The Last Session

The door opened at 6:17, rushed and chaotic. The clock, however, still read 5:47. It had stopped half an hour ago, but she hadn't bothered. No need to waste a battery on just one session.

Dr. Evelyn Reeves set down her pen and straightened in her chair, a gesture so automatic she barely registered it anymore. Thirty-four years of such adjustments. The cardigan needed straightening too. She did that.

"I'm sorry I'm late," the woman said, "Traffic."

Reeves smiled. The smile she'd perfected across three decades, accompanied by a gesture of the hand towards the chairs that occupied the center of the room. "It's fine. Please, sit."

At the doorway, the woman paused. Placing her purse and raincoat on the small table near the door. Her mouth curled into a subtle frown as her gaze moved across the room: the emptied bookshelf, the cardboard box beneath the window. She removed her gloves as she spoke. "Going somewhere?"

"Retiring, actually," Reeves said. "Today is my last day."

The woman nodded slowly and moved to the chair across from Reeves with the deliberate care of someone navigating a space whose architecture seemed to matter. She sat. Crossed her legs. Uncrossed them.

Reeves flipped open her notebook writing a few quick notes she remembered from their phone call. Important context for their session:

Claire, female, mid-30s, presented over phone in acute psychological crisis secondary to recent maternal bereavement. Client endorsed significant symptoms of depression and complicated grief. Speech was observed as pressured, and affect appeared labile, indicating an acute state of distress requiring immediate therapeutic stabilization and comprehensive risk assessment.

This mismatch between the phone call and the woman before her was clear enough, but crisis didn't always arrive disheveled. If someone needed to frame their need as an emergency to justify asking for help, it was one.

Reeves laced her fingers resting them on the notebook in her lap. she glanced at the intake form on the table, half the fields left blank, just a name and phone number. "I appreciate you coming, Claire," she said. "Why don't you tell me what brings you here today?"

Claire opened her mouth. Closed it. The afternoon light, already thin, was leaving the room as the sound of gentle raindrops tapped the window.

Claire began to speak. Her voice was steady. Guarded. "I... wish I could just talk to my mother today," she said with sigh.

"I understand." Reeves said as she scribbled notes and observations with a steady practiced hand.

"She is..." Claire laughed nervously, then shook her head as if giving up on a thought. "Sorry. That's not where I meant to start. I just don't understand... why... and now..." her words slowed. "It's too late."

Reeves underlined the tense 'is' in her notes. "Go on."

* * *

Claire spoke the way people did when they'd rehearsed something until it lost its shape. She was fluent, detached, as if reciting someone else's story.

"She worked constantly," Claire said. "My mother. She was devoted to her work. That's what everyone said. Devoted. She was always helping people." She stopped. "Sorry, I really shouldn't get into it."

"You're doing fine," Reeves said gently. "Take your time."

"I used to wait, you know. After school. I had this yellow raincoat. It was one of those rare shopping trips where it was just the two of us. It was a glossy bright yellow and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I owned because a girl on TV had one just like it." Claire's hands moved to her lap, fingers finding each other. "I work it constantly. Even when it wasn't raining. I think..." She stared towards the window. The sound of rain rapped gently outside. "I think I thought if I wore it enough... She'd remember the day we bought it." She trailed off. "Remember me in it."

Reeves continued her notes without looking up. "That's a very evocative image," she said. "The raincoat. Many clients describe similar objects. Things that become symbols of their waiting. It's a common way for children to externalize the absence."

Something shifted in Claire's face. Just for a moment. A flicker of something Reeves tried to identify. Maybe the disappointment of hearing your wound described as ordinary. A hard truth for some.

"Common," Claire repeated.

"Universal even," Reeves gestured with her pen, a small inclusive motion that ended in several taps on her notebook. "The patterns are well-documented."

Claire was quiet. Outside, the rain had thickened, rattling the window in irregular bursts. When she spoke again, her voice changed. Still controlled, but with something fragile beneath the surface. A hairline fracture in her composure. They were getting somewhere.

"She missed my sixth birthday," Claire said, picking at her fingernails as she spoke. "Someone in crisis. She missed my tenth, too. I stopped expecting her after that. But I kept the raincoat in my closet until I was seventeen. I don't even know why I'm bringing all this up."

"Because it mattered," Reeves said, her voice calm. "Because it still matters."

Claire looked up then. The first time she'd met Reeves' eyes directly since sitting down. The look lasted only for a second, searching, almost hungry. Then it was gone, and she was studying her hands again.

"Yes," Claire said quietly. "It still does." She looked back towards the door and wiped a tear from her cheek onto her sleeve.

Progress.

* * *

They were now approaching the forty-minute mark, and Reeves found herself glancing at the clock more often than she should. It was still frozen at 5:47. The dead face on the wall offered no help. She checked her watch instead: ten minutes left. Her last session. Her last ten minutes as Dr. Evelyn Reeves.

