We each settled into chairs. The metal was cold—even though it was only September, the weather was turning. There was a gravity to the seasonal change that I couldn’t remember ever experiencing back home on Bet.

“Did your friends have their turns in front of the tribunal?”

“No. Rain had his. Ashley will have hers soon. I’m helping her pack up her apartment tomorrow.”

“With one arm?”

“It’s for emotional support, as much as anything.”

“Drink?” he asked. He reached down and pulled a small cooler out from beneath his chair.

“Please,” I said. “Whatever you have would be great.”

He had an assortment of sodas, water, lemonade and iced tea. I took the iced tea, set it down, and got the papers out of my bag.

“The stuff you asked me to fill out.”

He took it, leaning back in his seat. It was disconcerting to deal with the silence, when I was used to one person guiding and leading conversation, steering things and making the most out of the hour and a half or however much time was set aside.

That had been back at the hospital, though, and maybe the need to fill the silence had been because I’d been something less human.

He read through the paperwork, and put it down on the table with the last page on top.

My ‘homework’. I’d submitted the critical information back when I’d made my first appointment, which I’d had to cancel for surgery. I’d walked away with some information on therapy and what to expect, and this. Questions.

The page he’d left on top had been the unusual exercise in the batch. The bottom half of the page had been left empty, but for a circle with a thick bold line. The instruction had been to draw, not write, how I was feeling, and to leave the paper and pen in arm’s reach for a while before and after using the space.

I’d settled on a face, drawing it like I might a sighing emoji, eyebrows slightly turned up in worry. I wasn’t much of an artist.

In letting it sit, though, I’d drawn around the perimeter of the face, lines circling the bold circle that framed the face.

I felt self-conscious about it. Now it sat on the table, between the two of us, the page facing nobody in particular.

“Anything you want to get off your chest before we start?” he asked. “Some people come to a session with something in mind.”

“Uh,” I said. I leaned back, holding my iced tea. “No, no I guess not. This feels pretty different from what I’ve experienced in the past.”

“The therapy you got at the hospital?”

“And what I saw of the session with the group,” I said.