I had not allowed myself to imagine him.
Four months of research, application materials, and intake documentation, and I had deliberately left the space where his face should be empty. Clinical self-preservation. You cannot prepare for something you have not pre-constructed, and I did not want to arrive having already decided what he was.
I had been disciplined about this. I had been thorough.
It had not helped.
He was the kind of precise that therapists learn to watch carefully — the precision of someone who had decided, at some point, that controlled presentation was cheaper than exposure. I recognised it because I had made the same decision. Dark hair, a jaw that suggested he had learned not to clench it in front of people. His eyes were the only thing that moved freely. But his eyes weren't cold. They were observational. Pale gray, the color of fog over water, and just as impossible to read. The eyes of someone who saw patterns in chaos.
He wore black, simple trousers, a fitted shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. No tie. No pretense.
"Dr. Kaelen." His voice was low, controlled, with the faintest trace of Norwegian softened by years elsewhere. "Thank you for your patience. The weather delayed your arrival by thirty minutes."
Patience? I'd just signed away three months of my life to a stranger.
"It's fine," I said, wishing I sounded less uncertain.
He gestured to a chair—white leather, low-backed, positioned across from a matching one—and waited until I sat before taking his own seat. The room was warmer than the corridor. Precisely warmer. I noted it the way I noted everything here: as a choice someone had made deliberately. The distance between us was calculated. Close enough to feel intimate. Far enough to maintain formality.
"You've read The Protocol," he said. Not a question.
"Twice," I replied.
A flicker of something crossed his face. Approval, maybe. Or amusement. "Then you understand the structure of the twelve weeks. The first four weeks are diagnostic. I observe your baseline responses—physical, emotional, and psychological. Sessions are scheduled three times per week, increasing in intensity according to your Cadence."
There it was. The first Praxis term, used aloud. Cadence. The rhythm of my unraveling.
"I understand," I said.
"Do you?" He leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees, fingers steepled. "Understanding intellectually is different from understanding viscerally. You're a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist. You know this better than most."
Heat crawled up my neck. He was right, of course. I'd spent years teaching patients the difference between cognitive insight and emotional integration. Knowing why you were anxious didn't make the panic attacks stop. Knowing why you self-sabotaged didn't prevent you from doing it again.
"That's why I'm here," I said, meeting his gaze. "Because intellectual understanding hasn't been enough."
He studied me for a long moment, and I forced myself not to look away. This was a test. Everything here would be a test.
"Tell me," he said finally, "what you hope to achieve."
I'd rehearsed this answer on the flight. I'd written it in my application. But sitting across from him now, the practiced phrases felt hollow.
"I want to understand surrender," I said slowly. "Real surrender. Not the performative kind. Not the kind that's just another form of control."
His expression didn't change.
"And why do you believe you need to understand that?" He asked.
The question arrived before my prepared answer had anywhere to go. I didn't answer for a moment. Not because I didn't know — because I hadn't expected to be asked.
"Because I'm tired," I said, and the honesty surprised me. "I'm tired of being the one who holds everything together. I'm tired of managing, analyzing, and fixing. I'm successful. I'm respected. I have a career I built myself. And I feel nothing. That is the whole of it."
The last word came out raw, stripped of the professional veneer I usually wore like armor.
Meric nodded slowly. "The paradox of control," he said. "The more you refine it, the more it costs you."
My throat tightened. He'd articulated in two sentences what I'd been circling for years.
"Yes," I whispered.
"Then we have a foundation," he said, sitting back. "The Praxis might be uncomfortable." A pause. "If that becomes a problem, the helicopter can be arranged within the hour."
The ultimatum hung between us.
I thought about the helicopter on the landing pad. I thought about my empty apartment in Boston, the calendar on my desk filled with patients' names, the dinner invitations I'd declined because I couldn't bear another evening of pretending to be present.
I thought about the flat, unresponsive nothing that had no name.
"I'm not leaving," I said.
He didn't look away. I catalogued that — the quality of his attention, which was not the performed intensity of someone trying to demonstrate control, but something quieter and more deliberate. The attention of someone deciding. Then he reached to the side table and retrieved a slim black folder.
