January 20xx
The day began like any other: coffee too bitter, sky too grey, silence too complete.
In the mirror above my bathroom sink, I looked like a man prepared for routine. Dark coat. Pressed collar. A clinical face. But the mask was cracking—I saw it in the way my eyes refused to settle, darting like moths toward places they didn't belong. My reflection felt foreign, falsely animated.
I told myself it was grief.
---
At 9:00 a.m., I walked into my office on Rue des Dames. Neutral walls, filtered winter light, the faint scent of bergamot lingering from the diffuser. The space was curated to soothe. Warm, unthreatening. A place where people said the things they couldn't say anywhere else.
But that morning, I couldn't shake the feeling that I no longer belonged there.
Three patients were scheduled, one wouldn't arrive. And I knew, long before the clock confirmed it.
Elodie Martin's chair remained empty.
She'd never missed a session—not in two years. Chronic depressive disorder, early childhood trauma, survivor's guilt, a once-promising ballerina until the car accident that ruined her spine and left her spirit limping. Still, she came every week. Rain or shine, relapse or reprieve. Until today.
I waited ten minutes....Fifteen....
The office was too quiet, the walls absorbed everything.
Two days ago, she left a voicemail. I'd played it again that morning, holding my breath like it might change on the sixth listen.
"Thank you for helping me find my voice again, Dr. Noirel. I've made peace with everything now. I'm finally ready to go."
Those words should have pierced through denial. But part of me still clung to hope—delusional, clinical, cruel.
The call from the police came at 10:37 a.m.
They had found her that morning in her apartment. Warm bath, empty bottle. A folded note, no visible distress, no sign of struggle. Just a final statement, two lines written in looping script:
The silence was too loud,
Tell him I danced.
I sat motionless at my desk for several minutes. Then I stood, closed the file on her name, and placed it back in the drawer.
---
That should've been the end of it.
But guilt doesn't end—it burrows.
The next patient arrived on time. I greeted him with the same flat calm I'd used for years. Smiled, asked the usual questions.
"How have you been sleeping?"
"Any changes in appetite?"
My voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. He talked about dreams and tension headaches. I nodded, took notes, and said all the right things.
But I wasn't there, not really.
I was still seeing it—her apartment, the bathroom, the tub.
The note
Reading those two lines again and again.
Tell him I danced.
---
When the final session ended, I didn't move. The office emptied like a theatre after curtain call—chairs askew, the scent of people still clinging to the room, but no presence. No life, only me.
And her absence.
I stared at the empty chair across from mine until the light in the room began to shift. Late afternoon cast golden lines across the floor, sharpening the shadows. The room suddenly felt unfamiliar, like a replica of a place I had once trusted. I pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose. My breath came shallow.
That was when I opened the drawer again—not for Elodie's file, but for something older.
A leather-bound journal.
I hadn't touched it in years. Not since the beginning of my practice, when I still believed documenting my thoughts might offer clarity. I opened to a blank page, touched the pen to paper.
Then stopped.
What was there to write?
That I had failed?
That I was tired of holding the pain of others while ignoring the rupture in myself?
That I'd built my career on deciphering grief, and still couldn't recognize when it sat in the room with me?
My hand trembled, I closed the journal.
I remember standing suddenly—too fast. The chair clattered to the floor behind me. The lamp on the desk shuddered, then tipped. The framed diploma slipped sideways against the wall. I stood in the center of the room, fists clenched, pulse roaring in my ears.
No scream left my throat, but the sound lived in me. Coiled and desperate.
"Elodie," I whispered to the empty air.
"I'm so sorry."
No answer came.
---
Outside, the city continued without me. Paris in winter is a quiet machine—trains passing, conversations bleeding through café windows, life exhaling around you without pause. I watched it all through the glass and felt like a ghost observing a world he'd already left behind.
That night, I typed out a formal leave of absence.
Indefinite, no explanation.
Claudine, my assistant, would handle the calls. My colleagues wouldn't ask questions, not directly. I had always been composed, pofessional and unshakable. They would assume burnout, compassion fatigue. The weight of too many lives tethered to mine.
But the truth was simpler.
I had come to the end of something. And I could not stay and pretend otherwise.
I packed lightly, the old journal. A single bag, a bottle of red wine from the family vineyard I hadn't visited in years. My body moved on instinct—closing drawers, switching off lights, locking the door behind me.
Outside, the rain had started early.
It fell without thunder, without ceremony.
I let it soak through my coat as I walked. Past familiar streets, past patients' apartments and cafés where I used to read alone between sessions. The cold settled into my bones, but I didn't mind. In fact, I welcomed it.
Somewhere in the distance, a church bell rang.
I did not turn back.