"Emma, how nice of you to come!" Dr. Wong said sarcastically as Emma was shyly walking in her office.

"I'm sorry about last week" she replied, without even greeting the psychiatrist.

"No worries, I understand your reluctance. Lots of my patients are actually reluctant to come after the first consult. It seems like a big bridge to cross, doesn't it?"

"I guess so…"

"Anyways, since you came, I was thinking we could try diving into your past a little. How does that sound?"

"I don't really like talking about it actually…"

"Why not? I thought you had good memories of France."

"I do. It just… hurts. And it will never happen again."

"Nothing is really doomed to never happen again you know. Sometimes, it's just our minds playing tricks on us."

"My parents are dead. How do you expect those memories to happen again if they're not here to relieve them with me? I won't ever go back to France because it hurts way too much! I don't want to talk about my parents because I still have nightmares of the accident, because losing them was the most horrible thing that I ever went through! I saw my dad on the driver's seat! The shock was so violent that he didn't feel a thing and he looked… he looked…"

Emma was panting. She was also crying and felt nausea invading her space, making its way closer and closer to her guts. She felt trapped. Her heart beating faster and faster. And breathing was becoming harder and harder. She was having a panic attack.

"Emma, Emma, it's okay"

The voice of the doctor seemed to come from afar. She had lost total control of her body. Dr. Wong sat next to Emma and held her tight, instructing her to take deep breath and patiently waiting for the attack to end.

Dr. Wong decided to bring the session to an end for the day and, despite her deal with Emma, gave her a prescription for lorazepam, just in case she'd need it. Emma shoved the paper in her pocket and threw it away in the first public trash can she found. She had been dealing with her pain on her own terms for 10 years. There was no way she would let a doctor get in her way.

The next session however, Dr. Wong was bringing the subject back on the table. And she was sitting next to a syringe of Ativan, which Emma looked at with dread.

"Emma, I don't like where we left things off last week. I understand you don't wish to talk about your parents but how about we talk about just your memories from France, what you did there, what you liked and so on. I think what happened last week is a good thing you know."

"How so?" Emma replied intrigued.

"Well, first of all, it shows me you do have PTSD and that it might have originated in the car crash. Then, it also shows me we can work on dealing with your pain and maybe having you sleeping without nightmares."

The idea of sleeping through a whole night without a bad dream sounded quite appealing to Emma.

"Also," Dr. Wong added, "if you have a panic attack again, which we can't get under control, do you allow me to use this?" she said raising the syringe.

"Is it Haldol?"

"It's Ativan. It works roughly the same way but it's more appropriate in the case of a panic attack."

"No. we had a deal. No medication unless I don't make any progress. A deal is a deal, you're not using that on me."

Dr. Wong knew Emma was going to bring up their deal to refuse the medication. Out of honesty and thus hoping to gain her patient's trust, she stored the syringe in a drawer of her desk, knowing that if Emma were to be out of control, she would still need use it against her will.

"So, where were we? Ah yes, France! Tell me all about it!"

Emma took a deep breath and began opening up a bit. First it was about what she had classified as "safe memories" to discuss, the ones she could easily pull out when she was asked by other people about her life in France, such as the school, some of the food, the games she used to play… Once she felt a bit more confident, she began talking about some more personal things. That's how Dr. Wong got to know about her passion for the violin, the memories she had of playing it with her mother who was also a great pianist and her father who played the cello. But she refused to dig any further in her memory and face her pain.