"The Protocol," he said, opening it. "Clause 4.2: You surrender all personal communication devices. Clause 7.3: I maintain clinical objectivity. Emotional attachment is prohibited. Clause 12.1: Upon contract completion, all contact ceases for thirty days." He paused. "Do you have questions?"
"Just one," I said. "Clause 7.3. If emotional attachment is prohibited, what happens if it occurs anyway?"
For the first time, something moved across his face that had nothing to do with the session. His eyes dropped to the folder. A single beat — less than a second — before they returned to mine.
"Then the contract is terminated immediately," he said, voice quieter now. "The methodology fails if boundaries are compromised."
The air between us shifted—became heavier, more charged. The rule existed not just to protect the client, but to protect him. Which meant he'd seen it happen before. And maybe he knew exactly how dangerous it could become.
And I'd just asked him about it in the first five minutes.
His eyes held mine a beat too long. "Any other questions, Dr. Kaelen?"
I should have said no. Instead, I heard myself say: "Not yet."
He produced a pen—black, expensive—and slid it across the table along with the signature page.
I picked it up. The weight of it felt absurd. A pen shouldn't feel this heavy.
"Once you sign," Meric said, his voice quieter now, "you belong to the Praxis. Not to me. To the process. I am simply the facilitator. Do you consent?"
'You belong to the Praxis.' The phrase arrived in my chest before my frontal cortex had finished parsing the language. I was already aware of the warmth. I filed it: data point. Returned to the page. I signed.
Meric took the folder, closed it, and stood. "Vigdis will show you to your suite. You have forty-eight hours before our first session. Use that time to settle in. Read the Session Guidelines in your welcome packet. Rest."
He extended his hand.
I stood and took it. His grip was firm, warm, and deliberately measured. But when our palms touched, my pulse kicked—a sharp, unmistakable acceleration that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the way his thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist.
He felt it. I knew he did. The slight pause before he released me confirmed it.
"Welcome to the Praxis Institute, Dr. Kaelen," he said.
And then he let go.
Vigdis led me through a series of corridors, each one as pristine and impersonal as the last, until we reached a door marked with a small brass number: 3.
"Your suite," Vigdis said, pressing her palm to a biometric panel. The door clicked open. "Meals are delivered at seven, noon, and six. If you need anything, use the intercom. Do not attempt to leave the East Wing without permission."
"Understood," I said.
She studied me for a moment—the same assessing look she'd given me on the landing pad—and I wondered what she saw. A woman who had made a deliberate choice. Or a woman who had made a deliberate choice and was only now understanding what that meant.
"Good luck, Dr. Kaelen," she said and left.
I stepped inside.
The suite was beautiful in the same austere way as the rest of the Institute. A large window overlooked the fjord. A bed with white linens. A desk. A chair. A door that presumably led to a bathroom. Everything I needed. Nothing I didn't.
On the desk sat a black binder labeled SESSION GUIDELINES and a sealed envelope with my name written in precise handwriting.
I opened the envelope first.
Inside was a single card.
The first rule of Praxis: You will learn that control is not power. Power is the choice to surrender it.
— M.S.L.
I read it three times.
Then I walked to the window and stared out at the black water, the mist rolling in like a living thing, and I let myself feel the full weight of what I'd done.
I was here. I'd signed the contract. In forty-eight hours, I would sit across from Meric Solvang-Lykke in whatever space he'd chosen for our first session, and I would begin the process of dismantling everything I'd ever believed about myself.
And the terrifying part—the part that made my pulse race and my hands shake—was that I wanted it.
I wanted to be unmade.
Because I had run every other variable and arrived here. That was not hope. That was the process of elimination.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and stayed there until my breath had fogged it completely.
Then I went to the desk. I picked up the card. I did not read it again — I had it already, the exact weight of each word. I turned it over in my hands instead.
Meric Solvang-Lykke had held this. Had written on it. Had chosen these words for me specifically, before he knew anything about me except what I had written in forty-seven pages.
I set it down.
I did not sleep for a long time.