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He crouched beside me with his elbows on his knees, his wrists dangling. “I see your therapy is coming along.”

“I’ve been proactive about my well-being.” I don’t know how I put the sentence together, but it slid out, and he smiled. “Are you back?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Be back.”

“I’m not coming back unless you play ball.”

I got up on an elbow, and the world swam until Elliot looked as if he was doing a sidestroke when he righted me.

“I’ll play.”

“You’re going to need to rest.”

“I remember it,” I said. “What happened at the stables. I remember the whole thing.”

“And? It makes you feel good or bad?”

Therapist to the core. Facts were fine, but feelings ruled.

“Good,” I said. “Great even.”

“Focus on that for now.”

My brain was cloudy, but I was awake enough to be suspicious of what I had been asked to focus on.

ELLIOT

“T
his is a mistake,” Deena said.

She sat at the round lunch table, a ball of white waxed paper and a half-eaten prosciutto and buratta sandwich in front of her. She’d picked off the arugula.

“You’re not getting a response. I don’t see the benefit of keeping you on it.” I leaned my back on the counter and crossed my arms. The grey room, with its workers’ comp poster and featureless cabinets, had been the scene of many a discussion about patients when I worked at Westonwood, and I fell right back into it.

“A real response takes time, not parlor tricks.”

She was referring to hypnosis, which wasn’t a trick. I didn’t need to defend myself against her for another minute, but I had to get through her first. It begged the question of why I was doing it in the first place.

“How long do you think she’s going to be here?” I said. “This isn’t a long-term facility.”

“What do you want out of this, Elliot? Don’t you have souls to save?”

Frances burst in carrying a stack of folders. She attacked the refrigerator and grabbed a wrapped burrito from the freezer. “Dr. Chapman, thanks for coming.”

“Frances,” Deena said, wrapping up the remainder of her sandwich with a loud crackle. “Do you know—”

“I know everything. It’s my job.” She threw the burrito in the microwave and slammed the door. “What’s not my job is getting attacked. So, first. The family wants her out. Why? I don’t know. But the pressure’s making it hard to run this hospital.”

I didn’t know why either. Frances set the timer with three loud beeps, and the machine hissed and creaked.

“They want her out to care for her,” Deena said.

“Oh, please,” I mumbled.

“First they want her in, then they want her out. I’ve got whiplash already.” Frances was in rare form. The pressure was really getting to her. “I’d lock my kids in a box before I let them face that media circus.”

“They’re oddly unprotective,” I said.

“She needs us to protect her,” Deena said.

“Not our job,” Frances cut in. “My first responsibility is to this facility. If you ask me, they don’t want two kids in here at the same time. It looks bad. So that leads us to the second thing. The judge is irrelevant after thirty days. So as much as he wants her here in spite of everything—because he’s in the media circus too, and he wants her off his docket—he’s got less say once she can put sentences together and not choke random people. Like her therapist.”

“Or her brother,” I said.

The microwave beeped. Frances opened the door.

“She has a problem with men,” Deena exclaimed as if she’d hit gold. “Having him here could unleash a torrent of old feelings.”

“The only misandrist in the room is you, Deena,” I said.

She stood like a shot, knocking over the chrome-and-plastic chair. “That is—”

“True,” I said. “It’s—”

Frances slammed the microwave door. “Enough. Just, enough. I have a budget to put together, and I have a major donor’s kid in solitary, and I just got attacked by a hundred-ten-pound heiress, and I’m hungry. Dr. Chapman, do you have room in your schedule to finish this? I know you left, but I’m on my knees.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Don’t split hairs.”

“I want her off the Paxil.”

“Frances,” Deena said, “please, I can do this.”

“Deal,” she said to me before turning to Deena. “No, you can’t. I’m sorry, but I need this to run smoothly.”

“I’ll do it,” I said without thinking. At the very least, Jana would be happy about my impulsive decision.

“Thank you.”

“Can I do the brother then?” Deena asked.

Frances and I spoke together. “No!”

