Page 1 of The Last Session

Prologue

This is a womb.

That’s the image I cling to now, the only one that keeps me from screaming.

My voice has long since gone. My throat is raw and burning and I keep bending over the ledge, cupping the cold water to my mouth to soothe it. I drink until my belly distends and I vomit most of it back up. There’s no comfortable position, but it feels best to squeeze myself into a ball, listening to the rushing water thundering through the tiny chamber.

Right over there, much too close, is the body. Normally, it remains underneath the water, waterlogged, but every so often the current pushes it back up. The water’s cold, so it’s decomposing slowly, but there’s still a stench.

Since I first explored this place by touch, I was confused when my fingers met the rancid, jelly-like mass. Then I realized what was in here with me. At that moment sheer horror overtook me and I tried to force myself back through the tunnel I’d come out of, almost drowning myself in the process. Sputtering, swallowing, coughing. The current was superhuman, pushing me back like a hand. I knew even as I struggled that it was pointless. I was trapped.

How long have I been down here? There’s no way to know, but it feels like days, weeks. After the initial shock and terror, anger started buzzing through my body, battling with the cold that numbed my fingers and toes. I replayed the scene over and over: standing at the lip of the hole with the others, my chest squeezing in sadness and fear. I hadn’t wanted her to go in. But it was what she’d decided. Only: she tricked me. They all did. As she walked up behind me, I didn’t even turn. And then: two warm palms on my lower back, shoving me into the swirling void.

Eventually, hunger overtook the anger, steak knives stabbing intomy belly. But that receded too. I think you can survive a long time on just water, and I have all the water in the world. I drink where it comes out, away from the corpse.

Now, the cold: that’s what will probably kill me. I knew it was important to dry off on the ledge, but even now, I continue to shiver. Sometimes it stops, starts again, like I’m a faulty machine.

The darkness is the worst part, even more than the cold, but I’ve gotten used to it too. Now it feels like a velvety sleep mask, helping me to drift in and out of consciousness. There’s no night or day. Just slow seconds that tick by whenever I happen to be awake.

My mind has become very still, empty, like a flat pond. Every so often the claustrophobic reality breaks the surface: the awareness of the tons of solid rock surrounding me, that immense weight pressing in from all sides. When this happens, all I can do is shriek and keen into my hands. My fingers, scraped and bloody, burn from the salty tears.

New thoughts arise:This isn’t a cave. This is a womb. I am not yet born. I do not yet exist. All I have to do is wait.

They’re soothing and help me drift back to sleep.

At some point, something new happens. Under the rush of water, I hear a voice. At first it’s a whisper, a hiss by my ear that sounds so real I sit up and hit my head on the rock ceiling.

But no—of course there’s no one else here. There isn’t room.

It’s just me. My own mind, turning on me.

But it’s weird—isn’t it?—that I can’t quite make out the words. A phrase repeated, either:Are you the savior?orWill you save her?The whispers are sibilant, snakelike.

Savior/save her?

Save what? Save who?I dwell on the question, lazily, like a stoned person pausing in a stream to pick up an interesting rock. The whispers multiply, meld. Eventually, they become a symphonic kind of lullaby. I drop the interesting rock and lie down in the stream. It’s warm, and the sun shines overhead. Something slips against my calf, smooth and scaly. I shiver, wishing it away.

You’re not done yet.

The same voice, this time warning in a clear tone. But Iamdone. My mind is shunting inward, slipping out of my grasp, like a phone dropped down a deep well. Right before I turn off completely, I wonder if it’s the next life, tapping on my knee, waiting for me to be reborn.

Part One

1

“Why don’t we draw our greatest fears?” Ace cocked his head as he handed me back the stack of computer paper. “Or is that too dark?”

“That’s an idea.” Uncertain, I took my own sheet and set the stack neatly to the side.Wasit too dark? I’d been thinking of asking the art therapy group to draw their favorite meal, but knew Ace and Lydia would reject it immediately. I was running out of ideas. There was only so much you could do with crayons, the sole approved materials: blunt, soft, safe.

“Don’t ask me about those, honey.” Lydia swept back her gray-streaked mane. She looked like a well-kempt Upper East Sider, incongruous with the sights and sounds of a public hospital’s inpatient psychiatric unit. “That’s a door you really don’t want to open.”

“Why not? Come on! You need to face your fears head-on.” Ace spun a red crayon in his fingers. “Right, Dr. Thea? Aren’t you always saying that?”

“Ace, you know I’m not a doctor.” I’d told him this multiple times to no avail. My coworker Amani had warned me during his first hospitalization, but being a naïve newbie, just off my two-year social work program, I hadn’t listened. Ace had seemed so friendly, sopleasant. But in addition to manic episodes that caused him to think he had to save the world from human-presenting aliens, he also had a sixth sense for messing with you.

“MissThea,” he corrected amiably, scratching the back of his shaved head.

“And when do I say that?” A bead of sweat rolled down my chest. Outside, the March sky was frigid, gray, and rain-speckled, but in this wing it was always sohot.

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