Disclaimer: None of it belongs to me. Just this story.
ladiesbingo prompt: mutation/physical transformation
darkbingo prompt: mental health issues (wild card)
Summary: She knew it wasn't her imagination this time. Spoilers for 'Monkey Business' and 'Helga on the Couch'.
Content Note: dark, and as per the dark_bingo prompt the story is about mental illness. Also contains some in-character ableist language.
METAMORPHOSIS
"I'm glad you came, Helga. It was the right decision."
Helga couldn't pull Dr. Bliss's entire face together. Just her left eye and her mouth were visible, unnaturally large, the red of her lips in stark relief against everything else in the room. She looked away and studied her hands, tucked in her lap. The familiar tormenting came from somewhere outside the window into her head and she raised her voice in an effort to block it out. She was yelling at Dr. Bliss, trying to explain over the taunting inside of her about the fight she had with Big Bob and how angry she was. That she went to her room but knew she had to get out of the house and to Dr. Bliss's office to talk with her.
Dr. Bliss quietly asked her why she was shouting.
"I called him a self-centered blowhard."
"You've kept a lot of anger bottled up inside of you for a long time, a great deal of it toward your father. Today it finally erupted. It can be disturbing when it comes out like that."
Helga shook her head in frustration and she held up her hands for Dr. Bliss to see.
After a pause Dr. Bliss said, "I don't understand."
She lowered her hands and stared at them, then at the rip in her jeans and the dried blood around it, wondering how Dr. Bliss could fail to understand the problem. Couldn't she see?
"What is it, Helga?"
Cautiously Helga raised her eyes back to Dr. Bliss's face. The red lips filled her vision and she still couldn't fuse together the rest of her face.
"Something's wrong," she whispered.
#
One time she was scratched by a monkey.
Helga was nine and in the fourth grade when it happened. Around that time in school they were reading up on weird and wonderful made-up diseases. One of them was called monkeynucleosis. She was convinced that she'd contracted it when she got scratched by an organ grinder's monkey in the street, especially once she began to exhibit the catalog of the disease's symptoms. And she had a terrible nightmare that she'd turned into a monkey. In the dream she still had her blonde pig tails but the rest of her, including her face, was covered in brown fur and she had a long curled tail; the organ grinder owned her and she climbed and leaped like a monkey, holding out a cup for passersby to drop in coins.
Her friend Phoebe set her straight on that one. Monkeynucleosis wasn't actually a real disease and the symptoms she was experiencing were a figment of her overactive imagination.
She knew this time it wasn't her imagination though.
The quarrel with Big Bob that day started out as typical of any of their arguments. Then she called him a self-centered blowhard and it all escalated from there. Words of rage that she couldn't make sense of, or even hear, poured out of her mouth. Her father's face was red as he shouted back; but she couldn't understand him either. She heard only loud garbled gibberish. Then his features were suddenly expanding and separating from each other like disjointed puzzle pieces and his eyes became gigantic and buggy like in a cartoon. She had to look away from him, down at her hands.
And saw that they were changing too. Golden fur was growing on her hands and wrists, claws protruded from digits that no longer looked like fingers. She was mutating.
Helga rushed from the room in a panic and in the privacy of her bedroom closet she sat on the floor and stared, fascinated and horrified at the lion's paws that had once been her hands and at the tufts of hair that were beginning to sprout along her forearms. She didn't know why this was happening but she knew it was real. Whenever she accidentally brushed one of the paws across her leg the sharp extended claws ripped her jeans and scratched her skin, tearing a gash and drawing blood at one point.
She would have to be careful to keep them away from her face so she didn't scratch her own eyes out and she couldn't let anyone near her anymore – she might hurt them. Enraged as she was at him she didn't even want to harm Big Bob either.
#
Long after the diagnosis that shattered her world was handed down, long after everything got much worse and then eventually better, she could look back and examine with clarity the moments when her disease began to rear its ugly head. The fight with Big Bob wasn't the first sign; that day it simply reached a level that could no longer be dismissed and pushed aside.
