Hal knows the strongest thing in the universe is (willpower) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-08-18 00:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | ariadne, prince charming |
Jack R and Bianca: Therapy
Who: Jack R and Bianca
What: Just talking.
Where: Jack's office
When: Friday evening, 6 pm
Warnings/Rating: Bianca venting?
Before he moved into his office, it had been used as a day spa. The owners were looking to sell so they could move into a larger space and he'd preferred the colors to the more traditional and glaring doctor's offices. After it was his, he'd had the door replaced with a plain, frosted glass door and the flooring pulled up and a lightly stained hardwood to match the cabinets and door put in. He'd done some repainting as well, covering the pinks and purples with shades of blue and green. Jack managed to talk them into leaving the fish tank (which he liked) as well as the fish. With only him there though, more often than not the glass table was clear, though he'd recently bought a small bonsai tree for it.
It wasn't much, but it was his, and he liked it. Not that he saw many of his patients here -- most of them now called him for house calls and it worked so long as they remembered the rules that were set down. He almost could have worked out of his home, but that would require more space there and he wasn't sure that he wanted any of his patients visiting him there. Lines of personal space and all that.
Speaking of patients, his last session ended at five and he ran out to get something quick to eat from the deli down the block before Bianca showed up. He wasn't sure what to expect from the young woman. All he had were the few conversations they'd had and the memory of the other girl's worry for her. Whatever happened, it was going to be interesting. Finishing off his sandwich, he heard the chime for the door sound and left his small office to enter the waiting room.
Bianca knew that she needed professional help, but that didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted it. Why couldn’t she drink like Aubrey did? Or Evan? Why did Evan get to drink his pain away and she had to feel all of it? It wasn’t fair. “I know, ‘life isn’t fair’,” she muttered, before Ariadne could interject. The younger brunette was really starting to get on Bee’s nerves, particularly after taking advantage of her drunk and hungover states. Talking to Cory had only pissed her off even more because it seemed he was siding with her. Aubrey, the one person she’d counted on to drink with her, had actually told her to stop drinking and Andrew was hiding in the hotel. It was just frustrating, but after the accusations of cheating on top of everything else, Bee could see the signs. She was sleeping more than usual, eating less, drinking more, and she didn’t wear pants if she didn’t have to. Depression was the obvious conclusion but it wasn’t as if she was going to kill herself!
There was a small part of her that wanted to get over all of this, but it just hurt to think about it. Maybe this would help, but Jack seemed sketchy as hell, even if his credentials all checked out. Either way, she’d only agreed to do this once and she’d go from there. Finding the office wasn’t that difficult, but it reminded her more of a spa instead of a therapists office. Odd. The second thing she noticed was the man standing there and she recognized him as Jack from the photo that was attached to the research she’d done on him. “Doctor,” she greeted with a slight inclination of her head. Definitely sketchy. “Might as well get started.” She certainly didn’t look like she wanted to be there but at least she’d put forth some effort in her appearance. Bianca was fully prepared to never see him again. She just needed to get through the next sixty minutes and then she’d be able to go back to her drinking.
"Bianca," he said, a fair measure warmer than she'd been. It wasn't the first time that someone had agreed to come see him and been belligerent about it. It wouldn't be the last time. "Of course, right this way." Opening up the frosted glass door, he gestured her through and to the right. To the left was only a short hallway with a single door at the end that led to his office. To the right were two doors, one of which was open.
"The one on your right." Much of the decorating for his patient room was the same as it had been when it was a spa, only now there was a couch instead of a massage table and the bookshelves were filled with actual books. He'd liked the lighting though and kept it, preferring it over the harsh glare of overhead lights. "Before we get started, do you have any questions for me?" He asked as he sat down in his own chair. If it wasn't obvious from the waiting room, Jack was a bit more informal than others of his profession. To him, it was more important that people be relaxed when they came to talk to him, than to have a cold, sterile office.
