The Girl Who Sees

by Dima Zales

  Is this another inappropriate dream about my boss? Until now, there’s only been that one about a kiss—but this looks like a full-on wet dream.

  My abstinence is really messing with my head.

  He pulls out a phone and dials. “We need an ambulance to—”

  Tuning him out, I gather my thoughts. This is not a dream. I was on stage and passed out. He’s calling 911, but I’m certain what just happened was a panic attack, not a real medical emergency.

  “I’m okay now,” I say weakly and attempt to sit up.

  “You’re not,” Nero says, hanging up on 911. “Hold on.”

  He dials another number and says, “Lucretia, join me backstage.” He pauses, listening to some reply, then adds, “That’s great. Please walk and talk; this is urgent.”

  He then proceeds to explain to her what happened to me, and it’s clear that he also suspects I had a panic attack.

  Lucretia Rossi is a shrink, and her job at the fund (as I see it) is to help traders get more confidence—which is a bit like teaching cockroaches survival skills. Analysts rarely, if ever, see her, so the only reason I’m even aware of her existence is because a couple of people have told me I remind them of her. I take that as a compliment since Lucretia is quite striking and is admired at the fund for her intellect. Personally, though, I don’t see any physical resemblance between us, aside from hair and eye color, and perhaps the pastiness of our skin.

  “Lucretia is almost here.” Nero gives me a thorough once-over. “You look like you should be fine, for the moment at least. I’m going to go salvage your presentation.”

  Before I can reply, he strides back onto the stage, steps onto the podium, glances at my slides on the laptop in front of him, and says, “As this slide suggests, and as many of you already know, we have a long position in RANR.”

  Still stunned, I listen to Nero speak and fill up with envy. If I didn’t know for a fact that Nero is winging this talk from my just-created slides, I wouldn’t have ever guessed it. If I could be that comfortable in front of a large crowd, the sky would be the limit for my career as an illusionist.

  How do I get to this level of self-assurance?

  How do I learn to face a crowd that big?

  “Sasha,” whispers a female voice to my right. “I didn’t alarm you, did I?”

  Apparently ninja skills are part of a psychologist’s toolkit. That, or Lucretia is a better magician than I because she just pulled off an appearing shrink illusion.

  “Hi,” I say, hoping that missing time and visual delusions aren’t part of whatever is happening to me.

  Her red lips curve in a toothy smile. “Forgive me for skipping the pleasantries, but Nero brought me up to speed and I would like to go straight into the therapy, if you don’t mind.”

  I nod bemusedly, feeling a wave of relaxation at the slightly odd cadence of her voice. It’s as soothing to my ears as Fluffster’s fur is to my palms.

  “What sensations do you feel in your body right now?” she asks, studying me with an enigmatic expression.

  Damn. The office legends about this woman must be true—she is good. I feel a deep compulsion to do exactly as Lucrecia says, so after a moment of introspection, I tell her, “I have an irregular heartbeat and shortness of breath.”

  “Splendid,” she says. “Empty your mind and listen inward. List as many sensations as you can.”

  “I’m sweaty,” I say softly, amazed at how comfortable I am sharing something so embarrassing with a woman I’m speaking with for the first time. “My chest hurt before, but it’s better now.”

  “It’s fortuitous that you remember the chest sensations,” she says, and I realize she has a faint accent of some kind. “Can you list more?”

  “I thought I was going crazy,” I say, and she nods encouragingly. “I also thought that I could be ill.”

  “How about your musculature?”

  “My lower back is stiff,” I say, realizing just now that it’s the case. “Overall, I’m pretty tense.”

  “Focus on these sensations.” Lucretia’s jet-black hair covers her right eye, so she hides the stray strand behind her pale, unpierced ear. “Study them. Commit them to memory. Awareness of these changes in your body helps you stay in control. It tells you that you’re not irrational, and that you’re not having a heart attack. You’re merely experiencing symptoms that you can learn to mitigate.”