But for a few years before that there were fleeting disconcerting interludes where she suddenly couldn't understand someone. Words ran together, morphing into unintelligible utterings, or she could hear them clearly but they were spoken backwards or out of order. Then it would pass and she'd pick up the thread of the conversation once more. Or right before her eyes people's faces split into separate parts while she was talking to them, like a modern art painting. Maybe just the eyes stood out or she could only see the forehead or the nose, a face painted on a plate that had broken in pieces and all she was left with was the fragment containing the specific feature. Things would eventually fuse back together again, sometimes after a few minutes but sometimes it took much longer than that.
Other incidents were harder to define. Often she'd get a distinct sense that the likeness of Arnold that she'd sculpted and left in the back of her closet was watching her through the door, and that somehow through that sculpture Arnold himself was watching her too as if it had taken on sympathetic magical power. She knew she was being ridiculous. And yet there was a part of her that was convinced it was so, that made her self-consciously walk around the room, undress and dress as if her every move was being observed.
Far more distressing was the voice. It wasn't an actual voice that spoke words but more of an impression of a voice somewhere outside of her that telegraphed to her that she was no good and everyone was laughing at her behind her back.
There were other clues, large and small, that signaled that her brain was going haywire. But somehow she'd managed to hold it together (or so she thought), even with the tormenting voice that was slowly intensifying, transmitting the message that she didn't deserve to live. She'd held it together until that fight with Big Bob and her gradual transformation into a lion.
Unglued as she'd become she still managed to grasp that she needed help, the help of someone professional, and thought of Dr. Bliss, the child psychologist she'd had to see when she was in the fourth grade.
Or rather Arnold through his likeness suggested that she call Dr. Bliss. Working with her back in the fourth grade had not been optional; it was a time when she lashed out at everyone, especially Arnold. But Dr. Bliss saw through the anger and aggression to the lonely unhappy child underneath, and pinpointed her true feelings for Arnold. By the end of that first session of just talking Helga came to know that she could trust her.
#
"I want to talk to you."
The rejection cut her like a knife. She came here for help, but after she explained everything that had happened Dr. Bliss was sending her to someone else.
"You can, Helga," she reassured her. "But I think you need additional care that I can't give you. There may be something biochemical happening, for example. I want you to see Dr. Klein because she's a psychiatrist, an M.D. So she can determine if you need medication and prescribe it. We can still meet too. This isn't an either or. In fact I think we should meet and talk regularly—as long as that's what you'd like."
Helga felt the tension in her body uncoil, her disappointment and hurt released. She nodded.
For a half hour or so Dr. Bliss asked her questions and jotted down notes. Had she been having trouble sleeping lately? Was she tired and sleeping too much?
"I'm noticing that you've grown very thin, Helga. Have you been eating?"
"Fuel is food," Helga responded automatically.
Dr. Bliss asked about school and if things had been more stressful than usual. Helga answered as best she could over the messages from outside. She avoided looking directly at the fragments of Dr. Bliss's face and instead concentrated on her hands, watching for signs that they might be changing. Gradually the conversation turned to her hands and her concentration on them. Then Dr. Bliss asked whether she'd had any unusual experiences lately, such as hearing voices.
"I don't actually hear a voice," Helga explained. "It's an impression. But it's out there."
"Does it say anything? Can you describe it?"
Don't tell her.
Her eyes remained pinned on her lion's paws. "It plants things in my mind. That I shouldn't eat, that I don't deserve to live."
You'll be sorry now.
Calmly Dr. Bliss rose from her black leather armchair, moved to the desk in measured steps without betraying any signs of her worry and picked up the phone.
#
For too many days to count she was surrounded by a sea of white. She shuffled through endless white hallways and was tended to or pushed around by nurses in crisp white uniforms. The bed linens were white, too, as were the patients' gowns.
There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. At first it didn't matter. Tuning out the messages placed in her head and trying to avoid accidentally scratching herself kept her completely occupied. Eventually, when she started to get better and was considered more trustworthy, she was allowed to go outside for a cigarette a few times a day. The lounge was stocked with jigsaw puzzles but all of them had pieces missing. Same with the playing cards – the deck wasn't full. It was an apt metaphor, Helga thought when she began to find her sense of humor again.
