The Savior’s Trap

Chapter Thirty-Four – A Professional Mask

Morning light arrived like judgment—thin, colorless, too honest for the skin beneath Elena’s eyes. She chose a charcoal suit from the closet with the deliberation of a surgeon selecting a scalpel: crisp jacket, high collar, sleeves that hid the tremor in her wrists. The mirror did what it could. Concealer softened the red rims. A neutral lipstick returned some temperature to her mouth. Hair pulled back, not severe, just controlled. She pinned a stray strand behind her ear, watched it fall again, and let it. There had to be room for one imperfection. On the drive in, the city carried on with its indifferent errands: a bus wheezed; a cyclist raised a hand at a car that drifted; a woman in a red coat laughed into her phone at a joke Elena could not hear. Elena’s hands whitened on the wheel at each red light, then remembered to relax. She practiced breathing the way she taught others to practice it—in fours and twos and fours—though it felt like counting footsteps toward a cliff. Inside the clinic, the smell of coffee and disinfectant lay over everything like a clever lie. Bulletin boards still brandished their pastel flyers—MINDFULNESS TUESDAYS, COUPLES COMMUNICATION, LOSS & LUNCH—each a promise made in twelve-point font. Phones rang. Someone laughed near the copier. The familiar machinery of help. Elena walked past her office without entering. If she sat, she would stay. If she stayed, she would not ask. If she did not ask, she would drown politely where no one could see. She turned down the administrative corridor instead, heels tapping a pulse she hoped sounded competent. Dr. Harris’s door was ajar. His office was a geography of paper. Stacks of files sat in sedimentary layers across his desk, a topography of other people’s pain organized into stapled strata. The corkboard behind him was a quilt of calendars and color-coded assignments, arrows and stars and the occasional question mark jabbed in red. A mug with the department logo cooled by his elbow, ringed with a faint tide line of dark. “Come,” he said without looking up. When he did, his eyes landed on her in the way administrators look at time slots. “Chase.” “Good morning.” She stood, then sat when he glanced at the chair, folding her hands to still them. The scar from last night’s glass cut on her palm stung against her own knuckle. “I’d like to request an adjustment to my caseload.” He waited. The clock on the wall ticked like a metronome drilling into her spine. “I’m asking to step back from group work—temporarily,” she said, making the word sound like a term of art rather than a plea. “I’d like to keep my individual patients and not take new groups for the time being.” His brow climbed a notch and settled lower. “We’re in Q1 overflow. You know that.” “I do. I also know group work requires a steadiness I can’t guarantee right now. For the sake of the patients—” “For the sake of the patients,” he echoed, a taste of irony in it. He sat back, steepled his fingers, glanced at the board behind him as if the answer were pinned to it. “How many groups are you running?” “Three,” she said. “Two evenings, one afternoon.” “The recommendation is three,” he said. “You’re at recommendation.” “I’m at my limit,” she said, and heard the rawness breach the professional music of her voice. She sanded it down. “Temporarily.” He exhaled through his nose. “Everyone is at their limit, Elena. I’ve got juniors with six intakes waiting. I’ve got Maryanski covering weekends because Carroll’s kid has the flu. I’ve got evaluators on loan from across town. We’re not a boutique.” She nodded once. “I understand the strain.” “Do you?” His eyes sharpened, not unkind, just administrative. “You’ve asked me twice this winter to consider you when the head position opens. I keep that in mind. But leadership isn’t a menu. You don’t pick out the courses that won’t upset your stomach. You carry trays when the banquet’s on fire.” Heat rose into her face and settled there, steady as a fever. “I’m not refusing to carry,” she said, keeping her tone level. “I’m saying this is how I continue to carry without dropping everything. Finish the groups I have. No new ones—for now.” She swallowed. “I’ll take additional individuals to offset the hours.” He stared a beat longer than was polite, the way you watch a glass you’re not sure will hold water. “Finish the groups you have,” he said at last. “No new assignments until we review in four weeks. You’ll pick up individual sessions where possible. We’ll call it a balance adjustment.” He picked up a pen, wrote something on a sticky note that would become a memo that would become a task for someone with less power than either of them. “But hear me: candor has consequences. People remember who asks out when the boat’s rowing upstream.” “I’m not asking out,” she said. “I’m asking to row differently.” “Semantics,” he said. The pen made a small, pointed