The Ouija Session
Page 14
“Well, it looks like the Sleeping Beauty has awakened.”The woman smiled at me before she walked to the bed’s foot and picked up a folder where all the information about my admission should be. “Mrs. Armstrong, I wish I could talk to your son alone for a moment. Would you mind leaving the room?”
My mother nodded, and after I kissed her cheek, she went out, leaving me alone with that stranger. I sat up carefully, but still I noticed that the room span a bit.
“Easy, Eric. You have to move little by little or you will get dizzy. You’ve been unconscious for a couple of days.”
Had I lost again two days with my last attack? What happened to my mind to disconnect like that? I nodded slowly to avoid getting dizzy and I rested my head again on the pillow, while the doctor manipulated the bed controls elevate it a little.
“Well, Eric, I’m Dr. Coleman and I’m going to be your psychiatrist.”
Psychiatrist? I didn’t need a psychiatrist. Those people worked with mad patients, with dangerous people who had to be tied up, so they wouldn’t hurt anyone. In just one second all the movies about asylums I had seen pass through my mind. Cold showers, drugs that fry your brains, electric shocks... Was that what was waiting for me in the future? I felt my eyes filled with tears.
“I’m just here to talk. I need to know what happened to you at the pool. What were you scared of?”
I continued quietly. How could I trust her and tell her what was happening to me? How could I tell her that my dead friends’ ghosts came to visit me, that they had followed me from Swanton and that they would never leave me alone? Saying that was the fastest way to get a direct ticket to the madhouse.
“Eric, can you talk?”
“Yes, of course, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why don’t you want to talk about it?” She gave me a sweet and sympathetic smile, which she wanted to convince me that I could trust her, but I didn’t believe her.
“Because you’re not going to believe me. No one would.”
“You might try,” she was silent for a few seconds as if she were waiting that only by that I would be encouraged to speak. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to think anything bad about you. I hear weird stuff every day.”
“Of course, you hear strange things because you deal with mad people, but I’m not.”
“No one’s saying you are, Eric, but in order to help you, I need you to trust me. Your mother told me you see ghosts. Is that so?”
I was staring at the TV in the room, as if I was very interested, even though it was off. Actually, I was trying to contain the tears. I felt betrayed by my own mother. How could she have told that to the doctor? Did she want me to be locked up?
“Eric, I need you to cooperate. If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I won’t be able to do anything for you.”
“I don’t need you to do anything for me. All I want to do is go home.”
She kept insisting for a couple of minutes more, but I didn’t answer any of her questions again. I just looked at the black screen almost without blinking. I heard the doctor drop a long sigh, get up and go to the room’s door, from which she asked my mother to pass again. The doctor ran a curtain and they continued talking a few steps away from me. At that moment, I thought that adults sometimes behaved like stupid. Would they think that I wouldn’t hear them with a miserable curtain in between? Or did they think I was so gone that I couldn’t understand what they were saying?
“Has he spoken to you?” My mother asked.
“Not, at the moment. He’s very reserved, but I’m sure he’ll learn to trust me.”
“We don’t have money for many sessions. My husband is out of work...”
“Don’t worry about that. We have a program in the hospital for people with no resources. Later on, I’ll explain what forms you should fill out to apply for.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My family was going to have to resort to charity because of me? I wasn’t going to let that happen. I didn’t need any more sessions with that woman. All I wanted was to go home and get my normal life back. I’d take care of convincing my mother that I was fine.
“Do you think you can heal him?” Is it serious?”
“I don’t want to lie to you. It can be a lot more serious than we expected. At first his son, given the experiences he had just suffered, was diagnosed with a post-traumatic disorder. The difficulties to sleep, the night terrors, the feeling of guilt and sadness... All that fit, but we can’t fool ourselves. His symptoms are more severe. He has delusions and hallucinations, and after his crises, he falls into a catatonic stupor. We have reason to think that we may be facing the first outbreaks of a psychotic disorder.”
“I don’t understand you. What do you mean?”
“We’re talking about schizophrenia, Mrs. Armstrong. It’s a serious, chronic disorder. I think we should start with pharmacological treatment as soon as possible.”
“But he says he is all right and he can be for weeks behaving normally.”
“Patients with schizophrenia always say they are all right. They don’t accept their disease. I know that what I’m saying to you is very hard, but you must begin to raise awareness.”
“I don’t think you can diagnose my son without even talking to him.”
“All right. We’ll have a few sessions until I can confirm or refute my diagnosis.”
“Could we go home, now?”
“Yes, of course, but first, let’s set the time for our next meeting. Would the day after tomorrow at 5:00, suit you well?”
“Yes, it’s perfect.”
The doctor said goodbye and left the room. I heard my mother crying on the other side of the curtain. At that moment, I decided that I would never see them again, that if they appeared to me, I would ignore them, that I would not allow them to turn me crazy. I was destroying my family. I repeated myself again and again that they did not exist, that they were only a figment of my imagination and that I could control them.
I turned to the window and saw it was raining. The water was falling hard on the city streets. For years, I thought it was because of my will that I had stopped seeing them and hearing them. I was proud of the power of my mind, of my self-control ability, but the reality is that the water fell asleep and drove them away from me. And now they’re back.
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