The address led me to a plain brick building on the outskirts of town, unmarked except for a small brass plaque beside the door that read only THE LANTERN PROJECT — By Appointment.
I checked the address three times against the one on my phone, certain I’d made some mistake. This wasn’t Ashgrove Regional. It wasn’t a hospital annex, wasn’t anything with a sign large enough to be found by accident. It looked, if anything, like a building trying very hard not to be noticed at all.
Inside, a receptionist in a crisp blazer looked up from her desk and smiled the practiced, gentle smile of someone used to putting nervous people at ease.
“You must be Elena,” she said, checking her screen. “Dr. Bishop will see you shortly. Please, have a seat.”
I sat. There were four other women in the waiting room already — one who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, sitting very still with her hands folded tightly in her lap; another closer to seventy, reading a magazine she didn’t appear to actually be reading; two more somewhere in between, both avoiding eye contact with everyone, including each other.
When the receptionist called Adrian’s name to confirm a scheduling detail, every single woman in that room went quiet in a way I found impossible to explain and impossible to ignore — not embarrassed quiet, the way you might get shy about a doctor’s name. Something heavier than that. Something closer to reverence, or maybe fear, or maybe both at once.
The older woman, the one close to seventy, finally spoke without looking up from her magazine. “First time?” she asked, apparently sensing my unease.
“Something like that,” I said.
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “Everyone’s terrified their first appointment. It passes. He has a way of making you forget to be scared, somewhere around the second or third minute.” She glanced at me then, something searching in her expression. “You don’t look like most of the women who come through that door, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated, choosing her words with visible care. “Most of us have a very particular reason for being here,” she said. “You look like someone who wandered in by accident, chasing down a mystery instead of chasing down some healing.” She said it kindly, not unkindly, but the words landed hard enough that I didn’t have an answer ready by the time the receptionist called my name.
Five minutes later, the receptionist opened the inner door.
“You can go in now, Ms. Ford.”