dot. “Close the door on your way out.” She stood with care, as if sudden motion would spill everything she had balanced precariously on the ridge that was this morning. At the door she paused. “Thank you,” she said, and wondered when gratitude had become a bruise. The hallway outside felt airless. The dingy runner rug caught at her heel; she righted herself on the wall with the palm that still burned. For a second the corridor blurred at the edges, and she saw herself from above: a woman in a good suit, back straight, walking away from a closed door with her mouth in a practiced line. She pressed the back of her tongue to the roof of her mouth to shore the line up. “Elena!” The call came bright, sugar in tea. Katherine White hurried up beside her, cardigan sleeves pushed to her elbows, curls pinned in cheerful disarray. Katherine always seemed as if she’d just come from a kitchen where something had risen perfectly in the oven. “God, this floor is a maze today. Everyone’s buzzing.” “Morning,” Elena said, skirting a smile into place. Katherine fell into step, coffee cup in hand, the lid decorated with little hearts drawn in sharpie—probably a patient at the front desk with a crush on the world. “Do you have a second? Because I have to tell you—” She lowered her voice like a teenager with a secret. “Yesterday I ran into one of your group patients in the lobby. Elena.” Her eyes widened with dramatic sincerity. “He could be a statue. A dangerous one.” Elena’s stomach went cold and then colder. She kept walking, kept her eyes on the rectangle of daylight at the corridor’s end. “We don’t usually discuss patients in the hall, Katherine.” “Oh—no names, promise.” Katherine laughed, unbothered. “But dear God, the height? The jawline? And those eyes. He asked for the vending machine and I forgot where the vending machine was.” She pretended to fan herself. “If I had to sit across from him twice a week while he… you know.” She waggled her eyebrows. “I’d be a disaster.” Elena’s grip tightened on the folder she still carried. The paper edges cut into her palm, a welcome, physical instruction: hold. “You wouldn’t,” she said. “You do good work.” “I do okay work,” Katherine said, bumping her shoulder companionably. “You do good work. The very good kind. The ‘unflappable in a hurricane’ kind.” She sipped. “But be honest—how do you do it? With a man like that? You must have nerves of steel.” The taste of last night returned to Elena’s mouth—the metallic shock, the heat of someone too close, the sound she hadn’t meant to make. She swallowed hard. “Boundaries,” she said, because the word had saved her before and might again. “Structure. Humor, when it fits. A door that locks.” Katherine grinned. “Humor I have. A door that locks—sometimes. Structure—” She wobbled her hand. “But boundaries? Ugh. I get soft. I’d probably tell him too much about my cat.” “Don’t tell anyone about your cat,” Elena said, and her voice almost turned it into a joke. Almost. They reached the branching point of corridors. Katherine slowed but didn’t leave. Her tone softened, the mischief draining to something like care. “Seriously, though. I know I tease. But you’ve always been… steady. If anyone can handle a patient like that and not get pulled in, it’s you.” She offered a small, sincere smile. “You’re Elena Chase.” The name landed in Elena’s chest with a strange weight. You’re Elena Chase—as if that title were armor she could simply remember how to wear. She lifted the corners of her mouth. “Thank you.” Katherine squeezed her elbow. “Okay, go be excellent. I’m off to be adequate.” She winked and peeled away down the left hall, humming something that sounded like a lullaby for a life that made sense. Alone, Elena stood in the intersection’s quiet. Somewhere a printer started and stopped. The ice machine coughed. Laughter rose and fell from the break room, uncomplicated and brief. She watched dust move in a shaft of light and thought of last night’s lamplight, the flicker, the way a shadow can step between a person and the world and make the world decide it has no business there. Her office door shut with a click that felt too loud. The air inside had the faint citrus of the cleaner the janitorial staff used; it always made her think of rind—the bitter white beneath the bright. She set the folder down and didn’t sit. Instead she walked to the window and opened it two inches, as always, for “honest air.” Cold slid in and licked at her cheeks. She let it. On her desk, today’s schedule waited in neat black type. 10:00—individual. 11:00—group prep. 12:00—lunch (ha). 1:00—individual. 2:00—group. 