Clair was talking about expectations now, and all the needs her mother had failed to meet.

"You learn to perform wellness," Claire's voice became clear. "You learn that your feelings are... that everything you do is... being observed. Being analyzed. You can't just be angry. You must identify why. You can't just be sad. You must identify the root." She paused. "At least, that's how it felt."

"A loss of privacy," Reeves offered. "The sense that authenticity was impossible because every emotional display was scrutinized."

"Yes. Exactly." Claire leaned forward. "And the worst part is, you start doing it to yourself. You can't just feel anymore. You have to understand the why behind every feeling, what it means, where it's coming from, ask yourself what pattern you're repeating. You can't just trust your own feelings anymore. You become..." She stopped, her jaw tightening. "She made me into a patient." She swallowed, her eyes stared back at Reeves with a watery intensity. "I wasn't a daughter, I was a patient."

Reeves tapped her pen lightly against the paper, a small, involuntary delay. Before returning her gaze to her notebook. "Your mother was in a clinical profession?"

"Yes..." Claire hesitated. "A therapist, she was very good at helping other people's children."

Reeves noted the shift. You to I. "I noticed you sometimes use 'you' when describing your relationship with your mother. 'You learn to perform wellness' and 'You can't just be angry', then correct to 'I'. That's common in cases of complicated attachment. It's a kind of slippage that suggests the wound still feels present and immediate."

Claire stared at her.

"Transference, in a sense. The feelings are so unresolved that the 'I' is too personal. She's still actively present in your daily emotional architecture."

"She's still present," Claire repeated, and something in her voice made Reeves look up from her notes.

For a brief, disorienting instant, she felt a sense of familiarity and an unwelcome echo of an old argument. Five minutes. She could begin the gentle work of closing the session in five minutes.

Reeves cleared her throat, "You were saying something about your mother being present?"

"Was I?" Claire's composure had thinned. "Choices were made and I want to understand them. I want to know..." The sentence fractured. She pressed her lips together and looked to the window.

Reeves waited. She could wrap up, offer a referral, shake hands, and wish Claire well and her last session would be over. Instead, she heard herself ask, "Know what?"

Claire didn't answer. Her hands were trembling now, a vibration she was clearly trying to suppress. When she finally did speak, she addressed the window, not Reeves.

"Did you even notice I was gone?" She asked as if talking directly to her mother.

Reeves gripped the armrests of her chair, a reflex she hadn't used in years. Her focus narrowed to the sound of the rain, anchoring herself. She ground her teeth and turned to her watch again, it was time to end the session.

"What I'm hearing," Reeves said, falling into her practiced cadence, "is a fundamental wound around visibility. You needed to be seen. And instead, you were observed." She paused, letting her words settle. "Your mother may have known you very well. But knowing didn't replace being present. And now that she's gone, you feel resentment about that."

Claire said nothing. Her hands had gone still in her lap.

"Children of helping professionals often describe this," Reeves continued. "The parents who can name the emotion, but don't participate in it." She leaned forward slightly, her voice softening. "Have you considered that your mother may have struggled with or been incapable of the intimacy you needed? Her absence wasn't a rejection of you, but a limitation of hers?"

Claire looked up. Her eyes bright and glossy. "You're saying it couldn't be helped?"

"I'm saying some people--especially in helping professions--develop frameworks for dealing with emotions because direct contact threatens their boundaries. The framework becomes a substitute for engagement."

"So... a defense mechanism?"

"You could call it that." Reeves sat back, satisfied. This was good work. The kind of synthesis that could take months to reach, arriving in the first session because the client was ready for it. "Your mother may have loved you very much. But love and presence aren't always the same thing."

Claire laughed. The sound was sharp, jarring, and without humor. Something about it twisted Reeves insides.

"That's very convenient," Claire said. "Very tidy." She kept her focus on the window. "You understood me but couldn't see me. You had limitations!" she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, hard enough that her voice came out distorted. "Christ! It's just the same exact excuse as before."

"It sounds like that observation is painful for you," Reeves said, hands continuing to scribble notes. She reached into her cardigan pocket and offered Claire a tissue from a packet.

Claire lowered her hands. Her mascara now smudged. She looked, for the first time, like someone who had come to therapy because she was on the verge of breaking.

"You have no idea," she said.

* * *

Reeves glanced at her watch. They were twenty minutes over and the rain still fell outside the now dark windows.

"I'm aware we're running long," Reeves said. "I want to be respectful of your time. Perhaps we should-"

"No. You're not listening." Claire interrupted.

The words came sharp, cutting across Reeves' professional tone like a slap.

"I've been listening for over an hour, Claire," Reeves said. "I-"

"No. You've been scribbling on paper and fit everything I've said into patterns we already know!" Claire's voice was shaking now. "I just wish... we could skip the cold clinical analysis."

