Chapter 28

Trinity

When I entered the room, the man from the bar was seated in the room. My face heated as I eyed the breadth of his shoulders and thought about the dream.

He was definitely bigger than me. I could bet that he was about as large as the man in my dream. Maybe the dream had been so vague because I hadn’t slept with anyone so large before. I pulled away from that thought and kept my gaze from dropping to his lap.

He was wearing a different suit, and I was definitely sure that there was something different about his eyes now that we were in the light. They were strangely warm hazel with flecks of red gold or something. They were beautiful but strange and otherworldly.

“This… isn’t what I really meant by calling me if you were in the city,” I said. “How did you find me?”

He titled his head. “I wanted to see a psychiatrist. They said you were available, so here I am.”

“I’m not… a psychiatrist.”

He shrugged. “Every master started as a student, and the clerks in front did not seem to care.”

I sat down, looking at him before reviewing his chart. I couldn’t imagine what a wealthy-looking man could have to talk to a psychiatrist, even one still in school, about, but part of the draw of being in this profession was trying to help all types of people with their problems.

Sure, I was nowhere near qualified. This was probably some form of illegal or bordering on malpractice. The hospital and the school could get sued, but maybe the person that was supposed to be overseeing me was just running late.

I straightened up in my chair and tried to smile at him. “So, tell me, what brought you in today?”

“I believe you’ll find those answers in the paperwork I filled out.”

My lips twitched as I glanced through the pages. It was a fair statement, but I guess he’s never really been with a therapist.

I picked something off the page. “Are you still having hallucinations?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of hallucinations?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why does that matter?”

“It might… give a better sense of what’s causing them. If they’re more general—”

“A person,” he said shortly.

I took note but decided not to push for more information about what the hallucinations were like since he seemed so tense.

“We can… talk more about them later. What about intrusive thoughts?”

“Frequently,” his lips twitched. “Violent. All-consuming and quite distracting.”

I swallowed at the glint of his teeth as he smiled. Was he dangerous? I got that sense back at the bar, but it was different being alone with him somehow.

I nodded, looking through the documents and trying to gather my thoughts and take notes. I tried to think about what Sindia would do in this situation. It wasn’t a threat, or at least I didn’t think it was, but the words seemed weighted. I couldn’t focus on the pages or the man in front of me.

Violent. The word kept pushing my mind to the death of the dean.

“Do you… ever act on these thoughts?”

He chuckled, but he didn’t answer. I swallowed again.

“W-When you say violent…?”

He smirked. “Are you expecting me to say that I consider killing people regularly?”

I licked my lips. “Do you?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

I blinked and frowned. “I… Well…”

“Have you never plotted murder? Not once?” He asked, seemingly amused.

“We’re not talking about me,” I said. “In… the broader sense, people have violent ideas, but intrusive thoughts tend to be more involved than that, especially… violent ones.”

He tilted his head. “You seem distracted.”

I glanced at him. “I’m unfamiliar with your case. I’ve been caught off guard, and I’ve only been in clinical observations until now. I really don’t think I’m qualified to—”

A knock sounded on the door. It took everything in me not to sigh in relief for a bit of a reprieve. That had to be a supervising psychiatrist or something!

“That’s… probably the person I’m meant to be shadowing.”

He frowned as I stood and headed to the door. Instead of a doctor, familiar or unfamiliar, there were two police officers there wearing mostly casual clothes with their badges hanging around their necks.

“I’m with a patient at the moment.”

“We’ll need you to come with us, miss.” One of them said. “We have questions regarding the late dean.”

I glanced back at the man and nodded before turning to him. “I’ll be right back.”

He gestured blandly. “I will be waiting.”

The words struck me as heavier than he probably meant them, but I nodded and followed the police officers into another room. Hopefully, by the time I got back, a supervising psychiatrist will have appeared and gotten me out of the session.

“We were told that the dean had harassed you shortly before his death,” the officer said, narrowing his eyes. “As such, you’re under investigation for potentially being involved in his death.”

My eyes widened as I thought back to the incident at the bar. I had heard that the police were supposed to look into every angle, but who had told them? And why me? I’d been avoiding him anywhere I even thought he might be since we got back.

“Why?”

One of them opened his notebook. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“You still haven’t answered me,” I said, looking at them. “Why am I—”

“If you continue to refuse to answer, we’ll take this interrogation to the police station.”

My jaw dropped open as they looked at me.

“Do you plan on answering the question?” The other officer asked.

“At the retreat,” I said stiffly, meeting his gaze. “That was… almost a week ago, I guess.”

“You guess?” The other officer said. “Seems quite a short term and quite important for you not to remember.”

“How convenient.”

My jaw tightened. “I have memory issues.”

One of them scoffed. “You have any proof of that?”

“Do you need a medical release to obtain a copy of my mental health records?” I asked. “They’re held with the city’s main hospital.”

“Do you often forget things that have happened?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” He pressed. “What does that mean?”

I shook my head. “I… lose time, sometimes. Sometimes, time is a fuzzy concept. People will tell me they have seen me somewhere, but I have no memory of it. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD and disassociation, and I have fugue episodes.”

I blinked back my tears, feeling embarrassed that I had to tell them that.

“Yet you go to school regularly enough.”

“I rely on my phone to keep track of things and where I’m supposed to be,” I said. “And journals. I’m functional enough.”

One of them sucked on their teeth. They shared a glance.

“Do you remember any other time you’ve seen the dean?”

I shrugged. “I guess when we left for the trip? And… probably during orientation, but I’m just a student. I don’t have much of a reason to see him.”

I shuddered. “I never made a reason to.”

“No other time?”

I shook my head.

They seemed disgruntled, and the officer closed his notebook. “This is an ongoing investigation. We’ll be back with further questions as we deem it necessary since you don’t tend to remember. We’ll expect your cooperation.”

“There’s no need to be so threatening about it,” I said. “You’ll get the same answers whether you ask me later today or several weeks from now.”

“We’ll see about that.” They walked away, and I was struck by the realization that I really hated the police.

Even if I remembered anything about my own case, I probably wouldn’t share that with the police under any circumstances.

I headed back to the room and found the man looking at me as I entered the door. He narrowed his eyes.

“I can only imagine that they were not here to investigate the man’s harassment of you.”

I shook my head.

“You did not call them?”

I shook my head.

“And you still work here,” he tilted his head. “Why would you allow a man who means you harm to have so much access to you?”

My lips twitched. “Not everyone has the money to dress in a suit every day and seemingly waste time with a psychology student.”

“You view money as the problem.”

“Sometimes people have to do what they don’t want to do in order to do what needs to be done. I don’t have the time or the qualifications to attend another school with an attached psychiatric hospital if I want to be done with my degree in a reasonable time. My part-time job here isn’t much, but if I go somewhere else, it’ll probably pay less.”

I sat down and looked at him, taking out a notebook and sighing.

“Now, let’s talk about your past and where these intrusive thoughts may be coming from.”