And the big one—washethe reason she hadn’t returned his calls or texts?
None of it was relevant at all. Her silence was very loud. She’d made her feelings, or lack thereof, very clear by never responding to him.
He was so lost in his thoughts that when the alarm sounded on his phone, he stared at it for several seconds before remembering what he’d set it for.
“Fuck,” he cursed beneath his breath.
Today could not be over soon enough. A month ago he’d received an email from his commanding officer,Meet with a civilian therapist. Mandatory check-in.It had sat in his inbox for weeks before he’d clicked on the link to make the appointment. He’d been in therapy before, but this was different, this was a “mental health evaluation,” a box to be ticked before his discharge could proceed. He’d expected to be assigned a therapist in uniform, someone who’d speak a common language, but the name on the email was unfamiliar, Dr. Melinda Baxter, PhD, Northwestern, with a background in applied behavior analysis. He’d googled her, read three articles she’d written, and decided he’d rather stick his head in a beehive than explain his feelings to a civilian.
But orders were orders.
AJ finished wiping down the counters with methodical care, every movement calibrated to burn off adrenaline. He lined up the glass in the cabinet so it was symmetrical and in a perfectly straight line, refolded the hand towels into tri-folds before hanging them neatly on the oven door handle, and checked and double-checked that all the burners were off. It was good for himto do menial tasks while he attempted to process the one-two punch of not just seeing Poppy again but seeing her with a man and his daughter and having to speak to a stranger about his feelings and childhood, two of his least favorite topics.
After reminding himself this was just fifty-five minutes of his life, he clicked on the Zoom link, and the waiting room screen filled his monitor. For a brief moment, he fantasized about closing his laptop and making an excuse why he couldn’t do it, but then, Dr. Baxter’s image appeared. She had a striking appearance, was in her mid-thirties, had olive skin, and jet black hair in a sharp bob. Bright green eyes framed by black rectangular glasses perched on a nose that looked recently sunburned. The wall behind her was an artfully curated grid of diplomas and abstract prints, and her posture suggested a person who had never once reclined in a chair. She glanced at his name in the lower corner of the screen, then made direct eye contact.
“AJ, hi.”
“Hello.”
“I’m Dr. Baxter, you can call me Melinda.”
Okay, so she was afirst-nametherapist.
Her head tilted slightly to the side. “How do you feel about that?”
“About what?” he questioned.
“About calling me by my first name. I saw you had a reaction to that.”
“You did?”
“When I said you can call me Melinda, your eyes squinted slightly, like your brain was taking a photograph to use as evidence against me.”
He never realized he did that, but now that she pointed it out, he had the sense memory of that exact twitch. When he heard her first name, his eyeshadreacted.
“Would you like to share why you had a reaction to me telling you that you can call me by my first name?”
He was impressed that she’d picked up on that. Not one of the other eleven therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists he’d seen in the twenty-four years he’d gone to counseling had done that.
“Mental health professionals have patients refer to them by their first name as a tactic to reduce hierarchical barriers, foster trust, and create a more comfortable, collaborative space. It can lead to better communication and vulnerability. Also, studies have shown using a first name releases dopamine and serotonin, which signals safety, creating an optimal therapeutic environment,” he explained the category that put her in when she suggested using her first name.
Instead of addressing his statement, she was quiet for a few moments, thoughtfully so, before asking, “When did your brain start making you feel exhausted?”
Now it was AJ’s turn to be quiet for a moment. No one had ever asked him that question, not directly. She hadn’t even asked himifhis brain made him exhausted, she knew it did.
She was the first therapist who hadn’t begun with,Tell me about your childhood. Every therapy session he’d ever had, the first session was spent talking about his dad dying, his mom working for the Sterlings, her issues with alcohol and depression, him being a twin, and them living in a one-bedroom cottage growing up on the property with two other children who were very wealthy. Melinda skipped the small talk and backstory he hated. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“I was six.”
“Was there a specific moment or event that triggered it?”
“It was a Tuesday, and I realized I remembered everything.”
AJ knew that sounded vague. He’d never tried to vocalize the experience before, so he paused to gather his thoughts. Hewondered if she would move on to another question, but she didn’t. She waited.
He still wasn’t sure he could put it into words, but he tried. “I became aware that there is a constant hum of activity in my head. I index every interaction, every conversation, every date, every number, and every detail. Not just the big memories, but the way the air tasted on a Friday in December when I was three. The number of steps from the Sterlings’ garage to the cottage. The color of socks every person in my class wore every day of the entire school year. I catalog them automatically. It is like a video camera records everything in my head. I can’t stop it.
“It is so much useless information filling up my brain, perfectly preserved, and at any moment something will trigger me and one specific memory will get stuck, like a broken record, and replay over and over on a loop. But I thought everyone’s brain was like that. And on that Tuesday, Niko asked what we had to do for our math homework, and I didn’t understand why he was asking me when he just had to think about it. My mom explained to me that he couldn’t remember things like I could. And Frankie couldn’t, she couldn’t, the kids at school couldn’t. I got upset and locked myself in the bathroom for hours. I turned off all the lights, closed my eyes, and put pillows over my ears because I just didn’t want to have any sort of senses picking up any information. It was too much.”
