4. DREAMS
Jazz's day had been normal. It had been the same everyday for months, though she wondered (not for the first time) if accepting the internship had been a good decision. It was a paid internship, in the city, and she was taking most of her courses online at the moment (which should given her time to spend with her family when they most needed her). Strangely, she felt numb; like reality was unbearably normal. She decided she had been lingering for too long in the fourth stage: depression. Because it had to be depression, right? She couldn't find any satisfaction in doing what she usually loved doing, as much as she wanted. The question was… why? The denial she had gone through for three days (three days), and she was sure the anger and the gambling stages had been lasted two weeks (give or take some days when she wasn't sure if the had mixed together).
"I mean, I can't believe it! I'm the one who's supposed to examine and help others to heal!" She exclaimed, throwing her arms over her head as she layed on the soft pink surface of the therapy couch. "But no! I'm stuck in the depressive stage! Of course, I could just very well be feeling everything dull after the biochemical mess my brain had been in the previous stages… Meaning, I'm about to finally… Accept it." As she said this, something in her head moved and she wondered: accept, what? Why was she exactly in the fourth stage? Why was she in therapy? Well, something must have been really bad with her if she was coming to therapy, but… what was it?
Oh, right. Fourth stage of grief… because of what, exactly?
"Hm… I think I get it…" The one sitting in the big comfortable sofa answered. Why was he covered by that puffy blanket? "You're feeling lonely."
"What?" The redhead questioned with disbelief.
"Maybe you need some human contact" Human contact? She was feeling lonely? Why would she feel lonely? "Imagine you're an oncologist, the best of the best, and one day you find out you have terminal cancer" he exemplified. "And you wonder how can you save other patients if you can't even save yourself" As he spoke, the young ginger felt like she was watching a movie. "However, you decide you don't want to linger in that issue and keep yourself going as if nothing bad was going on, but you can't stop thinking more and more about your cancer. Then, after a while, you keep your life kind-of-normal, but you don't talk about it with other doctors, because you do know what's the treatment and think they'll tell you what you already know, what happens next is that you become reclusive and you avoid talking with them about things that are not from work, you even worry your patients will think less of you. At the end, you've distanced yourself from everyone, you talk with no-one; and when everyone comes to know about your cancer, it's too late."
"That is a little over dramatic, don't you think?" Jazz questioned with an arched eyebrow.
"Yeah, well, the point is: you're just like the sick doctor. Doctors can't just treat themselves, they won't see themselves in the same way a third party does, yet the doctor will try and hide it, thinking they don't have anyone to confide in about their own sickness." The guy pointed good naturally, adjusting the blanket over his shoulders. "You're not made out of rock. You have emotions and you need to relieve them once in a while, just like everyone. You're human."
"What do you suggest?"
"I don't know, maybe… relax a little"
"But I can't just go out and "relax", I have responsibilities!"
"I'm not telling you to go out and party every night," he said as he rolled his blue eyes in exasperation, "what I mean is that you just need a new perspective. I know you can't simply go back and forth to campus and then to the hospital, but I believe you can always use the dead hours in your internship to, I don't know, call Sam or Tuck or Danielle, maybe even your project partners, and stop emailing everyone like you're afraid of using the phone." He suggested, sipping from his chocolate mug. "Or, I don't know, maybe trust your secrets to a stranger; like people do with taxi drivers, maybe a mere acquaintance like that nice lady-assistant… what was her name?"
"Abigaelle" was her automatic response. When had she told him about her? And they were technically not strangers. They talked, but she wasn't the talkative type, and they never exchanged more words beyond beyond "hello" and "Goodbye" or "Where's Dr. Mel?"
"Now that I think of it, it surprises me you've even been able to just do the readings and assignments for school" her therapist commented, amused. "You're usually the kind of person that loves to be in the classroom correcting everything and everyone, including the teachers." Then he added in a light laugh: "I think you lectured Mr. Lancer over a hundred times in your freshman year"
"That I did!" She admitted with a smile. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I just… Wait a minute! How do you know about that?!" She stopped in her tracks as she turned to look into the other's blue eyes.
"You're asking me?" Danny shrugged and dipped a marshmallow in his hot chocolate before eating it whole. "This is your dream, not mine", he declared with his mouth full. Jazz didn't say a thing.
Danny, her 15-year-old brother, washer therapist, it was really dream.
"And why am I telling you all of this?" She questioned, rolling her eyes and facepalming, but actually happy to see her brother. Even if it was just a product of her brain… And what a creative brain she had! The carpeted floor was limited to a circle around them, with a couple of indoor plants beside each piece of furniture. Beyond, there was only the infinity of space, stars nebulas and the occasional sci-fi ship wandering around. "And, if this is my dream, why does this office look like we're on an island you could of have dreamed of?" Jazz wondered.
"Why should I know? Do I look like Sigmund Freud to you?" He joked and crossed his legs, panicking a little when he almost dropped how chocolate on his baby-blue pyjamas (with a cute pattern of planets, spaceships, astronauts, stars and moons all over). "Though, I must admit, you're a good sister to me. Even in your sleep"
Jazz felt a bunch of information suddenly come to her. Danny had saved the world two years ago. Danny had died a year ago. She was currently coursing her second semester of college. She had been offered an internship and started that same summer as a way to escape her self-created well of pain and duty to her family as therapist, yet she had ended up avoiding herself and her own emotions by being a workaholic. This dream was a product of her own subconsciousness, because she still missed Danny, she needed her brother to fill that empty feeling she had. That's why her head had made this copy of him to listen to her rant (and given him all the commodities for him to be as relaxed as possible, like she liked to see him).
She still wanted her little brother to be healthy, happy and well.
"Hey, dream Danny" she called the product of her brain.
"Yeah?" He answered, now with some cookies taken from nowhere. "Sorry, being able to eat without running away from my own plate… or mug, in this case, is awesome." Jazz smiled. Gosh, her subconscious had a high fidelity copy of Danny at work.
"I know you are a product of my own brain activity mixed with whatever-biochemical-process going on in my head right now, also catalysed by my own emotions and all, but... can I hug you?" She asked, strangely, feeling tears gathering in her eyes.
"That's going to be embarrassing" dream Danny talked through a mouthful of cookies, not sounding as disgusted as he had tried to. "But you're my only sister so..." The mug disappeared from his hands and he came to hug the redhead.
"I wish I had been a better-"
"You're a good sister. You were there for me, and now you're there for Sam, Tuck and Danielle, too!" She hugged Danny with a strong, almost desperate, hold. "You don't have to be strong all the time. Just, remember you are a person too…" What a way for her brain to make her understand the mental stress she had normalized. "You know? If you don't have another metaphorical doctor to turn to, you still have the metaphorical patients who know you and what you're going through with the metaphorical cancer" Dream Danny said, then leaned back to look at her face and said:"Why don't you have a cup of coffee with them? Maybe what you need is to just talk your feelings with those who know what you've been going through" Dream Danny seemed to look somewhere behind Jazz and added: "It's getting late. Remember: you're human, sis…"
Jazz opened her eyes with a smile and crying. She turned to her nightstand to check the clock, she had awaken 20 minutes earlier. Meh! She could use the bathroom first. But before she left her bedroom, she came to the single spot in her bookshelf that was solely dedicated to precious objects, among them a photo of Danny.
"I love you, little bro" She said and left her bedroom. Had she possessed the right virtue, she could have seen the smiling winged visitor standing by her window, petting a small green puppy; and even she could have heard him say:
"I love you too"
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