~What if you find your soulmate but he's already dead?~
Charlotte is a last year Psychology student, hating the dorm-life she moves into an apartment. She considers it a blessing that she got such a quiet and decent place in such a cheap rent. And...
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Ian Flinn stared at Charlotte sitting across his desk again. He didn't want to see this one person out of all in the list of his patients. But what we want and what we get are mostly not the same things.
She looked to be waiting with bated breath for his verdict. In reality, he knew, she was aware of what was truly going on. She was one of his brightest students after all. He believed what she particularly wanted from him was reassurance.
She had told him all about the logic that challenged her sickness. It was not surprising that it was her delusion who had presented those logics to her to strengthen itself.
Ian made a mental note to up the dosage of her medication.
Finally, he leaned forward, his elbows slid on the sleek desk. "Sometimes hallucination can be instigated, Charlotte. Suppose I'm having a visual hallucination, I speak about it to someone with a weak or stressed mind, sometime later it is possible they will start hallucinating about the same thing too. It's not new that people are capable of sharing auditory or visual hallucinations."
"I certainly wasn't aware of the rumors about the building. I never knew it was haunted or something." She was rubbing her forehead.
"Oh, but you perhaps were. Perhaps you heard something from someone, you just don't remember it. Maybe your brain erased that part, hid it from you. Our brain is a mysterious organ, Charlotte, there's nothing it cannot do." He hoped she was not past being helped with reasoning. He hoped he wouldn't have to treat her like he treated all his other clinical patients.
She tugged at her disheveled hair in a way it looked like she was going to rip her own hair in frustration. "If my brain is capable of doing such a thing with me—if my brain has begun erasing or hiding such vital pieces of information from me then it is a given that I'm slowly getting driven towards absolute madness."
He remained quiet seeing she was having a moment of mental breakdown. It was good that she was letting out all her pent up emotions, all the frustration and fears in such a raw way.
"Is this moment right here, right now, is it real?" she spoke brokenly. "Are you truly sitting in front of me? Or am I being tricked by my own brain again? Can I even trust myself anymore!"
It seemed she was questioning every moment of her life, of her days, of her sanity; like she did not know anymore what was real and what was a lie.
Ian knew she must be in great distress at the moment, but sometimes one need to burn entirely to rise from the ashes. Such moments of breakdowns are always marked as important milestones in psychology.
Charlotte was almost in tears and Ian was just about to offer her a tissue and then perhaps a glass of water, but right then his phone blared. He peeked at the screen to see it was from the hospital. He let out a long breath. This might be important, he needed to take the call. But the news that was given him from the other side as he took the call made his face turn pale.
