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“I’m Lonely,” She Said
And he listened to her without judgment.
It was another day where Elizabeth Fairchild sat on a couch, waiting for her psychiatrist to make an appearance. She plucked at her nails, the cuticles irritating her, as she kept snagging on thoughts about her doctor. But he wasn’t really a friend, she knew well, far too caught up in his own professionalism to really look at her as anything more personal.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. “He’s married with kids. That’s not the kind of guy you want to tangle with.”
But she couldn’t help but be intrigued by him as she sat in his office. The plush emerald couch was soothing to the touch, even though it was unbearably impractical. She could imagine how other patients had been splayed across its fabric, spilling out secrets and tears alike as they poured out their inner turmoil in heavy sentences and lukewarm stanzas.
Daniel Morrison was a good man, she knew, from all the pictures hung around the room. In one, he cradled a Corgi in his arms; Elizabeth wished she could have known what the lucky dog’s name was. In another, he sat aboard a boat with two little girls pressed on either side of him as they all grinned at the camera. The one who had taken every photo? Daniel’s beloved wife Caroline.
