“No, you did not. I will scream until my abuela in Mexico can hear you if you don’t move your goddamn foot,” the terrifying woman snarls.
“It’s okay, Lana, let him in. He’s like a dog with a bone when he wants something.”
I give her a stiff smile and step through the entrance.
The apartment is small, with two bedrooms leading off from the hallway, the kitchen and living area practically one space as a two-person couch faces a TV that has been precariously mounted to the wall. There is color everywhere. The couch is a velvet, dusty pink with yellow and lime green throw cushions, artwork hanging from the wall in pops of greens, blues, and purples. It’s so Mia… her personality is scattered everywhere. The soft plushie taking residence on the sofa, the perfectly thriving plants, psychology textbooks haphazardly strewn across the coffee table. It’s solived in.Compared to my house which is styled, and homely, sure. But the plumped up couch cushions don’t have the same indent that Mia’s do. As Lana heads to turn off the stove, the scent of spices warms my lungs. She eyes me up and down before moving to what I guess is her bedroom.
“Yell if you need me.” It’s not directed at me, despite her persistent stare down.
“I will,” Mia mutters before taking a seat on the couch, drawing her legs up and tucking them beneath her.
“What do you need that was so important you had to bother me on my day off, Dr. Adams?”
Dr. Adams.God, I hate it when she calls me that. The soft lilt of her voice hums as if she whispered into my ear. The punishment I’ve inflicted on myself to encourage her to act a little less informal has my blood heating.
“First off, I want to apologize for my behavior this week. I hadn’t planned for you to be there when I followed Vincent, and I know it was wrong of me to involve you.”
“And it was wrong to stalk him…”
It was hardly stalking, but I’m not sure pointing that out is going to make my apology go down very well.
“Right, yes, of course,” I add.
“How many times have you followed him?”
“Once or twice.”
She raises her eyebrows, her lips in a flat line of disbelief as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“Okay, with Vincent, maybe three or four. I knew he was escalating, and his sessions, he was feeding me bullshit ever—”
“What do you meanwith Vincent?” she interrupts, her eyes widening.
Oh fuck.
“You’ve been following others?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.” I shake my head for all the good it does.
“Yes, you have. You could lose your license for this.”
“It’s for the greater good, I promise. I only do it when absolutely necessary.”
Not quite true, but I could probably justify all the times I’ve seen patients outside of our sessions.
“But why?”
“Why?”
She huffs, “Yes, Dr. Adams, why have you been following your patients around?”
Because I have zero control over anything except for what happens within the four walls of my office. And even then, rogue seagulls can still disrupt the progress of a patient with one crunch of its beak on my window. My patients deserve the best, and I can’t give them that if they’re lying to me. But mostly, I work with some incredibly dangerous people, who have very dangerous people in their lives. I want them to be safe, and I want the people around them to be safe. If they give me an indication that they’re going to hurt someone, don’t I have a responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen? I can help prevent crime by steering them in the appropriate direction.
I know it sounds insane. Hell, I knowIsound insane. But it works. I’ve prevented a woman from getting flashed this week,I’ve prevented another patient from stealing from their local store by setting off a fire alarm, I’ve even encouraged another patient to go to the same bar I knew another was going so that they could distract them from starting a fight with their ex-wife. They’re now dating, and the ex-wife is none the wiser.