Bianca just nodded and followed his directions, moving to the right and into the room he’d pointed out. It was more than clear that he’d taken over a spa, but by this point it was simply one more thing that attributed to his weirdness. She took a seat on the couch, closest to the door, and crossed her legs in front of her before looking up at him. Did she have any questions? She did have one, but she didn’t think he could tell her why her life spiraled downwards so quickly. “No,” she replied with a shrug. She could’ve been belligerent and asked about his sketchy behavior, but there was no point in arguing with him when she would only be there for sixty minutes. No, fifty-seven minutes now.
If he was waiting for her to start talking, he’d be waiting for a very long time. To begin with, she honestly didn’t even know where to start and there was still a part of her that didn’t trust him. Names certainly wouldn’t be dropped, but she would happily bitch about Ariadne and the mess the other woman had gotten her into. Everything had been calm before she’d let Ariadne through the door but now she was suffering from the losses of her sister and mother, questions about her academic integrity, and breaking her promise to her parents to never pick up a bottle.
Some people needed only to sit down before the words started spilling out of them. Others needed a bit of time and some prompting from him. Either way was fine with Jack, who favored a more relaxed approach to his patients.
Given the way she was holding herself, half tense and half defeated, he went with the easier approach. "So what brings you to Vegas?" She looked about college age and that could have brought her, or perhaps she was a native to the city like he was. Either way, he was hoping to get a little more out of her than the few scant words she'd said since they'd met.
That was where he wanted to start? Very well. She’d answer his question and count down the minutes while she did so. “My father. He had a heart attack and needed me to return here. After assuring that he was in better health, I decided to enroll in law school.” She stopped there for a full minute, but she felt compelled to add more, despite not particularly wanting to. “I grew up here, until it was time for high school. My parents enrolled me in a private school in New York City and I moved there to live with my Uncle for the duration. I moved back recently, after finishing at Harvard in three years and working for one with the DA’s office there. It was just as well. If I’d stayed much longer, I probably would’ve ended up like my mother.” She clenched her teeth to stop herself from saying anything more.
The mother was something he'd ask about later. "How's your father doing now?" She had to be smart to be admitted to Harvard, but it also meant that her family likely came from money. They weren't cheap and he knew it from his time at Stanford. Before deciding on becoming a Doctor of Osteopathy, he'd considered becoming a MD, and if he'd gone that way, Harvard would have been one of the schools he applied to. Once he decided against that, other schools had to be found. "Pre law or something else at Harvard?"
“He’s fine. Busier now that he has a case, but he didn’t have a choice about that. I wouldn’t have let Andrew go to anyone else.” That just brought her back to her mom and the all too recent discovery that it was Wayne’s fault that her mother was dead. She wanted to be angry at someone, anyone, and it was just easy to be angry at Evan for killing her sister and making it so that Cassandra was killed in a car accident, too. It was just as easy to be mad at Andrew, and she wished Wayne was alive so that she could kill him herself. She hated all of it. Most of all, she hated Ariadne for opening her eyes to all of the pain she’d spared herself over the years. “Both of my parents went into law. Mom was a prosecutor, Dad’s a criminal defense lawyer. There wasn’t much else for me to do. I went for Government and History, finished in three years. I went to work for the DA’s office in Manhattan, like my mom, but then I moved here and decided I might as well go to law school. UNLV has a dual JD/MSW program that I’m almost finished with. I volunteer all over Las Vegas to fill my spare time. Idle hands being the devil’s work and all.” Not that she believed in that crap because she’d stopped believing in God when Becky died.
It was more than she'd said previously and Jack counted that as a good sign. "You sound very busy." Yet none of it was deep and none of it hinted at the things that he'd gotten in the memory. That didn't surprise him though, sometimes people had to talk all around the issue before they could start talking about it at all. "Is it what you want though? It's important to do things you love as well."
