No longer would he be the one crying. No longer.

15

Doctor Shepherd leaned over his desk and took more notes. This patient equally fascinated and unsettled him. He studied his recorder for a moment, as though the electronic device held a puzzling secret. In her case, perhaps it did.

His thoughts now noted on paper, he pressed the play button and continued listening. Patient MENO3’s voice filled the room. He never included a patient’s full name in his reports. He worried if something went wrong, his notes might be used against a client, or him for that matter.

A few years ago the police had been relentless in their harassment of a colleague. They accused him of withholding evidence in his files of a suspected ringleader of a pedophilia ring. So Dr. Shepherd created a system for his files. He used the last two letters of the first and last name, along with the day of the month of the client’s first appointment. Any good detective would probably break his code, but it gave him some deniability.

This was his third play through of this recording and he grew more troubled with each listen. Her voice filled his office; it infiltrated every corner, even more so than the light thrown from his solitary desk lamp.

“He wanted to apologize to me, but I didn’t need his apology. I already knew he’d be sorry,” she said.

“Oh, how would you know that for sure… him being sorry?” he heard himself ask.

“Because they’re always sorry once they realize.”

“Realize what?”

“Fate’s no longer in their hands. Fate is not a right.”

Doctor Shepherd stopped the recorder, rewound and replayed the last sentence.

Fate is not a right seemed a peculiar phrase to spring from a child’s mouth. Then again, nothing about patient MENO3 felt right for her age or circumstance.

This girl was young, just entering her teens, yet she behaved as if she’d already lived many lives. An old soul in layman’s terms. He called children like this emotionally age-advanced. He would admit she frightened him on occasion, with the way she studied his face when he asked certain questions.

Once or twice during their few sessions, he sensed something strange in the air, like a swirl of, of… aghh, he struggled to find the right word. An imbalance around him. The world at a tilt.

Pretty silly, really. His job was to help people find balance, not have patients unbalance him. Especially a young girl.

That’s why he used the recorder with Nem. He didn’t always tape patient sessions, preferring to take notes. But, after the first session, he realized he needed a backup. At first, he’d forgotten what she’d said and been left staring at a blank page, only recalling her answers in a vague way as if they were hidden in a mist.

Upon returning to listening to the next visit, it felt as if he experienced hearing what she said for the first time, though it was his voice on the recording. Mind blowing peculiar, he’d say, if he wasn’t an educated man who should possess better words to describe the experience.