But she talked to other patients and even began to make a couple of friends.
Dr. Klein arranged for her to have a notebook and some pens once she'd determined that Helga wasn't a risk to herself anymore. But the pages were part of the whiteness and Helga couldn't bring herself to write. Helga appreciated it though and she liked Dr. Klein. She knew that if she had said 'no' when Dr. Klein suggested hospitalization she would've been brought here anyway. But the fact that Dr. Klein had asked first, talked it over with her and gave her the chance to make the choice meant a lot. Even if 'no' was never really a choice.
She didn't meet with Dr. Bliss until after her release. But Dr. Bliss stopped by when she could, just to let her know she was there, and convinced Dr. Klein to allow Helga to have a CD Walkman and some of her CDs from home. It was all rock music and though she was glad to have it – it was something from her life from before, when things were normal – it agitated her. Her best friend Phoebe had the bright idea that classical music would calm her and during one of her visits she brought Helga some classical cello CDs. The cello was Phoebe's instrument of choice and she'd always been quite proficient.
They sat together that day and Phoebe chatted casually with her, acting as if they were sitting on a park bench together instead of in a room in a psych ward, explaining in her usual meticulous detail the differences between the three different cellists on the CDs and what she liked about each one.
As Phoebe talked Helga smiled and studied her normal human hands.
#
"Dr. Klein always talks about the hallucinations as manifestations of my emotions."
Dr. Bliss picked up her mug of coffee and took a sip. A notebook and pen sat on the small mahogany table to the right of her armchair but she hadn't been writing notes during their sessions for some time now; Helga figured she probably did that after she left. During the sessions Dr. Bliss merely listened, periodically asking questions or coaxing her on a topic.
"Do you agree?"
Helga shrugged. She rose from the brown leather couch and crossed the room to the window, looking down at the street. It was a quiet Saturday morning and there were very few people out.
She was used to shrink speak now, but in a weird way she appreciated that Dr. Bliss always asked her if she agreed rather than what she thought.
"I guess it makes sense. All the kind things and the good advice came from Arnold, the likeness of him. He was my defense—against the voice, a lot of things. That figures. He's the one who told me I should come to you. The other voice. But I guess I really knew it and it was me telling myself." She frowned. "Dr. Klein said that even after it's under control the symptoms could come back."
"They do sometimes. But now that you know the cause you'll handle them differently. A big part of our work here will be to identify the pressures and stresses that are likely to bring the symptoms on again and to come up with strategies for dealing with them."
"When she made the diagnosis I was devastated."
"It's a serious illness with a bad reputation. Deservedly. But it's not hopeless. Not anymore."
"Sometimes I still feel hopeless. All of my time is spent getting better. Seeing you, seeing Dr. Klein, going to the Hillwood Mental Health Center. I know that's a social situation but it's still…controlled."
"Maybe you can think of it as safe rather than controlled. It's a safe place for you to work on building relationships, figure out how to navigate living with your illness. A place where you can get guidance, and access to good resources—"
"Practice for living in the real world like a normal person?" Helga quipped sarcastically.
"You're already living in the real world. And there's nothing wrong with practice. Helga, you can still lead a good life. We understand it more than ever and you've already seen that it's treatable."
"But not curable," Helga grumbled.
"No, not curable yet, unfortunately," she agreed, and there was deep regret in her voice. "But you can hold down a job, have relationships, enjoy activities – and you will. We're going to keep working together on all of that."
Helga turned away from the window finally and smiled at her. Dr. Bliss's entire face was visible to her and had been for a while now, though she couldn't pinpoint exactly when the transition happened. One day it just was. She was mid-sentence, talking to Dr. Bliss during one of their sessions together, and she cut herself off in astonishment, noticing it for the first time. It was a moment of joy for both of them when she shared it.
Dr. Klein still monitored her symptoms as well as her medications, but her treatment was all outpatient treatment. She didn't have to be in a hospital anymore. Things weren't all bad, Helga supposed, even if they weren't perfect.