He wasn’t the first person to tell her that she was busy, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. Bee had cut back on a lot of her volunteering lately, opting to spend her time working with her father or drinking. So far, she’d successfully kept it under wraps from her father but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay on top of things. The academic integrity accusation had been a kind of wake up call, but she honestly couldn’t find herself to care too much about it. She was almost done with her classes and she was so far ahead anyway. Did it really matter if she slipped to Bs and low As? Bee shook her head. “It makes sense,” she replied with a shrug. “People make stupid decisions all the time and there are plenty who just have bad luck. Someone has to be there to show them how to pick themselves up. Why not help them do it legally? Besides, some people just don’t know everything that’s out there. It’s easy to tell someone what forms to fill out or how to file them.” She paused. “Some things you can’t fix that easily.”
"No. Some things aren't that easy to fix." Jack knew that as much as the next man, perhaps better than most. "Do you like that? Helping people?" That was also something he could understand, it was what led him to his current profession. He hadn't wanted to cut them open and put them back together, nor diagnose their physical pains and made it better, but he'd wanted to help them find a better place in their own minds. Whether it was possible or not depended a lot on them, sometimes on the drug combinations they were on, sometimes on the support they had from friends and family, and sometimes it was just getting them to a better place without being able to make them better. There was no way to determine how they would make it through. "Is it something you're passionate about?"
“People need help. Someone’s got to do it. You can’t help people that don’t want it, so you might as well help the ones that do,” Bianca replied, quietly angry at her sister for not wanting help. She didn’t see that she was falling under the same category and how much she needed help. Bee could justify her drinking as finally growing up, but Ariadne knew it wasn’t true and she quietly pointed that out. “Shut it,” Bee hissed out of the corner of her mouth, and when she looked back at Jack, she shrugged. “Do you have trouble with yours? Mine doesn’t know when to shut up and mind her own damn business,” she said, conversational for the most part but frustrated and angry too. “My whole life’s been turned upside down because of her. She has no respect for me at all, and yet somehow I’m the bad guy in all of this. Not Arthur, who’s not in love with you. Not Eames, who used you to get information on Arthur and put you squarely in the middle. Not Cobb, because the man only destroyed his wife’s life and you would rather hate her and make her think you’re screwing him. No, it’s my fault because I’m pissed at Evan for killing my sister and mad at Cory for not telling me. Yea, all my fault.”
Ariadne protested for a brief moment, but then she realized that Bianca had just given Jack a fair bit of information to talk about. Quietly pleased, the young architect faded into the back of Bee’s mind. Realizing now what she’d just done, Bianca growled in frustration. “I hate you,” she muttered, and pointedly looked anywhere but at Jack as she waited for his next ‘revelation’.
Through all of his years of schooling, and then in his own years of practice, he'd never treated someone like him – like them – where they were carrying around another person in their heads. It wasn't Dissociative Identity, but a whole separate person and fictional or not, they could wreak havoc. It was fascinating to watch her talk to the other person in her head as if she was really there though, and he moved forward a bit on his seat.
There were the names of the people he got in the memory and he'd have to unravel them later, but finally, it was more than he'd gotten before. "Mine is a charming narcissist," Jack finally said. He wouldn't say anything more than that unless she asked.
"Do you want to talk about your sister? Evan? Cory?" They seemed more closely related to Bianca, rather than the girl she had in her head.
“Lucky you,” she muttered under her breath when he talked about his Alter. Bianca crossed her arms over her chest and stayed silent, attempting to glare a hole in the wall as he asked about Becky, Evan, and Cory. Truthfully, she didn’t want to talk about any of them but even just arguing with Ariadne had brought a lot of it up and she gave in after a silent five minutes. “I don’t want to talk about any of them. Well, maybe Cory because I’m the least mad with him. I feel bad for him because he really needs help. I mean, yes, the drinking is bad, but I’m not nearly as bad as Andrew or Aubrey is so it’s perfectly fine. No one would be saying anything to me if it wasn’t for the fact that Becky was a drunk who happened to be sober when a drunk driver killed her. Cory though, I was mad at him before. He was dating her and all she wanted was to be with him instead of with her family. It wasn’t fair, when I never got to see her anyway because Mom and Dad sent me off to New York so that I wouldn’t end up like Becks. I came here though, and I was talking to him before I even realized who he was. I want to help Cory, because it’s obvious that he’s depressed, but then he went and defended Evan! Who, by the way, is the drunk who killed my sister.”