3:00—documentation. The word group looked belligerent, like something written in thick crayon by a child demanding attention. She took a pen and drew a box around it, as if containing a word could also contain the hour it named. She sat then, the chair taking her weight like a friend that never asks questions. Her hands sought ritual: straighten the pen cup, align the clipboard with the desk edge, turn the monitor so the reflection did not catch her face at a cruel angle. The cut on her palm twinged. She opened her top drawer and found a bandage, the small kind with rounded ends, and smoothed it over the line of red. The adhesive tugged her skin in a way that felt like permission to hold together a little longer. The knock at her door was soft, tentative. “Dr. Chase?” Administrative. Elaine from the front desk, with calendar adjustments and apologies. “Come,” Elena said. Elaine slipped in, cheeks pink from the perpetual draft by reception. “Quick—Harris sent down a note. No new groups for you this month.” She lowered her voice, conspiratorial without meaning harm. “I think you might be the first person to talk him out of something this quarter.” She held out a printed sheet. “He asked me to ‘rebalance’ your hours.” “Thank you,” Elena said, taking it. The words on the page were ordinary: names, times, asterisks. The ordinariness nearly undid her. “You’re a miracle worker.” Elaine smiled. “Use your miracle wisely.” She left in a rustle of scarf. Elena set the paper down, exhaled, then inhaled slowly as if the air had changed composition. She tried to catalog what she felt: relief, shame at the relief, irritation at the shame, gratitude edged in fear. She turned in her chair to the shelf behind her where three frames used to sit. Two had been removed after the divorce. The third—Kevin at graduation—remained. His grin was all teeth and future. She touched the edge of the frame with one finger; the glass was cool. You’re Elena Chase, Katherine had said as if the name could do the work. The roles came with scripts—therapist, candidate for promotion, exemplar of boundaries. There had been a time when the script fit her mouth. She closed her eyes and tried the lines on for size. You are steady. You are clear. You are not alone. You are not prey. The last sentence rang false in her head, a bell struck wrong. She opened her eyes fast, like waking from a fall. Across the desk, the whiteboard held yesterday’s faint ghosts of two sentences she’d erased after the group: Avoidance ≠ cowardice. Substitution ≠ punishment. In the thin morning light, the words were barely there, a palimpsest of advice. She almost laughed. If she could replace terror with work, she would have been cured years ago. Her ten o’clock appeared on time, a woman with ragged cuticles and a practiced apology for existing. Elena stood to greet her, and the muscle memory of welcome stepped into her limbs. “Good morning. Come in. Sit wherever you like.” Her voice found its old register—warm, not soft; firm, not sharp. The room responded the way rooms do when a person returns to the shape they’ve carved over years. The hour passed in the measured way healing pretends to, then sometimes succeeds in. Elena asked questions and listened. She offered a phrase that made the woman tilt her head and consider mercy for herself. The clock’s hands moved, not kindly, but with purpose. When the session ended, the woman stood with that look people get when something heavy has been shifted a quarter inch and is therefore, in a way invisible to outsiders, easier to carry. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re doing the work,” Elena said. The sentence was true and a shield. The door closed. Elena sat again. She touched the bandage on her palm, then the edge of Kevin’s frame, then the boxed word on her schedule. Outside her window, a truck beeped as it reversed, warning the air of the movement the eye could already see. She wished for such a beep inside her—an alarm that would sound when danger approached, louder than charm, louder than need, louder than the terrible silence of skin. On her desk, her phone hummed with a text from Lizzie: Coffee tonight? No pressure. My place; I’ll overfeed you. A small, ordinary rope thrown across a small, ordinary river. Elena typed, Can’t tonight. Soon? then deleted Soon? and typed it again. She hit send and set the phone face down as if that changed anything. There would be a group at two. She would go. She would take her seat. She would mark the rules and hold the frame. She would watch Chloe sit opposite Vincent, and she would watch Vincent watch her, and she would be Elena Chase in a room that needed her to be nothing else. She closed her eyes once more and let the breath come all the way in. When she let it out, it felt, briefly, like the first breath of a swimmer who had remembered the surface. The clock ticked. The heater clicked. Down the hall, someone laughed again, untroubled. Elena straightened the pens, lifted her clipboard, and stood into the day she had, not the day she wanted. The mask settled—not a lie, but a function. A necessary layer between her and the weather. A knock at the door—eleven o’clock, early. “Come,” she said, and the voice that answered sounded like hers.