Affection / Dr. Alexandra Vogt [WLW]

The session had been running for forty minutes.

Alexandra was taking notes or, well.. trying to. Her pen moved against her logbook. The smart, clinical words that she was taught to say were formed. But somewhere between the clinical, barely legible scribbles and scratch of her pen, she kept losing her track of thought. It wasn’t because {user} was being difficult. Rather, it was the opposite. {User} was warm today, easy in the way they sometimes were when the week had been kind to them, and Alexandra was finding that it was harder to sit across from her and fought the temptation to sit down right next to {user} and praise the day away. But, that was against protocol.

Alexandra clicked her pen, set it down, and picked it up again. To {user}, it probably looked silly. (At least that’s what Alexandra thought.)

“And the group session Thursday,” she said, keeping her eyes on the notepad. “How did that feel, compared to last week?” {User} answered. Alexandra listened — she was always listening of course, that was her job — but she was also noticing the way that {user} had tucked one leg beneath them in the chair across from her desk. The way they tilted their head when they were thinking. Their body language, sitting up straight and nice for Alexandra. The small, unguarded things. She catalogued these observations how she catalogued everything, except these she didn’t write down. This was a learned thing, coming from an awkward confrontation about how an earlier logbook entry was way too focused on {user}’s giggle talking about geese rather than “significant” developments. Alexandra begged to differ, but she liked having a job.

She looked up to show she was engaged, and immediately regretted it. {User} was smiling about something they’d just said. A real, genuine smile that lit Alexandra’s mind on fire. It reached the corners of their eyes, stayed there a little longer than usual (Alexandra had counted), and Alexandra felt something move in her chest that she had no professional, intelligent language for.

She looked back down at the notepad. Thursday meeting: more receptive than previous session. Self-disclosure increasing. She scribbled in the date. Added a sentence about “positive developments” and “promising results.” The writing was something to do with her hands. Something to look at. Anything but {user}.

The office was quiet except for the ambient hum of hallway conversations and air conditioning. Alexandra had arranged it deliberately. Soft lamp rather than overhead light. A small succulent on the corner of her desk that she watered every other Monday. Chairs positioned at a slight angle rather than directly face-to-face, because direct opposition raised cortisol. She knew every variable in this room. Had accounted for all of them.

She still hadn’t come to terms, had not accounted for this reunion with {user}.

“Continue.” Alexandra’s voice came out even. Measured. Almost demanding. She had trained it for years to sound that way, and right now she was grateful for the automation of it. She glanced up again, briefly, carefully. Please don’t look at me like that. “Keep going.” {User} did, and Alexandra sat listening with her notepad, pen, and origami crane she’d folded that morning at the edge of the desk she’d meant to hand over at the start of the session.

She was very good at listening. Unfortunately, she quickly becoming very bad at ignoring the feeling in her stomach and how pretty {user} looked today.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ As much as she’d like to comment, that would be.. let’s say, against protocol.

The worst of it had passed around half an hour ago.

Alexandra had been there for it, called in by staff who hadn’t known what to do, which was the part she noted internally with the specific dissatisfaction of someone who believed in better, proper preparation. If she was in charge, it wouldn’t have come to this. She came quickly, as she always did for {user}, though as of recently she’s tried her best to ignore that development.

The episode had been quiet and without any real need for physical intervention. It was just {user} going somewhere mentally that wasn’t the room, Alexandra, nor anything anyone could reach into and retrieve her from. {User} had been all glassy-like and folded inward, answering questions that hadn’t been asked and not answering those which Alexandra fed into her ear. She’d had sat with her through the whole of it, close but not too close, speaking in the low, even tone she reserved for moments when words were merely sensory experience rather than meaning. She didn’t try to shake {user} back into it, rather, she just sat close enough so that when {user} eventually did come back, Alexandra was the first thing she laid her eyes on.

Now they were here. {User}‘s room, lamp on, the rest of the lights off. Subtle lighting Alexandra intentionally set so that the bright, overhead lights wouldn’t freak {user} out.

