Team orders- autistic Oscar Piastri, ADHD Lando Norris

10: the sports psychologist

Oscar's POV:

When I woke up my head hurt and I felt rubbish. Deflated and down and just like everything was on top of me. I called Mum again, leaning on her soft words to make me feel better. She helped me send a message to the necessary staff at McLaren to let them know I couldn't come in. We said I was ill, I don't know if I exactly felt ill. Then I told her I'd be fine and hung up. She knew I wouldn't exactly be great but she was in Australia, so what could she do?

Later on in the morning, when I'd dragged myself out of bed and pushed myself in to one corner of the sofa, I got a message from Kim asking if he could come over. Knowing that he would be understanding and that I could maybe do with someone to talk to, I agreed.

I wasn't hungry. I just wasn't. It wasn't like I looked at the food and thought I didn't deserve it or anything like that. When I thought about eating anything, I just didn't want to. I felt a bit ill at the thought. Kim was quick to complain about it when he arrived. "We've got you on the meal plans for a reason. You need to keep the weight."

"I don't feel well enough to eat," I half-lied. I didn't feel well enough to eat but I wasn't exactly sick either.

"You got a temperature?"

"I don't know, I haven't checked," I sighed, buried my head further into a pillow.

"I'll check then shall I?" He said with a laugh, getting a thermometer out of his kit bag and aiming the laser at my head. It beeped and he looked at it. "No temperature. You thrown up?" I shook my head. "Runny nose, cough?" I shook my head again. "So how do you feel?"

"Tired and just off. Like just not my normal self?"

"I don't mean to step out of line but do you think it could be a mental thing rather than a physical one?"

"I'm not crazy! I'm genuinely not feeling well!"

"No Oscar, I'm not saying you are crazy, but it's not uncommon for anxiety or low mood to manifest itself in physical ways."

"I'm fine, it's probably just exhaustion."

"We have a new team sports psychologist. Maybe it's worth just one session to see if there's something else going on."

I groaned, "can we not just give me a day, or two, see if it fixes itself?"

"You're really going to make me do this huh?"

"Do what?"

"Sunday night, that was anxiety. Sure, I do more training on the physical side of things sure, but we do our mental health training too. And you'd been crying, I could see it. Same thing now. Oscar, if we don't get this sorted, it could seriously start to affect our weekends. You're evidently not coping with things as well as your calm demeanour would suggest."

"Things are just a lot right now." I said, sniffling, not even looking at him where he'd sat on the sofa.

"Then let us help. Just for an hour, talk to someone about how you're feeling and see if there's anything they can suggest that would help you."

"I'm fine."

He sighed and look straight at me, it felt like he was staring into my soul and I looked away, "Oscar, your mum called."

"She didn't!" I said, embarrassed to hell. I couldn't have my mum calling up my place of work to state her worries.

"She called me, privately. Don't worry, no one at McLaren knows. But she's worried, and looking at you now, I am too."

"I'm fine." He looked at me sternly. "One session?" I asked.

"One session and then we'll talk about what worked and what didn't."