I wonder why I’m getting all fixed up for a doctor who’s coming to me. So I have no idea what to expect at 11:00 a.m., but whatever it was, it’s not what I get.
“Dr. N” turns out to stand for Dr. Nilsson, and Dr. Nilsson turns out to be female, which has to be unusual for this era. Her thick black hair is swept back into a tight bun, but her heart-shaped face keeps her from looking severe. She’s not mean; she’s not motherly; she is calm personified. Her clothes look like any other woman’s from the street below, though they’re a quiet gray. Instead of the black bag doctors used to carry in the old days, she has only a notebook and pen. And instead of asking how I feel, she takes a seat in one of the chairs nearest the long velvet sofa, takes out her notebook and says, “What shall we talk about today, Your Imperial Highness?”
At first I’m just glad she said it in English. Then it hits me—she’s not a medical doctor. Dr. Nilsson is a psychiatrist.
The grand duchess came to Paris for therapy.
Seems extreme to me, but then again, if social history is evolving more slowly here too, psychology would be very new to this world. There might not even be an analyst in Russia yet. Or maybe the tsar didn’t want anyone knowing his daughter is seeing a shrink.
Slowly I stretch out onto the sofa, again like in movies.
Dr. Nilsson says only, “Your Imperial Highness?”
I venture, “I guess—I guess I’m feeling, uh, conflicted about my father.”
“Which one?”
“Which what?”
“Which father?” Dr. Nilsson keeps taking notes without ever looking up from her pad. Thank God she’s not looking at my face. Instead, she continues, “Or have you given up your fantasy that your tutor is actually your father?”
It hits me so hard I can hardly breathe. She remembered.
The selves we enter during our cross-dimensional travels aren’t supposed to remember anything we do while we’re in charge of their bodies. I’ve seen other versions of Paul and Theo who had absolutely no clue about anything that happened while my Paul and Theo were within them.
But I’m a “perfect traveler.” These voyages are different for me than they are for anyone else. Every single Marguerite I’ve ever visited must have remembered everything I did and said in her life.
Grand Duchess Margarita tried to talk about what she’d experienced, which is why she wound up in therapy. Nobody believed she’d actually been taken over by a visitor from another dimension; they think she’s cracking up.
“Your Imperial Highness,” Dr. Nilsson says. “Do you wish to answer the question?”
“The tsar is my father,” I say in a rush. “But I’m angry with him sometimes, and it’s easy to pretend that somebody else is my father. Someone kind like Professor Caine.”
Did this Marguerite tell the tsar the truth? If so, she might have doomed my father to death by firing squad.
I don’t feel as if I can breathe until Dr. Nilsson says, “So it’s not a secret you were keeping. Only a secret fantasy.”
Dad’s safe. I breathe out in relief. “Yes.”
“Good. You’re better able to face reality now. That’s progress.” Dr. Nilsson keeps taking notes. “Do you miss your father on any level?”
“I miss my brothers and sister more.” That much is the absolute truth. If I could see little Peter and Katya again—talk with Vladimir one more time—that would be a gift.
“And Lieutenant Markov?”
At first I think I must trust Dr. Nilsson a lot—but then I realize, after the scene I made at the army camp after Lieutenant Markov’s death, everyone must have known about us. About them. “He’s dead.”
“You no longer believe he still exists in some . . . shadow world alongside our own?”
I close my eyes. The grand duchess remembered everything. “It doesn’t matter if he is. I can’t reach him there. He’s—he’s very far away from me now.” My voice starts to shake. “The other Paul might not be my Paul. He might not be as loving, or as strong. As good.”
She tilts her head. It’s easy to imagine what she’s writing. Subject retains irrational belief in “shadow worlds” but has begun to say these worlds are cut off from her. She expresses no more desire to visit them. This is a transitional step toward accepting the reality of her lover’s death. “Do you still feel that one of your shadow selves took over your body nearly the entire month of December? That your actions were actually her responsibility?”
“It—it seems like that’s what happened,” I venture. “But she didn’t do anything I hadn’t wanted to do.”
“Do you think she might have come to see you on purpose?” Dr. Nilsson is humoring me now. “To take the actions you were afraid of? To do things otherwise forbidden?”
“I need to think about that some more.”
That wins me a very slight smile. She definitely believes we’re making progress. “Have you had any dreams lately, Your Imperial Highness?”
How would I know? But the words well up anyway, spilling out to the only person I have to tell. “I dreamed that I was captured by armed men.” What’s the closest equivalent to the Russian mob in this dimension? “By soldiers loyal to the Grand Duke Sergei, the ones who rose up against us.”
“What happened during your captivity, in this dream? Were you sexually violated?”
“No.” Um, rude. Then again, I remember studying that the early Freudians believed absolutely everything came back to sex in the end. Dr. Nilsson’s overly personal questions are going to keep coming. “But one of the soldiers turned out to be Paul Markov.”
“What role did Markov play in your dream?”
“I thought he was there to protect me. To rescue me, no matter what.” I swallow hard. “Instead, he turned out to be just like all the rest. Someone else came to save me, and Paul—Paul shot him. The man who tried to save me didn’t die, but there was so much blood, and I thought he might lose his legs.”
Dr. Nilsson nods. “How did this make you feel?”
“Guilty. Sad. Scared. Doctor, what do you think my dream means?”
“Only you can answer that, Your Imperial Highness.”
“I know, but—I just wondered what it looked like to you. Please tell me.”
She puts the notepad in her lap and folds her hands on top of it. Instead of answering right away, she thinks for a moment—trying to give me an honest answer.
Finally she nods, as if agreeing with her own inner assessment. “Someone whom you have always regarded as a loving, protective figure instead, in your mind, became someone who could hurt you. In your dream, you only saw him attack another; this may have been your subconscious softening the blow.”
“But Lieutenant Markov never would have hurt me. I know that. I know it.”
“The dream of him can,” Dr. Nilsson said. “So can the illusion that you might find him again.”
My belief that Paul and I are destined to be together no matter what—that’s the illusion. It shattered along with Theo’s bones in that rain of bullets. And it feels like I’ve been destroyed along with it.