The clinic smelled like weekdays: disinfectant, paper, and cold coffee left too long in a cup.
Clara swiped her badge, heard the faint click of the lock, and let the door seal the rest of the world behind her.
The digital board in the corridor scrolled through names in a pale blue light. She looked for her own, then down the list of patients.
She saw it immediately: Adrian M. — Assigned Therapist: Dr. L. Savio.
For a second, the floor tilted just enough for her knees to remember gravity.
"Maybe it's a system error," the nurse at the counter said, trying to sound casual.
"Or just temporary."
"Temporary," Clara repeated, testing the size of the word in her mouth.
"I see."
She didn't see. She smiled anyway. Fastened the white coat around her neck like armor.
Dr. Rinaldi called her into his office mid-morning.
Everything there was exactly as it should be: the tidy desk, the soft side light, the faint scent of polished wood.
"Voss," he said, "yesterday's safe session, how did it go?"
Clara placed her hands on her knees to keep them still.
"We talked," she said. "About sleep. The nightmares. How silence can trigger memory."
Rinaldi nodded slowly.
"Nothing else?"
Her mind flicked through every possible version of something else.
"He mentioned discomfort with the mirror in the observation room," she said finally.
"I thought removing stimuli might help him relax."
He studied her a moment longer.
Then, gently: "Adrian asked for a new therapist this morning."
The words didn't fall… they emptied the space between them.
"Did he say why?"
"He said he feels… destabilized."
Clara blinked once, steady.
"I understand."
"Is there something I should know?" Rinaldi asked, voice softer now. She thought of a closed door, of breath too close, of her own voice saying I can't.
Then she chose the narrowest path between truth and safety.
"A change might help him," she said. "A different tone. A new dynamic."
Rinaldi held her eyes a second longer than comfort allowed.
"I hope so," he said.
Then, after a pause: "And how are you, Clara?"
Her answer was automatic. "Working."
Which was another word for barely holding together.
The rest of the day took the shape of things that don't move.
Patients. Files. Scales and numbers.
She listened, wrote, signed. Each word neat, professional, distant.
Yet, in every gesture of someone else: a hand tapping a chair, a glance toward the ceiling, she caught something that wasn't there: not him, and yet him everywhere.
At five, Dr. Savio passed by.
"Coffee?" she offered kindly.
"I have reports to finish," Clara said, smiling away the invitation.
By seven, the corridors emptied.
By eight, the clinic sounded like a church after mass.
In her office, she switched on the desk lamp. The warm light pushed back the shadows just enough to make them seem new.
File after file, she kept writing. The steady sound of her pen became the only proof of her being still.
Every now and then her gaze drifted to the empty chair across the table. She didn't imagine him sitting there. She imagined the space forbidden.
At some point, the handle turned. No knock. No hesitation.
He entered as if the air had called him. Closed the door quietly behind him.
Not hurried, not ashamed. Just decided. He looked different, not colder, but resolved. The kind of calm that hurts.
"You shouldn't be here," she managed, her voice steady, her pulse not.
"I know."
He stopped at a measured distance, close enough for her to feel the weight of his silence, far enough to still call it restraint.
"Clara," he said. Her name sounded heavier than it should.
"I asked for another therapist."
"I saw."
"Not out of anger," he said, half-smiling without warmth. "Out of survival."
She didn't answer.
There were words she could have used, I understand, it's better this way but none of them contained enough air.
"I have to stay away from you," he continued quietly. "I lose control when you're near."
The sentence hung between them like an echo that refused to fade.
Clara's hands pressed against the arms of the chair, anchoring her to something real.
Then he added, in a voice that trembled not from weakness but from honesty:
"I won't touch you again… not until you're the one begging me to."
The words didn't sting, they branded. Not cruel. Just final. A promise made at the edge of restraint.
"This isn't a game," she whispered.
"I know," he said. "That's why I'm leaving now."
He stepped back. Not retreating, removing himself from gravity.
"If you look for me, you won't find me," he said quietly.
"Not until you want to."
Then he opened the door. The corridor swallowed him whole.
Clara stayed seated. The sound of the latch closing was small, exact, unforgettable.
She sat until silence turned into a heartbeat. On the desk, an unfinished file stared back at her.
The patient's name blurred into nothing. She wrote one more line, not knowing why:
Separation-induced anxiety.
She almost laughed. She didn't. The room didn't breathe, but she did, unevenly.
On the dark mirror at the far wall, for an instant, her reflection trembled. As if the glass itself remembered him.
Distance, she thought, is just another name for memory.
She turned off the lamp. The room shrank, then exhaled.
Her hand hovered above the table, still warm from a presence no longer there.
She didn't call Rinaldi. She didn't call anyone. She just listened to her heartbeat decide in what language it would one day speak his name.