Who: Laurie Strode and Dr. Barbara Gordon When: Monday morning What: A first therapy session/meeting Rating: PG-13 just to be safe. Mostly for language, mentions of past violence/abuse.
Laurie Strode was something of a celebrity to the true-crime fans out there; there were two books written by Dr. Samuel Loomis about her life, about her maniac brother, and both had been on bestseller lists for awhile. As a result, sometimes Laurie would get stopped somewhere, despite wearing her hair in front of her face and baggy, misshapen clothes to try and hide the scars.
"Are you...? You look so familiar... Are you that Myers girl?" they'd ask, pity and curiosity warring for dominance in their eyes, and she would lie. "Who? I'm sorry, you have the wrong person." Scuttle away like an insect, fear making her ribs ache with how hard her heart was beating. Nevermind the big glossy photos in the books, baby photos she'd never even seen herself, a school portrait from her sophomore year of Haddonfield High. A candid of her, Annie and Lynda sitting on a bench on the school courtyard, Laurie laughing and holding something out of Annie's reach while the other girl grabbed for it. Those last two had been in the 2008 yearbook; this year, 2010, would've been her graduating year. If she'd stayed in school.
As it was, she'd spent last night with Tristan, the way she spent most nights with Tristan these days. She hadn't met many people since being here, just a strangely timeless and elegant woman named Talia, a twitchy and mouthy guy named Itchy, and of course Tristan of the lovely eyes and impossible hands. They had lain on her bed, decidedly platonic poses so that when the nurses popped in for 'checks' they never got caught doing anything inappropriate. Mostly Laurie just loved to play with his hair, to stroke it back from his handsome face and play with it while he spoke. They'd talked about traveling and food and music, and lives outside of the hospital; he had held her when she'd begun to cry, as she inevitably did when she thought about the past. When the nurse had come in with her sleeping pills (the strong sedatives that were the only way Laurie could get any sleep at all worth mentioning; they knocked her out so thoroughly that she couldn't have bad dreams, which was exactly how she wanted it for now), Tristan had been allowed to stay, holding her hand and sitting on the edge of the bed unil she'd fallen asleep.
This morning was her first official therapy session with Dr. Gordon; Laurie had gotten an envelope on Friday afternoon notifying her of the appointment time and room number. She wasn't anti-therapy; she'd done plenty of counseling back in Haddonfield, both before and after the second attack from Michael. She wanted to be better; she wanted to sleep through the night again without tranquilizers and be able to walk down the street without looking over her shoulder constantly. She wanted to be normal more than anything, which was why every morning she religiously smeared the stinging chemical lotions over her vivid surgery scars, trying to get them to fade; why she wore black fingerless gloves to try and conceal the wreckage of her hands that had been so badly broken and smashed in the struggle to escape, to survive her brother's rage.
She reached the correct office door and knocked, shifting her weight. Dressed in faded bootcut jeans and a black t-shirt, a red hoodie over everything, she looked every bit the seventeen year old girl, her long gold hair tangled and unkempt against her cheeks, the toe of one high-top chafing against the side of the other as she waited.