“Come on, keep doing it.”
“I’m nonbinary. I’m nonbinary. I’m nonbinary.” It’s silly, standing in the middle of a lobby, repeating back the same words over and over again. But it does feel easier with each time I say it, despite the heavy feeling in my stomach. “I’m nonbinary. I’m nonbinary.”
“One more.”
“I’m nonbinary.”
“Good, you’ve got this.” She presses a hand to the small of my back and leads me to the elevators. “Just picture me if you have to, okay?”
I nod. Just get there. Get in there so there’s no turning back.
“And I’ll be in the waiting room if you need me. If you want to leave early, if you need me to sit in there with you, anything at all.”
“Okay.” The elevator doors slide open, and we walk in together.
I’m not exactly sure what to expect. Maybe stark white walls, ugly tiled floors, and an inescapable medical smell. But Dr. Taylor’s office looks just like what it is. An office. The walls are a light blue and decorated with colorful paintings. The furniture is bright too, and the floor is a warm hardwood.
“Hello! Ben, right?” She smiles and opens the door wide for me.
“Yeah.”
“I’m Dr. Taylor, but you can call me Bridgette if you’d like. You can take a seat right on the sofa.” Dr. Taylor points to this hideous mustard-yellow couch that sits against the wall. By some miracle, it fits the look of the room though.
“So.” Dr. Taylor grabs a small notepad and pen from her desk. “Your sister called to tell me about a few things.”
She’s older than I thought she’d be. Maybe midforties? She’s pretty short too, with brown skin and short, tight curls.
“What did she tell you?”
“That you’d been kicked out of your home.” Dr. Taylor takes a seat in the chair across from me, folding her legs over. “And that you might need someone to talk to.”
“That’s it?” I ask, a little surprised. I know Hannah said she didn’t tell Dr. Taylor anything else, but I didn’t really believe her. And now I feel bad for thinking my sister might out me like that.
“That’s it. I thought it wasn’t appropriate to discuss anything further without your knowledge.”
“Oh …” I’m not sure what to say. “Thanks, I guess.”
She nods. “So, can you tell me why your parents made you leave?”
I close my eyes, rubbing my knees. Here we go.
“You don’t have to, but it might be a good starting-off point,” she says.
“No, it’s …” I shake my head, picturing Hannah. Just say the words. Two little words, that’s it. “I’m … I’m nonbinary.”
“Oh.” I hear the distinct sound of a pen being clicked, and then something being written down. Opening my eyes slowly, I watch her move. She doesn’t seem surprised, or horrified, or like she misunderstood me or didn’t know what I was talking about. “Did Hannah tell you that I work with a lot of LGBTQIAP+ youth?”
That pit in my stomach is still there, but I can feel my hands relax. “You can say ‘queer’ around me, it’s fine.”
She chuckles at that. “Sorry, a few of my clients aren’t comfortable with that word. So, you’re nonbinary?”
I nod.
“Can I ask what pronouns you use?”
“They and them,” I say. It’s still weird, for some reason, to be asked that.
“And so what’s the connection there, between you being nonbinary and your parents?”
“I came out, or I tried to. They both sort of freaked.” I’ve never felt smaller than in that moment. The way Dad stood over me, his hand raised. I thought he might actually hit me or something, but no. He just pointed at the door.
“Where do you want me to go?”
“I don’t know, just get out of this house.”
I’d never seen that look in his eyes before.
“Can you tell me how they behaved? As parents.”
“Like parents, I guess,” I say. “I don’t really know.” As far as I know, they were mostly normal. But I don’t exactly have another set of parents to compare them to.
“What was Hannah’s relationship with them like?”
“She got along with Mom, for the most part. But she’d fight a lot with Dad.”
“And you? What was your relationship with them like?”
Better than whatever their relationship was with Hannah, but still rocky. And it only got worse as time went on, the fights getting more and more frequent. “Fine, I guess. Things got worse after Hannah left.”
“When did Hannah leave?”
I sigh. “The night I called her, that was the first time I’d spoken to her in about ten years.” My fingers find the little balls of fuzz on the couch and can’t resist picking at them, twisting them together until they get too big. I just leave them sitting there when I’m done.
“I see. Are you comfortable staying with your sister right now?”
“Is there an alternative?”
“Do you want one?”
I shake my head. “Just wondering. This all stays between us, right?”
Dr. Taylor uncrosses her legs and leans forward in her chair, the leather squeaking underneath her. “You’re my patient.” She points to the door with the end of her pen. “I won’t discuss anything that happens inside this room with anyone but you. Not only am I legally required to, but the privacy and safety of my patients is important to me, Ben. We could go over informed consent if you’d like?”
“Informed consent?”
Dr. Taylor walks over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, sifting through the rainbow of folders situated there. “It’s an important procedure, where I lay out everything I’ll be going over with you, the limits of what we’ll be discussing, as well as the benefits of treatment, and, more importantly”—she walks back across the room and hands me the stack of paper—“confidentiality.”
I take a deep breath through my nose, trying to read through everything the documents entail. Sure, there’s the Hippocratic oath and everything, but I don’t even know if that’s supposed to apply to therapists, or if that’s just the surgery sort of doctor. This woman hasn’t given me anything to base a level of trust on.
But the papers lay it all out, or at least they seem to. “We can go over each part step by step if you like.” Dr. Taylor leans in closer. “But I swear to you that unless I think you are an immediate threat to your own life or someone else’s, I’m not going to tell a soul what goes on in here.”
“I … I’m sorry.” This weird sense of shame creeps up my face.
“You don’t have to be sorry, Ben. I realize it’s scary, I can only imagine what you’ve been going through these last few days, even months.” Dr. Taylor speaks quietly. “But that’s what I’m here to do. I want to help you, help understand what you’re going through.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s what I’m here for. Do you want to go through the forms?”