That evening, long after Alan had gone and the building had fallen silent, Dr. Morgan sat alone in her office. The clock on the wall ticked steadily, but she didn’t seem to notice it. Her phone lay in her hand, Elise’s contact already pulled up on the screen.
She hesitated.
Then pressed call.
Elise answered almost immediately. “Morgan?”
There was a quiet pause before Dr. Morgan spoke. “He asked for you.”
Elise didn’t respond at first. “He… what do you mean?”
“He asked if you could join our next session. That the three of us could talk together.”
Another pause—this one heavier.
“And how did you respond?” Elise asked.
“I told him I would think about it,” Morgan said, her voice soft, careful. “But I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”
She could hear Elise exhale, slow and steady. “Morgan… how did it make you feel when he asked?”
Dr. Morgan swallowed, her breath catching slightly. Her thumb traced the seam of the chair’s armrest as if grounding herself. “Like something… shifted. Like there was a part of me that wanted to say yes. Immediately. Without hesitation. And another part that pulled back—afraid of what saying yes would mean, or reveal. It was like being split between impulse and caution all at once.”
Elise’s voice warmed, thoughtful. “That reaction matters. Maybe more than the request itself.”
Morgan let out a low breath, her voice barely above a whisper. “I keep seeing the three of us in the room. The way we’d sit. The questions that wouldn’t even need to be said out loud. The silence that would have weight to it. The tension… it wouldn’t be clinical. Not fully. It would be personal. Exposed. Like something underneath all of us would be watching the others.”
“No,” Elise agreed quietly, though her voice carried something more weighted than simplicity. “It wouldn’t be. It would be charged in a way that isn’t easily named—like a room where everyone knows something unspoken is happening, but no one says it first.””
Another beat passed—too long to be accidental.
“But I’m not rejecting it,” Elise added. “I just think we need to understand why he wants that… and why you didn’t dismiss it.”
Morgan pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, eyes closing. “Yes. That’s what scares me. I didn’t want to dismiss it.”
“Morgan,” Elise said gently, “maybe the question isn’t whether it scares you. Maybe it’s what, exactly, it’s waking up in you.”
The silence that followed was not avoidance. It was recognition. The women had silently accepted the group meeting.
In the days leading up to the joint session, all three felt the pull of something unspoken.
Alan moved through the week with quiet anticipation. The idea of both women—Dr. Morgan with her reflective composure, and Elise with her measured curiosity—sharing the same space with him felt like a convergence of everything he had been holding privately for years.
Dr. Morgan found her thoughts drifting more often than she liked. She caught herself imagining the seating arrangement, imagining the silence before the first question was asked.
Elise considered the theoretical structure of the session, but also the emotional dynamics. She was not afraid of the tension. She wanted to see it.
The joint session was scheduled for late afternoon, in one of the clinic’s larger conference rooms. The space was different from their usual offices—neutral, uncluttered, with a long table and several chairs. It felt less intimate, more formal, yet that formality only heightened the awareness of what might happen.
Alan arrived first. He sat near the center of the table, not at one end or the other—a deliberate choice. He wanted to be with them, not opposite them.
A few minutes later, Dr. Morgan entered. She carried her notebook, but held it loosely, as though she already knew she might not use it. Her eyes met Alan’s, and something in the way they looked at each other acknowledged that this session would not resemble the others.
Then Elise entered.
She did not rush. She did not hesitate. She simply arrived—her presence steady, grounded, observant. She took a seat beside Dr. Morgan, not across from her.
The three of them formed a quiet triangle of awareness.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Finally, Elise broke the silence—her tone gentle, open, without pretense.
“Alan,” she said, “I’d like to start by hearing from you. In your own words—what made you ask for this session? What did you hope might happen here?”
Alan breathed in slowly.
“I think,” he began, “that something important is happening between us. All of us. And I don’t want to ignore it. I want to understand it. I want to see it clearly.”
He looked at Dr. Morgan.
“Because what I told you… what I showed you… it didn’t just reveal something about me.”
He shifted his gaze to Elise.
“It revealed something in both of you. And I didn’t want to explore this alone.”
The room did not shift.
But the air did.