Bianca stood and started pacing along the length of his office about halfway through her spiel, but she wasn’t done yet. “So, I, naturally, want to talk to this asshole because he should know that I’m out there and Cory tells me not to because nothing good is going to come of it. Well he was right about that because Evan doesn’t even seem to care that his drinking killed someone. I mean, he went right out and got drunk and then his boyfriend decides he’s going to - and I quote - ‘make me wish I was in the car with my sister’. But you know what? I already have wished I was in the car with her, or with my mom. Would’ve been easier than having to deal with their shit or Ariadne! Ohhh, I hate her. I really really do. And you know what really ticked me off? She had the nerve to just take over because she thought I was a danger to myself after the memories, but you’d want to drink too after that crap! Things are just crap, and you know what’s the icing on the cake? I got called in under suspicion of cheating! Me! As if. I’m a straight-A student prior to this semester and it’s not like I need to cheat to get an 81! That’s just ridiculous!” She was obviously really upset but she tried to keep the tears at bay. She wasn’t going to cry.
Jack didn't stop her from pacing, especially not as it seemed to help her get out some of what she needed to get out. Before she got too far, he picked up his notepad to begin writing down some of the names in his typical shorthand. When dealing with people like them, they had twice as many problems since they had twice as many lives. Whatever problems the others had in their fictional world came back with the people on this side. "How were you feeling after the memories? Besides crappy," Jack asked.
She spun on her heel to face him, hands on her hips and she glared angrily. “Besides crappy? Seriously? It sucked. I got memories for her, stupid, good for nothing...” Bianca trailed off and started pacing again. “All this is confidential right? I mean, it doesn’t matter because you’ve probably seen the news but still.” She waited for him to agree before continuing. “I got a memory of my best friend murdering someone on his grandfather’s orders. Turns out, Wayne Mumford is more than just a creepy jerk. He’s actually basically the head of a crime syndicate and apparently Andrew, in his infinite wisdom, went to confront Wayne after the memories. He kills him, runs, and calls me! Do you know what he says? He tells me, like it’s nothing, that Wayne killed my mother and threatened to kill me too. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? And do you know why Wayne decided to kill her in a car accident? Because of Becky. So yes, I raided his fridge for leftovers and opened a bottle of tequila. Can you seriously blame me?”
Jack knew who Wayne Mumford was -- he was too close to the mob not to know. It was her state of agitation that was concerning though, as he listened to her give voice to all the things that had happened after the memories. "Take a deep breath," he finally said. "Did it make you feel better? The tequila?" His memories hadn't been that bad, but -- it must have been Ariadne's -- memory of Bianca had worried him the most. Tequila wasn't something he could recommend, nor vodka, rum, or any other spirit, but he knew that many chose to find some relief with whatever bottle they could find.
Trying to take deep breaths was hard with how worked up she’d gotten herself and it took barely even a minute for it all just to come bubbling out in tears. Bianca started to shake and she dropped down to the couch, leaning forward to cradle her head in her hands. “No,” she replied tearfully after a few long minutes, but still she wouldn’t look up at him. “It m-made me fe-feel numb, but it- it wasn’t enou-ough,” Bee added, forcing herself to talk through the tears. “It still hurts. It hurts and no one...no one can help.” She couldn’t bring herself to burden someone else with her problems, as much as she knew keeping it in would only make it worse. Her friends had their own things to deal with and she didn’t think it was right to dump on them. She wasn’t even certain that she felt comfortable talking to the sketchy-but-good doctor, but at least she didn’t know him.
Without a word, he grabbed the box of tissues off the small table next to his chair and held them out to her. Crying happened frequently enough in his office that he kept the good kind around. Many of the women he saw did not want to leave with raw eyes. "You've been through some traumatic losses," he finally said, his voice quiet and warm. "And then you confronted the drunk driver that hit your sister. These aren't easy things to go through. Do you have-- family? Friends? That you can talk to?" It was one thing for her to come here and unload with him, but she needed a support system.
