Closing The Door
Disclaimer: Janet is mine. So is Nathan, but he's barely anything to claim ownership of. All the other characters belong to their respective owners. Don't sue me, because you won't get anything.
Set during/after the events of episode 113 "The Journey
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It was 9 am when I got to Ray Mercer's office. Nathan, the university receptionist, was clearly surprised to see me rush into the lobby this early in the week. He was under the impression that I must be relapsing back into some kind of drug dependency and needed to cling to Ray like a life raft once again. This was always Nathan's constant worry for me whenever I would run in unexpectedly. Not that he actually had the guts to ask me whether or not I was going to be alright. Just like he hadn't had the guts to ask me out like he'd wanted to when we first met after he'd started working the desk. The boy was a total coward when it came to confrontation. Little did he know that drugs were probably the one and only problem that I'd never had in my entire life.
God! Did I really look that desperate today? Nathan's perception of me wasn't one that was necessarily accurate. Sure I probably looked like crap to the well groomed, suburban raised twenty year old sitting behind the desk but was I really drug addict material? Just because I'd woken up with a headache that made migraines look as soft and gentle as newborn kittens and hadn't had the physical energy to make myself glamorous this morning, shouldn't mean that I would automatically look like death warmed over. I mused about this thought, taking a seat in one of the cushioned waiting chairs. Getting lost in thought was apparently a very bad idea because my head throbbed with uncontrollable fervor.
A lot of people, when I'm forced to tell them about my headaches, question them. Did I have too much to drink the night before? Am I going to die from a brain aneurism? Do I like to fake my condition to get sympathy? Often they, like Nathan, won't openly ask me about what caused them or what I do to myself to make them as incapacitating as they are. And sometimes they just don't care. The ones that don't give a hoot make my life easier, because when people don't care there's no pressure to come up with excuses. Of course, they don't know that what goes on in my head is completely different then what goes on in theirs. If they did maybe they'd care a little bit more about my headaches, since they are technically the ones causing them.
If someone were to imagine turning on a static filled radio talk show while sticking their head inside of an occupied beehive, they would come mighty close to what I hear. Only instead of just buzzing, one bee would be complaining about her husband leaving her for the much younger bee next door, while another would be bitching that his neighbor stole some of his honey. That person would be hearing all of the bees screaming about random things in their lives all at once. Minus, a swarm of angry bees stinging my face, I experience the equivalent of that scenario in my head on a daily basis. Now tell my why I have headaches.
It took a lot of strength to resist putting my head between my knees to practice some deep breathing exercises, but I kept a calm facade just long enough to give Nathan a fairly confident order. "Call up to Ray's office and tell him I'm here."
Nathan didn't question my order, or ask me wether or not I had an appointment, you know the annoying things receptionists are told to say to dissuade students from harassing the professors with pointless drivel. He got on the phone immediately. Thank the lord that I was the only one in the lobby, or else Nathan's conversation would've been mixed into a maddening cacophony of other people noise. He told the person on the other line, Ray I assumed, that Janet Matthusen was in the waiting room. I had to give him a hand, he sure knew how to convey when something was an emergency. That's probably why Ray had recommended him for the job in the first place.
The wait was fairly short, because no more then five minutes later Ray made his way through the hallway and over to the corner chair where I was hunched.
"Again Janet?" He looked irritated, like my visit had somehow disturbed some important work he was doing. Odd, Ray wasn't the type to get irritated when patients were involved.
"This is a bad time. A few things have come up."
Ray also wasn't one to turn away any of his former patients just because they had chosen the wrong time to come and see him. His newfound "I'm far to busy" spiel was not something I would've expected to come out of his mouth, or in this case his head. Under any other circumstances, I would've gone home the second I had seen the burden I was putting on him, but pain has a way of making you more self-centered then usual.
