Unethical

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Maxim

I stand by the front door and allow my eyes to ride up the small office building. Dying bushes droop by the door, their curled brown leaves begging for water. It’s not very welcoming, even if I wanted to go to this appointment. I’d rather do almost anything else than walk in there.

Therapy has never really been my thing. When I first started acting out when I was extremely young, the courts tried to intervene and force me into counseling. I didn’t need a therapist to tell me that getting bounced around from one shitty foster home to another had done a number on my psyche.

I was damaged before the foster parents even gave up on me, though. Something has been wrong with me since the day I drew breath. Something not wired quite right.

I pull the door open, and a little electronic alert chimes overhead. A dark-haired young girl sits at the reception desk, playing on her phone, and I’m tempted to leave before she notices me. The prison release papers glue my feet to the floor, though.

“Can I help you?” the girl asks once she looks up from her phone long enough to notice me.

“I’m here for an appointment with Dr. Reeves.”

The girl looks at the clock. “You’re ten minutes late.”

“Sue me,” I clip. God, I’m feeling more homicidal by the minute. This girl is lucky I only have eyes for the doctor.

The moment I saw Dr. Reeves’ picture, she became my sole focus. I can’t stop thinking about her. I dreamed of this visit, but my fantasy took a pretty unethical turn. In my mind, I walked into the office, and she gave me the fuck-me eyes instead of asking me questions. She spread her skirt-clad thighs, and I placed myself between them. Instead of allowing her to force me to confront my demons with her words, I made her confront hers with my dick.

“Have a seat and I’ll ask if she’s still available to see you,” the girl says.

It’s ten fucking minutes, not an hour. Did the doctor magically vanish once I didn’t appear at the stroke of fucking midnight?

I just nod and pace by the windows lining the wall as I wait.

A few moments later, the girl leads me to a room in the back of the building. The office is nothing like my vision, and neither is the doctor. She can’t even be bothered to look up from a manila folder as I enter the room.

“Hello, Mr. Jankowski. Nice of you to finally show up.” She closes the manila folder, types something on her laptop, and finally meets my eyes.

Yeah, lady, neither of us wants to be here.

She gestures toward a chair across from her. “Have a seat.”

I do, and my jeans rise up as I sit. I drop my head to my fist. There’s nothing approachable about my body language, and hers matches mine.

“I’m Dr. Sarah Reeves. I’ve been a therapist for ten years. Tell me about yourself,” she says. When I don’t respond, she sighs and starts scribbling something on a yellow legal pad. “It’s my understanding that you’re here because you’re court ordered, correct?”

“Yup.”

“Some of my colleagues believe that court-appointed therapy doesn’t work. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. Do you plan to participate?”

It probably is a waste of time, to be honest. “We’ll see about that, I guess, huh?”

“Do you have pets or anything, Maxim? Anything you care for?” She swallows as my dark eyes land on her.

“I had a cat, but they took him when I got arrested. I think I need to figure out my own life before I try to take care of something else.”

“Fair.” She nods. “Have you done therapy before?”

“Nah. Not really my thing.”

She leans forward, pushing her breasts higher. I can’t keep my eyes away from them, and I don’t try.

“But they brought it up to you before?” she asks. “Your parents?”

“My parents tried to bring me to therapy after the loss of my twin,” I say coldly.

“How old were you when you lost your brother?”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t even remember him.”

This is a lie. I remember him. I remember the way he looked when he was up to something, the little quirk of his brow. I remember his laugh. Most of all, I remember the sound of his body colliding with rocks at the bottom of the fucking well.

“What happened to him?”

“He fell down a well on the property.”

“How did your parents cope with that loss?”

I sit up. “I don’t fucking know. And then they died too, so it doesn’t matter.”

The air shifts. She no longer looks so sure of herself. Her confidence has drained from her eyes, replaced by a glint of fear.

“Will you tell me more about that?” Her voice quivers a bit, so she clears her throat and sips from a water bottle on her desk.

“Absolutely not,” I snap.

She should count herself blessed to have received this much information from me already. I don’t need to talk about my brother or my parents. I don’t want to. The only other person who knows what happened that day is dead, and I’m done discussing it. She can go look up the article from the fucking paper if she’s hungry for more dirty details.

It was all over the news. I was labeled a psychopathic child because I didn’t act the way I “should have” after the incident. I saw no point in crying and being miserable. He was already dead. Tormenting myself about it wouldn’t bring him back.

“What about your parents?”

“I’m not talking about them.” I’ve had enough. I stand to leave.

“If you exit this room, I’ll have to report that you’re being non-compliant,” she says. She raises her chest, her confidence returning with full force.

I sit down again, look at the clock, and shrug. “Fine. I guess we’ll be silent for the next half hour. Is that compliant enough?”

And that’s exactly what we do. We sit in silence as the clock counts the seconds with a monotonous tick that scrapes against the backs of my eyeballs.

I stare at her until her cheeks flush red and she crosses her legs. She grabs her laptop and places it on her lap, then starts typing away. Each clack of the keys unhinges me a little more.

I assume they normally do this shit after the session, but what else can she do during this painful silence between us?

I’m tempted to lean forward and rip the hunk of metal from her hands to read what she’s saying about me. I want to see how she’s framed what little bit of information I’ve shared with her when she doesn’t even have the full picture.

Go ahead. Micro-analyze and judge me for a few sentences.

I’m used to it. People in my life have thought they understood me, but their misunderstandings are why I’m the way I am today. Why I’ve done the things I’ve done.

The clock strikes the hour, and I stand up. I don’t look back at her as I whip open the door. “See you next week, doc.”