Transversals

I. The Psychiatrist: Session 1

"Tell me from the beginning what happened."

I laugh and play with my hands. "You won't believe me if I say."

The therapist taps her pen on her memo pad. "I can't diagnose schizophrenia until you tell me everything. The hallucinations will stop and you can forget this all ever happened."

I slowly shake my head and feel tears form, replying, "It wasn't a hallucination." Her words scroll through my mind again, and I snap my head up with a scowl. "And I'm not crazy, for one."

She holds up her hands defensively. "I apologize. Although you shouldn't perpetuate schizophrenia's bad connotation." Her hands come down and she taps her memo pad again. "It's perfectly healthy to live with."

I ignore her syrup-drenched prompt to my schizophrenic confession again and look outside the window of her cozy office, outside to the conglomerate of trees off in the near distance. Rain outside falls in slow sheets, the kind that blurs and fuzzes out the world like fogged glasses. I shut my eyes and turn away from the weather, like it was a welder's flash. The crushed glasses were still on my dresser.

"Listen, Harley," the psychiatrist coaxes, leaning forward. I instinctively clench my hands into fists. "I can't help you if you won't open up."

"I don't want to open up," I snap, standing up. "I know it wasn't fake!"

Footsteps sound out in the hall and I look up, heart racing at the prospect of being forced to live in the nearby ward. Instead, the footsteps continue on and I collapse back into my seat, breathing heavily. The psychiatrist scribbles a word on her memo pad. Paranoia.

"I'm not paranoid," I mumble, memories flashing back to me as I stare outside. Every irregular drop of rain on glass feels pressuring, like it's trying to get my heart to drum along. The psychiatrist stands from her chair and walks to a filing cabinet. "I'm not paranoid," I mumble again.

Digging out a plain composition notebook, she hands it to me on her way back from dimming the blinds a touch. I open the notebook, blues and reds blurring past my field of vision, all blank. She sits back down in her chair, memo pad and pen absent for once. The slight smile observing my confusion only makes me angrier.

I shut it with a slap. "What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

Her eyes stayed trained on the black and white. "Writing can be very therapeutic."

I scoff and tuck the thing under my arm, nonetheless. "I don't write."

"You know, I had a patient earlier this week just like you," she wistfully begins, nodding her head. "Uncanny similarity in personalities."

Tears spring from nowhere and sting my eyes as I stare outside. I try to stay away from thoughts of fog and smoke, to think of frost and snow instead of rain and steam, but that doesn't help much either. And I try to erase the phrase "uncanny similarities" from my mind, but I can't. I can't forget if I would bargain my soul to.

"I'm not permitted to disclose the name, but she came from a rough place. Ever heard of Rushwood Isles, Harley?"

My mouth stays shut.

"It's an island off the coast. Terrible, terrible underground crime history used to be there until recently." The psychiatrist pauses to pick at her nails. "She was angry, no doubt. And she was very shaken up over her experience, let me tell you. I hadn't ever seen a person so harden by trauma until you walked through my door. I gave her the same notebook and the same spiel about forgiving and forgetting earlier. And she said the exact same thing you did."

"Call it bullshit?" I mumble, chewing my bottom lip.

"Yep. I know you're bottling it all up inside." She leans forward again and sets a hand on my knee, eyes baring into my soul through figurative rose-colored glasses. "Tell me everything."