  I sit quietly and follow her instructions. Aside from all the sensations I’ve already described, I’m tired and a little lightheaded, so I share that with her.

  “Now I want to coach you.” She puts one hand over her breasts and another on her belly. “Put your hands like this.”

  I do as she says.

  “Not quite.” Lucretia scoots toward me on the couch until our sides almost touch. She takes my right hand and moves it closer to my belly button. And though I usually would find a stranger’s touch disturbing, with her, it seems perfectly natural—her ice-cold fingers are actually pleasantly refreshing on my skin.

  “Close your eyes so that you can focus on your breathing and on the movement of your stomach under your left palm. Your right palm should soon become stationary,” she murmurs almost into my ear, her voice hypnotic. “You’re breathing into your lower abdomen. This is called diaphragmatic breathing.”

  Closing my eyes, I do as she says. Some of my symptoms, especially the ragged breathing, improve.

  “Gently slow your breathing,” she says, her voice even softer and more melodious. “Count mentally to five as you inhale, and count to five as you let the air out.”

  I follow the directions, amazed at how effective this is. The mumble of Nero’s presentation and the applause from the crowd seem distant now, as does my fear.

  “Now we’ll work on your muscles,” Lucretia says. “Curl your toes as you inhale; relax them as you exhale.”

  This reminds me of a visualization meditation a hippie counselor had us do at camp. The similarity grows stronger as Lucretia names more muscles around the body to contract and relax.

  By the time she has me relax my forehead muscles, I’m as calm as an underground lake.

  The serenity lasts a few minutes before I start to get antsy from just sitting and breathing, and I wonder how she isn’t bored with this already.

  “This is great,” I say after another couple of minutes, when I can’t keep still anymore. Opening my eyes, I ask, “What’s next?”

  “In order to get proper privacy, it would be preferable for us to go to my office,” Lucretia says. “Can you walk?”

  I nod.

  “Good.” She gets up. “Try to breathe slowly as you walk. Treat it as exercise.”

  Getting up, I follow her suggestion. Rather than treating it as exercise, something I associate with “pain and gain,” I tackle this the same way as I learn new sleight-of-hand techniques. Whenever I need a new finger-flicking move for a routine, I rehearse it over and over, until the move becomes second nature and I can do it in my sleep. In this case, it might be literally true; if I practice breathing slower for long enough, my breathing overall, including during sleep, might slow down.

  Breathing slowly while walking is extremely challenging, though, and by the time I plop onto a brown leather chaise in Lucretia’s office, I take great pleasure in ignoring my breathing completely and examining my surroundings instead.

  Unlike the rest of the building, which screams “ultra-modern,” Lucretia’s office has a last-century feel to it. Across from me is an antique-looking bookshelf filled with paper books, and instead of blinds, intricate curtains cover the glass walls of the office.

  Lucretia pulls those curtains closed, creating a theater-like ambience, and gracefully lowers herself into her large, throne-like chair.

  “Anything you say to me is protected by doctor-patient confidentiality,” she begins, and proceeds to explain my privileges in detail, with the key point being that no one—not even Nero—can make her disclose what I share.

  �
��Got it,” I say, wondering what kind of secrets she expects me to tell her.

  “Splendid.” She steeples her fingers and looks at me like I’m the most interesting person in the world. “In that case, I’d like you to tell me why you think you felt so anxious.”

  Like earlier, I’m overwhelmed with an almost unnatural ease in her presence. Though I intellectually know that you’re supposed to confide in a therapist, I never thought I’d be so eager to do it. I feel almost a compulsion to share with her my deepest and darkest secrets—things I don’t even like to think about, let alone speak out loud.

  “My earliest memory is at JFK airport,” I say, listening to my own words in surprise. “I was lost. Scared. I had to ask someone, anyone, for help, but I was too afraid to do so. There were just too many people. They were all so big. They spoke so fast.”

  Pausing, I realize that my elevated heartbeat and a few more of the troubling symptoms are back, so I slow down my breathing as she taught me.

