A/N: thank you for reading and reviewing. Please do tell me where I can improve.

A shoutout to The Sadistic Fangirl for being the beta of this story


CHAPTER 4

"Dr. Chase, Miss Bennett is here for her appointment", crackled the voice of Jenny, Annabeth's assistant.

"Great, send her in please", said Annabeth, ready for her first session of the day. She worked at the Johnson Medical Centre, a small yet renowned hospital, and specialised in schizophrenia and dissociative disorders. She hadn't worked at the Centre for a long time, only a year, and had had trouble being taken seriously as a psychiatrist, being only 28 years old. The fact that she was 5 feet 3 inches tall didn't help either, but she was slowly and steadily making progress, and had come to really like her workplace.

Annabeth sat down in her armchair and readied her notepad and pen when her client walked in. She greeted her with a smile and began their session.

A little over an hour later, she took a mandatory break to regain her mental strength and then called in her next client. And so her day continued uneventfully, the only highlight being that they were serving chocolate pie in the cafeteria at lunch. During her lunch break, Annabeth left Silena a message, reminding her to eat dinner. Silena was an astrophysicist working at a university and had been lucky enough to gain access to the university's high end telescope. As a result, she would be up all night, sleep all day and consequently, forget to eat a proper meal, relying on granola bars and energy drinks.

At around 7 in the evening, Annabeth bid adieu to her last client of the day and headed home, ready to crash on her couch. As she got in her car, she saw her client's mother, Mrs. Smith, struggling to get her schizophrenic son into their car. She got out and walked across the parking lot to help, when she noticed that Mr. Smith (her client) was hallucinating and aggressive. She approached them slowly.

"Hey there Kyle. How are we doing?", said Annabeth in a soothing voice, raising her hands to show Kyle that she was holding nothing in them. "Do you want to maybe get in the car? Don't you want to see the ducks in the park?", she asked, knowing that the park calmed him down. She moved closer to Kyle and nodded at Mrs. Smith, who opened the car door. As Annabeth neared Kyle, he suddenly lashed out, hitting her squarely in the chest, sending her flying backwards into a parked car.

As she landed, she heard a sickening crunch and felt excruciating pain in her left arm. She also felt something wet down the side of her face and realised that she must have hit her head. However, she was able to stand and saw Kyle struggling against two security guards, who must have seen her fall and came to subdue Kyle. As she watched, she saw Mrs. Smith talk to Kyle in a calm, soothing voice. He gradually stopped struggling and sat down in the car.

Mrs. Smith put a seat belt on him, closed the door and turned towards Annabeth, tears forming in her eyes upon seeing Annabeth's blood across her face. She opened her mouth to apologise, but Annabeth didn't let her speak, "no, Mrs. Smith, please. Don't apologise. I completely understand and I'm fine, I promise. This risk is part of the job after all, and I'm just glad that Kyle is okay. Please, take him to the park, he'll feel much better, and I'll see him next week."

"Dr. Chase, I-", began Mrs. Smith, but Annabeth waved her off, "it's okay, I'm fine. Please don't worry. Just relax. I'm going to head inside to get patched up, and I'll be perfectly okay. Please."

With that, Annabeth clasped one of Mrs. Smith's hands, gave it a squeeze and walked towards the emergency room of the Centre, supported by the guards, Tom and Andrew. As she walked, she realised that there were tears pouring down her face and acutely felt just how much pain she was in. Her knees buckled underneath her, just as Andrew wrapped an arm across her shoulders, helping her walk. Annabeth felt as though she couldn't breathe. The only thing she was aware of was the pain she was feeling. She felt her knees give out and collapsed on the parking lot. Andrew picked her up just as two doctors ran out of the Centre with a gurney and hoisted her on to it. They quickly dragged her to the ER and began the process of patching her up. Annabeth was only vaguely aware of what was happening around her, her head felt like it was going to burst. When the pain reached a crescendo, she blacked out.