Session One

The room is small. Well decorated, dark mahogany accenting everything, the bookshelves, the legs of the huge chair, the desk; a gorgeous fake plant spreading out on the opposite side of the room, books of every sort laying around, stacked nicely on shelves. It's a bibliophiles heaven and all I can do to keep myself from peeking at a few titles. The leather on the chair keeps me distracted, its reflective surface smooth to touch as I run my hands over it. The sun from the two huge windows bounces off of it and gives a white glare. The view is beautiful. All the high rise buildings are in plain view, I can see traffic if I peek over far enough. But then my head spins a little and I retract and submit to the comfort of my chair.

It has a distinct clean smell in here. Almost like the waiting room of a hospital, only clearer, not marred by the different scents of people and their medicines. It's crisp and sharp. Like nothing in here has ever been touched. I'm scared to touch any of it.

It's quiet.

Not normal quiet. You'd expect an empty room to be quiet, but this one is too much for me to deal with. We're high up enough that the traffic's roar is reduced to a low hum. It's driving me crazy. I want to do something to break this silence, something to amuse myself while I sit here and wait. I opt for standing and walking. I pace the desk once or twice, eyeing the papers that lie there, hands grazing the chair as I pass, and find my feet moving towards that huge book shelf that lines the wall closest to the chair I had been sitting in. I stop in front of it and glance over the titles of a few leather bound selections.

Anatomy of the Mind

Psychology and Pathology: The Brain and its Behavior

Essential Psychopharmacology of Depression and Bipolar Disorder

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Diagonally Parked in a Parallel Universe: Working Through Social Anxiety

Understanding Yourself and Others: An Introduction to Temperament

All a little overwhelming to me. Nothing that I can wrap my head around right now, I know nothing about what these books are talking about, even in the titles. They remind me quickly of where I am, why I'm here, what's probably going to happen here. The awkward questions, the reluctant answers, the silences. I hate silence.

The door opens without a sound, but I feel the shift and see it out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head and take my hand away from the bookshelf with an apologetic look. The woman in the doorway offers a smile and shakes her head, closing the door behind her.

"Like books?" Her voice is soft and gravelly, high pitched. She reminds me of someone. I look her over, taking note of her formal attire, her dark curls pulled back into a no-nonsense twist, her complexion is like milk chocolate, light and dark at the same time.

"Not this kind." I reply, my own voice quiet. Those are the first words I've said all day. She moves fluidly over to her desk and takes a seat, like water splashing on a table top, with ease and delicacy. She nods for me to sit in the adjacent chair, and I comply with something less than grace, looking like an awkward adolescent to her cool, confident adult. She tips her head at me and turns over a fresh page in her yellow legal pad. I notice how cliched that is.

"Mark, correct? I'm Dr. Lopez, but you're welcome to call me Anne. Would you prefer I call you something else?" Those brown eyes don't look up at me as she scribbles away. What kind of question is that?

"No. Mark is fine." I reply. This is already awkward and frustrating. She nods, marks it down and finally looks up at me, clasping her hands in front of her.

"Alright. I'm going to have to ask you a few preliminary questions." That voice took a tone that I didn't quite like. Almost as though she were talking at me rather than to me. I nod, inferring that I understand and she continues. "Are you on any medication? Cold medicine, prescription anything?"

I shake my head no. She makes a quick mark on a separate paper and moves on.

"Do you have any emotional reactions to anything you've taken in the past by prescription?" She pushes a pair of wire-rimmed glasses up onto her nose that resemble mine and I shake my head again.

"I don't think so." I answer quietly, finding myself biting at the fingernail on the index finger of my right hand. I wonder how she's going to interpret that.

"Any physical?" She blows right over my nervousness like a footnote and I shake my head in silence.

"Who do you live with currently, Mark?" She asks, pushing the paper that apparently has my medical records on it into another folder and slips out another one. I swallow and clear my throat, vocal chords still getting used to speech this morning.

"My roommate, Roger." I answer as steadily as I can manage. She nods and makes some marks as she speaks.

"Age?"

"Twenty eight." My voice is short and quiet still.

"Relationship?"

"Roommate...friend..." I shrug my shoulders and slump in my chair a little more. She looks up at me and smiles.

"How well do you two get along?" She asked, seemingly out of just curiosity, but I know. I know there's something more to her question.

