Who's to judge?

Chapter XXIII

I had her take a seat at her desk. "Why did you give it to him?" I asked as I scanned the room.

"I explained it to him and he wanted me to show him, that's all." in her voice I recognized honesty, so I left it at that.

Before I could begin my real questioning, I needed something specific. "Listen, McKenna, I'm sure you have a list of your patients, right?"

She slowly began to nod. "I do indeed possess a list, but only of vampire patients."

I frowned, showing confusion. She then said, "Since it often happens that vampires have suspensions, the state wants everyone who shows signs of mental disorders to be kept in mind. Therefore, every type of psychic doctor makes a list of their vampire patients."

I stood up and looked around a bit.

"May I take a look at that list?" I asked. Surprisingly, she nodded. She opened a drawer of the desk and handed me a file folder. Carefully, I opened it and immediately recognized a patient. It was the first body I had found. I kept flipping through and found that all the bodies I had found up to that point were in that folder.

"What kind of problems did they have?" I asked her as I continued to leaf through.

"They were looking for forgiveness. For some reason, they thought their existence was a punishment." she said, leaning back slightly in her chair.

The Bible verses engraved on their chests were usually about forgiveness.

"Were they religious?" I asked further. She shook her head. "None of them mentioned God or anything like that. Still, it all seemed very spiritual."

Her answer made me ponder. My hand stopped as I came across a patient who evoked many questions. The decapitated woman. I pointed to her, "What about her? What was she like? Did she also feel the need to forgive?"

Dr. McKenna leaned forward to look at the image of the vampiress, then shook her head.

"She was one of my difficult patients. In the first few sessions, she showed the same symptoms as the others, so I prescribed her the medicine. Then one night she called me with panic in her voice. She said that everything was wrong, that I had brainwashed her. I tried to calm her down, which was impossible. She said the medicine was poison."

She looked confused, as if she didn't understand why the vampiress would claim that. This strengthened my suspicion that she was not the culprit. I decided to be gentler with her. I gently closed the folder and, as calmly as I could, I explained to her, "Unfortunately, that's the truth."

She frowned. Then she started shaking her head as if she didn't believe it. "It can't be, it was given to me by a professional." I pricked up my ears. Professional, meaning a doctor.

The cell phone vibrated again. Without looking at the display, I picked it up.

"Hey, could you ask the shrink how much she gave him? The doctor wants to know."

I turned to McKenna, who was biting her nails. "How much blood did you give him?" I asked hastily. She quickly stood up and rummaged through her trash can. She then pulled out the used syringe and handed it to me. She showed me the amount she had used with her finger.

"It's a zero point five milliliter syringe, and she injected zero point two."

"Okay, thank you." Then he hung up again.

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked me. She actually sounded concerned.

"They took him to a specialist," I answered briefly, but faltered.