Super Therapist

Gina had really wanted to be a therapist. It was admittedly not great to figure that out now, after losing her certification, her receptionist, her only wealthy client, and her professional reputation, but it was a starting place, she reminded herself, and we all need to start with small decisions to help us set big goals.  

The thing was, she really wanted to be a therapist, but she also wanted money and the things money could buy. Nice clothes, a good car, and an apartment in the wealthy end of town. That’s what lost her the job in the first place; trying to figure out how a delinquent teen with superpowers could be convinced to use her superpowers for the betterment of both therapist and patient.

The fact that this convincing had involved threatening to hand the girl over to the police and a fair amount of screaming didn’t change Gina’s complete conviction that it had been an acceptable course of action, ruined by irrational teenager moodiness.

Right now, she thought, looking at her bare walls, the secondhand couch, and the empty place on her dresser where her jewelry had once been, she needed to focus on her goals. Dwell on the present, not the past, she always used to tell her clients. But becoming a therapist again, and especially a wealthy therapist, felt like a very big goal indeed.

She’d sold the jewelry and all of her nice stuff and downsized the apartment to pay off the lawyers who had gotten her out of the lawsuit from the supergirl’s parents. Now she was working part time as a receptionist for a construction company. It was paying the bills…barely. She pursed her lips at herself in the mirror. At least her hair, with its carefully styled waves and frosty blonde highlights still looked amazing. She wouldn’t have to go back to the stylist for another month at least. And she was about out of her supply of Weight Watchers candy bars…but curvy was in, so she’d just stop dieting for a bit.

She got up and started pacing. How would you go about finding a superhero? Well, superheroes all seem to stop crime, right? If that wasn’t a sign that these people needed a good therapist…hero complexes, every one of them. Why would you take super strength and stop crime, anyway? Gina pondered. Nobody paid you a salary to swat Evil Overlord #65 down Broadway. They couldn’t all be privately wealthy like certain famous caped crusaders. Why on earth would anybody take on Evil Incarnate for free, when they could make bank with a perfectly average, safe job? Surely people would pay high prices to have an invisible super-detective investigate straying spouses and stolen dogs?  Or simply lifting heavy things? Yes, she decided, the super community needed her.

Gina put on a hat, some dark sunglasses, and hurried down the stairs.  She walked the block as if she were winning a powerwalking race, and then slowed down as she neared the curb. Blue lights flashed and flickered off the buildings around her. A siren yelped once and then cut off as another cop car pulled in to join the two others.

The immediate event, whatever it was, had already happened; the police were moving with businesslike regularity; the onlookers were beginning to drift away, their movements unhurried. Perfect timing. Gina slowed from a power walk down to a casual stroll, patting her hair back into place so she looked like any average businesswoman, just strolling back to the office from a late lunch. She wanted to get her business card in as close to the crime as possible, wending her way carefully ever closer through the crowd, aiming to slide the card just under a shrub. A tall gentleman bumped into her, and the car fluttered out of her fingers. “Oh, so sorry, you dropped this.” He said, picked up the card and handed it back to her.

He was over six foot tall, and his shoulders strained the bounds of his suit jacket. His hair was oddly white-grey for such a young man, and his jaw was the kind that everybody will describe as chiseled, despite the fact that many skilled sculptors are quite capable of creating a look of soft plumpness with their chisels. If she had been less irritated at her fumble, she would have been pleased to have been noticed by such a nice-looking man, but she was focused on her mission and managed only an insincere oops-thanks smile as she took the card back.

She hurried away, flushed with irritation. She’d double back, walk the other way, and just drop the card. It wouldn’t be as good as wedging it somewhere, but it would have to do. She achieved this without anybody else being polite and helpful, and hurried away.

She was busy planning her opening lines to convince the superheroes that they should hire her. “Therapy can provide—no, no, sell them on why they need it first, Gina,” she muttered to herself. “Times are tough. Therapy can provide…no, they’re helping the city. I should acknowledge that. Let them know I value what they do…” She didn’t notice the tall man who had picked up her card standing behind a column as she walked past. He watched her go, his eyes narrowed and fixed on the retreating figure of the woman in sunglasses and a hat, her head down, murmuring under her breath.

Over the next few weeks, when she wasn’t at work (and sometimes when she was) Gina kept her radio beside her, tuned to the police band. She even put in earbuds so she didn’t have to stop listening when she went to the store. Every crime scene, she visited. While two men screamed in each other’s faces beside their steaming and crumpled cars, she left a card under a windscreen wiper. As a petty thief was handcuffed and shoved into a police car, Gina strolled past and left a card leaning on the riser of the apartment stairwell. At the scene of a domestic crime, she stooped and shoved another card under a bush.

