allison (raheta) wrote in parabolical, @ 2009-02-10 02:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | heather mason |
WHO: Heather Mason.
WHAT: Psychiatric evaluation.
WHEN: 8:00AM.
WHERE: An office building located across town; address given by Lindsey McDonald.
RATING: PG-13.
STATUS: Complete. [narrative]
“Heather.”
No response. It had pretty much been a trend since she’d first sat down opposite the middle-aged woman with tightly wound hair and thin-rimmed glasses. She had to have glasses. Maybe no beard -- thank God, because that would have been weird -- but she had glasses. Heather saw that one coming a mile away.
“Heather, I can’t help you if you don’t talk.”
Finally, she felt the urge to speak. Mostly, Heather just tuned the woman out, but every now and then, she would say something that Heather just couldn’t ignore. This was one of them. “You can’t help me anyway.”
Doctor Elizabeth Carmine gave a small sigh and straightened out the pages of the file folder on top of her desk. She knew patients, especially brand new ones, could be stubborn or difficult, but Heather was one of the more thickheaded ones she’d encountered. She hadn’t lost any of her usual determination to help, but it was always a little more frustrating when there was so much resistance.
“Let’s try it this way. You didn’t want to come here, but you still did. You’re sitting here right now even though I can see in every inch of your expression that you want to bolt right for that door. Why?”
Heather glanced away from the clock on the wall behind Dr. Carmine’s head and looked into the woman’s eyes. “Why what?”
“Why did you come here if you hate the whole idea so much?”
Heather freely rolled her eyes at that. “Like it matters.”
“It does.”
She stared at the older woman for a long while, chewing on the inside of her bottom lip for a few long moments. She wasn’t getting out of here for another fifteen minutes, so why make herself more miserable than she already was. “Sam.”
Dr. Carmine straightened up a bit, looking more interested now. “Your fiance. The father of the child you’re carrying.” Heather nodded, and so the doctor continued. “That’s good. You’re doing this for someone who loves you, someone who wants to see you get better.”
“I don’t need to get better,” Heather snapped. For the most part, she’d been sitting there with a bored, uninterested look on her face, but now there seemed to be a fire there. “I’m not crazy.”
Dr. Carmine shook her head. “You aren’t crazy. But crazy people aren’t the only ones that have sat down in the chair you’re in right now. Heather, you do need help. You need help to deal with the things you feel you need to cut yourself over, the things you still feel suicidal over.”
“I haven’t cut in a while,” was the dull response. “And I haven’t exactly felt like killing myself lately, either.”
“Please be honest, Heather,” Dr. Carmine said, giving the younger girl a pointed look. “What did you tell me in the beginning of our meeting? You kind of spilled your guts there for a minute, as you like to put it.”
It was true. Heather had been so thoroughly disgusted by this entire concept that she sat down and blurted everything out. Her tone had been laced with sarcasm, as if she was making it all up, but there was no hiding the fact that it was the truth, and that it was painful for her to think back on. She’d told her all about her time spent in Silent Hill with those monsters and psychotic shifts in reality. She’d told her about her father’s brutal murder and how she’d stumbled upon it five minutes too late, how it had been her fault that he was killed in the first place. She went into gory detail about being ‘pregnant’ with a God that was supposed to rip out her spinal column and destroy the world all in one fell swoop, but she’d vomited up the fetus before that had a chance to happen. She described what it was like to bury her own father in the backyard, followed by months and months of time spent alone with no one else but herself, and how that time had caused her to plunge deeper and deeper into depression, cutting, and suicide attempts.
That was all before she’d found herself here in Los Angeles. Things were better here, yes, but not perfect. It was all far from perfect. She’d rambled on, taking up nearly the first hour as she told Dr. Carmine about everything that had happened here in L.A., from Pyramid Head and the ritual that had turned the city into Silent Hill for a while, losing her father yet again in this place, the Apocalypse, being raped and beaten by an alternate version of her fiance, being kidnapped and tortured by Lilith, dealing with the loss of a few friends whether they came back to life or not, being stalked by a crazed angel, to the more recent issues of being pregnant, the tension with Ruby, and Alastair, the demon that had already taken and tortured one of her best friends and future mother-in-law.
Saying it all out loud was easy when she let it all pour out like that. And then she sat there looking dumbfounded that as a person who was so adamantly against this, she’d revealed every single thing that had happened to her in the span of the first hour. At least now, she wouldn’t have to deal with all those stupid questions. The doctor already knew everything there was to know. But Heather was wrong. She was still asking away.
“So my life’s been shitty. A lot of people have to deal with stuff like that, especially here. But not everybody needs a shrink.”
“Some people do, and there’s nothing wrong with that, Heather,” Dr. Carmine pressed on. “You want to keep everything in so badly that it’s starting to eat you up inside all over again, just like before when you were on the road after Silent Hill. Do you really want to become that person again here, when you have a family and friends, a man who loves you, wants to marry you, and is having a child with you?”
Heather was quiet again, but there was something different about her at the same time. She wasn’t holding back because she was annoyed or anything like that, she was actually giving the words some thought. The answer was an obvious one, of course.
“No.”
Dr. Carmine seemed to give off a small sigh of relief, then glanced at the clock over her shoulder. “I think that’s a good place to end it for today. We got a lot further than most people do on their first visit. At least I don’t have to prod you for information now.” She gave a small, kind smile at that. “Just think about what I said, okay?”
Heather was already standing up and pulling her coat tighter around her body. She hadn’t taken it off since she walked through the door. She really didn’t expect to stay for ten minutes, let alone over an hour. It was her own fault, mostly. Damn that big mouth of hers. It did like to get her in trouble, didn’t it?
“Yeah. Okay, I will.”
Dr. Carmine stood along with her, reaching out to give her hand a shake. “It was nice meeting you, Heather. And I promise, I’m going to help you through this. That’s what I’m here for. Not to embarrass you or make you feel stupid for the way you’re feeling. I can help you deal with it and get past it, so you can feel like a real person again.”
Heather shifted uncomfortably and shook the woman’s hand briefly. “Right. Okay. I’ll, um…I’ll call back next week to make another appointment.”
Dr. Carmine smiled again. “That sounds good to me, Heather.”