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I emailed him? When? Why?
Suddenly I want to confide in this beautiful doctor who never judges me and who treats me with respect, calm and infinite patience. What did he ask? Why I was so upset?
Where do I start?
“I had sex with a boy!” I blurt out then immediately bury my head in my hands.
Why the hell would you lead with that, Malia?!
I burn with absolute mortification. Nothing could possibly be worse than this road I’ve started us down.
“I see. And was it…consensual?”
Well, you got that wrong. This is way worse.
“Of course!” I gasp, forgetting my mortification and sitting up to gape, outraged on Cove’s behalf, at the doctor.
Last night – the good bits at least – wasnothinglike the time before.
I wait for the doctor to ask me something else but he just stares back at me.Shit. What should I say?
“I went out on a date with a guy I really like. We’ve been sort of dating, online, I guess, for a while now, but last night was our first ‘proper’ date outside of my bedroom.”
“I see.”
I start to sweat when I realise how that sounded. “I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant, with me being too anxious to go out for any reason other than class, we’ve been video calling and stuff.”
“It’s quite alright, Malia. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Tell me about your date.”
“It was amazing,” I reply automatically. Somehow it makes me relax and I launch into telling the doctor all about my date, though I’m not really surewhyI’m telling him. All I know is that talking to the doctor calms me, and after last night, I need some calm in my life.
I tell him every minute, obsessive detail of the date, right up until just before the anxiety attack I had.
“I think I’m falling for him,” I confess. Then, horrified, I add, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t take my meds last night.”
“I see.” The doctor gives me a sympathetic glance, choosing to ignore the elephant in the room. “Why not?”
“I didn’t feel like I needed them. It was supposed to be a reduced dose anyway. Summer arranged it all and I just had to take the low dosage anti-anxiety and the anti…you know, pill.” I don’t like saying the word ‘psychosis’. Not around the gorgeous doctor. It’s not like I’m trying to impress him or anything stupid like that, I just don’t want him to think any less of me, even though he’s read my files. Plural.
I guess I just want to show him…my best side? That I’m more than just my diagnoses?
“I see, and why didn’t you?”
“I thought I had time. I was so excited for the date, I didn’t feel like I needed them, so I put them in my purse to take with me and have later.”
“Which you obviously didn’t do.”
“Not until it was too late.”
The doctor’s eyes swim with sympathy. “Why do you think it was too late? Did you have an anxiety attack?”
“No. But…” I take a deep breath. There’s no escaping telling him this. “But then the voices started again.”
“The voices?”
“The ones in my head.”
“You had auditory hallucinations again?”
