Shattering Truth

Chapter 6

He can't be dead. Not her dark eyed boy who was stronger than life itself. With a wide smile that was showing his perfectly ordered white teeth, and small, barely visible dimples on his cheeks, which he often claimed were only a part of her imagination. With eyes as deep and dark as the most vivid color on a painting, and obsidian hair which stood proudly in the wind, and whose strains only her fingers had an ability to disrupt. Not her husband with whom she was supposed to start a family and grow old together until time takes them both away.

"Mrs. Black, do you need another glass of water?" Dr. Edwards asks, and she squeezes the existing glass in her hands with her fingers.

Mrs. Black, her own name appears in her thoughts. If Jacob is dead, is she still allowed to wear his name? If he's gone, can she still be Mrs. Black? If yes, how, when there's no Mr. Black?

"No," she says silently, slowly shaking her head first left, then right.

Doctor watches her carefully as she sits still on his office sofa, wondering has he done a big mistake by telling her the truth. Her time has been up five minutes ago, but luckily, he doesn't have another patient for another hour, and he can't just throw her out like this. Not without an explanation. It's not professional, nor is it humane.

"Are you trying to tell me he's not real?" She says after few minutes of silence, parting her lips only enough to allow the words to escape through the small crack, "Are you trying to tell me I've been seeing him for a month when he wasn't really there?" She whimpers helplessly.

"Oh," doctor gasps surprised, like he didn't expect her to ask such questions this soon, "I believe he's very real for you. When you came to me for the first time you were in absolute shock, you looked like you haven't slept, or eaten anything, in days. You didn't even want to talk. We spent our first session in silence."

The memory invades her mind. A picture of her, in her early thirties, only a month before, sitting on the doctors sofa with a messy bun she usually only wore in her own home, wrapped up in one of her husbands hoodies. She can't even recognize the woman in her memory, even though the woman is her. She is struck by grief and loss and there's big nothingness in her eyes, which aren't brown, but black. Two, wide black holes on a white background.

"This is not unusual," doctor speaks again, pulling her out of her memory, "After a grave loss, people tend to go through a shock, and as a way of coping they create false reality. Some dig themselves in it more than the others. After our third meeting you started getting better. I thought our conversations are good for you, and that you're starting to move on. I wanted to dismiss you from my service on our fifth meeting, which is when you started talking about your husband as if he were still here. I felt it's unwise to throw the truth in your face, and my professional opinion was that it might harm you."

"So you let me believe my husband is alive?" She asks a little angrily, thinking how all of this could have been stopped a lot sooner, and her pain would be lesser.

Dr. Edwards sighs loudly, holding her look with his. "At the time, even if I told you the truth, you wouldn't have believed me. It would have been too much of a shock to you, so I decided to ease the news to you. Let your mind tell you itself."

"It didn't tell me anything!" She yells frustrated, tears forming in her eyes.

"It did," doctor stays as composed as ever, "You knew there's something wrong, something missing, you could have felt it. And I'm sure there are little things..." he tries to explain it to her the best he can, "Sink into your memory, and there will be million of little things that are different. You created a pretty accurate reality for yourself, but still, there are little details which are off. Try it."