Doctor Patient Confidentiality

Sarah hasn't had it easy. Bad boyfriend kept her boxed in until she scraped up the guts to walk. Now she's crashing at Cassie's place with Cassie's husband, James, playing the on-call shrink. They keep tossing her support but Sarah's still sitting on the parts she can't say out loud. A week in, she checks her neck in the mirror, fingers tracing the last purple smudges. Her hands drift lower, almost slow-mo, then they clamp around her own throat. The shock that rockets through her hits like straight current—she’s blushing, wet, and scared shitless at once. That’s when she decides James needs to hear this. Later, after she swears him to secrecy, she blurts it out: getting gagged used to terrify her, now it flips her switch hard. She’s convinced her shitty past twisted the wires. James starts preaching office hours; Sarah cuts him off, says she needs hands-on lessons, not lectures.