Chapter 93 Dr. Amara

Chapter 93 Dr. Amara
She arrived on a Friday morning with a black medical bag and the specific energy of a woman who had been doing her job for a long time and had stopped being impressed by anything that wasn't an actual medical emergency.

Dr. Amara was forty something, sharp eyed, with natural hair pulled back and reading glasses she kept taking off and putting back on as she moved through the examination with the brisk efficiency of someone who had four other places to be and intended to be thorough anyway.

Elena had set up the small sitting room off the main corridor for the examination and had arranged everything Amara had requested with the quiet competence of a woman who had been managing this household's medical needs for years and took it seriously.

I sat on the examination table and answered questions and let Amara do what she needed to do and tried not to say I'm fine too many times.

I failed at that.

"You've said that four times," Amara said, not looking up from what she was writing. "In my experience people who are actually fine say it once. People who say it four times are usually trying to convince themselves."

"I have been through a difficult few months," I said.

"That is one way to describe it," she said.

She moved through everything methodically, blood pressure, heart rate, basic bloodwork she would send to a lab, questions about sleep and appetite and stress levels that she asked in the same tone she used for everything else, which was the tone of someone who had decided that making things seem less serious than they were didn't help anyone.

I answered everything honestly because something about Amara made dishonesty feel genuinely pointless.

She sat back after twenty minutes and looked at me over her glasses with the expression of a woman compiling a verdict.

"Physically you are in reasonable shape considering," she said. "Your blood pressure is slightly elevated which is not surprising. Your sleep is disrupted which is also not surprising. You are not eating enough which you are going to address starting today." She reached into her bag and produced a card and held it out to me. "Her name is Dr. Reyes. She is a therapist. She is excellent and she does not let people say they are fine four times without addressing it."

I looked at the card.

"I don't know if I need a therapist," I said.

"You witnessed a killing," Amara said, in the same tone she had used for everything else. "You were held against your will, however the circumstances evolved afterward. You were taken from this property by force on one occasion. You have been living under active threat for months and you have been processing all of it while simultaneously managing a significant emotional relationship in extremely high pressure circumstances." She tilted her head slightly. "You need a therapist."

I took the card.

"Good," she said, and put her glasses back on and began writing up her notes with the focused attention of a woman who considered the case closed.

I looked at the card in my hand and thought about Dr. Reyes and what it would mean to sit across from someone whose specific job was to ask the questions I had been telling myself I didn't need answering and felt something that was not resistance exactly, more like the specific feeling of standing at the edge of something and understanding that stepping into it was the right thing even if it was uncomfortable.

I put the card in my pocket.

Amara packed her bag with the systematic efficiency of someone who packed it the same way every time and stood up and looked around the room once with the professional habit of checking she had left nothing behind.

"He walked past that door twice while we were in here," she said conversationally, nodding toward the corridor. "He will walk past it at least once more before I reach the front door."

I looked at her. "Dante?"

"He does it every visit," she said, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. "Never knocks. Never interrupts. Just walks past slowly enough to register that everything sounds normal and then continues about his business." She looked at me over her glasses with an expression that was professional and also slightly warm underneath the professional. "He doesn't say he worries. He just cannot stop."

Something moved in my chest.

"I know," I said. "I worry about him too."

"Tell him that," she said.

"Every day," I said.

She looked at me for a moment with that direct gaze that saw things properly, the same quality Isadora had, the quality of women who had decided a long time ago that seeing things clearly was more useful than seeing them comfortably.

"Good," she said simply, and walked to the door and opened it.

Dante was in the corridor.

Not walking past. Just standing there with a file in his hand that he was definitely not reading and his eyes moving to Amara immediately with a question he was not going to ask out loud.

"She is fine," Amara said. "Actually fine this time, not four times fine." She looked at him over her glasses. "She has a card. Make sure she uses it." She walked past him toward the front door without breaking stride. "I will see myself out."

Dante watched her go and then looked at me in the doorway of the sitting room.

I held up the card.

He looked at it and then at my face and something in his expression settled in the specific way it settled when something he had been quietly concerned about had been addressed.

"She said you walked past three times," I said.

"I was passing through," he said.

"The corridor outside this room does not lead anywhere," I said.

He was quiet for a moment. "Four times," he said finally. "She undercounted."

I looked at him and felt the warmth of that move through me completely and walked the three steps between us and put my arms around him and he put his around me and we stood in the corridor in the Friday morning quiet and said nothing else at all.