She hastily tried to get control of herself, wiping away her tears with a tissue. Her breathing was ragged and it took a few long minutes for her to feel reasonably confident that she could talk without stuttering. “I have my dad, but I couldn’t talk to him about this. It’s bad enough that he’s had to re-live mom’s death. Andrew...he’s going through his own stuff, and so is Aubrey. I have Cory, I guess, but he’s worse than I am. I guess there’s Catwoman, but I haven’t talked to her in a while.” There were a couple others too but it was the same excuse. Talking about things had never been her strong point and she half believed that this would be a one time thing. How could she ask anyone else to deal with her issues when theirs were so much worse in her mind? It just didn’t seem right.
As much as Jack wanted to tell her that she needed a support system at home, that she could come in here every day of the week and it wouldn't help her a bit if she didn't have the support in her personal life, he didn't want to add that to her concerns right now. He'd give her another visit, maybe two before bringing that up. "Do you think you'd feel more comfortable writing things down in a journal? Not the journal. But something that's just for you?"
Bianca loathed the idea of a journal. She’d never kept a diary before and the journal was annoying to carry around. Its only saving grace was that it gave her a reliable method to talk to the few people she wanted to talk to without trading phone numbers. Having another journal would just be stupid, just like writing in a journal was to her. “No. That’s not...that’s dumb. It won’t help. I’d never remember to write in it in the first place and it’s just...it’s stupid. I wouldn’t even know what to write.” She was annoyed with him for suggesting that she write things down. It was such a stupid idea especially when she was coming to him to talk about what she needed to talk about. What was the point of going over it twice. It was dumb, and now she thought he was too.
"I asked if it would make things easier on you," Jack said, rather blandly. Compared to men that had prison tattoos covering most of their bodies and would just as soon kill him as look at him, Jack wasn't especially worried about her opinion of him. "If not, it was only a suggestion, Bianca. Some people find it easier to write things down, sometimes just little snippets that make an impression or that remind them of something they want to talk about next time. It's not something you have to do." Whatever she decided to put into this was what she would get out of it. "The object is to find something that does help you. Even if only for an hour or two a day -- do it."
“No, you asked if I’d be comfortable with it. I’m not.” She was defensive now and it came across in her tone and the way she crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m barely even comfortable talking to you, but you probably figured that out already.” Bee got up again and started pacing. It was helpful to just rant and rave and say everything that was bothering her. Why couldn’t he just listen? Wasn’t that his job? She didn’t like the way he said her name either, like she was getting chastised. “Just talking helps. I can’t do that every day or with just anyone. I don’t have anyone to talk to. Except you I guess, but you’re paid to do that. Can’t that count? Can’t it just be enough?” She was desperate to just make it work.
He watched her for a moment, his eyebrows drawing together before he opened his mouth to be pointedly frank with her. "Yes, I figured that out," he said quietly. "And I'm not going to force you to talk to me. I'll be here when you need me to listen, but as you've said, you can't do that every day. Having something else isn't going to hurt you." If she wanted to rant and rave twice or even three times a week to him, it was fine, he'd be here, but he couldn't be her crutch either. And he certainly wasn't going to push her to keep talking to him if that wasn't what she wanted.
Bianca was waiting for him to tell her that she was wrong, that he wasn’t going to be able to be what she needed. Somehow, she still felt like he was chastising her and she slumped back in her chair, defeated and honestly just exhausted. She was silent for a few minutes, trying to wrap her brain around the idea of finding someone to talk to. Maybe, in a very roundabout way, she could talk to Selina. Maybe. “I’ll try. Just...let me come the week after next or something?” She could cancel the appointment if she needed to but she wanted to just have it. Just as an option.
"Of course," Jack said quietly. "But don't feel like you have to wait until the week after next," he added. "Okay? You can call me if you need to." And then, because he didn't want her to feel worse than she did, he added, "And if you call, I won't mention writing anything down, okay?" He grinned, hoping it might put her a little more at ease.