FIONA

J
onathan was in the rec room playing ping pong with a wall. Between the reddish hair, his height, and his fluid motion, he was hard for me to miss. The ball hit his paddle with a
thup
, then the wall and the table with a
crackcrack
.

He was a grown man. He’d been the baby, the little boy king for as long as I’d known him. But seeing him there, knocking that ball back and forth, with his arms and shoulders broad and built, I realized how much time had gone by. I felt old.

“Hey,” I said, sitting on the windowsill next to the table.

The table was bent in the middle like an L, and he was beating the ball against the other side. He moved fast and never even seemed close to missing.

“Hi,” he said, eyes on the ball.

“How are you feeling?”

He didn’t answer.
thup crackcrack

“You look good,” I said.

“You want something?”

thup crackcrack

“We’re imprisoned together. I thought I’d say hello.”

“Hello.”

He looked like a man, but he was a boy.

thup crackcrack

“Who’s your therapist?”

thup crackcrack

“Guy named Rogers.”

thup crackcrack thup

“Don’t tell him anything.”

crackcrack
He caught the ball midair. “What?”

“They’re out to use us,” I said.

“You’re nuts, Fee.” He knocked the ball against the table and started again. “Nuts, but I never had you for paranoid.”

thup crackcrack

“And what happened with you?” I asked. “I mean, Jesus, Jonathan. Were you really trying to end it?”

thup crackcrack

“You muscling in on my therapist’s territory?”

“I just don’t understand.”

thup crackcrack

“You’re really bad at this,” he said.

“I’m your sister. I want to know.”

“It’s none of your business.”

thup crackcrack

“Was it Dad? Was it that he was with Rachel when she—”

He smacked the ball onto the horizontal surface, sending it flying to the ceiling. “Shut up!”

“Take it easy, Jon.”

“Take it easy? Sure, I’ll take advice from you. You’re a fucking out-of-control druggie party girl doing God knows what. I don’t even want to say more because you’re my sister, but I read the papers, okay? You disappear for months, show up at Easter, and no one’s seen you since. Even the fucking paparazzi can’t find you. Then you’re arrested, and shit explodes. Now you want to tell me to keep it under control? I don’t even want to be seen with you.”

“I know what I am, Jon. I know damn well what I am, and I know better than you who to be seen with when, which was why you didn’t hear from me for months. Okay? And fuck you too.”

“I asked them to keep you away from me,” he said, pointing the ping-pong paddle at me. “You get on my last fucking nerve.”

He was a boy in a man’s body. I knew about plenty of his exploits. He was at least as out of control as I was. I tried to keep myself from reacting strongly, because I knew someone, somewhere was watching closely. I didn’t have to break my gaze with my brother to know it. I took a deep breath. He was family, which made us especially prone to poking at our raw places.

“I just got out of solitary,” I said, dropping my voice. “I was in for two days, and it felt like a week. Keep your shit together. In here, losing control has a price. They’re paid good money, and they’ll do what they want. They will drug you and lock you down. They will restrain you for as long as they want.”

It paid to be an older sister, because in his face, I saw that something had gotten through. His arms were still taut and his chin still jutted out, but on some level, he’d accepted the gift I gave him.

“Promise me,” I said, holding out my arms. “Promise you’ll try to keep it together.”

He put his paddle down and accepted my embrace. “I can’t believe she’s dead. It’s my fault. What this family did to her was so wrong. I couldn’t live with it. They euthanize animals, and that’s what I am.”

“Were you driving?”

“I was so drunk, I don’t remember.”

Then, as if blindsided with a pie to the face in front of a large studio audience, I laughed.

He pulled away. “What? I…”

I just kept laughing. I pointed at myself, then at him. “It’s genetic,” I squeaked then held out my hands. “Drazen Dementia.”

It wasn’t funny. Not really. It was very sad, but he got it. Though he didn’t laugh as hard as I did, he chuckled and picked up his little white ball.

thup crackcrack

FIONA

I
 couldn’t believe I was sitting in front of Elliot again. After talking to Jonathan, I’d showered and eaten before my afternoon session, trying not to think my most sexual Elliot thoughts. He’d see them, or I’d slip, and I didn’t want him to know.

