"Hello, Camila. How are you feeling today?" I ask as she's forced into the metal seat.

Her expression remains cold until the door closes behind the guards, when she looks up and offers me a miniscule smile.

"Bad. You?"

"I'm alright. Do you want to talk about how you feel?"

She shakes her head and tips it back, looking up into the fluorescent light. As much as I know I shouldn't, I take the moment to admire the strength of her jawline. Everything about her seems so soft, yet so powerful. Beneath her jaw, right where her chin joins her neck, I notice a long sliver of silvery scar tissue. My brows furrow at its placement; it's not the most common location of accidental injuries, after all. A vision of a blade pressed against her neck, biting into her skin, flashes through my mind and I wince; it isn't entirely unlikely. My gaze is distracted by the movement of her throat as she gulps. Unconsciously, I do the same.

After a moment, she licks her lips and looks back to me. Then, her eyes fall to the stack of papers on the desk and she frowns. "What's that?"

I've brought with me something I've found useful with some of my other patients as a means to properly understand their view of the world. I think it may prove especially useful with Camila; her mind is not quite like the others I'd worked with. While they may have been abused, it was not in ways she has been. While they may have been depressed, they'd never been so consistently suicidal. While I did care for them, they were a job. Camila feels like more. Plus, there's my curiosity to feed.

"I'm going to show you a series of comic excerpts. I'd like for you to tell me what you think they're about. Does that sound okay?"

She nods, evidently still confused, and I slide the first one over to her.

She looks down to the paper and her frown increases. "Um, there are no words."

"I know." I nod, watching her closely. Her fingers splay as she cracks her neck to the side.

"Well, how am I supposed to know what they're about if there are no words?"

When she looks at me with a look of irritated confusion, I lose my train of thought. Only when she raises a brow do I recall what she's asked. "Well, you uh, you have to interpret them. You have to draw conclusions from the images."

She still doesn't seem sure, but looks back down anyway, eyes flicking over each of the illustrations. Then, with all of the credence in the world, she states, "Well, he's a fucking idiot."

I lean a little closer, anxious for her explanation. "How so?"

"She's pretending to love him but she's wearing a wire. See?" She points to the fourth panel, the one that is technically supposed to show that the woman has survived breast cancer. She draws her finger along the outer line of the woman's dress. "It's the wrong shape. She's wearing a wire." She moves her finger to the last two panels, straining against her cuffs to do so. I wince at how they dig into her skin, but she doesn't even seem to notice. "Then the maid lady stabs him or whatever so he won't get taken down. She saw it before, when she let him in, but he probably wouldn't believe her if she tried to warn him. She's following protocol. Good. I hope she shot the narc, too."

I nod slowly. That's definitely a first. Deciding to move on, I hand her the next. "Okay, how about this one?"

"Was I right?" She asks, taking the paper but not looking down at it just yet.

I bite my lip. "There aren't really any right or wrong answers, Camila. It just depends on... how you see things."

She shrugs, seeming to accept the response, and looks down.

She takes a little longer with this one, looking it over and over. Finally, she meets my gaze again. "Addiction."

I tilt my head, hoping to encourage her to continue.

"The blue girl is the real person, and the red girl is her before drugs. Then she starts drugs, the plane, and they split, and red girl is sad that the blue girl leaves but it's too late because the plane has already taken off."

"Very insightful, Camila. Good job," I comment, taken aback by the figurative depth she'd managed to reach. Her eyes widen slightly.

"Um... insightful?" She seems nervous to ask.

I smile warmly to reassure her. "It means you have a deep understanding or perspective. If you're insightful, you can see and understand more than the average person might."

"Is that... good?"

"I was not a good daughter."

My shoulders drop, and my brows tent. I nod, my voice becoming a little softer, a little less perfectly professional, as though I'm talking to a little kid. "It's very good."

A proud grin slowly breaks across her face. "Show me another."

I thumb through the pages to find one I deem worthy. She goes into it with a newfound sense of confidence, so palpable I can't help but smile along with her.

Mine falters when hers does.

"I- I don't like that one." Her breathing picks up and, despite how harshly she pushes the paper away, she doesn't break her fearful, unwavering stare.

"Why not?" She doesn't respond, only begins to drum her fingers against her knuckles and bounce her legs beneath the table. "Camila?" She follows the paper with her eyes as I return it to my stack, hiding it beneath the others. Only when it is hidden from view does she make eye contact with me again.

"I see- I, uh, I've seen them... the monsters."

...

comics I used (in order):

About Betty's Boob - BOOM! Studios

Wordless Comic - Aya Alganmeh

The Speach - Oskar Andersson (title cropped out)