The Tegan Chronicles
Intuition and Lies 31
Half an hour into their eighteenth visit, Monday of week six, Tilly spoke from the stuffed chair she was sitting in. "So, how does it feel?"
Tegan raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"You're arm. How does it feel?"
"Like an arm."
"Do you feel phantom pain?"
"I –" Tegan wrinkled her brow.
"You can be honest with me."
"You're just trying to get me to open up."
"No." Tilly shook her head. "I'm curious from a medical standpoint. You're my first amputee."
"Gee, now I feel special." She didn't hide the sarcasm. She pushed her sleeve up until she could get her thumb in the release reader. She carefully laid the prosthetic arm beside her as if it were made of delicate mouth blown glass. "I really don't know how to answer that."
Tilly sat there quietly waiting for her to continue.
Tegan took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She shook her head and opened her eyes again, this time looking at Tilly. Tegan thought back to when she first met Tilly, how she hadn't let Jack walk on her. She'd seen a strength in her, not unlike her own; but now as she looked at her she saw something in her eyes she hadn't seen before. Something deeper than empathy. It wasn't her usual mask, there was truth in her expression. Truth and want. She really did want to help Tegan through this.
"I..." Tegan started to speak. She didn't want this. She didn't want to sit in this stupid little room, with the fake plants in the corner, for an hour three times a week. She didn't want to stare at that orchid on the coffee table for another minute. Mostly she didn't want to look at that expression on Tilly's face for one more second.
Tilly waited patiently for Tegan to continue. She watched the strange greens shift their intensity in her eyes. With a little over twenty minutes of this session left, she might actually break through the surface. As soon as the thought fired in her synapses she saw it, a blink and Tegan's focus went back to the purple orchid.
"Well," Tilly cleared her throat. "That's it for today. Think about my question and we can talk about it Wednesday."
Wednesday morning Nash, her occupational therapist was in a foul mood. He'd asked her to open a sealed cereal box and she did. She took the box placed it between her thighs and opened it with her right hand.
"You see that guy over there?" Nash pointed to a guy in a wheelchair missing one arm and the other badly disfigured. "He'd give anything in the world to be in your shoes. But he comes here three times a week, never complains, and he works really hard to do anything we ask him to do."
"Have you ever heard me complain?"
"No." Nash shifted his weight. "In fact that's the first damn thing you've said since you've been coming to see me."
"Don't forget who you are addressing, Lieutenant." It was rare for Tegan to pull rank, but she did so calmly.
"Yes ma'am." He muttered.
"How long ago did that Chief Sergeant sustain his injuries?"
"Seven months." Nash swallowed hard, he knew what she was trying to get at.
"I did exactly what you asked me to do. I've never complained once, and unless you let me..." She chose her words carefully, since the true nature of her injuries was classified; "rip your arm off, you have no idea how much pain I or any of your other patients is in."
"Dr. Fraiser tells me you aren't taking your pain meds."
"So that means I'm not in pain?"
"No ma'am, it just means you're crazy." He tried to smile. "Think you can try it again, this time using your prosthetic?"
Tegan took the sealed box from him and pulled on the flaps. A rip tore through the air as the cardboard gave way and the box tore down the side.
"I think we need to cut back on the spinach Popeye."
Tegan just glared in response.
That afternoon Tilly started where they'd left off, before the silence. Tegan took the chair today and Tilly sat on the couch in her blue uniform with her stockinged legs crossed. "So, phantom pain?"
Tegan looked out the window at the blue cloudless sky, she wanted to go back to that peaceful place she'd been in. The cloudless azure sky, the all too perfect scene, she wanted to see Shadow and her Grandmother again. She didn't want to sit here and play this game anymore. She didn't want to participate in this trite dance, no matter how important everyone else thought it was.
Tilly let ten minutes pass before changing her approach entirely. "I understand SG1 has resumed their mission status."
Had this been news to Tegan she might have been pissed to hear it from Tilly. But Tilly also knew Tegan wasn't the type to react, she played everything so close to the chest.
"How does that make you feel?"
Tegan smirked. "How does it make you feel? That's so cliché. I mean you couldn't come up with a better question? The great Dr. Tilly Tillman stumps patient with traditional psychological question."
"Why do you hate me so much?"
"I don't hate you." Tegan tore her eyes from the window only to lock onto the pale blue orbs belonging to Tilly. She felt guilty, almost. "I think this is stupid. We've wasted close to seventeen and a half hours in this office."
"You wasted, there's no we. I'm doing my job."
"Yup." Tegan leaned forward and ran her index finger along the hard stem of the orchid. She was quiet for a minute before she spoke again. "It's the only living thing in this room."
"Care to elaborate?"
She hadn't meant to say it out loud. "Plant, only living plant."
"Back peddling." Tilly pursed her lips and nodded before scribbling something on the loose leaf paper she had sitting on top of Tegan's folder.
Tegan could imagine what she was writing, something about being suicidal or wishing she wasn't alive. Maybe even that she was numb. She wished she was numb. Numb to the emotional pain, numb to the physical pain. "They can't wait for me to come back to work. No one even knows if I will."
"Do you want to go back to work?"
Tegan sat back in the chair leaving the orchid in peace. She really wanted to crush the miniature bloom in her hand until it was a shriveled mess. She didn't know where the thought had come from, only that more and more often she was finding herself suppressing feelings of destruction.
"It's a simple yes or no question." Tilly probed.
That was it. That was all the insight Tilly was going to get from Tegan for the day. Maybe even for the week. It was a start, even if it was cryptic.