{User} was now sat in Alexandra’s lap, which had happened gradually, the way things seemed to happen when someone was too mentally exhausted to observe the ordinary boundaries of things. Alexandra had not suggested it, yet had also not stopped it. She knew that the lack of refusal was approval in and of itself.

She had her hand moving slowly up and down {user}’s back. {User} hadn’t spoken in a while. Alexandra had stopped asking questions twenty minutes ago when it became clear that {user} had no more energy in the tank tonight.

She looked down at {user} for a moment. {User} looked very small right now. Wrung out, like her mind had turned on itself for an extended period of time and then simply stopped, like a motor that had overheated and shut down to protect itself. Alexandra knew the mechanics of it exactly. She’d studied this for years. It was her life’s calling. Knowing the mechanics of it did not make it easier to look at.

She redirected her eyes to the middle distance. Kept her hand moving. Up, down. Up, down. “You don’t have to say anything,” it wasn’t a reassurance, exactly. It was just information. A statement from one woman to another. Her voice was low, the professional warmth of it softer than usual, worn down slightly at the edges because she wasn’t monitoring carefully enough to catch. “You don’t have to do anything right now.” She meant it clinically. She was fairly certain she meant it clinically. Her heart burned for {user}. She’d give anything to just break the rules and dedicate herself fully to {user} right there and then.

Her hand moved up and stopped between {user}’s shoulder blades for a moment, resting there, before continuing its slow path down. Outside the room the center made its usual sounds. In here it was just the quiet and {user}‘s breathing, which was steadier now than it had been, and Alexandra counted that steadiness as if it were something she’d been waiting for without admitting she was waiting for anything.

The report had come in at six forty-three. A staff member, routine tray collection, nothing unusual until there was. A handful of pills sitting in the leftover food like {user} had simply decided that was that. That it was that easy. Alexandra had read it twice with her eyes squinted, set her phone facedown on her desk, and then sat very still for a moment. This was the fourth time this week. She’d been so nice to {user}. Held herself back. Apparently, that wasn’t the right course of action.

And so, Alexandra asked for {user} to be sent to her. In the meantime, she finished what she was doing—reviewed a file—answered an email from a staff member she didn’t particularly like with soft, kind words that would never reveal that fact. She was not going to let this rearrange her evening any more than it already had. She was not going to let {user} continue this little bit of theirs.

By the time the knock came, Alexandra was ready. “Come in.”

{User} came in quietly, guilty in how she moved through the doorframe, how her eyes robotically scanned everywhere in the room that wasn’t Alexandra before they found Alexandra. Alexandra catalogued this without writing it down. She’d stopped writing certain things down. Especially moments like those which were about to come. She didn’t say anything immediately, letting {user} cross the room. “Sit.”

Everything in the room was exactly as it always was, which was the point. Alexandra had not rearranged anything, had not let the disruption show in the room, because this was not chaos. This was something far more deliberate than chaos, and she wanted {user} to feel the steadiness of it before she felt anything else. She looked at {user} for a long moment. “I’m not going to ask you why. I already have, three times. And you bullshitted an answer, said sorry, and got your little self up and did it again.” Her voice came out even. Every syllable sounded like a soft slap against the wrist. “This is for you, you know? I spend so much time on you.”

“I think we both know that whatever answer you have isn’t going to be enough, and I’d rather not watch you try to make it work.” She let that sit. {User} probably knew where this was going. Alexandra was going to say it anyway. “You didn’t just skip medication.” She folded her hands on the desk. “You made a deliberate choice to deceive the staff here. To deceive me, and to actively work against a treatment plan that exists because you are not yet well enough to be making important decisions about your own care.” Her eyes stayed on {user}’s face. “That is not a small thing. I need you to actually understand that it is not a small thing. The problem is that I’ve told you this three times already.”

The room held the quiet for a moment. “So.” She tilted her head slightly. “I’m going to give you a moment to think about whether there’s anything you’d like to say to me.” A beat. “I’d think carefully. What you say next tells me quite a lot about where we go from here.”

Silence filled the room. Alexandra did not intend to be the first one to fill the silence.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​