“What do you mean?”
“You need to want something in order to get somewhere,” he told me, like he’d told me many times. “You know this. Just like with your career, you have to be hungry. You have to be willing to do what other people aren’t willing to do. Most people stop where the discomfort is. Pushing through the discomfort is where you’ll find the greatest success. It’s the same with where you are now in therapy. You’ve been through almost all available treatment for PTSD. You’ve broken old behavioral patterns. You’re exceptionally focused, in general. It’s a great strength of yours. What that means is that you have tools to go very far in anything you apply yourself to. It also means you can get stuck, when what you apply yourself to is not helpful, or worse, destructive. But imagine directing that superpower you’ve got, that intense focus, at something that truly matters. Imagine what you could accomplish.”
“Uh-huh. Imagine.” Right now, I couldn’t imagine having any superpower. I was so hungover, I could barely follow what he was saying.
“I’ll take your sarcasm as grudging interest until you convince me otherwise.” He poured himself a tea but didn’t drink, then stirred the tea with a spoon, around and around, going through an old ritual, from back when he used to allow himself to eat sugar. The man was a lot like me, in that way. Had a hard time sitting still. He always said he did his best thinking while doing something with his hands.
And as I watched him, I knew he was right; I was interested. I was always interested in what he had to say, even when I hated what he had to say.
When the kitten made a tiny mewling sound, I realized I’d tensed up. I was squeezing it a little and tried to relax my hands. He was still purring.
“You’ve described the boy to me, in the past,” Rory said, finally, setting down his spoon. I noticed he still didn’t drink the tea. “He’s changed over time, but not much. Can you describe him to me now?”
I sighed again, and reiterated it for what felt like the thousandth time; naming the emotions he’d helped me attach to the boy. “He’s lonely. He’s scared. He’s confused.”
“Is he curious?” He asked the question with obvious curiosity of his own. This was one of the things that I liked the most about Rory. This genuine curiosity of his. It was one of the things that made me as comfortable as I was with him, that alleviated the discomfort of talking to a mental health professional at all. He was different than the other doctors and therapists I’d talked to over the years.
“What, curious like you?” I poked.
“I’m very curious about you. As I was about all my patients. Some more than others.” He smiled a bit. “But let’s talk about the boy. Is he curious? Most children are.”
“About what?”
“What if he heard something on the other side of the wall? Not frightening. Just something in the distance. Something that piqued his curiosity.”
“I don’t know.”
“Has there ever been something like that?”
I didn’t answer that for a long moment. But the man was patient. He waited. And fucking waited.
“There was,” I said finally. “Once. It was a long time ago. What does it matter?”
Rory leaned forward, interested. “What happened to it?”
“It went away.”
“Why did it go away?”
“Because I made it go away.”
“Do you know what it was?”
“It was… a girl.” I cleared my throat. “A woman.”
“Did this woman get inside the fortress?”
“No. No, I didn’t let her in.”
“Did you want her to come inside?”
“No. Maybe. I was too scared.”
“You asked her to go away?”
“No. I hurt her. I made her go away.”
He considered that. “Did she love you?”