She couldn't help but verbalize that thought. "At least I'm not in the loony bin anymore." Helga paused. "I guess I really shouldn't talk that way anymore. At least I'm not in a hospital."
"No, you don't need to be hospitalized anymore. You're living your life again. And you're eating."
When Dr. Bliss commented that she'd grown very thin that first time she sought her help, it was an understatement. Helga was emaciated after months of obeying the voice's instructions that she shouldn't eat. It was only after the drugs accumulated in her system and had been adjusted so they wouldn't make her numb that she looked in the mirror and in shocked horror finally saw herself as she really was.
"And smoking. Don't forget smoking." What she wouldn't give to have a lit cigarette in her mouth at that moment. But Dr. Bliss's office was strictly non-smoking. "A lot of smoking."
"Yes, that seems to be another unfortunate – but common – characteristic of your illness. That's something we might want to deal with eventually, when you're ready to tackle it. Right now we have enough to work on."
"It's on my list of things," Helga said with a grin.
"You're walking well now. I noticed when you went over to the window just before. You're lifting your feet."
It was phrased as a statement but there was a question in it too. She wanted to make sure Helga hadn't stopped taking her medicine.
"Dr. Klein fiddled with the dosages. She said it should be enough to still control the symptoms – hopefully – but I won't shuffle anymore."
That was one of the more disturbing side effects of the different medications they'd been trying for months. She was twenty-two years old but she'd been shuffling along as if she was eighty because she could barely move her legs. It was like there was a block in the connection between her brain and her muscles; she would think about lifting her foot but her foot couldn't figure out what her mind was telling it to do, or it just didn't want to obey. The worst of her symptoms passed once enough medicine accumulated in her system; but that was a lousy trade-off as far as she was concerned.
"If that doesn't work she'll change my meds. She watches for other side effects too. I feel like an old lady taking so many different kinds of pills." She hoisted herself up, seating herself on the window sill. "Big Bob and Miriam are disappointed in me."
Dr. Bliss set her mug down on the table and crossed one leg over the other, resettling herself in her chair. "Well, your parents can be narcissistic."
"No surprise there," Helga scoffed. "That's Big Bob to a T, making everything about him. I'm not sure about Miriam. Figures I would have this disease and Olga wouldn't. Something else for them to compare. Luck of the draw, I guess."
"A lot of families have a hard time accepting all kinds of diseases, even physical ones. Unfortunately there's a lot of stigma attached to mental illness and you're suffering from an illness that's particularly misunderstood and demonized."
"No kidding. I didn't know anything about it until I was diagnosed with it. Now I'm reading everything I can. Anyone has anything to say about it I'll set them straight." She stared at her hands for a moment then held them up for Dr. Bliss to see. "It's hard to believe I actually saw myself physically changing into a big cat with claws."
"You were very angry for a long time. And you finally let it out."
"Yeah," she said and blew out a breath as if she was reliving that anger and releasing it in that moment. "I guess in their own weird way they care. I mean, they're supporting me financially while I get better. They could've thrown me out of the house or refused to help me with medical expenses or school expenses. But they didn't."
"And your mother called me that day. After you had that fight with your father she called."
This wasn't something anyone had ever told her. She was stunned.
"Really?"
"Really. When they discovered you were gone she called, guessing – and hoping you might come to me. She was right. You showed up at my door about ten minutes later."
"Wow, that's incredible. And uncharacteristically perceptive of Miriam. What did she tell you?"
"That she'd never seen you so agitated and she was scared. She told me that she'd been worried about you for a long time, that you weren't eating or sleeping, you were pacing and muttering to yourself all the time."
"Well wonders never cease," Helga murmured, incredulous. "I never thought Miriam noticed anything. Then again I guess I was pretty obvious."
"I'm glad you came to see me that day. It really was a good decision, Helga. You took care of yourself."
"Sometimes it happened in school, too, listening to the teacher. Not lately," she added quickly.
"Speaking of school, how is it going?"
"Okay. Some days it's hard to concentrate. Things get overwhelming and it's hard to tune out the noise outside."
"That's to be expected. Remember not to beat up on yourself too much. And if you need to lighten your course load so that you feel less pressured that's okay."
