Thread: Trust the Good Doctor [T-Howell and skittish_butterfly]

Grace felt relaxed. She knew her dream was weird, but weren't all dreams? It didn't mean anything, because if that one did then so did the hundreds of others and they were all such nonsense they couldn't all be true. So when Dr. King said, interesting, she just smiled and kept her eyes shut, relaxing with a sense she'd given him enough to chew on to burn up a good fraction of the hour. She recrossed her legs, unaware his eyes were studying her body when she was convinced his clearly disorganized brain had to be mulling over her words. There was silence for a bit and she could almost imagine him scribbling little notes about the significance of this and that in what she'd just said. It almost made her want to chuckle. Manipulating therapists to waste their own time was almost a game with her at this point. She wish her mom wasn't making her come here at all, but if she had to come, she'd at least try to have a little fun with it. Grace opened her eyes when he finally started talking again, a little startled by the intensity of his gaze staring back at her in the dim room, almost like a sinister owl in the dark woods. She dismissed that feeling as quick as she could tried to focus on his words instead, looking for any little hook she could hang any of her clever time-wasters on. She looked back at him as he spoke, the room a little too dim for her to see him clearly -- the dim lighting seemed to pool mostly around her, so he seemed to be in the shadows while she was in a very weak form of a spotlight, as if all the focus was supposed to be on her, which she didn't like at all. Looking down and seeing the way the room's faint light was enough to give a pale view of her bare legs, she pulled her crossed legs up onto the couch and curled them up under herself. As she listed to him talk about delving into her dream, Grace hoped he'd do most of it himself in one of those displays of therapeutic brilliance she was all too used to by now, where the new therapist has to demonstrate how practically psychic he is, as if he should have his own TV show. It was almost laughable at this point. But to her surprise, he pulled back from that display, not bothering to deconstruct the whole thing in some sort of Yungian construct, whatever the hell Dr. Popper had meant by that. Dr. King instead just asked her a few questions, simple ones really, and it put Grace a little off guard. He was going off the script. This wasn't how she manipulated the therapists and kept them from making her talk about things she didn't want to. The questions were so simple she didn't even feel threatened by them. It didn't feel like he was pry into her heart looking for all the painful crevices that if any of them had just asked she could have told them didn't exist, or at least she'd long ago plastered them over and gotten on with her life. It was more like a simple pop quiz in the easiest class on her schedule. Simple. The first time? Well, I never had an exact copy of this before, but some pieces of it have appeared before in different combinations in other dreams, at least I think I remember that. Obviously Patrick didn't appear before last spring when we met, and really not even until a few months after when things got... well, not before this summer let's say. But dreams of the water and the beach and being in that bikini? That goes back years, even to when my... dad died, she didn't finish. Not the complicated place she wanted this simple question ending up. Well, to when my, uh, my mom, uh, bought it for me. The guy in the bathroom? Ha, I, uh... She couldn't say she'd been having that in her dream going back even to when she was smaller, to when her dad started leaving all the time on business, when he stopped being a regular part of her life and more like a cherished occasional visitor. I must have made a mistake on that. Maybe I didn't remember it right. Or maybe it was something else, going way back, but I'm just not remembering it right. The simple question seemed to get more and more complicated the more she answered it, so Grace decided to stop. He followed it up with another simple question. What had she been doing before she had the dream? Grace stared down at her lap where her slender fingers were somehow twisted together in a tense little ball. When she looked back in his eyes, she was glad the room was so dimly lit, that he hopefully wouldn't see the color on her cheeks. Before the dream? What was I doing? Eh, well, you know, the usual. He just kept looking at her. Just... just thinking, lying in bed and thinking, about stuff. Her face felt even hotter as she tiptoed around the bigger picture. It was none of his business really, and it was perfectly normal, but most importantly, Grace knew, it had nothing to do with anything. So she left it at that. Just thinking about stuff. Weren't you ever young once upon a time, long long ago? Turning the questions back on them was always a good idea. Predictably enough that it didn't even annoy her he just seemed to brush aside her question, probably because he thought it was rhetorical, or maybe because he was getting to that age where facing the fact he wasn't young anymore was too painful for him. Her mom had talked her ear about that topic so much in the last year or two before her dad died, when he was always in Europe on business, as if he was a kid playing around instead of trying to earn a living for his family. Instead, Dr. King turned to Patrick, asking to know a little about him. Grace took a short breath and tried to will her fingers to relax, her legs and torso to untense. Patrick she could talk about. Patrick, he's sweet. He's a little older than me, a grad student. He's so smart, which I just love about him. Maybe he's not the alpha-athlete type, but we don't live in caves and hunt with our bare hands anymore. We live in the world of the mind, and his burns bright enough to keep me warm. She found herself smiling but only a little. Yeah, he's sweet. But we, well, I haven't had a boyfriend since... in a long time. So he understands, and we're... we're taking it slow. Which is good, right? Our chemistry is slow and steady and consistent, not something to just ignite and burn out in a week, leaving us both charred with nothing to show for it. Yeah. I can talk to him, about his studies, and my classes, and... it's good, mostly. I mean it's good. Just good. She didn't like talking this much about herself. It was the questions. Grace wanted to get his ego going, get him to fill the hour with his own ideas rather than her words. The time would pass more quickly if she could laugh silently in her heart at the bombastic absurdity she knew had to be in there somewhere, like all the others. So, Dr. King, you probably don't have a clue about me, do you? I mean, it's only been a session and, what, a half? Most of the doctors have it all figured out by now, but I can tell by your questions you're not like them... in a good way I mean, slow isn't bad. Yes it is, she thought to herself with a smirk she hoped he could see, a smirk she hoped irked him enough that he would have to prove how little he knew at great length, spewing out stupidity that had absolutely nothing to do with her. Grace pulled her legs back out from under her, putting her feet back down on the floor with her knees still primly together, facing him with an almost challenging look on her face.