"Alright." I answer plainly. She continues to stare at me in expectance. "We're friends, we fight, we get along, whatever..."

She gives a nod and inhales. "I'm going into this assuming that you know what you're headed into. I'm a therapist. I'm here so you can talk to someone. I'm here to listen and to understand. If I feel you have something seriously wrong, I can send you to a psychiatrist who can prescribe the necessary medicine. As of now, you come here and you talk to me about what's bothering you, and I assess your problem."

Problem. I've got a problem.

"You know that, correct? That I'm here acting as just a therapist."

You know that I don't want to be here, correct?

I nod my head in compliance and she smiles. "Good. Well then why don't you start out by telling me why you're here."

I don't want to. My face is formed in a tight stance, and it's like I can't move it. Or I don't want to. I just stare from behind my glasses for what seems like a year before she speaks up again, that graveled voice a little louder now.

"Mark?"

"Huh?" I pass it off like I was spacing out, thinking about something else, not paying attention. I can't tell if she buys it.

"Would you like to tell me why you're here?"

No.

I inhale and sit up a little more, bouncing my knee in that nervous way that I tend to do. "I put my hand through a window." She expects more and I don't give it.

"Well, then maybe you should be in a hospital and not here." she replies sarcastically. I cringe and fall right into her trap, hoisting up my sweater sleeve to expose the bandage around my right wrist, blotches of pink still evident from yesterday.

"I went to the hospital. They sent me here." She leans in and looks at my bandage with a quizzical glance.

"Are you sure you put your hand through a window, Mark?"

"I'm not suicidal if that's what you're implying. And I sure as hell didn't dream it. Do you want to see?" I slip my fingers under the bandage in a feeble attempt to lift it. She holds up a hand.

"No. I believe you." Her voice is quieter now. Cautious. "Now, why you did it is the question."

No it isn't. I know why I did it, there's no question about it. But I shrug my response, feet tapping against the carpeted floor.

"Had a grudge against the window?" She asked with another patronizing lilt. I glared at her, but she didn't move.

"Because if it wasn't the window, it would have been the chair. And if it wasn't the chair, than it was going to be him. I figured the window would make the most impact."

"It was going to be who?" She leaned forward, pen poised, ready to attack the paper. Ready to commit my words to something.

"Roger." I mutter. "It was stupid, a fight about nothing."

"Well then if it was about nothing, why did you manage to get so angry that you wanted to put your hand through the window?"

Damn her and her tricks, her ability to see through my words, her ability to assess that I'm lying. I stay silent and hope she'll forget that she asked me that question.

"Start from the beginning. Why were you fighting with your roommate?" She adjusts her glasses and it reminds me of myself.

"I'd rather not."

Those brown eyes peer at me in a disapproving glare rather quickly. I stay silent.

"I can't help you if you don't talk."

"That's the point."

She places her pen down and folds her hands in that condescending way that teachers do when you're in high school and you've committed a reportable offense.

"So you don't want to talk?" She asked. "Fine. We can both sit here in silence for an hour each week, and you can deal with whatever's going on in that head of yours on your own, which you seem to be content to do. Or you could just not come here. Save yourself the money. Look, I don't have much preference either way, but if you reopen that wound with another little fit of anger, I'll blame myself."

I sit here silently still. I'm not about to confess my problems to this woman. I barely know her name, never mind her credibility as a doctor...or a person.

She sits back in her chair. "Time is money, Mark. You can waste it, or you can take advantage of it and possibly fix something."

"You act like something's wrong with me." I manage to spit out.

"You don't think there is?" I watch as Dr. Lopez raises a caramel colored brow at me and I cave.

"Of course something's fucking wrong with me, but nothing that I can fix by talking to some woman in a stuffy little office for an hour a week." The words shoot out of my mouth like delightful weaponry.

"Excuse me, " I figure I'm in for it now. "But my office is neither stuffy nor little."

A smile threatens to crack my face, but I ignore it. Suppress it. As usual.

"Granted." I mutter, standing. Dr. Lopez's eyes follow me, but she makes no motion to stop me from getting the hell out of here.

"Next week, Mark. I want you here, and I want you ready to say something." She commands as I throw the door open.

"Yeah..." I mutter, letting it close behind me.