Kirill said no. Then he said no again. Then he spent an hour explaining all the ways a video connection could be compromised, traced, exploited by enemies who were actively hunting for me.
Then Rodion overruled him.
"This isn't negotiable," he said flatly. "She needs this. We'll take every precaution, but we're doing it."
Kirill's pale eyes moved from his brother to me and back again. Whatever he saw made his jaw tighten, but he didn't argue further.
"Fine," he said. "But I'm supervising the technical setup personally. And if there's even a hint of compromise, we shut it down immediately."
"Agreed."
It took two days to set everything up. Yegor handled most of the technical work—VPNs, encrypted servers, a laptop that couldn't be traced to any of Rodion's known assets. Kirill reviewed every step, adding layers of security that I didn't fully understand but trusted were necessary.
By Wednesday, I was ready.
My first patient was Julia, a woman in her forties who'd been struggling with anxiety and depression since her divorce three years ago. She'd been one of my most consistent clients, and one of the ones I'd worried about most when I disappeared.
Seeing her face on the screen—older than I remembered, more tired—made something crack open in my chest.
"Dr. Walsh." Her voice was thick with relief. "I didn't think I'd hear from you again. Margaret said there was a family emergency, and I thought—"
"I'm here," I said. "I'm sorry I couldn't reach out sooner. Things have been... complicated."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm okay. I promise." The lie came easier than it should have. "Tell me how you've been."
She talked for an hour. I listened, asked questions, guided her through the techniques we'd developed together over years of work. By the end of the session, some of the tension had left her face, and I felt like myself for the first time in weeks.
This was what I was meant to do. Who I was meant to be.
After Julia, I saw Benjamin—a young man battling addiction who'd been clean for eight months when I left. He was still clean, he told me, but it had been hard. The uncertainty of not knowing what happened to me had triggered cravings he'd had to fight through alone.
The guilt of that nearly crushed me.
"I should have found a way to contact you sooner," I said. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault." He shrugged, but I could see the hurt beneath the casual gesture. "You had your own stuff going on. I get it."
"That doesn't make it okay."
"Maybe not. But I'm still here. Still sober." He smiled, a fragile thing. "That's what matters, right?"
"That's what matters," I agreed. But I made a mental note to check in with him more frequently. He was more fragile than he wanted to admit.
By the time I finished my third session—a woman named Patricia who was navigating a difficult relationship with her adult daughter—I was exhausted. The kind of bone-deep tiredness that went beyond physical fatigue.
I closed the laptop and leaned back in the chair, rubbing my temples. The headache that had been building all day was now a steady throb behind my eyes.
"How did it go?"
I looked up. Rodion was standing in the doorway, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"Good. Hard." I stood, stretching muscles that had gone stiff from sitting. "I forgot how much energy this takes. Holding space for other people's pain."
"Is that what you call it? Holding space?"
"It's a therapy term. It means being present with someone's emotions without trying to fix them or make them goaway. Just... being there." I moved toward him, drawn by some gravity I didn't fully understand. "It's harder than it sounds."
