But maybe I was wrong. Because he turned around with an expression that went from neutral to beaming smile within the span of a second, like I’d really surprised him. I guessed he was one of those people who lost contact with reality as they sank deeper into their work.
He rose to a full six feet, hand extended, as I shut the door behind me. And then there was just a steady hum of white noise, like a ceiling fan, dulling everything, and faint classical music.
I almost smiled. That’s it, that’s his trick, I decided. Lull you to sleep in his office. You’re cured.
“Olivia Meyer, so nice to meet you,” he said as his hand met mine. “Seems we have some friends in common.”
I didn’t know Bennett considered him a friend, or whether Dr. Cal had asked around before agreeing to see me. I looked away first, scanning the room for a place to sit. I took the only other spot, a cushioned love seat across from his office chair. There were three pillows in varying shades of blue softening any possible edge. Even his furniture was designed to inspire sleep.
He settled back into his chair, rolling a little closer, hands clasped together over a pad of paper in his lap.
“Now,” he said, “why don’t you tell me what’s brought you to my office today.”
He tilted his head, eyes focused on me. I cleared my throat, looking anywhere but directly at him, as Bennett had jokingly suggested. The degrees on the wall, the certification, the articles printed out and framed—they were too small to read closely. I couldn’t tell whether he was displaying general advice or showcasing his own work.
Probably the latter.
Everything about this room, and him, was deliberate. To judge from the way he was sitting, body angled and waiting, Dr. Calvin Royce was someone who knew exactly what he looked like. He had probably perfected the angle and smile in the mirror. Slept with a teeth-whitening tray, or an eye mask, at the very least. When he crossed his leg over his knee, the bottom of his pants rose up to reveal a quirky neon green sock with dog bones, probably designed for disarming. A conversation starting point. A way in.
I decided point-blank he was a sociopath.
It was easier to avoid someone’s charm when you could see behind it from the start.
“Last night, I was sleepwalking,” I said. The truth, then. The reason I was here. An urgent sleep issue was what I’d told his receptionist, after all.
A slow nod, his face giving away nothing. He didn’t blink. “Has this happened before?”
“Not since I was a kid. Almost twenty years ago. I thought I outgrew it. Or it was fixed. Either way, it stopped happening.”
Another nod. “Were you seen by a doctor back then?”
Everything about that time was a blur. There had been so many doctors. Checkups and follow-ups; pre-ops and post-ops and physical therapy, before my mother decided they were doing more harm than good, perpetuating the trauma.
“Yes, I was given medicine, and the sleepwalking stopped,” I said, so he would know that I was aware of my own history and how best to address the issue at hand. All I needed was his signature.
“You were given medication as a child?” he asked, head tilted slightly in the other direction now. A better angle of the jawline.
“Yes,” I said.
“What kind?” He twirled his pen in his fingers, ready to make some notes.
A rattle in an amber bottle. The scent of hot chocolate. “I’m not sure.”
The pen stilled. He looked unsure, like maybe I was pulling this out of thin air. “That would be unusual,” he said.
But I didn’t want to tell him—it wasn’t a usual case. I had wandered away from home while asleep, without regard to the storm that was raging through. Gotten swept away by the flash flood that came through the valley with a vengeance.
This was why I trusted myself and my instincts. More even than my conscious thoughts. Because I knew, underneath, there was something stronger. Something that understood how to survive. That there was a person I could not remember who had endured something unimaginable for three full days before someone found me.
It was how I knew I was right to change my name. To break it off with Jonah. To stay here.
It was why I had picked that house but hadn’t changed the locks yet. And why I had bought that hook and eye at the store. Why I was sitting here right now.
The less I actively dissected a situation, the clearer the answer became.
“Are you on any medications currently?” he asked, pen hovering over the yellow notepad once more. “Sleepwalking can, unfortunately, be a side effect of other sleep aids. Even over-the-counter ones.”
“No. Though I guess there goes my hope for a sleep aid.”
He gave me a small smile. “Walk me through the night,” he said. “Before you went to sleep.”
It had been a night like so many others. I had run into Bennett heading out at the same time, and we’d grabbed a burger at the grill across the street before going our separate ways. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” I said. “I ate dinner out with a friend, finished some paperwork at home, watched TV, had a drink, went to bed.” I shrugged. It all sounded so mundane when reduced to a sentence.
“What was the drink?” he asked.
“A glass of wine.” The bottle had partially turned, but it unwound me at the end of the day.
“Alcohol can contribute to sleepwalking,” he said.
“It hasn’t in the past,” I said. “And it was only half a glass.” I never drank a lot at once. I’d gone out with my roommates in college at the end of sophomore year, let myself get to the point where the night had leaps and gaps, and then I’d never done it again.
We had been at a party in another dorm, and from what I could gather, a senior I liked had pulled me into the storage area under the stairs. I couldn’t be certain how long I’d been in there, but the story ended with me barging out in a fury, the guy following a moment later, bent over, hands held to his bloody nose.
By the next day, the story had taken on a life of its own: my roommates high-fiving me, announcing to anyone who would hear, Don’t fuck with the girls in 423! But I couldn’t say for sure. Couldn’t say whether I was protecting myself or reacting to the small, dark space—needing, above all, to escape.
They couldn’t really know the girl in 423.
I knew better now—fearing, most of all, that disconnect between my mind and body, when I was no longer the one in control.
The therapist I had to see briefly in high school was the one who explained that my need to always know my exits, to calculate my steps, was probably a symptom of the PTSD that manifested alongside my primal need to escape—a coping mechanism to feel in control.
This was just routine: that half-glass at the end of the day while I watched television; a bottle of wine that usually managed to turn before I could finish it. There had been nothing unusual about last night.
Dr. Cal tilted his head back, assessing me. “Tell me about yourself,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
Then he shook his foot, like maybe I hadn’t noticed the dog bones. Waiting for me to make conversation, give something away. Eventually, he gave up and put his feet solidly on the floor.
“Anything stressful in your life?”
“Yes.” I didn’t elaborate. He wasn’t a therapist.