Page 40 of Hello Stranger

Especially now.

“I’m sorry I missed all those appointments,” I said, now that I was finally here. “I didn’t want to leave my apartment.”

“I understand,” Dr. Nicole said.

I’m not going to lie. My life lately had me questioning everything. And Dr. Nicole Thomas-Ramparsad, Ph.D., just felt like a person who had all the answers.

“Nobody has all the answers,” she said when I told her that. “I’m just here to help you ask the right questions.”

Exactly what someone who had all the answers would say.

Her office was bright and breezy. It had a little bit of an Old Hollywood vibe to it, with plaster walls and a wrought-iron staircase rail. Big windows. A lazily spinning ceiling fan with basket-weave blades. Potted palms and rubber trees all around—and, outside the window, positively basking in the sunlight, a cheery forest of birds-of-paradise everywhere.

Dr. Nicole made us tea and brought me a slice of coconut bread—warm with melting butter. Did neuropsychologists bake bread for their patients? Was this a thing?

No matter. Dr. Nicole clearly made her own rules.

Plus, I was so starved for comfort, I didn’t care. My eyes filled with tears at my first bite.

“How is the facial perception?” she asked. “Any changes?”

I shook my head. No change at all.

“It may take some time,” she said. Then, “How are you coping?”

“I don’t think I’m going to win any coping trophies anytime soon,” I said.

I told her about feeling like I was on an alien planet. I told her about not feeling like myself. I told her about being so terrified of not recognizing people—and then running into Parker. I told her that Iwanted to be the kind of person who could think of prosopagnosia as a superpower—but I just didn’t know how to get there.

“Well,” she said, “getting there is the fun part.”

From anyone else, that would’ve been insulting.

I told her about trying to paint Sue’s portrait, and what a total disaster it had been, and how the thought that I’d worked so hard for so long only to finally get my big break and thentotally blow itwas keeping me up at night.

“Why do you want to win the competition so badly?” Dr. Nicole asked.

“Because it’s ten thousand dollars—and I’m broke.”

She nodded, like,Fair enough.“Any other reasons?”

“Because it could change my life,” I said.

Dr. Nicole waited, like she knew there’d be more.

“Because I could use some encouragement,” I said. “Because I’m ready to get something right. Because I’m just so tired of failing.”

That felt like a pretty big confession, right there.

But Dr. Nicole just waited, like there was more.

“I guess I should mention,” I said then, “that my mother was also a portrait artist. And she also placed in this same competition thirteen years ago. But she, um…” I took a sip of tea. “She died suddenly the week before the show.”

Dr. Nicole sat back in her chair.

Now, at last, I’d said something real.

“We should probably talk about that.”

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