"Because it's not relevant to your treatment."
"Bullshit."
The word was sharp, unexpected. I blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Bullshit." He leaned forward, and the distance between us shrank. "You're not a robot. You're not a function. You're a person, with a history and a life and reasons you chose this work. Pretending otherwise is... It's the same thing I do. The performance. The mask."
"That's different."
"How?"
I didn't have a good answer. He was right—the professional distance was its own kind of performance, its own kind of armor. I'd built it over years, perfected it, made it so natural I sometimes forgot it wasn't the real me.
But acknowledging that to a patient was dangerous. Especially this patient.
"The difference," I said carefully, "is that you're here to get help. I'm here to provide it. Those roles require a certain... asymmetry. If I tell you my life story, it shifts the dynamic. It becomes about me instead of you. And that doesn't serve your treatment."
"What if I don't care about the treatment?"
"Then why are you here?"
He was quiet for a long moment. The afternoon light was shifting, golden now, casting shadows across his face that made him look older. More tired.
"I don't know," he admitted. "Last week, I told myself it was about the insomnia. This week..." He shook his head. "I've been thinking about you. About this. I've been counting the days until Thursday, which is insane, because I've known you for two hours total and I don't even know your first name."
My heart was beating faster. I could feel it in my throat, my wrists, the places where the body betrayed the mind.
"That's called transference," I said. "It's normal. Common, even. Patients often develop feelings for their therapists. It's a product of the intimacy of the work, not—"
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't reduce this to a clinical term." His voice was low, intense. "I know what transference is. This isn't that."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been in therapy before. Briefly, years ago. I didn't spend those weeks thinking about my therapist. I didn't walk past his building, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. I didn't—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "I didn't feel like this."
The admission hung in the air between us. I should have shut it down immediately. Should have cited professional ethics, referred him to a colleague, done any of the things I'd been trained to do when a patient crossed lines.
Instead, I heard myself ask: "Like what?"
His eyes met mine, and the air in the room felt suddenly thicker.
"Like I want to know everything about you," he said. "Like I want to sit in this chair every day, not once a week. Like whatever's happening in this room is the most honest I've been in years, and I don't want it to stop."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Every professional instinct I had was screaming at me to end this, and I couldn't move.
"Mr. Zelenov—"
"Rodion."
"That's not appropriate."
"Neither is this conversation, but we're having it anyway."
