The Calling | The House of Voices #1

Three - Inconsistencies

Inconsistencies

Darren:

Even if Darren Michelson hadn’t been completely engrossed in his patients’ files, he still would not have noticed the sudden drop in temperature in his new office. If October was around, she would have been able to detect it instantly, but since she was tucked in bed in her room on the other side of the building, the young doctor had no idea that he wasn’t alone.

The thermometer nailed to the wall indicated that the temperature was well below its original mark; but the doctor remained oblivious to anything other than the inconsistencies he found in Parish Feltman’s file.

“It doesn’t make any sense.” The young man mumbled in frustration. Sighing heavily, he flipped through the pages for the fifth time that night; trying, and failing, to find a small piece of evidence that would help him make sense of what was going on.

Parish Feltman had been diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder when he was only thirteen years old, but he only seemed to be showing a couple of the symptoms of the disease. Darren didn’t know whether to be angry or troubled. Either the boy had been severely misdiagnosed or had developed a rare disease that his doctors were too lazy to research thoroughly and diagnose properly.

He could see why no one would be too keen to spend much time with the boy, though.  During the half hour he’d spent with Parish trying to get to know him, it had taken Darren only five minutes to realize that the boy wasn’t going to be the easiest person to get along with.

Still, he thought, that’s no excuse for not diagnosing the boy properly.

With a grunt of frustration, Darren slammed Parish’s folder shut and sent it flying over to the other side of the desk. He rubbed his temples together, feeling a small headache coming on.

At twenty-five, Darren was one of the most dedicated, hardworking Doctors the Board had ever seen, so it was no wonder that, when Pauline Larkson called in requesting a hand with a Schizophrenic girl and a very disturbed boy with an MPD, Darren Michelson was the first person they thought of.

Opening his eyes wearily, he reached over and picked up the other patient folder on his desk. October’s folder was considerably thinner and much lighter than Parish’s – understandably so, considering the fact that she’d never gotten into fist fights with her principal. But it was just as troubling.

The girl had just been diagnosed with Schizophrenia, something which, Darren was sure, she definitely did not have. He had met the girl a few hours ago and she had actually seemed…normal. Yes, she’d been a little hostile, but that was expected. She was a seventeen year-old girl locked up in a houseful of unstable kids, being forced to believe she had a dangerous disease.

He studied the small photograph that was stapled to the first page of October’s file. It was a fairly recent one, probably taken only about a few months ago. She was wearing a dark blue, knee-length dress that completely complimented her fair tone of her skin.

Her dark brown hair flowed loosely around her shoulders in neat little waves, framing her heart shaped face and her big hazel eyes shone brightly, smiling.

A cold breeze crept up Darren’s arm and he shuddered, snapping out of the daze he had slipped into. Mentally chastising himself for taking a little too much interest in October’s photograph than was necessary, he flipped the page over and started going through Doctor Larkson’s notes.

“October Grimmes,” she wrote, “seems like a healthy, happy regular teenage girl on the surface. At first I believed that her parents made a mistake by committing her, but after a few therapy sessions with the girl, it became clear that she is extremely troubled. Before she was brought here to Abercoster’s Institute, October’s ambition was to become a criminal psychologist and work for the FBI. After studying her for a while, I fear that she may have lost all interest in pursuing that dream anymore, though I am not one hundred percent certain.