  The empathy on Lucretia’s face is so genuine it’s easy to forget that this is merely her job. “Why were you lost?”

  “I don’t know. My parents—my adoptive parents, that is—think that my biological parents lost me at the airport that day, but I can’t be sure.”

  “So what happened?” she asks. Yet again, something about her piercing gaze makes me want to share this with her, even though I’ve never spoken about it with anyone, not even Felix and Ariel.

  “I was overwhelmed. Curled into a ball at one of the terminals,” I say, my breathing speeding up despite my attempt at control. “Mom—the woman who ended up adopting me—saw me. She and Dad were going on vacation. She talked to me, calmed me down, and initiated the search.”

  Lucretia sits utterly still, as if she thinks that even taking a breath might spook me—and perhaps that’s true.

  “Mom convinced Dad, her then-husband, to cancel their Fiji trip and help me,” I continue. “At first, everyone thought my biological parents were flying somewhere—this was an airport, after all. However, no none could figure out who they were. Every couple traveling with a child my age had their kid with them, and nobody reported me missing. Later, when the police got involved, they couldn’t figure out who I was either. I was probably three years old, because I held up three fingers when someone asked me my age, and the only other thing I knew was that my name was Sasha. I didn’t know my last name or where I lived. My parents aren’t even sure I’m an American. The name Sasha is more popular in Eastern Europe, and I enunciated English words very deliberately when I spoke. But then again, many kids speak funny—”

  A phone rings, bringing me out of the trancelike state.

  It’s Lucretia’s office phone, and she gives it a look so scathing it’s a wonder the thing doesn’t melt.

  Shifting uncomfortably in my seat, I practice the slow breathing again as I try to figure out why I overshared with the therapist. I guess getting the truth out of me is her job, but still, I can’t believe I blathered on like that. Could that incident at the airport really be the root cause of my fear of public speaking? It was the first thing that popped into my head when she asked about it, but if that’s the case, does that mean this realization will help me eventually speak (and more importantly, perform effects) in front of large groups of people?

  The phone doesn’t stop ringing, so Lucretia picks up.

  “It’s the ambulance,” she tells me, and the way she says it, it sounds like she just barely omitted an f-word.

  “Oh, I don’t think I need that anymore,” I say, my face heating up with remembered embarrassment.

  “I concur, but Nero insists.”

  “Fine,” I say, getting up.

  “Before you go…” She stands up and looks at me intently. “You should see me again, so we can finish this session. And please, consider seeing me regularly going forward.”

  “I thought you only saw traders,” I blurt out.

  “My services are available to everyone in Nero’s employ,” she says, arching her sharply defined eyebrows. “I’m here to make sure everyone functions optimally—especially the people he takes interest in.”

  “Okay.” I look into the depths of Lucretia’s lapis-blue eyes and wish we really did look alike.

  The phone rings again, and with the look she gives it, I half expect her to rip it out of the desk.

  “I’d better go,” I say, careful not to commit to returning. I have to think long and hard about whether I’m comfortable seeing a therapist on a regular basis, especially at a job I consider transient.

  “I hope to see you soon,” she says instead of a goodbye. She must’ve detected some of my reluctance.

  In a daze, I make my way downstairs before the ambulance people come up. I hope I can get them to go away before the whole firm learns about my embarrassing incident.

  Nero is downstairs, talking to an EMT guy. I catch Nero’s gaze, and I could swear he momentarily looks relieved. Then his usual arrogant expression is back, and I decide I must’ve imagined it.

  “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” I say, doing my best not to sound like a petulant child.

  “You fainted in front of half of Wall Street,” Nero says. “If I don’t send you to get checked out, my lawyers will never let me hear the end of it.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say that before? Making lawyers happy is my life’s ambition. I’ve been slipping them Zoloft for months now, but if they require me to go to the hospital too…”

  The EMT guy chuckles, and Nero gives him a stern glare.

