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“FULL DISCLOSURE,” Johnny said to the lady. She sat adjacent to him, cross-legged, wearing a blue blouse, and stared at her legal pad. A glass of water perspired on the table beside her. The light from the afternoon sun shone through the window behind. “If I’m being completely honest, every night before I go to bed I pray — not really pray — I wish, I wonder, I lust that before I wake I die. Every day. And every morning, I wake up disappointed.”
The lady looked at him. Her eyes betrayed that she might have to report this.
“I mean,” Johnny said. “I can’t really say this stuff to anybody out there, and if I can’t say it here, then how are we supposed to accomplish anything?” Despite having never told anyone this before he knew he had to diffuse the situation before he found himself committed.
He imagined how she might excuse herself and give a signal to the receptionist or to another therapist in the office who would then call the police. She’d return and continue the session as if nothing sinister was at play. In the time it took for him to finish his final thought and before the lady could respond he would hear a knock at the door and the police would be entering before having been invited into the room. Handcuffs around his wrists he’d be taken against his will to wherever, drugged, and locked away until they deemed him no longer a threat to society or himself. Johnny regretted admitting his secret. He should have never come here to begin with. He stared out the window. A bird flew by and landed on the grassy knoll below. It was only the second floor.
“Will you excuse me a moment?” the lady asked.
Johnny smiled.
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