Page 13 of The Last Session

“To wake up,” I said softly.

A rustling: Catherine’s hand was moving against the paper. My body went rigid as I watched her fingers close around the pen.

But she was holding it wrong—grasping it like a baton, the tip facing up.

I moved to correct the pen’s placement, my mouth forming words—Wait, let me—when the pen flew upwards at my throat.

8

I scrambled back, leaping off the bed and pressing myself against the wall. Catherine’s face was suddenly a blotchy red, her teeth bared, and she wielded the pen like a knife.

“You tricked me!” she cried. “How could you do that to me?”

Even in the rush of shock and fear, I marveled at the familiar throaty voice.

“Catherine, wait.” I held up my hands. “I didn’t do anything—”

“You tricked me!” She took a step forward, and I darted towards the door, shouting: “Security!”

“It should’ve been you! It should’ve beenyou!” She lowered her head and ran at me. I raced into the hallway, where a small crowd of patients was already gathering. I had a split second of unreality—Catherine O’Brien is chasing me, seriously?—before she jumped on my back. We both hit the ground, and I managed to wrench the pen from her grip and shove her off. She sprang back onto me, pinning my shoulders to the ground. Tears poured down her cheeks as she shrieked, the words unintelligible. Then she looked up, jumped to her feet, and took off down the hallway.

“Run, bitch, run!” one of the watching patients called out.

Catherine was nearly at the doorway when her bare feet slipped. Her head connected with the metal doorframe, and she sank to the ground with a moan.

Security guards Frank and Caleb appeared and bent over her. Catherine reanimated—punching, kicking, and screaming—until Nurse Femi managed to stick a needle in her arm to sedate her. In the sudden silence, the ghosts of Catherine’s shrieks still rang in the air.

“Thea.” Amani kneeled next to me and pointed at the front of my button-down shirt. Somehow in the struggle it had ripped open and my nude bra was visible.

“Oh.” I closed it, aware of the patients surrounding us.

“I have an extra T-shirt in my locker.”

“Thanks.” I was shaking. I got up and strode to the group around Catherine. A small trail of blood streamed from her head onto the gray tile.

Femi turned to me. “We paged the medical rapid-response team. They should be here in a minute.”

“You all right?” Frank asked.

“I’m fine.” The fear and adrenaline pumping through my system would say otherwise. I stared down at the now-unconscious Catherine, who looked like she was peacefully sleeping.

What the fuck had just happened?

“Okay, show’s over!” Amani clapped. “Let’s clear the hall, everyone.”

“Damn, Dr. Thea.” There was Ace, chewing gum and smiling. “Was it something you said?”

The rapid-response team took Catherine to the medical unit for testing, including a CT scan, when she awoke. For the rest of the day, staff and patients alike kept asking me to rehash what had happened, and I responded that I really didn’t know (staff) or that I couldn’t talk about it (patients). But any psych unit is filled with constant activity, and though shaken and bruised, I slipped back into work mode surprisingly easily.

It wasn’t until I was on the subway home that the feelings of disquiet and disbelief rushed back. I watched myself in the reflection of the subway car’s window. It was blurry and smeared, enough that I could imagine myself looking at Catherine.

Somehow Diane and I confronting Catherine with her name and identity had 1) snapped her back into reality and 2) caused her to attack me. I couldn’t get her eyes, shining with a mixture of anguish and fury, out of my mind. She’d thought I was someone else—but who? What did she think I’d done?

You tricked me!

It should’ve beenyou!

I pulled out my phone at the next subway stop and googled Catherine when the cell service kicked in. Her Wikipedia page shared the basics: that Catherine was the only child of writer and director Killian O’Brien and actress/model Lisette O’Brien. That she’d grown up in LA and had been acting since she was a baby, first in commercials, then in a two-season sitcom. She’d been in various movies throughout herchildhood, and at eleven was still acting in ensemble casts; her first lead role was in her father’s movieStargirl, which came out when she was thirteen.

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