Despite his disconcerting behavior, I sneered and nodded my head to answer his spoken question. Nodding was another bad thing to do as it rattled my already crowded head some more. "Believe me, when the time comes where I can go a month without these goddamn headaches I will be a happy woman. But until that time comes, you're just going to have to put up with me and the schedule that my head puts me on."
He extended a hand, and helped me from my chair. I could let my guard down with Ray, which helped me relax a bit. Relaxing as much as possible is always a good thing when you're head is screaming bloody murder under the weight of other people's thoughts.
We made our way to his office, where he sat me down on the chair by his desk and looked into my eyes.
"Your pupils are constricted." He stated. Well, no shit sherlock.
"Yeah, and Toronto is cold in the winter." I closed my eyes, and began massaging my temples in the vain hope that it would ease some of the pain.
Ray couldn't keep his opinions to himself today.
"I think you should go to the hospital and get a head scan."
I couldn't help but snort, despite my head wanting to split itself into two afterwards. "Yeah, and tell them what exactly? That I'm afraid I have a tumor because I've lost control of my ability to read people's minds and all the whining is giving me headaches? That'd go over real well with the medical professionals."
"Secrecy is of the utmost importance naturally but Janet, you have to do something about this if the headaches are becoming incapacitating." Ray had just given me "the tone". He was trying to calm me down so that I would see his logic. "This may have nothing to do with your gift and everything to do with your health."
"Or at the very least a head scan might give us some answers as to why your ability is progressing so violently."
"Okay Ray, thinking directly at me isn't helping." I opened my eyes and glared up at him.
"I'm sorry." Ray backed away slightly, though he knew physical distance didn't really help. "But ....
"I'm worried about the fact you may have something wrong with you that could possibly kill you. This isn't something to be stubborn about."
He was sitting in a chair across from me, pity written all over his face. Pity may be calming to Ray's other patients but I like to think of myself as more of an independent thinker. I don't like it when people feel sorry for me. Especially not after I've seen into their heads. Most people only show pity when they want to feel better about themselves, when they want to think that their miserable lives aren't so bad so they look to people who have it worse.
But Ray's pity is different. When he gives me pity, very naturally he wants to empathize with my plight of being telepathic and understand my pain. Even though he's probably the one shrink in the world who treats telepathy like it exists and is the only person in my life who hasn't thought I was batshit insane, Ray can't possibly know what it's like to hear things that no one in their right mind would want to hear. He knew me well enough that pity for my "gift" (more like a curse) was an insult.
Then why am I seeing a shrink if I can't stand being pitied? Because I don't have anyone else who will believe in what I can do. Ray is an open mind who would do everything in his power to help me, at least he normally would. Everyone needs that in their lives, a friend to care about them. Ray was as close to a friend as I could ever get.
With that in mind, he should've known the "better safe then sorry" speech doesn't work with me anymore. I've had enough head scans in my life to know that they never show anything useful on someone like me.
"Hey, I'm not just being stubborn about the brain scan!" I growled through gritted teeth. "Do you think I like waking up every morning with a pounding headache and the knowledge that my next door neighbor jacks off to Barbara Streisand when his wife is at work?"
He didn't seem to take any offense to my comment, (I have a tendency to be too crass when it comes to not offending people) but maintained his look of concern. "No, I can't imagine that you would wish that on yourself. But I'm wondering why you're so resistant to possibly discovering whatever is going wrong."
"Well, of course I want to fix whatever it is that's wrong with me." No one could blame me for being frustrated. I used to be able to tune the voices out, force them back into a corner of my brain where I could choose to hear them when I wanted to. Now I was an exposed wire, my ability to insulate myself from them shot to hell for no apparent reason. I had been trying for weeks to stuff them back down, but none of the exercises Ray had taught me to develop years ago seemed to work anymore. If I couldn't stop them then I was going to lose my mind and insanity was not an option I was willing to embrace at the moment.
"But I don't think I could bare if I got my hopes up, only for there not be a way to cure this problem of mine."
