Don had no idea for how long he had paced up and down the little hallway. Time went so slowly when you needed it to hurry. Where was the car? Why didn't he hear anything? How much longer could this take?
A knock on the door made him jump and open the door.
"Thanks God you're here." He had tried to call Sara, had talked on her mailbox, had begged her to call Sofia, to come back. He had no idea if she listened to this or she deleted everything and didn't care. All he knew was, he was not getting anywhere this way. He called a colleague and asked a personal favor. A few minutes later he got a call back, got a number and dialed it. It was Doctor Weinberg's personal cell phone number.
"What happened?"
"She's losing it."
"Be more specific."
"She said her life is worthless without Sara. She's desperate. I…I'm scared she might do something stupid." Saying these words out loud scared him even more.
"Where is she?"
"In her room. She locked the door, doesn't want to talk to me."
"Do you have a second key?"
"No."
"Show me the door."
"Up here." He guided her up the stairs to Sofia's room.
"Thanks." She knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again.
"Leave me alone!"
"Sofia, it's Jules."
"Leave me alone."
"That won't happen."
"This is not your office, you don't make the rules."
"Open the door."
"No. Leave me alone."
"Sofia, you've got two options: the first one is, you open the door, the second one is, you let the door closed and I'll open it."
"Tell Don if he does anything to open the door I want him out of the house ASAP."
"I don't need your housemate to get into your room. So what's your pick?"
"Get lost!"
Jules looked at Don.
"I can kick the door in, I don't care if she kicks me out for that."
"I can handle this. It might be better if you step back."
"But…"
"Please."
"Alright." He stepped a few steps back.
"How about you organize some muffins and coffee?"
He looked at her. Did she really ask him to back off completely? Was she serious? She wanted to do this all by herself?
"Alright, your pick, doc but if you don't get anywhere within the next few minutes, I'll do something."
"Thanks." Doctor Weinberg waited until Don was gone.
"I sent Don away, Sofia. Don't you want to open the door?"
"What didn't you understand when I told you to get lost?"
"So you take option two? Alright." Doctor Weinberg sighed. She hadn't done this for a long time. At least she wore sport shoes, that made it easier. She went a few yards back, took a deep breath, ran towards the door. When she was around a yard away, she jumped up, turned in the air so that she hit the door with her right foot, face down. Together with the door she fell into the room and ended up on her belly. The door was open, she was inside but she got no points for the landing. She was supposed to land on her feet and hands. She was out of practice.
"What the fuck?" Sofia sat up on her bed and stared at her door and the psychologist on the floor.
"I told you I'll get inside without help." She got up.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I keep my promise to come inside."
"I can't remember I asked you to promise this."
"You didn't say it with words, lucky for us, I'm a psychologist, I understand what people say even when they don't say it." Jules picked up the door and put it in front of the frame. It wasn't broken, only flew out of the door hinge.
"I can shoot you for that."
"Sofia, if you threaten me I've to call an ambulance. Do you really want to stay a few days in a mental hospital?"
"You've got no…"
"I've got everything I need for that. So, now that we're here and Don is getting muffins and a coffee, why not talk?"
"I'm not your patient."
"I know, but I do talk to other people than patients."
"Why can you invade my life, give a damn about my privacy, while you treat Sara's like it's a treasure?"
"When people say things like that their life makes no sense and close friends worry about them, I'm allowed to do a lot of things."
"I'm fine."
"You didn't tell Don your life is worthless and has no sense without Sara?"
"Not your business."
"What do you think does he think when he hears words like these?"
"That my girlfriend left me and…I miss her." Sofia had to swallow. Her anger was gone. She was too tired, worried too much about Sara to be mad at the therapist.
"Talking like you're threaten to harm yourself won't make it better. It will make people worry about you, break a few rules to get to you."
"And my door."
"Yeah, sorry about that. I told you, I'll come in."
"I thought more of…I don't know.. you pick the lock."
"Sorry, I've no idea how to do that."
"But you know how to kick in a door. I thought you're a therapist."
"A therapist, who worked in a hospital and we had once or twice a year a patient, who locked himself in a room. The fasted way to get in is kick it in. I'm out of practice, there were times when I did that better. More elegant." Doctor Weinberg sat on Sofia's bed, took her hand. "You didn't sleep."
"No."
"I know you love her and she loves you too. If she saw how you suffer, what she's putting you through, she wouldn't do it."
"She should know what she's putting me through."
"She still thinks it's better for you to be without her. Without her problems."
