trapped, you think. Next to that awful painting is a door and it's not so far away. Closed, probably locked, but you could easily get up and change that.
"Second opinions can be more... conclusive," she says. Her voice is somewhere else, farther away than anticipated. You drift towards it and find her standing at the bookcase with her back turned. Too trusting for her own good. "Then again, no one really knows you like you do, Sameen."
Absently, she searches, trailing her fingers across the books' spines. "The people who see us, they only witness a fragment of who we are. What's on the outside mostly, the superficial..." she says and plucks one from the shelf. A blue hardback, the title skewed by the palm of her hand. "We only show the parts we want to be seen."
She wanders back, flipping through the book without any real purpose. For some reason, she stops at the desk overlooking the sitting area. Something on one of the pages must have demanded her attention more.
"You could know someone..." she says, not to you, but to the open book, to the lines of unknown script. At first, you think she might read the passage aloud, but you're wrong. Whatever there was must have meant little to her, you think, as she looks up and half shrugs. "I mean, you could believe you know them," she adds, ripping the page right out of the book.
The loose leaf falls from her hand and into the waste basket by her feet. "No matter what, there will always be areas unknown," she says and tears off another.
"Blind spots..."
and another.
"Secrets..."
You watch in silence as she calmly destroys this book. A mixture of tension and curiosity grows with that ripping sound, as she drags page after page, letting them all drift into the garbage.
"We make certain parts of ourselves invisible to others," she says directly to you now, with another unlucky page in her hands. Oddly, she hasn't yet discarded it like the rest. If this is the pivotal moment, she better get on with it.
"We cover their eyes. Strategically manipulate their perspective... sometimes to an extent. We become good at it... too good." And with that, she crumples the paper into a tight little ball and throws it away. You see it through the wired mesh of the trash can, standing apart from the flat pages of blurred text. "When it comes time to reflect, we become unaware. That same veil we used to cover their eyes, we unknowingly use it on us. We blind ourselves."
She closes the book and you can see it now, the white lettering on the cover flashing just so in the light. Long enough for you to catch the title before it too is sent to waste. The DSM IV, and you almost laugh.
"The bigger question is... What are you hiding from yourself?"
This is nonsense, you think.
"I already know who I am," you tell her. "I know what I'm capable of and what I'm not. I'm realistic."
You don't hold yourself to impossible standards. You don't lie to yourself. The truth is, you don't block anything out. The things you've seen, the things you've done... the good, the bad, the completely fucked up and unforgivable... you remember it all. You just don't care.
"I can see that you're an intelligent woman," she says, leaning back to the desk arms crossed. "Strong... resilient..." A silly smile flashes across her face. "Charming, even, when you want to be. Qualities which I greatly admire."
"You flatter me."
"Oh, your file does all the complementing," she replies. There, on the desk behind her, it still sits. Must have been a good read.
"But like you said, you're not interested in what's in my file," you quip, before it all becomes brass tax and bottom lines. "So what is it that you really want?"
The tables turn and now you're the one studying her. Silence hangs in the air and you wonder what she's thinking of, if she's searching for the right words for just the right lie. Most people tend to look off and away while they gather their dishonest thoughts.
But as she approaches the empty seat beside you and sits down, her eyes never shy away. She's a stranger, yet she looks to you in longing, with a glint of familiarity that flickers across the burnished rings of her irises.
"I'd like to know what you think you're incapable of," she whispers, as if she's being eavesdropped upon. Softly, like you are something fragile.
You're not.
"Why?" you challenge her. "So you can fix me?"
A shadow befalls her face, something akin to despair darkens in her eyes. "Is that what you really believe? That I want to fix you?" she asks, like the very notion is odd and offensive. Though you assumed it was her intention all along, you're not so sure anymore. The root, the reason why you're here, it feels beyond broken pieces in need of mending. It feels like pieces missing.
You lower your head and let your gaze find something else less provoking. "You wanna know what I'm thinking?" you ask but it ends on a distant note. On the leather seat, her hand lies inches from your own and the prospect fades. The mere closeness, unintentional you suppose, but too much. It's stifling in a way that makes your fingers curl into fists and retreat preemptively in case she dared to reach out. So you speak to the door across the room instead. "Leaving..." you say, "I'm thinking of leaving."
The exit is right there. The way out of this, whatever this is, you want no part in it. But when you send the command to your legs, they never move. The signal is jammed or lost. And though you remain frozen in place, your eyes drift and tunnel in towards the door until it's so close, it's as if you can almost touch it.
"No one's forcing you to be here."
You hear her speak, but her voice sounds far away. Disembodied almost, like an echo down a long hallway, barely anything by the time it reaches your ears. As you reach for the handle, you wonder if it's actually true, if you can indeed leave. But the invisible resistance slowing your movements says otherwise, that there is actually something forcing you to be here.
"If you wish to leave..." she says, but when it's processed in your mind, you think you've heard something else entirely, a threat, "If you think I'm going to let you..." A threat, but you can feel the insincerity, the fear, the tremble in a voice that seems to belong to a different person altogether.
The door knob begins to glow a faint red as your hand draws closer. Brighter and brighter, until it looks as though it's white hot. If you touched it, if you could, you wonder if it'd burn and sear your flesh. If that would scare you.
Your muscles shake and strain, fighting to cross the air denser than lead. It's the exhaustion that finally stops you in the end, futility riding on it's coattails and once again, you are still. Hope had collapsed and left you cold in the avalanche. Frozen and you think it might last forever.
And then you feel it, something soft and firm pressing flush with the flat of your back. The warmth isn't instant; it slowly blossoms and sinks in. You don't know why, but you lean into it and let it spread and thaw, all the way to the ends of your fingers caught in this standstill of reaching out.
You feel the concentrated bursts of energy buzzing down your forearm before you see it, the hand of someone else gliding across your skin. Long fingers with polished black nails, gentle despite their formidable appearance, snaking up to your wrist.
Lips, or what feels like lips, press to your ear and whisper to you. They say please, they ask you to stay.
It's all so tempting, this warmth. You close your eyes and almost lose yourself in it for a moment, but another temptation arises, strong in it's own way, the feeling like you don't belong here.
Those fingers smooth over the top of your hand, slip between your knuckles and lace themselves into you. Locking on but never pulling you away. You feel the testing drag of sharp nails scrape against your palm, the softness of those lips as they whisper again...
"Why are you so afraid?"