  I’m not sure why I’m even fighting Nero on this. Even going to the hospital is more fun than my usual day here at the office—and here is my boss, pretty much ordering me to slack off. Then I remember one reason why I need to be by my desk.

  “I destroyed my phone earlier, when I tried to bring you up to speed on the way here,” I tell Nero.

  “How can I forget?” he says, his face noticeably darker. “I thought you crashed at first; then I realized what really happened.”

  “Well, the vet might call my desk number and—”

  “Right. The cat.” He sounds like a zealot charging me with heresy.

  I frown at him. “Yes, the cat. What, are you allergic?”

  “I’m allergic to absurdity.” Nero reaches into his pocket, takes out a phone that’s a replica of the one I broke, fiddles with it for a minute, and hands it to me.

  I reluctantly take the phone. It’s the same Android model that everyone at the fund gets on their first day at work—something to do with securing our correspondence. Like everyone else, I use mine for calls outside of work in order to avoid carrying multiple phones.

  “But this is yours,” I tell Nero, looking at the EMT guy for support and getting none.

  “I’ll have Venessa get me another.” Nero waves his hand dismissively, like the two grand these phones cost is but a penny to him. “She will also route your desk calls to this number.”

  “Sounds like I’m going to the hospital then,” I say and surreptitiously check if he left any of his emails or texts in the phone. Unfortunately, the device is reset to factory defaults, which must be what Nero did when he was fiddling with it.

  “Here.” He hands me a wad of bills. “Hospitals are expensive.”

  I gape at the money in shock. “I have health insurance.”

  “There’s a deductible,” Nero says, his eyes narrowing. “Take the cash.”

  I stuff the money into my pocket, mumble a thanks, and storm out of the building, the EMT guys on my tail.

  Before someone can suggest I get on a stretcher or something equally humiliating, I beeline for the ambulance, jump into it, sit down on a bed, and practice the breathing technique Lucretia just taught me.

  The trip to the hospital is as useless as I expected it to be. My heart and brain are scanned via various methods, and the verdict is that I’m as healthy as a grass-fed, free-range, organic, non-GMO horse.

  On my cab ride back to the office
, I make the new phone completely mine by logging into all accounts to set up my email and other minutia. I then call the vet and learn that the key is out of Lucifur’s stomach and she’s now recovering from anesthesia. They assure me they’ll call when I can pick up the cat after work.

  Back at work, I run to the cafeteria and grab a giant salad for lunch, so I can eat it at my desk as I research a couple of pharmaceutical companies we’re thinking about adding to our portfolio.

  The call from the vet comes at 8:30 p.m. as I’m eating a bean burrito for dinner.

  Lucifur is finally ready for pickup.

  I quickly wolf down my food and head for the elevator, ignoring the half-envious, half-dirty looks of my coworkers. They’re probably going to work for at least a couple more hours, but then again, they care about their careers and I don’t.

  Obeying speed limits and traffic lights, I zoom on my Vespa toward Chinatown. I’m a few minutes from my destination when the Spidey sense that saved me earlier raises a new alarm.

  My breathing turns fast and shallow, but I don’t utilize Lucretia’s calming techniques—if I’m about to crash, I want to be alert so I can avoid it.

  The problem is that I don’t see any dangerous scenarios in front of me.

  I drive super carefully for a couple of frantic heartbeats until I realize what’s going on.

  The danger is behind me.

  A silver Dodge Charger is following me much too closely.

  Chapter Ten

  If I had to bet my life on it, which is sort of the case right now, I’d say that the driver of the Charger is trying to catch up with me so he can steamroll over my scooter.

  Hoping that I’m just being paranoid, I switch lanes.

  The Charger switches into my lane.

  Figuring a little detour would be a small price to pay to lose the idiot, I make a sharp right turn.

  In my mirror, I see the Charger appear behind the corner.

  Could this still be some weird coincidence?

  Speeding up, I feel the bean burrito like a cold piece of granite in my stomach.