Season of Strangers by Kat Martin Page B

young woman said, probably a UCLA student doing part-time work, since the campus was just blocks away. The same sort of work Julie had done.
    She glanced around the office, liking the soft gray carpet, the muted tones, and the Impressionist paintings on the walls that made the room feel warm and not sterile.
    â€œHello, Julie.” Dr. Heraldson stood in the open doorway leading into his private suite of rooms. “Please come in.”
    She smiled uncertainly as she moved past him, her heart beginning to throb inside her chest. “I came as quickly as I could. Laura’s all right, isn’t she? She was able to drive herself home?”
    â€œLaura’s fine…at least on the surface.” He firmly closed the door. “I’ve asked you here in the hope that you might shed some light on a subject that has me somewhat concerned.” He indicated she should take a seat on the light-gray overstuffed sofa. “I want to play a tape for you. I don’t normally do this and certainly not without the patient’s permission. Laura has given her consent, and I’d like your opinion about what she has said on the tape.”
    â€œOf course. I want to help Laura in any way I can.” She sat down on the couch while the doctor walked to the chair behind his desk. He was a good-looking man, she saw, with his thick brown, slightly too-long hair and neatly trimmed beard. She wondered that she hadn’t noticed that when she had first met him, the day Laura’s sessions had begun, or the second time she had stopped in.
    â€œI’m not going to play it all. Some of it is extremely personal.” He stopped the tape, backed it up a little, ran it forward again, and then pushed the button. “This is the tape I made the first of the week, her first hypnosis session. Here’s the part I wanted you to hear.”
    Julie sat unmoving as Laura described the first time she had been afraid. It was the day they had suntanned on the beach. At first it was the same as Julie remembered, then Laura’s story turned different. Laura said that after the beach, she had gone to the hospital, which of course wasn’t the least bit true. Julie’s skin began to crawl as her sister recounted her terrifying experience, describing in vivid detail the humiliating examination she had been subjected to, the way her body had been stripped, washed, and probed.
    Unconsciously, Julie clasped her arms across her chest, waiting for the gruesome tale to finish. She jumped when the doctor pressed the stop button, abruptly ending the strained, terror-stricken voice of her sister on the tape.
    â€œIt isn’t true, you know,” Julie said softly. “She didn’t go to the hospital. After she left my house, she simply went home. I called her later, so I know she got there safely.”
    â€œI didn’t think this had actually occurred. At least not on that day. There was nothing in her medical files and nothing on the admission forms she filled out when she started treatment.”
    â€œI thought under hypnosis, people were supposed to tell the truth.”
    â€œThey tell the truth as they perceive it. I think Laura may have confused another event in her life, perhaps the abortion she went through some years ago. At least that was my feeling until the session we attempted today.”
    â€œShe told you about that?”
    He nodded.
    The abortion wasn’t something Laura liked to discuss. At seventeen, the pregnancy and botched abortion was just another incident in a lifetime of mistakes.
    â€œYou said that was your feeling until today.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    Julie’s stomach began to churn. “So what…what happened today?”
    â€œI think the best way to tell you is simply to play the tape.”
    Julie just nodded. Her insides felt tied in knots. There was something strangely unsettling about what Laura had said, though she knew it wasn’t the truth.