Elara leaned forward. The MMPI was never the story. It was the table of contents. “You’ve spent your whole life building structures—buildings, routines, a family, a face for the world. But the test suggests you’ve never built one for yourself. The anger you don’t feel? It’s there, scale 6. The paranoia? It’s not about others. It’s about the fear that you are the one lying to yourself.”

Elara closed the booklet. “Now we look at the questions you answered ‘false’ but wanted to answer ‘true.’ The ones about joy. About belonging. About the possibility that the voice in your head might be a liar.”

He paused. His thumb hovered. What counted as a breakdown? The night he erased all his digital files? The morning he forgot his daughter’s name for three seconds? He marked True because the alternative was unbearable.

True. He slept in ninety-minute cycles, each ending with the same dream: walking through his own unfinished blueprints.

“I just need a baseline,” Elara said, sliding the booklet across the table. The PDF printout was thick, stapled in four corners. “Answer each one ‘true’ or ‘false’ as it applies to you. Don’t overthink.”