Page 11 of Deranged
“I’ve read the DSM-5, twice. Way back when I was young and naïve and still thought something might actually be wrong with me.”
“You don’t think you need help?”
She shrugged. “Of course I need help. I need the skills of someone who can smuggle me to another country so I can hide.”
“From your mother?”
“Look, Ash, I understand. To you, it may seem like I’m paranoid. Why would an upstanding government official hurt her own daughter like this?”
“And…” I prompted.
“And…I’ve been asking myself the same question for years.”
“You don’t think that doesn’t sound paranoid to you?”
“Is it paranoia if it’s true?”
I gestured at my notes. “People with paranoia think these things are true. It’s part of the lie your brain is trying to sell you.”
She scrubbed her hands up her face. “People with paranoid personality disorder also have a difficult time forming emotional connections with other people, right?”
“Right.”
She met my eyes locking our gazes. “Then why haven’t I been able to stop thinking about touching you since that night at the bar?”
Her statement hit me somewhere low in the gut. I blinked and glanced away, needing the distance. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
She grabbed my hand, and clutched it tight around my pen. “And I trust you. God help me, I’m going to regret it, but I trust you want to be a good doctor. And not just another person hired to hurt me.”
I put my pen and the pad on the desk and took her hands in mine. I shouldn’t want to touch her, need to touch her. “No one here wants to hurt you.”
She shook her head. “No, but no one here wants to help me either.”
“I do. Please let me try.”
“You want to diagnose me with something I don’t have, so I fit in one of your neat little boxes.”
She withdrew her hands and looked away.
I scooted closer trying to draw her out again. “Kory. Please look at me. Everything I do here is for you. I want to help you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a doctor. I took an oath.”
“Is that all,” she pressed.
I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. I couldn’t tell her the truth. She’s a patient, I repeated in mind for the thousandth time. “Does there need to be more of a reason?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“How about we make a deal. I promise to answer anything you ask. If you’ll do the same for me.”
She scanned my featured in a quick flick of her eyes. “What says you won’t lie?”
“Respect. Which I hope holds true for you as well.”
She bounced her leg a few times, no doubt deliberating in her head. “Fine. You ask first.”
