[Olive branch]

It is three minutes past five. I am fourteen years old. The lottery has been drawn; I am sitting outside a room now. Blue chairs, large imposing plants that lean right over me. Dr Goldman. The fun of this game of course being, I have no clue which of the five is mine. I do not know names. Goldman. Seven letters. I’d better hope she or he had an odd number of letters in the first name too. Drumming my hair along the chair I spotted my doctor, to my delight it was the tapping doctor; he rummaged for his keys for a moment, pausing only to smile gently at me. Eventually, he managed to open his own door and slid across the plastic plate that read Vacant or Engaged. With the room officially engaged, I was allowed in. The exterior was no better, the same blue, square chairs, three and one, his, on wheels.
“What is your first name?” I blurted out, unable to wait any longer and not observant enough to watch every piece of paper he drew out, each click of the computer screen for the name.
He smiled, and raised an eyebrow. “You first.” I couldn’t help but smile back, someone was playing my game. “I’m Jocelyn,” I said, and uncharacteristically stuck my hand out, the doctor took it, “Jonathon.” I immediately cursed inside, eight letters, oh well, at least he is a descending sequence of integers. “However,” he continued, “I would appreciate it if you could call me Dr Goldman.”
I lent back into the chair, raised my own eyebrow and nodded. He tapped his fingers on the table, seven times. The letters in my own name I wondered? Or his.
“So.” He began, interrupting my internal monologue, “would you like to tell me why you are here today Jocelyn.” Tapped fingers seven times. My name, it was my name I muttered to myself.
“I’m here,” I said, taking a deep breath, “because I think I am going to die.” Startled he drew his chair back from me, “Well that’s quite an assumption to make. Could you expand on it.”
In my own head I saw tens of conversations running out of my mouth, the weight, the cutting, bruising, the fears. I couldn’t say them, any of them, I was, for a moment muted. I didn’t give the words permission but they seemed to have a mind of their own. “It’s my mother’s fault.”
He didn’t raise his eyebrows. He didn’t move away or move forwards. He sat, like me, watching me try to control the barrage of emotions I felt. I felt, in no particular order, a wrenching guilt for what I had said, the relief of having someone else to blame, the tightening feeling in my chest that made me want to run, sadness an extreme kind, anger at myself and him, confusion but mostly I felt broken. It wasn’t an emotion, it was a sense of myself. It was my thin arms, the cuts along them like train tracks, or an unsteady line of dominos. Eventually, in all of the confusion, I began to cry. ‘I don’t cry. I just don’t.’ I thought as I felt the tears land on my arms, run along my nose and make dark splotches on my skirt.
I felt the need to confess my sins, and here he was, a doctor, as close to a priest as I was ever going to find.