Page 152 of Letters From A Stalker

I identify Julia only as required for the report, state that she is a current psychiatric patient under my care, and describe the conduct without euphemism. I followed her to her residence after a session. I subsequently returned without a clinical reason. I observed her outside the therapeutic setting without her knowledge or consent. I initiated anonymous written contact while concealing my identity. The relationship later became sexual while she remained my patient and while she was unaware that the anonymous man was her treating psychiatrist.

I stare at the final sentence. There it is. Not Ghost, not whatever I told myself existed between those identities. A physician engaged in sexual conduct with a current patient. I add that the therapeutic relationship has ended effective immediately at the patient’s request, that I will have no further clinical or personal contact with her, and that continuity of care will be handled independently through referrals and transfer of records only with her authorization. Then I sign it.

My hand pauses over the touch pad, the mouse hovering over the submission button. For years, I have watched people bargain at this point. Patients, colleagues, men ordered into treatment by courts, people who know they have done something wrong but still search for the exact arrangement of words that will make consequences optional. I have no interest in becoming one of them. I submit the report. The confirmation appears on the screen immediately. I read it once, then close the browser. Whatever happens to my license happens.

For the first time since Julia left, my chest loosens enough to let a full breath through. Not relief, just certainty that I made the right choice. At least now.

I open my email next. The message to Mara is brief. Julia’s file is to be removed from my active schedule immediately. Mara is to offer her a choice of several qualified trauma psychiatrists outside my practice, including at least one woman, and make clear that Julia owes us nothing beyond whatever authorization is necessary if she wants records transferred. There will be no call from me and no message passed through Mara beyond administrative necessities Julia herself requests. I hesitate before sending one more instruction.

Do not tell her anything about the Board report. That is not information I am entitled to use as proof that I am sorry.

I send it.

The next email is harder for a completely different reason. I search my contacts for a psychiatrist I trained with years ago, someone I respect and someone removed enough from my daily life that there is no temptation to turn treatment into conversation between colleagues.

I need an appointment. As soon as you can reasonably fit me in. Personal, not professional. I’m not in danger and this isn’t an emergency, but I need to start therapy.

I stare at the message before adding:

I’ve made a serious ethical violation involving a patient and have reported myself to the Board. I’ll explain the rest in person.

Send.

Three things done. None of them make Julia hurt less. That is probably another lesson I deserve. I turn the computer off, but when the screen goes black I see my own reflection in it and barely recognize the man staring back.

She said one thing I cannot stop hearing.

You let me decide what each of you was allowed to know when you already had all of it.

That is the wound. Everything else sits around it. For months, I convinced myself that once Julia began choosing Ghost, what happened between us became something separate from the original violation. I told myself she wanted me there. That she opened the door. That she told me yes. That she asked me to stay. All true facts but none sufficient. She consented to Ghost because I deliberately withheld the one fact about who he was, that might have changed her answer. There is no fucking loophole around that.

I get up and walk to the window, pressing both hands against the sill while Minneapolis stretches below in late-afternoon traffic and glass and reflected light. My mother used to say she was fine because admitting otherwise made everything harder. Julia said it because she had learned that other people’s comfort often came before her own pain. I saw the similarity and decided I would be the person who didn’t accept the easy answer. Somewhere along the way, “I won’t look away” became “I have the right to look.” That distinction is so obvious now that I feel sick. Concern gave me the first excuse and wanting her gave me every one after it. And love, or whatever word I am finally willing to use for the thing lodged beneath my ribs, does not make any of them noble. If anything, it should have made me more careful with her. Instead, I became another man who decided his feelings entitled him to information she had not chosen to give.

I close my eyes. There is still one thing I need to do. Julia told me not to come to her house, not to follow her, not to ask Mara to check on her, and not to appear somewhere because I decided enough time had passed. She never said never to write again. I know exactly how thin that loophole is but I have no other choice. There will be one letter. One more. Not because I want to convince her to forgive me or explain myself into innocence. Not to leave the door open for Ghost — to close it.

I take a sheet of the same cream paper I have used from the beginning and sit at my desk. For several minutes, I stare at it.

Then I write.

Little Ember,

This is the last letter I will ever send you. I know I have no right to ask you to read it, so if you stop here, I will understand. I also know an apology can’t undo what I did, but you deserved one without having to stand in my office and drag the truth out of me first.

I am sorry.

Not because you discovered who I was. I am sorry because there was ever anything for you to discover.

You were right about the most important part. You trusted me twice, in two completely different ways, and I let you do it without telling you that both men were the same person. You chose what you wanted Kai to know and what you wanted Ghost to know because you believed those choices were yours to make. I took them both from you. There is no explanation that makes that acceptable.

I need you to know one thing, though I understand if you can’t believe me now. None of this began because I wanted to use what you told me in therapy to sleep with you. I never listened to your pain looking for something I could turn into desire, and I never built Ghost out of your trauma. The truth is less calculated and somehow not much better.

The first night I followed you, I was worried about you. You had left my office after dissociating, and when I saw your face through the windshield, I recognized something I had known long before I ever became a psychiatrist. My mother used to disappear like that after my father hurt her. She could still move, still answer questions, still insist she was fine, while I knew she was somewhere I couldn’t reach.

You did not remind me of my mother. I need to emphasise that because I would hate for you to misunderstand it. It was the look. The way you told me you were fine while every instinct I had told me you weren’t.

“I followed you because I wanted to make sure you got home safely. You did. That should have been where it ended. It didn’t, and everything after that was my choice. I watched when I had no right to watch. I returned when there was no reason to return. I wrote the first letter because some part of me wanted you to know that somebody had noticed the things you worked so hard to hide, and then I kept writing because I liked the woman who began answering me.

By the time you opened that door, I had already crossed more lines than I could justify. The fact that you wanted Ghost afterward does not erase the fact that I never gave you the information you needed to decide whether you would have wanted him if you knew he was me. That is the betrayal I will have to live with.