Some of his things had been removed from the office, but the fixtures and furniture were the same. The lighting was still warm, and he looked exactly the same.

“You need a haircut,” I said.

“I’ll get right on that.”

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“Well, I’m not fully back. I’m back for you, but I still have duties at my other job,” he said.

“I feel special.”

“You are special, but it’s simply a matter of redressing a wrong. I shouldn’t have left things unfinished with you. I should have known better.”

“So why did you do it?”

He shifted his pen on his desk three quarters of an inch. “I had pressure in my personal life.”

Two words in, I knew he’d prepared his answer very carefully.

“Really? Someone didn’t like you working with the rich kids?”

“My girlfriend wants me here.”

I tightened when he said he had a girlfriend. Men who dug ditches didn’t work harder than I worked to hide the shot of adrenaline that went through my system.

“Okay?” I said. “So you should be here then.”

“It would be inappropriate for me to get deeply into it, but I can’t do things to please other people. Things came to a head at home just as my recommendation for you was due. The other job came up, I felt I was needed there, and I finished here. But I wasn’t. I’m not finished with you at all.”

He couldn’t have meant it the way it sounded, with his eyes on me as they were. He couldn’t have intended to send a stinging rush of fluid between my legs or to set my nipples on end. My throat closed. I had no words, and I always had words. No man in the history of my cunt had ever rendered me speechless.

“I’m told you’re not sleeping,” he said.

“It’s not out of spite.”

“Does this happen often? Insomnia?”

I shrugged, looking out the window. The sight of him distracted me. “Sometimes, when Deacon was away. Other times, when there was a lot going on. I get stressed, you know.”

“You’re on Ambien.”

“It’s not working. Halcion works.”

“It’s very habit forming,” he said.

“So is talking to you.” Talk about habits! Coming on to an attractive man just because I could, even with my little Velcro-closure shoes and V-neck scrubs with no tie at the waistband. I laughed softly in a little huff of breath. I was a mystery even to myself. I needed sleep, and I needed sex. “Deena said Deacon wanted to see me.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Are you letting him come?” I asked.

“I’ll meet with him first. Then if I feel that you aren’t a danger to each other, and you still want to see him, you can see him.”

“I want to see him.”

“What do you think he’ll say?”

He wanted to know how I felt about Deacon and where we were in our relationship. What he didn’t know was that I was so happy about the visit that I didn’t care what Deacon would say. I wanted to suck Elliot’s cock for just allowing it.

“I think he’ll say lots of things.”

“Such as?”

I leaned forward, putting my elbows on the desk and the heels of my hands on my cheeks. “He’ll tell me I look nice.”

“What if he tells you what happened at the stables?”

“I know what happened. I was there scraping Snowcone’s hoof. It was late. When he came in, the horse shifted. I had been afraid Snowcone was going to kick me, and I had an adrenaline rush. When I saw a man standing behind me, I went after him with the knife. I guess I freaked out. I mean, stabbing your Dom is not a small deal.”

“And you came up with this when?”

“In solitary. I kind of tranced out and remembered.”

“You used self hypnosis. That’s good, mostly.”

I didn’t care about the conversation. My body felt aligned with his, poles of energy wanting to attract into a wider, stronger bolt of life. Maybe he felt it and maybe he denied it, but it was there. Sex was my superpower, and I knew when a man wanted me.

“Why mostly?” I ran my fingertip over his desk, considering the ridge between the blotter and the wood with a lazy intensity.

“Mostly, because your memory makes no sense. It has to jibe. I’ve been startled before, but that goes away in an instant.”

“You think I made it up?”

“False memories under hypnosis are pretty common, and they’re always in the subject’s favor.”

Wait, he was implying that the stabbing was premeditated? Was that it? Or was it that I was lying to myself? That the relief I felt was false and based on nothing? Bullshit. I knew that memory was right.
Knew.
The fucker… Was he trying to keep me here, or was he just trying to get some kind of upper hand?

I kept calm and sighed. I pushed a pen a couple of inches before popping it in his cup. He was right across the desk, and I wanted him to take me like his little vanilla whore.