To Find the Collector - We Parts

Tabytha

"So you can see dead people?"

"She says she see them all the time," Maurine said raising her hands above her head for emphasis.

"Tabytha," Dr Hister said moving his rotund body more to be pointing more at the little girl than at the mother. "What do these dead people say to you?"

"She says they don't say anything?" Maurine said again, fluttering one hand in the air. 

Dr Hister looked at Maurine, his eyes narrowing and his lips drawn in to poof-out his goatee. Maurine looked up at the ceiling and sat back in her chair.

"Tabytha," Dr Hister said in a gentle voice. "Why do you say..."

"There a little boy with a scar on his nose sitting in the corner," Tabytha said matter factly.

Dr. Hister straightened. "Which corner?" he asked twisting his girth back and forth. Tabytha's brown eyes went up from the floor where she had been staring into a corner off to his left.

"There's nothing there," Maurine said pointing at the empty space between Dr. Hister's mahogany desk and a wall filled with framed diplomas.

Dr. Hister frowned again at Maurine and using both arms, pried himself from the chair and stood up.

"So, Tabytha," he said looking directly at Maurine. "There is a little boy here in the corner." He waddled around the other side of his desk and ended just before the corner. "What is he doing here?"

Tabytha looked up, started to speak, but she stopped herself. She knew how the doctor would react. Everyone would react the same. She was too old to have imaginary friends. She needed to give up the ghost stories. She did not see dead people. "He's gone."

"Tabytha, I'm trying to help," Dr Hister said leaning onto his desk. "What was he doing here?"

Tabytha looked at him. He was pretending to like her, Tabytha could tell. He wasn't the first doctor, or shrink like her mom called them, that Tabytha had seen. He wouldn't be the last.

"Tabytha, you tell Dr. Mister the truth," Maurine said.

"Hister," the doctor said.

"Hister?" Maurine said giggling a little. "Oh, I got that wrong."

The doctor exhaled through his nose and seated himself on the chair behind his desk. "It's OK. It's German. I grew up there and when my family moved here our name was shortened to something more American. Unfortunately, it was one letter off from a very common word." He repositioned himself. "Tabytha," he said raising his voice. "I can not help you if you don't..."

"He was saying he was cold," Tabytha said. "He was waiting for someone to come help him."

"I thought you said they didn't talk to you," Maurine blurted out.

Dr. Hister cleared his throat. Maurine looked at him, clasped her hands and looked away. The doctor leaned into his desk. "Tabytha?"

"The dead do talk to me," she said raising her head and looking at her mom who was looking away. "It's me who can't talk to them."

"Dr. Mister," Maurine said louder than before. "Is there a pill you could give her to get rid of these childish imaginary friends."

The doctor leaned back in his chair, "Hister," he said.

"What?"

"Wo ist mine bruder," Tabytha said. "He keeps saying that."

"What did you say?" the doctor said leaning in further. 

"I don't understand what he is saying," Tabytha whispered. "He just keeps repeating it. He's crying," she said tears beginning to form in her eyes.

"He's still here," the doctor said glancing at the empty corner. 

A tear ran down Tabytha's face as she shook her head up and down. "Wo ist mine bruder he keeps saying. He is just a little..."

"Doctor Hister," Maurine said standing up. "My daughter has these panic attacks almost daily. She can't go to school because she says there is a black man there without a head. She can't go to the bathroom at our house because she says her dead grandmother is sitting on the toilet. She needs to be medicated. Will you medicate my daughter?" Maurine brought her fist down on his desk. The doctor had been lost in a memory. A memory of his childhood, of getting lost in the woods with his younger brother, of leaving his brother behind while he went for help, of never seeing his little brother alive again.

"I," he stuttered looking at Tabytha who held her face in her hands. "Yes." He looked up at Maurine, then to the empty corner.