"I've already lightened it," she blurted out in frustration. She abruptly slid off the window sill and began to pace the room. "I'm behind everyone else from my class. They're all graduating college this year. Criminy! I'm still trying to finish my junior year requirements. I never skipped grades like Phoebe but I wasn't at the bottom of the class either."
"You're moving at a pace that works for you and that's okay, Helga. And you did take a semester off."
She pivoted and began to pace toward Dr. Bliss's chair.
"Not voluntarily." She sighed resignedly and held up her hand before Dr. Bliss could tell her what she already knew. "I know. I needed to be hospitalized."
It had been a matter of life and death. She hated to admit it.
"I know it's difficult but you can't compare yourself to the other people in your class. They're not in the same situation. Part of the pathology of your illness is difficulty planning and managing things. I know it's hard for you to organize—"
"Before I was smart—"
"You're still smart, and very creative. This has nothing to do with your intelligence. And it doesn't make you a loser," she added, anticipating the next thing Helga was going to say.
Helga allowed a small smile to touch her lips and shifted her eyes to the paintings on the wall of Dr. Bliss's office. The Hopper painting she'd remarked on the first time she came was still hanging in the same place and she walked over to peer at it. Except for a computer that Dr. Bliss hadn't owned years ago her office hadn't changed. Helga felt comfortable here.
"A lot of the kids I grew up with keep their distance from me now," she said sadly, turning her attention back to Dr. Bliss.
"They don't understand so they're afraid. But not all of them…"
"Not all of them," Helga conceded, walking back to the couch and plopping down on it. "To be honest I would be afraid too. I used to be pretty insensitive to people like me."
"Tell me about the other kids. There are a couple that are your friends still."
"Phoebe is still a good friend. I don't get to spend as much time with her as I used to. She's busy applying to grad school and I'm busy dealing with this crap. But she really cares about me, and she still treats me—like me. The me that I always was. So does Arnold. I'm not exactly friends with Arnold. But we're friendly when we see each other. I don't insult him anymore or call him Football Head. He doesn't know I have a likeness of him in my closet or that it watched over me and gave me the right advice all this time, and he never will. I'll never tell anyone about it. Well, I told you, but you're sworn to total secrecy—"
"That's right. Even if someone tortured me I couldn't tell them."
Helga smiled broadly now. Years ago, in that very first session when she was nine, she told Dr. Bliss that she loved Arnold. Some people, like Phoebe, guessed. But Dr. Bliss was one of the only people she'd ever actually told.
"Have you been writing?" Dr. Bliss asked.
"Yeah, I've been writing a lot. Some poetry, some prose. It's not all about Arnold anymore. Most of it is a description of—what happened to me, the hallucinations, all that."
"Maybe one day you'll publish."
"I wouldn't want anyone to see this stuff." She leaned forward, sitting on the edge of her seat now. "Did I tell you that I'm thinking of maybe switching my major to psychology?"
"No, you never mentioned it."
"With everything that's happened to me I've become interested in the mind and how it works. And I'd be coming at it from a different perspective. Since I've been a patient I would know what it's like to be on both sides of it."
"I believe that you would bring a unique perspective to any profession you set your mind to, Helga, including psychology."
"You think I'd be good at it?"
"I do."
"I'd have to learn how to be patient with people, though."
Dr. Bliss smiled. For the rest of the session they discussed psychology as a profession and together they made a separate list of professional goals and of the specific requirements Helga would need to fulfill should she choose to pursue this vocation. Dr. Bliss reminded her again that it was okay if she set out to do three things in one day but only accomplished two, or even just one.
"The important thing is to take things at a pace that's challenging enough for you but not too overwhelming." She stood up. "We have to bring our session to a close. I think that's a lot to think about for now. I'll see you next Saturday."
The ending of her session was often a let-down for Helga. She always liked talking to Dr. Bliss. It was comforting. But she nodded, tucked the list they'd made together in her bag and stood up. Dr. Bliss walked to the door with her, and Helga turned back and smiled before stepping out into the hallway.
"See you next Saturday."
She walked home, feeling hopeful.