“No Alfie. I need some time. I need to rethink this.”
“Wait.” I grab her wrist. “I’m sorry about the photo. I didn’t know they were going to do that.”
She shakes her head. “You’re the smartest man I’ve ever met, Alfie. And you’re a fucking idiot.”
???
Mia didn’t come back to work that day. She sent a text on Friday saying that she was sick and she wasn’t coming in that day. By ten a.m. on Monday morning, she hadn’t shown up for work and hadn’t responded to any of my messages.
At lunchtime I drove to her apartment, but there was no answer. I’d messaged Lottie to see if she could get hold of her, but she didn’t respond to her either. I was running out of ideas on how to contact her.
Has something happened to her? Is she hurt? Is she in the hospital?
My muscles grow heavy, pinning me to the seat of my car. My knuckles white on the steering wheel, like letting go will set off a chain reaction I can’t go back from. I’m so selfish. I knew something was wrong, and I should have tried to call her over the weekend. Fuck, I can’t believe how badly I’ve messed this up.
I try calling her cellphone again, and this time it goes straight to voicemail.
I finally find the will to move from my car. This time, my panic manifests itself into speed. I jog from my car to the office, opening the door roughly, the loud whack of the wooden door slamming against the wall pushes my blood pressure further north. Checking the calendar, I see that I have a free hour until my next patient arrives. I pull up Mia’s employee record andtake a deep breath. I tap the numbers on my phone and wait for the ringing to stop.
“Hello, Sinclair residence.”
“Hi there, this is Dr. Alfie Adams. Please may I speak with Angela Sinclair?”
“Speaking, what can I do for you, Dr. Adams?”
Oh good, she knows who I am and doesn’t seem worried that I’m calling. Maybe she has heard from Mia.
“Mia hasn’t come to work today, and I was hoping you could tell me if you’ve heard from her at all?”
“I spoke with her this morning,” she says briskly.
“Great, great. Is she…okay?”
“I’m not really sure I can answer that question, Dr. Adams. But I’ll let her know you called.”
“Tha—” I go to say, but she’s already hung up.
Okay, so she’s alive. That’s a relief. But where she is, is another question.
A raw pain burns in my chest, like someone's been scratching so much at my skin it’s started to bleed. They won’t stop picking at the raw wound, and the longer it goes on, the more painful it is.
I need to fix this. That’s what I do, right? I help people talk through their feelings, and we work out solutions to improve things. But how can I do that with Mia if she won’t answer my calls, if she won’t even text me back?
???
It’s Friday and still no Mia. In six working days, my business has fallen apart. It only took three days for things to really start fucking up, and now I’ve almost accepted that this is my life now.Just an unorganized, chaotic mess. Emails weren’t answered; phone calls were ignored. I hadn’t taken any payments or done anything admin-related since she left. Dead flowers sat in the vase, and the water jug has been sitting there for three days, unwashed. It is actually embarrassing how incapable I am at taking care of this shit.
But do you know what? I’m fucking furious that Mia still hasn’t answered a single call from me. I’ve tried every morning and sent her texts, but nothing. No notice at all. We were supposed to be a team. I always felt like we were, at least until last week. Even when she caught me following patients, she made me feel like she was on my side.
Austin and I always have a session on Friday mornings. It’s usually my last session of the week, and on Friday afternoons I catch up on paperwork. I call at our scheduled time, taking a deep breath to compose myself. After this, I’ll go through the emails from our admin inbox and tackle some of the work that Mia usually completes.
After that, I’ll go to her apartment one more time to see if she’s there. By the looks of things, she hasn’t been there all week, but really who knows, she may have just hunkered down for the week. The guilt gnawed at my chest like a beaver chomping down a tree. One more bite and everything I know is going to topple over.
“Hey, man,” Austin says. “How are you?”
“Hello, Austin, I’m well, how are you?” My professional voice is on. Mostly the talks with Austin are easy, they’re just catch-ups. He has done a lot of work in the last three years, and he’s very settled in Texas with his fiancée, Olivia.
“Better than you, I’d bet. Olivia told me about the TV show. I hope you apologized for that one.”
