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You keep staring at her, hoping she’ll give anything. Dr. Melrose, however, patiently waits.
You concede with a sigh. “I have trouble sleeping sometimes.” You look to the side, disliking how open you have to be with this virtual stranger, but Coco would be sad if you didn’t take this seriously.
Melrose nods. “No need to be embarrassed, it happens to lots of huntsmen in training, though few would admit it.”
An alarm blares in your head. “Gonna give me meds now or something?”
The doctor smiles. “I’m a psychologist, I can’t prescribe medication.”
“But you do, I don’t see any psychiatrist around.”
She laughs. “Extraofficially, yes. But unlike psychiatrists, I don’t receive financial bonuses for putting as many people as I can on drugs. I'd like to try some other options first.”
“What are those?” you ask, hoping to get a solution and get out fast.
“First I’ll need to see what’s causing you to lose sleep.” Maybe she realized your eagerness to leave.
You stare at her for a few more seconds. “I see images and I hear voices.” You give her as little as possible.
Melrose raises an eyebrow. “And what do these things show?”
“Dead people, corpses and stuff. Blood, guts, whatnot.” <span class="mu-i">Surely she’ll let me go with this.</span>
“Is there any pattern to these things?”
“Death.”
“Aside from that, the context I mean, are they people you know? Do these images happen in one place, or are they just the people?”
You tsk your tongue, the doctor seems determined to get answers out of you. “Yeah I know them, they’re people who died.”
“All of them? There isn’t anyone who’s alive and yet appears in your visions?”
“… no,” you lie.
“What’s your opinion on the past?” The doctor changes subjects.
“What do you mean?”
“The past, is it something you give a lot of importance to?”
“No. The past happened, it is what it is, there’s nothing I can do to change it.”
The doctor nods. “But if the past doesn’t matter, why do you keep remembering it when you close your eyes?”
“… who knows. Aren’t you the shrink?”
Melrose laughs. “Again, I’m not a psychiatrist.”
You stare at her. This time she speaks despite it, “have you considered you can’t sleep not because of what did happen, rather because of something yet to happen?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” you sharply say.
“This is a safe place to talk, anything you say is bound by doctor patient confidentiality, you can speak with no fear.” She tries to calm you down.
“What time is it?” You didn’t bring your scroll, having left it in your tent in case anyone’s listening.
“We still have ten minutes in our one hour, but we can go longer.”
You decide to keep quiet for the rest of your time. After a couple of minutes, dr. Melrose sighs. “I’ll let you go after one more question, okay?”
“Fine.”
