The world goes silent.
The hearing room fades to a dull, buzzing gray.
All I can see is the manila file in his hands.
VOSS, ELARA: PEER SUPERVISION NOTES, CONFIDENTIAL.
My history.
My insecurities.
My private, professional doubts, shared in confidence with a trusted mentor.
Weaponized.
Turned into evidence against me in a public execution.
It is the most profound betrayal I have ever experienced.
Ms. Shaw is on her feet, her voice a whip crack in the silent room.
"Objection! This is an outrageous and unethical breach of confidentiality! These are not case notes! They are privileged communications between a supervisor and his student!"
Dr. Albright, the head of the board, looks down at her with cold indifference.
"Dr. Harrison has waived his confidentiality to bring a matter of grave public safety to this board's attention," she says, her voice a death knell. "The notes are admissible."
"This is a personal attack!" Maya yells from her seat next to me.
"Ms. Sanchez, you will be silent or you will be removed," Albright snaps.
I feel Theo's hand clench into a fist beside me.
The board calls for a one-hour recess to review the "new evidence."
The room erupts into chaos.
But I don't hear it.
I just stare at Dr. Harrison.
He avoids my gaze.
He just adjusts his tweed jacket, a mask of sorrowful duty firmly in place, and walks out of the room.
The man who taught me how to heal trauma has just become the single greatest trauma of my life.
The conference room at Sterling, Shaw, & Cohen feels like a bunker.
The mood is grim.
Defeated.
"They're going to use those notes to paint you as a master manipulator," Ms. Shaw says, pacing the length of the long mahogany table. "He'll twist every observation, every insecurity you ever shared with him, into a sign of predatory behavior."
"He's not just a consultant," Maya spits, her fingers flying across her laptop keyboard. "He's the star witness for the prosecution. This was his plan all along."
I just stare at the wall.
I feel… hollowed out.
Numb.
I spent years defending myself from the chaos of my patients.
I never thought I'd have to defend myself from the man who taught me how.
"No."
The word is quiet, but it cuts through the room.
It's me. I'm speaking.
My own voice sounds strange to me.
Harder.
Colder.
Everyone stops and looks at me.
"No more," I say, standing up. "We're done defending. We're done reacting to his moves."
I look at Theo.
Then at Maya.
At my new, expensive legal army.
"He thinks he's the one with all the secrets," I say, a cold fire starting to burn in my veins. "He's wrong. We are going to take a microscope to Dr. Alistair Harrison. We are going to find every skeleton in his closet, every dirty secret, every lie."
I point to the whiteboard at the end of the room.
"We're done building a defense," I say. "We start building a case. Against him."
For the first time in days, a flicker of hope enters the room.
It's not hope for an acquittal.
It's the hope for a good fight.
The hope for revenge.
Theo is the first to move.
He pulls out his phone.
"Dmitri," he says, his voice a low growl. "New target. Dr. Alistair Harrison. I want everything. I want to know what he eats for breakfast. I want to know every dollar he's ever spent. I want to know who he's sleeping with. I want a full-spectrum analysis of his entire life, and I want it yesterday."
He hangs up.
The hunt has begun.
For the next hour, we work.
We build a timeline.
We map out Harrison's life.
His career.
His publications.
His known associates.
It's a mountain of data.
A life of quiet, academic achievement.
"He's clean," one of the junior lawyers says, looking up from a background check. "No criminal record. No lawsuits. Not even a parking ticket."
"He's not clean," Maya mutters, her eyes glued to her screen. "People like this… they're never clean. They just know how to hide the stains."
She's not looking at public records.
She's deep in the sealed archives of legal and state licensing databases.
Places where the dirt gets buried.
She's been silent for twenty minutes, her face a mask of intense concentration.
Then, she stops typing.
Her eyes go wide.
"Holy shit," she whispers.
"What is it?" I ask, leaning forward.
"I'm in the Arizona State Licensing Board archives," she says, her voice hushed. "It was sealed. But I have a friend who owed me a favor."
She turns her laptop around.
On the screen is a legal document.
A formal disciplinary action.
Dated eight years ago.
The name on the action is Dr. Alistair Harrison.
My eyes scan the text.
The charge: Gross Negligence and Unethical Dual Relationships.
The details are sparse, but damning.
An affair with a patient.
A vulnerable young woman who had come to him for therapy for a personality disorder.
He exploited her.
Manipulated her.
And when he was caught, he "voluntarily" surrendered his license to practice in the state of Arizona to avoid a public hearing.
His license was permanently revoked.
The room is silent.
The man who is trying to ruin my career for an ethical breach…
Is a predator who committed the cardinal sin of our profession.
And got away with it by burying the evidence in another state.
"The hypocrite," Theo snarls.
"This is it," Ms. Shaw says, a slow, predatory smile spreading across her face. "This is the weapon we need. We can't submit it in the hearing, but we can leak it to the press. We can destroy his credibility before he even takes the stand again."
It's a lifeline.
A silver bullet.
But something is still bothering me.
"It doesn't explain his obsession," I say, thinking out loud. "His obsession with Theo. With Sarah."
"He's a predator who preys on vulnerable people," Maya says. "Sarah was a vulnerable person. Maybe he was trying to 'save' her from Theo so he could have her for himself."
"Maybe," I say. But it doesn't feel right.
I look at Theo.
He's staring at the picture of Harrison on the screen.
"I don't get it," he says quietly. "Sarah never mentioned this guy. Not by name. She just… she called her therapist Dr. A."
My blood runs cold.
Maya and I look at each other at the exact same time.
The same impossible, terrifying thought passing between us.
Dr. A.
Alistair.
"Theo," I say, my voice trembling. "When you told me the story about Sarah… in the secret room… you told me what happened. Her bipolar disorder. Her stopping the medication."
"Yeah," he says, looking at me, confused.
"How did you know all that?" I ask. "Did Sarah tell you?"
"No," he says. "She was hiding it from me, remember? I found out… after. I read her diary."
The final piece of the puzzle clicks into place.
A horrifying, sickening click.
"So you never actually spoke to her therapist?" I press.
"No," he says. "I never knew who it was. Not until you told me his name today."
My God.
I look at him.
This brilliant, powerful, broken man.
And I realize the entire story of his grief, the narrative that has shaped the last three years of his life, was based on an assumption.
It was based on the frantic, private diary entries of a woman in an untreated manic state.
He never had the full story.
He never had the clinical perspective.
But Harrison did.
He wasn't just a ghost in the background.
He was the gatekeeper.
The only one who knew what was really happening in Sarah Jenkins's mind.
"Theo," I say, my voice barely a whisper. "The version of events you've been living with… it's incomplete."
I take a deep breath, the full, horrifying weight of the situation crashing down on me.
"You've been mourning a story you read in a diary."
"But Harrison… he was there. He was her actual therapist."
"He holds the real story. The one we've never heard."