Reeves felt her own defenses rise, "Clinical distance isn't coldness. It's what allows me to help you without-"

"Without what?" Claire interrupted again. "Without feeling anything? Without being present?"

"Without making your pain about me." Reeves parried, setting down her pen. "Clinical distance protects us both. Boundaries are what make real connections possible."

"Really?!" Claire snapped. "Or is it just you you're protecting? I've already heard it Evelyn. 'Boundaries make real connection possible.' Don't you think I heard it enough growing up?"

Something tore behind Reeves' sternum. A physical sensation, like a stitch giving way. Her hand moved to her chest before she could stop it.

"That phrase," Reeves said. "Your mother said that?"

"All the time. Every time I needed support, there was a boundary to discuss. Every time I needed more, we instead focused on why less was healthier." Claire's face was streaked with running mascara. "And the worst part? I believed it. I thought boundaries were how you kept other people save from the harm of your own emotions. And now, it's too late to fix it. Instead of talking to my mother, I'm here, just another patient again."

Reeves' hands became unsteady. Her notes blurred on the page. She blinked, bringing things back into focus.

"I can see this has touched something very deep," Reeves said. Her own voice sounding strange. "Perhaps we should-"

"Perhaps we should, what?" Claire interrupted again.

Reeves was startled. She stared at her notebook, hands clasped together, white knuckled. A single tear rolled down her cheek. "I... I'm sorry." She didn't look at Claire. "I'm retiring today, and I'm experiencing some unexpected grief of my own about that." She laughed uncomfortably pulling her own tissue from the packet. "Let's end our session here, Claire. But, for a first session I'm quite impressed. You made fantastic progress. As I told you, I'm retiring, so I'll be writing up my notes tonight and... and handing them off to... um... off to Dr. Sloane. I'll make sure she is up to speed so she can continue..."

Claire rested a hand on Reeves' trembling wrist then stood. The movement was slow, deliberate-not anger, something heavier. Resignation, maybe.

"I should go," she said. "I've taken too much of your time."

"Wait," Reeves stood too. "You called this morning because you were in crisis. Do you have support tonight?"

Claire's mouth twisted into a smile, but her eyes said it was a wound.

"I have people," she nodded. "I'm not going to hurt myself, if that's what you're asking."

"Claire," she heard herself say but the name felt strange in her mouth. Wrong, somehow. "I hope you find what you're looking for. Dr. Sloane will take great care of you."

Claire paused at the door. She collected her raincoat. Her gloves. Hefted her purse onto her shoulder.

“I had hoped that if I played along this time,” she said quietly, “you might hear me. I’m sorry to have upset you. Goodnight, Dr. Reeves,” she said, closing the door with a click behind her.

Reeves stood in the silence. The room felt larger. Emptier. She moved to the window, watching as the figure entered the parking lot. The sight struck her - a clean, sudden break in her reality. And there it was. The bright yellow raincoat, folded in Claire’s arms.

Not Claire. Margaret. The memory flashed: “I had this yellow raincoat… I thought if I wore it enough, she’d remember the day we bought it together.”

She gasped, clutching at her chest.

“Did you even notice I was gone?” The words echoed, no longer a patient’s grief; they were her estranged daughter’s final accusation.

How long had it been since they spoke? Guilt tore at her mind as she dredged up pieces of long buried memory. There had been one last voicemail. She couldn’t remember what it said, only that she didn’t return the call. Not returning the call was easier than whatever came before.

And now she was retiring, her daughter was grown. The guilt and shame of not having recognized her burned her insides. She watched Margaret cross the parking lot and climb into the driver's seat of a car. The headlights came on, but the car didn’t move.

“Margaret!” She screamed, abandoning the window. She left her office before she knew she was moving.

* * *

In the hallway, Mark sat on a short cushioned stool. The last visitor had left and they’d be rounding up the residents for dinner soon. He heard a shout and then the door to Room 304 swung open.

“Mrs. Reeves, you ok?”

“It was Margaret! I have to stop Margaret!” She gasped as she shuffled down the hall, her cardigan askew, her hands clutching at sheets of paper covered in chicken scratched scribbles.

Mark rose quickly, gently taking her elbow. “Visiting hours are over, Mrs. Reeves. Margaret will be back tomorrow. She just left.”

“No, no! I have to catch her before she leaves! She was trying to reconnect! I called her Claire! I was telling my own daughter that… Oh Margaret!” The last words were a cry, a desperate realization that momentarily cut through the fog.

“I’m sure she understands.”

“My last session,” she whispered. “I had to give Claire a referral to Dr. Sloane. I… I’m retiring today. And I confused Margaret with Claire…”

Mark held her arm. “That’s right, Mrs. Reeves. You retired long ago. Now, let’s go get something to eat. Are you hungry?”

The fog settled back over her mind. She nodded as he turned her slowly back down the hall. “I’m retiring, you know. That was my last session.”