Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(3)
Ten years. She was definitely older than she looked. “What if you decide you don’t want to hire me?”
“Then you may return to the hospital, or not, as you like. But if I weren’t confident of your character, I would not have gone to the trouble to reach you.”
“How much trouble is it, exactly, to call the—”
Wait a second. No one had introduced her. And shouldn’t she have been wearing a name tag or something?
Carefully I pushed myself to a stand. Caryl remained seated, making no move to stop me. I forced the remaining air out of my AK suspension, then slowly walked to the door.
I called down the hallway toward the nurses’ station, and then glanced back over my shoulder into the room, half expecting to find myself staring down the barrel of a gun. But not even my hyperbolic filmmaker’s imagination could prepare me for what I saw.
Nothing. The woman I had been talking to was gone.
2
Dr. Amanda Davis must have been intelligent to get three degrees, but sometimes in our sessions I felt as though I were talking to a brick wall. Her lack of humor made our conversations halting and awkward; between that and her dogged, persistent faith in me, I’d jumped to the conclusion early on that she didn’t understand me and couldn’t help me. Jumping to conclusions is another thing Borderlines are great at.
At this point I was not very far along in my dialectical behavior therapy, and unmanaged Borderlines have a partially deserved reputation for manipulating others. I knew how to make Dr. Davis feel she was doing well, and I had learned which of my tangents fascinated her enough to keep her off the topics I didn’t want to discuss. On that particular Monday, however, I wished I’d used all that energy to find out if I could really trust her.
“This seems a little sudden,” Dr. Davis said, her chin-length hair slipping forward as she leaned on her knees. She made me think of Snow White at fifty: lips’ faded bloom painted over, alabaster skin mottled by decades of sun damage.
“I’m not sure what you want from me,” I said. “A couple of weeks ago you were on me for staying here so long, and now you’re on me for leaving.”
“I’m just trying to understand what precipitated this,” she said. “Obviously you can leave whenever you want, but given how long you’ve been under hospital care, it might be helpful for you to go to a transitional facility first, at least until you’re more comfortable living on your own.”
I considered bringing up the Arcadia Project and the disappearing lady, but then I quickly thought better of it. I knew Caryl hadn’t been a hallucination, but Dr. Davis hadn’t seen her, and I didn’t have a great theory to counter “Millie’s last marble finally rolled under the fridge somewhere.” Assuming Caryl was real, the woman obviously wanted to stay off the staff’s radar, and I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to burn my bridges with a potential employer, given how fast my inheritance was dwindling.
“I found someone willing to put me up for a while,” I said.
Dr. Davis failed to conceal her surprise. “Someone from school?”
I tensed at the mention of school, but it wasn’t a bad guess, since she knew I had no living family aside from some creepy rural grandparents I’d met once when I was eight.
“It’s no one you know,” I said.
“I’m sure it isn’t, but you understand I’m curious about your future and concerned that you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Have I ever really been all that forthcoming with you?”
“That’s part of why I’m confused. You’ve been here for six months and shown no sign of wanting to rehabilitate yourself for life outside the Center, you’ve refused medication, your DBT skill practice has been spotty at best, you’ve refused to talk about your father’s suicide or the events that -precipitated your own attempt, and we’ve all tried to strike a balance between patience and persistence—now suddenly you tell me that you’re leaving tomorrow. I do care about you, Millie, as hard as you may find that to believe, and I would like some reassurance that you’re ready for this step.”
“What kind of reassurance do you need?”
“You could start by telling me about your plans. Are you going to go back to school?”
I set my teeth against a familiar sharp throb of pain, like an old war wound. “Of course not.”
“Why ‘of course’ not?”
“You’re not a film person, so you don’t get it. Getting into UCLA was a huge deal.”
“But you did get in.”
I felt my blood pressure rising. I hated optimism; it served only to remind me how inconceivable the depth of my failure was to normal people.
“Yes, I got in, and then I blew it. Even if they would take me back—which they would not—he’s still there.”
“Who is?” She frowned. “Are we talking about the nameless professor?”
“He has a name. Just because I won’t tell it to you, that doesn’t mean I’m making him up.”
“Millie, if he’s real, and he assaulted you, someone needs to—”
“Stop.” I held up a warning hand; I could feel something ugly threatening to open up just under my solar plexus, like a door to a spider-infested crypt. “I am not talking about this.”