What he said next drove me up the wall. "If there's an emotional trigger that brought down the barrier in your mind then I can help you find a way to rebuild it but if there is something physically wrong then this could be beyond my abilities to fix."
I wanted to either smack him over the head or start crying. I hadn't done anything emotionally overwhelming that would've pushed me over my psychological precipice far enough to make my mind reading freak out on me. I hadn't witnessed any murders, or almost been hit by a car. I didn't lose my job, or my house. I could pay my bills without the stress of being in debt up to my eyeballs. My life was normal. Well, as normal as life could be considering my unusual condition.
"I haven't done anything to set this off! One day it was just like someone turned up the volume and I couldn't turn it back down again."
"Then it's time to go to the hospital. We absolutely won't mention the telepathy aspect but tell them about the headaches." He was getting impatient with me, or maybe just with me being there. If I wasn't already in enough sensory overload I could've asked him what was going on and have gotten the answers as to what had crawled up his butt.
"And what if it's like all the other times I've gotten my head scanned? I've spent most of my life in hospitals having doctors poke at me, taking pictures of my head. You know as well as I do what good that did me."
"I remember."
I shuddered a bit, my past was an uncomfortable thing for me to think about. Let's just say I envy people who don't remember much about their childhoods. "You know why I can't willingly go through that again."
"Yes, and I want to help you regain control of your gift." Ray was really good at placating people, seeing as that had been his job for longer then I had been alive. He always made you feel like someone was on your side, even if the rest of the world was against you. "But this is something I have never seen before and I'm not a medical doctor. "
Not the answer one wants to hear when someone is your last hope for a comfortable, if somewhat secretive, lifestyle. It didn't help that I was also losing my patience with his almost dismissive attitude, like he had bigger things to attend to. This was not the Ray Mercer I had known for years. I could tell, without prying into his head, that something was seriously wrong if he was in such a state of disregard for everything. Now, not only was I worried that I may possibly be suffering from some incurable ailment that I couldn't explain to doctors but I was also desperate for answers as to why my mentor would be turning away from me when I needed his guidance the most.
It was desperation that fueled my question. "You must know of someone who's abilities have been progressing similar to mine. Anyone whose range has been increasing suddenly or maybe is having difficulty drowning out thoughts?"
This time he frowned, something very out of character for him when dealing with patients. I had definitely hit a nerve by mentioning others. He was protective of the identities of the other telepaths, which I suppose are very small in number, because if anyone with nefarious intentions found someone with these kinds of gifts we'd be hunted down. Under those circumstances, I can't blame him for being careful. But that doesn't mean I don't resent him a bit for not introducing me to the others. Even though Ray has never openly admitted their existence to me, I knew deep down that he had dealt with other telepaths. The knowledge he had about my gifts was knowledge that one only gained from experience.
"Even if I could Janet," He replied with what seemed to me like regret or maybe even guilt, "I'm afraid that anyone I sent you to wouldn't be of much help to your situation right now."
You have to love irony. It has a penchant for sneaking up and biting you in the ass. Here I am, a telepath who could hear people thinking about what they were having for breakfast from miles away, yet there was no one who could help me keep my brain from melting. And my only source of help and understanding had just told me that he probably couldn't help me either, while he happened to be preoccupied by something that had him on edge.
I was alone, and not for the first time mind you.
"Great." I rested my head in my hands. "Just great."
We sat there for a few minutes. I would say that there was nothing but a punctuated, cliche silence between us, but that would be a lie. I've rarely ever experienced true silence where someone's thoughts weren't creeping in. Right now, the security guard on the opposite side of the building was thinking about the fight he had with his wife. The female student walking down the hallway was getting ready to cheat on her midterms. The store owner two blocks away was worried about the kid in aisle five who looked like he was stashing stolen goods in his backpack. Ray, however, was worried about a matter unrelated to my visit, a name from his mind popping into the muddle of thoughts swirling around me.
"I hope Toby found her..."