Two weeks later, she was sitting in her pajamas at her kitchen counter, staring blearily at the cereal box. Flashing blue and white lights had dominated the past five night’s dreams. She jolted awake at the slightest sound of the police band radio. And yet, no one contacted her. Not even mundane people.

Clearly, she needed to do something else. Something bigger. She tapped her cereal spoon on the counter thoughtfully. If someone saw her administering help and counsel in a stressful situation…but over the past few weeks she’d seen enough crime scenes to know that she could not handle the variables associated with a real crime, and if she got there before the police without a good reason to be there, she’d be a suspect.

She scrolled through her phone looking at her bank account. She’d received a nice inheritance from her grandma the previous year…perhaps someone could be hired to arrange a crime scene. Yes, someone secretly hired to commit a crime, and then she would be there at the scene of the crime, restoring order and providing comfort…It was perfect. A smile spread across her face. Now, how to go about finding an affordable, reliable criminal? She went to her contacts list. There, one of her first clients, before that delinquent super girl had ruined her life….she dialed the number.

Thursday morning, the plan went into action. When things began to move they really start moving, Gina thought, patting her hair carefully in front of the mirror. She leaned forward and put bright red lipstick on to match the red flowers in her floral suit jacket. Her former patient Saul had gotten her in contact with a man named Ron, who was going to enter City Bank this morning, fire a gun into the air, frighten people, and then run away, all for a tidy sum of 10,000 dollars.

The enterprise would take over half of her grandma’s inheritance, but it took wealth to build wealth. Ron wasn’t to harm anybody, and she had emphasized that no actual bank robbery would be necessary. He’d been skeptical, but after she promised him 5,000 upfront, he agreed to go along with the plan. She would be inside the bank, ostensibly to get a loan for a new apartment, and as soon as he’d exited the building, she would be there to administer help to traumatized people.

Bank robberies were so flashy; surely the supers would show up for something like that, and then they’d see what an amazing therapist she was! And if she couldn’t nab a super, maybe a rich banker would see the benefit of having a trauma-tested therapist. She gave a tug on her jacket (she did look smart this morning!) swung her purse over her shoulder and went out the door.

Everything went perfectly. Up to a point.

The bank was filled with customers; the gentle hum of business being conducted matched the peaceful trickle of the water feature in the atrium. Morning sunlight filtered through the glass front of the building. Gina glanced over her shoulder just in time to see a scruffy looking man in a black hoodie and jeans stride through the door, his shoulders hunched, and the hood pulled over his head. He hurried to a teller and leaned forward.

Gina forced herself not to watch, waiting and preparing to flinch in surprise as soon as he raised the pistol into the air and fired. That’s when things went wrong. He was supposed to demand money, fire the gun, and escape. Noise, excitement, drama. A good show. Instead, there was only the collective intake of breath and thirty people freezing in place as he pointed the pistol at the teller and demanded money. Now, thought Gina, fire the gun into the air and get out of here. But instead, he handed the teller a bag and kept the gun leveled at her face as she stuffed money into the bag.

Gina started to stand up, needing to fix this, remind this Ron creep of what he was missing out on—but the banker discussing her loan with her grabbed her sleeve and kept her in place. “Be still.” He hissed, panicked. “Don’t draw attention to yourself!”

In moments, it was over. The robber snatched the bag out of the teller’s hands, fired a shot into the air, and ran away—holding a bag full of cash. Behind him the bank exploded into noise, people shouting, dialing 911, running after the robber.

Gina sank back into her chair, numb, and felt the room swirl around her, a maelstrom of confusing noise. This was not what she planned. Dimly she was aware that whatever money that teller had stuffed into the bag, it was certainly much more than the 5,000 dollars Gina still owed him. How could she have been so foolish? A firm hand landed on her shoulder, “Come right this way, ma’am,” a deferential voice murmured in her ear, and, dazed, she followed.

Around a corner, someone threw their arms around her—there was a horrible squeezing sensation, a flash of darkness, and then she was stumbling, gasping and nauseous into a boardroom showing more sky than city out the windows. She grabbed a chair to steady herself, her heart hammering, breath coming in whimpers—and looked straight into the eyes of the tall, white-haired man she’d met on her very first attempt to drop a card at the scene of a crime. He nodded at her, his face solemn. “Sit down, Ms. Alvaraz. We’ll give you a minute or two to get your bearings. It’s difficult to travel by teleportation when you’re not prepared for it.”

A man standing behind her coughed, and pulled out a chair. Gina thumped into it and stared up at him, her eyes wide. He looked like a normal person, a banker, even, but…given where he was standing, he had to have been the one that grabbed her and…teleported her? She looked back at the rest of the room. Beside the tall man stood another man, shorter, stockier, and possessed of weird, glowing purple eyes. A woman sat to his left tapping the table with manicured fingernails and eyeing her sourly. “I don’t see why we’re being so polite, after the way she treated Allie.” She grumbled.

