“That you equate problem-solving with childhood.”
I rolled my eyes. “See, that’s what I mean. I say one normal thing, and you over analyze it.”
“Is it normal?”
“Is what normal?”
“For frustration to make you dismiss the entire exercise before you understand it?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it, because I heard the trap. He did that sometimes, made me catch myself just in time.
He stood. “Come with me.”
I frowned. “Where?”
“To the exercise.”
Two big ass attendants waited outside the door quietly, Ebony and Ivory, I called them. Usually, seeing guards that close made me tense. Today, neither of them reached for me. They just stepped aside. I wasn’t restrained. The doctor walked beside me, not behind me. Not in front like I was being marched somewhere. Beside me. That mattered to me, too. I kept my face neutral, but pride moved through me anyway. They trusted me, or they were starting to.
The hallway went farther than I expected. We passed the regular therapy rooms, the medication station, two security doors, and an elevator that required the doctor’s handprint. The building was bigger than it looked from the patient wing.
“What kind of exercise needs all this?” I asked.
“One designed for clients like you.”
I laughed. “Should I be flattered or worried?”
“That depends on how you perform.”
Something about the answer made me glance at him, but his face was turned toward the hallway ahead. The final door was a double one—black and wide enough for a small truck to drive through. One of the attendants entered a code. The doctor stepped forward and placed his palm on the pad. A lock released with a heavy sound that I swear I almost felt. The door opened.
I stopped.
“What the hell is this?”
The room on the other side was enormous. Not just large.Enormous. The ceiling rose two stories high, maybe more, and square tiles covered it from wall to wall. Some showed blue sky, bright and cheerful looking. Some showed clouds, soft white drifting across gray. A few were darker, full of imaginary rain.
The floor was smooth gray concrete marked with thin black lines. Metal panels stood throughout the space at different heights and angles, forming corridors that twisted out of sight. Some were low enough to see over. Others reached high above my head. I heard the soft hum of machinery behind the walls.
A maze.
These people had built a whole damn maze.
I looked at the doctor. “You serious?”
“Very.”
“This is what my insurance paying for?”
He chuckled. “You not paying for any of this.”
That answer felt kinda strange, but I was too busy staring at the room.
The doctor walked to the edge of the entrance. “The goal is simple. Find your way out.”
“Out where?”
He pointed toward the far side of the room.