"Ray." I brought my head up to look at him, my eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Who's Toby?"
"That's not something I feel comfortable discussing right now."
Okay, when the man chose to evade he could be completely aggravating. "Well, you're thinking more about him then you are of the fact that my head might explode at any moment. And you clearly have something to get off your chest." Or out of your ass.
"I should've sent her away today. The break in was only the beginning."
Break in? Someone had broken into his office? So this was why he seemed so irritated with my visit.
"Jesus! A break in?" I said, trying not to seem so prying. "Did anything go missing?"
Boy was I sorry that I asked that question.
A bunch of thoughts popped from his head before he could filter them and before I had time to put up my flimsy barrier. The human brain rarely has need to censor itself on the fly, so it often pops out thoughts before it has any idea of how to organize them. The images I got were jumbled. File folders missing from Ray's filing cabinet, patient files. A man's voice asking why the files were just sitting in a filing cabinet. An old man in a hospital gown and cuts on his face. A video of a guy with a buzz cut taking the now missing patient folders. A woman, who had been shot laying, in a hospital room. These were all places, names and faces that I didn't and could not expect to recognize. And the one that I did.
I knew him or, more accurately, I'd seen him. The guy was pretty good looking by my standards. It was hard not to remember the eyes. Bright blue, the kind of blue that made you take a step back and stare into them. Eyes that contrasted with his jet black hair. Three years ago, I'd seen him coming out of Ray's office and ever since then I would see him on campus off and on. I thought he had been a student, or maybe even an intern. He'd left an impression on me because he never seemed to broadcast any thoughts whenever I would pass him on my way to see Ray, like he'd shut a door on his mind that I couldn't open. This must be Toby. He certainly seemed to be the center of all the worries I was seeing.
"Dammit!" A sudden jolt of pain inside my skull startled me out of his head, and back into the present. I'd pushed my limits with my pain and now it was pushing back, hard.
Gasping, I put my forehead down to my knees, slowly clenching my fingers into tight fists. My only concern now was shutting the door. I had to close my mind and stop any more thoughts from entering. Anymore would be too much of an assault on my senses to handle right now. One thing, though, was horribly clear. These thoughts should've been kept where they belonged.... inside Ray Mercer's head.
The world quieted a bit, the voices fading down enough that my ears no longer seemed like they were ringing.
"Ray, what have you gotten yourself into?" I knew the implications of what I had just seen and it was clear that I was now involved in something I shouldn't have been. Story of my life.
Not only that, but they were making me sick to my stomach by the weight that they put on my brain. Little did I know how much what I had just seen would change my life.
Ray's hand was now squeezing my arm, holding me so I wouldn't fall out of my chair. "Are you alright Janet?"
I was panting, trying to regain my equilibrium from the episode that had almost knocked on my ass. "Do I look alright to you?"
"How much did you see?" His tone worried me, like anything I had learned would mean I'd have someone coming after me within the hour.
"I saw Toby." Taking a few deep breaths, clenching my hands so tight that my nails dug into my palms, didn't stop the thoughts but they were somewhat manageable now. Close the door, Janet. Close the goddamn door. "And the woman who got shot."
"Oh my god." I felt Ray try to pull me from the chair, and grabbed the tissue box from his desk. "You're going to the hospital Janet. Right now."
His change of subject was so sudden and confusing that I tried to pull away from him. "What are you talking about?"
When he pushed a tissue under my nose and I saw red stain the white paper I understood. The choice to go to the hospital wasn't mine to make anymore.
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Okay, this is my first fanfic for The Listener. I got this concept one day at work, and it turned into this first chapter. Before I knew it, it was five pages long and a new story had emerged. I had some problems with getting Ray's character right, because we know very little about him from the series, so keep in mind that I tried my best. If any of you think it's good, then I'll probably write this until I run out of ideas for where to take Janet. Write a review and tell me what you think, or should I say, if you think it's worth it.