"It's not. I love her, I want to be with her. I want to have her with her problems in my life, you're supposed to be there for the one you love, to help her through everything and…" Sofia couldn't held back her tears anymore. Like a monsoon rain in the rain forest, her face was flooded by tears. She couldn't see anymore, everything was blurry, she shook and held like somebody had ripped off her heart. She leeched on to the other woman, buried her face in her shirt and let go of everything. All the pain, all the fear, all the things of the last two days got up and seemed to leave her body through her eyes. There was no way she could stop her tears, she didn't try, she had given up, had let them taken over. She was a hostage of her own body.
"Can't you get her back to me?"
"I can try. When she's with me the next time, I'll try to make her come back."
"Thanks." Sofia snuffled. "I'm such a wimp."
"You're a woman, who is in love."
"I cry like a baby and she isn't even gone for forty-eight hours."
"You don't start to miss your lover after forty-eight hours and it's not like you've forgotten her after seventy-two hours, we're not talking about a physical addiction, Sofia. You love her, you miss her when she leaves the room to get a drink for the two of you. You wonder what she's doing when she's in the kitchen and needs a little bit more time to fix the cocktail because she can't open the tin. And you worry if something has happened to her when she comes home late, despite the fact that you know, it's rush hour and she can't always be on time. It's love Sofia. Just the side effects of love, not more and not less."
"Are you a relationship counselor too?"
"No. And you don't need one."
"Right, I don't have a relationship."
"You have one, you know that."
"A relationship on hold."
"A relationship, that's a little bit tough, but you don't give up a case when it gets tough, do you?"
"No."
"So do you want to give up Sara because it's tough?"
"No!"
"See."
"But what if she…you know, when she was…she left Vegas, left her fiancé there, she left him a letter, didn't tell him she'd go. Didn't tell him where she'd go to. I'm…I feel like…I'm afraid she'll do the same again. Maybe there'll a letter in front of my door tomorrow, telling me, she couldn't handle it anymore and had to leave. Maybe I won't get a letter and she leaves me without a note. I'm so scared, Jules."
"She won't do that, Sofia."
"How can you know?"
"Let's say I know a little bit about people and their actions. Especially when I've talked with them for a while." Doctor Weinberg smiled.
"True. Sorry."
"It's alright, Sofia. She'll be back soon. Sara is…she needs some freedom and at the same time she's afraid to be alone, that nobody cares about her. The problem is, the people, who were supposed to care for her as a child, didn't care."
"You mean, she's afraid she'll get disappointed again? That I'll watch her suffer and won't do anything?"
"At the moment she's more scared that the person she cares about most suffers because of her. It's like…she had to suffer because her father didn't stop the suffering. She tries to stop it for you by staying away, not seeing that she gives you even more pain."
"Can't you make her understand that it's worse for me to be without her than to suffer with her?"
"I can try when I see her again."
"You won't tell me when she has her next appointment?"
"No. And I don't know if she'll be there."
"I hope she will."
"So do I. And I hope, I can leave you without worrying that you'll do something stupid."
"I won't. No more locked doors. Promise."
"Good. Get in the kitchen, your muffins should be there."
"Don't you want some muffins too?"
"No, I'll go back home."
"I'm sorry Don called you and got you here. You don't have a lot of spare time since you met us, do you?"
"I'm fine. My mother wants to see me for dinner, you can imagine, that's not exactly a time I can relax."
"She should be happy."
"She would I was a medical doctor. This isn't what she had planed for her daughter. You can't please your parents all the time, can you?"
"No." Sofia got up. "Thanks Jules. I guess, I've to write you a big check."
"You're not a patient, Sofia. You've to pay me in another way. I might call you the next time I get a parking ticket and let you make it disappear."
"I'll see what I can do."
"Good. Until then, you forget that I broke your door and…I don't know, I trespassed your room, I guess."
"B&E. Break and enter. You'll need a good lawyer to get out of this without some time in jail."
"You know any good lawyer?"
"There are no good lawyer. It's like you want to order a dry water or baked ice cream. Some things just don't fit together. Good lawyer is one of these things. Or careless therapist."
"You'd be surprised how many therapists don't care about their patients."
"I'm afraid I wouldn't, most people don't care anymore. Why should a therapist be different to some cops?"
"I know a cop, who cares a lot."
"I know a therapist, who cares a lot. We should hold on to these special people we know and be thankful for their help."
"We are, aren't we?" Jules squeezed Sofia's hand before she got up and left the room.
