XIV: Don't Let Us Get Sick
"And then I thought maybe I'd leave the dogs there," she said. She looked the young man in the eyes, feeling sympathy for his position, wanting nothing more than to say, I know how you feel. I know what it's like to want to leave responsibility behind, to want to drift away from everyone and everything you care about to start over somewhere where you have no ties and no way for anyone to keep you there.
"Really?" The young man was stunned, like he had never thought psychologists could do that.
"Really," she affirmed. "I thought maybe, just for that moment… I could go away. But, no. I couldn't. Because I'm human. And so are you." She quirked up her mouth into a smile, trying to get him to smile.
He smiled back, but it was a shaky gesture. However, she knew it was sincere. The way he drew closer to her, opened herself up to him: That was no fake, and she made a mental note of it. He was watching her hands, seeing if she'd scribble it down as a note on the pad that she kept turned away from him, and she did nothing of the sort. That would be too obvious, and wouldn't instill trust.
Unipolar affective disorder, she thought, watching him. Atypical depression with reversed vegetative symptoms. He was a textbook definition, really: Oversleeping, overeating, unable to hold down a job, sensitivity and anxiety, and panic attacks. But what had really clued her in to the boy's problems was how cheerful he seemed on the surface. He had these moments of giddiness, hardly pronounced and random enough for bipolarity but enough to conform with her initial diagnosis.
She leaned back in her chair, watching him. A small sound escaped her lips, midway between a chuckle and a sigh, and she set pen and notepad on the table. "Well, just so you know, you're not the only one who has feelings like that sometimes." She chose not to elaborate on her own feelings any further.
"I know." The boy – young man, really; he was in his mid-twenties and not too much younger than she – softened further at that, and his eyes lifted to meet hers, seeking out some sort of empathy. She studied him for a moment, feeling more academic curiosity than she figured she ought, but the young man spoke up before she could feel too guilty. "Well," he said, repeating her tone in a strangely accurate fashion, "I don't know what else you want to know. I mean, that's the whole of it." His fingers tightened on the chair, as if expecting to be told otherwise, and he glanced towards the notebook that she had set down and the folder next to it.
"You're right," she declared, rising. "I'll give this report to Dr. Lee, and he'll be in touch with you. I won't be your primary doctor – because I'm not a doctor – but you'll see someone I trust. You'll see someone good." She would see to it. He was so sensitive.
That brought a new wave of concern to the young man, who glanced down at the floor as if looking for it to swallow him up. "My – my mother," he began, and she could think of nothing but Hitchcock movies. She wiped the smirk off her face that she felt about to form and forced the Norman Bates image from her mind: It was improper for psychological evaluations. "She won't have to know, will she?"
"Not if you don't want her to," she assured him, telling him the truth, "and you don't pose a threat to others or yourself. If you do, we'll have to inform the authorities, but to be honest, I don't see that happening. I trust you. You're a good kid."
He smiled, a slow blossoming of an expression. She wondered if it was the first compliment like that anybody had ever paid him. She suspected it might have been. There was a silence, but it was a comfortable silence, and the young man turned for the door, his fingers clutching on the frame as he turned back around to face her. "Doctor – "
"I'm not a medical doctor," she corrected the young man quickly, and then supplied him with an alternative: "Libby."
"Libby," the young man started again. He chewed at his lip, stared at her. His eyes were hot with pain, and she imagined that the tears that she could see starting to gleam would do nothing to cool the burning. "I'm not crazy."
"No, you're just suffering from depression. But you can come out of it, I'm sure. You will. Anyway, one of the real staff will be in touch with you, and then we'll see what we can do for you. You may have to be evaluated, but you're a good kid. I think you can handle that."
The young man smiled, nodded silent thanks, and moved out the door. She sat there for a long moment, staring at his record, flipping through papers as his footfalls sounded down the hallway. She wished she could do more for him, but to interfere would be improper. She had been hired as a psychologist, as someone to diagnose problems, not to treat it. But she wanted more than anything to help, and it pained her that she could do nothing. For not the first time, she regretted not following through with medical school. Her parents had asked her to come and take care of their home, though, and they lived so very far away from everything else. She owed it to them, and then they had died so suddenly after she had gotten there that she felt a duty to the house, to their memory.
Things had all worked out over the past few years, though. She had found a reliable caretaker for the house, the man who owned the farm next door. She could scarcely believe that llamas could survive in upstate New York, but he seemed to treat them decently, and she trusted he'd keep up the house well. He had promised to use it for a vacation home for his guests, what little tourism he got, and she knew he would. It had felt bad, leaving the dogs behind, and she remembered the crazy idea she'd had to just abandon them. It still felt like she had done that anyway, but at least they were happy where they were.
They would never have been happy in California, not in the small studio apartment near the clinic. She had made the right decision, she told herself. She had done what was best for them, not herself, and that was the right decision. She would now do what was best for the young man, which was to turn his files over to Dr. Lee and to let the more competent professionals deal with the boy's troubles. She wondered whether they really were more competent, but supposed it was true – they had the degrees, after all.
She rose fully from the chair, then, and started down the hallway, watching the young man disappear through the doors, pushing both of them open and moving through like a force of nature. A boulder, perhaps, or a glacier. Her eyes drifted down to his files and then back up to the Asian-American fellow who stood there with his hand outstretched for her files. "Is that the Reyes boy, Libby? The outpatient depression?"
Atypical depression, she thought, but saw no need to correct the man with the degree. "Yes," Libby said flatly, and handed over the folder on Hugo Reyes, twenty-five year old Hispanic male, 320 pounds, brown hair and eyes, to the care of Doctor Lee's psychological clinic.