“I’d like to know a little about her motivations, before we charge her with anything,” the tall man said and turned to Gina. “Now, Ms. Alvarez. We’ve been concerned about some of your activities for a while, and we recently tracked a wire transfer from you to the Mr. Ron Allen who just robbed that bank. It seems you were paying him for something. What might that something have been?”

Gina felt a thrill of excitement. Teleportation! Superheroes! She’d done it! She sat up, patted her hair into place, crossed one leg over the other and said in her most professional, calm tones, “I’m sorry, but who am I addressing?”

The white-haired man gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “For the purposes of this conversation, I’m known as Captain Ice. Behind you is a man you may call The Vanisher, this gentleman here,” he pointed to the purple eyes, “Death Eyes, and,” he gestured to the woman beside him, “Ms. Renata.”

Ms. Renata leveled a cool stare at Gina from under level brown bangs. “I’m in I.T. We don’t do goofy nicknames. It’s not a customer facing job.”

For a brief moment, Gina’s mouth and eyes formed a perfect “o” of excitement. Then she got herself under control, fished around in her purse, and presented Captain Ice with her business card. “Times are tough,” she said, meeting his gaze with an expression of deep compassion, “and you and your associates perform a valuable duty, unseen and unsung, for our city. Therapy can—”

“Yes,” Captain Ice graciously cut her off, setting her card aside. “But what we’re interested in is your relationship with this Mr. Ron Allen. It appears—”

Gina, her eyes shining at her chance, leaning forward almost out of her chair, interrupted him, “Therapy can provide you with a sounding board as you process the traumatic events you daily—”

Ms. Renata glared at her, “Don’t interrupt the Captain!”

But the Captain was looking thoughtful. “I think I might already understand why Ms. Alvarez has been behaving the way she has.”

Gina’s cheeks were pink, but she soldiered on as if they hadn’t stopped her: “…daily face as our city’s protectors. Therapy can help you sort out complex interpersonal relationships—”

“Ms. Alvarez,” the Captain said patiently, “if you could hold on for a moment while we discuss the crime you just committed?”

That stopped her. She sat upright. “I didn’t commit a crime!”

“As far as our knowledge extends, you have been stalking crime scenes for weeks trying to contact someone. You finally succeeded at getting the attention of a particularly notorious perp, and then paid him a large sum of money with a wire transfer labeled ‘9/14’ which is today. Today, after having contented himself for years with muggings, he chooses to go to a bank and rob it. Tell me, Ms. Alvarez, when were you planning to meet Ron Allen to split up the money?”

Gina’s eyes darted from one to the other of the impassive faces before her, her face flushing, “I didn’t want to contact a criminal! It was you! I wanted to contact you! I have already got experience counseling supers—”

Ms. Renata let out an unladylike snort. “Bullying a teenage girl, you mean. We know all about Allie.”

“So what you’re saying is,” the Captain said, running a hand over his face. “Since we didn’t pick up your cards and call you, you staged a crime to get our attention?”

“I was going to be supporting people through the trauma. So you would see what a good therapist I am.” Gina whispered. “He wasn’t supposed to actually rob the bank, just fire the gun into the air.”

The four superheroes stared at her for a moment. Then the Captain shook his head and looked between Ms. Renata, Death Eyes and The Vanisher. “I mean…you can’t punish stupid.”

Ms. Renata looked like she disagreed. She could absolutely punish stupid, but Death Eyes nodded. “Foolish, but not criminal.”

Captain Ice looked at the man still standing beside Gina. “Vanisher, if you would just take Ms. Alvarez back home? I don’t think she’s really committed a crime.”

“But what about—what about therapy?” Gina squeaked, clutching the arms of the chair. The Vanisher gently took her by the arm, but she wrenched it away. She started babbling. “Have you ever considered why you chose heroism? Could it be a resistance to opening yourself up to true closeness?”

Death Eyes crossed his arms. “Ms. Alvarez, considering the consequences of your recent choices, maybe you might book a therapist yourself?”  

The Vanisher put both hands on her shoulders, preparing to teleport her, but Gina dodged away from him, spluttering out, “There are countless career opportunities that would allow for a normal life and no secrecy!”  

The Vanisher grabbed her again. On tiptoe, hollering, she shouted, “What would you think about life as a frozen vegetables magnate?!”  And then The Vanisher and Gina were gone.

Captain Ice shook his head. “Ms. Renata, once Gina Alvarez is returned to her apartment, please keep her under watch. I’m afraid we just witnessed the beginning of a villain origin story.”

If you're interested in Gina's interaction with Allie and how she lost her first therapist job, the story is here, but you don't need to read it to understand this one!