"Drum Fills in Our Hearts"
Chapter 2: A Wednesday with Dr. White
The two hour Wednesday drive to Columbus was just another part of Quinn's life. She'd been seeing Dr. White for almost all of her life and she couldn't afford to look for a new doctor in Lima. Technically, they'd known each other since Quinn's birth, when her genital abnormality was first discovered in an ultrasound. While a medical doctor, Dr. White served just as much as a therapist as he did diagnosing and prescribing her ailments.
"Quinn, it's good to see you." Dr. White greeted Quinn at the door promptly at 5pm, like always. He'd made a special appointment time for her following her move to Lima.
"Hi, Dr. White." If Quinn was honest with herself, Dr. White was the person she most trusted and looked up to. He was the only person that Quinn had ever truly talked to about her life. She'd never had real friends in Columbus and since moving to Lima, only her newfound friendship with Rachel and Puck was promising.
"So, what's new in the life of Quinn Fabray?" He offered her a warm smile as they took their seats - Dr. White in an armchair and Quinn on the couch.
"Nothing."
"Oh, Quinn. It always starts the same, doesn't it? Nothing's new, huh? I'll pull it out of ya." He teased her like a father to his teenage kid.
"Ok ok, Doc. Things are ok. There's some good stuff and some bad stuff, I guess."
"How about we start with the bad? That way, we can end with the good. We'll both be feeling good by the time we're ready to go home." Quinn had to admit, Dr. White had a way of making her feel good about herself. No matter what they talked in the course of an hour, she always turned the music up in her truck on the way home and drummed along on the steering wheel.
"The bad. Ok. I passed out again." Her eyes sought the floor.
Dr. White's right eyebrow raised and his mouth opened a little. "Hmm. I thought we were over that in Columbus. Just once in the past week?"
"Well...just once, but I felt woozy another time, too. Like, I was almost ready to pass out, but I came back from the brink somehow."
"Once for sure and almost a second time. Hmmm, ok. We have to fix this. You and I both know that feeling this way is not ok. So our strategies in Columbus were to avoid the bullies and keep the heart rate low, right?"
In Columbus they'd been through this before. She'd always been a wallflower and in adolescence that went unappreciated, especially at Benjamin Franklin High School in central Columbus. The mean girls had teased her mercilessly. In ninth grade, she never changed for gym and heard whispers of "loser" and "freak." Those same girls ensured in tenth and eleventh grade that Quinn never had a place to sit in the lunchroom and never had a lab partner in science class. As soon as she'd started in ninth grade, Quinn repeatedly passed out after soccer practices and games. Even her teammates alienated her, figuring it was a stunt for attention that had just gotten old. On the bus at away games, she always sat in the front seat alone behind the bus driver, making shy eye contact with her teammates in the bus driver's rearview mirror. By eleventh grade, she all but gave up on believing she'd ever have friends or a future in Columbus.
"There aren't any bullies," she started, "yet." Being a transfer and a senior probably helped with that. Most people at McKinley just left her alone and acted like she wasn't even there. She usually ate her lunch outside the cafeteria, on a bench, despite the cold winter weather.
"You don't know how happy that makes me Quinn." Dr. White offered her a genuine smile. "So, no bullies. Heart rate?"
"I guess the times that it's happened I've been pretty amped up." Quinn looked beyond him, remembering those two moments.
"Tell me about those times."
"Ok. Well. I met this girl, Rachel." Quinn flashed a glance at the doctor after saying her name. His eyebrow raised again.
"Tell me about Rachel."
"No. No. No. It's not like that. C'mon Dr. White, you know it's never like that." Quinn felt her emotions charge. At times, Dr. White had tried to get Quinn to talk about her romantic life and try to gauge how much the medicine affected her libido. Given Quinn's refusal to talk about it, he figured the medicine had completely dimished any physical or sexual attractions she may have had as a typical teen.
"I said nothing. Tell me about Rachel."
"She goes to McKinley and she's a singer. Also a senior. I think she's a little nerdy, she's always making announcements on the intercom about this club and that club after school. So anyway, she saw me at this music store in Lima, and she introduced herself. She said that she was looking for a drummer to help her out with an audition she had for college. So, I volunteered to help her."
"Despite being 'nerdy,' she sounds like a good person." He made air quotes when quoting Quinn. "That takes a lot of guts to approach someone you don't know and ask for their help, and then ask that stranger to help you out with a meaningful part of your life. Sounds like she's a trustworthy person. ."
"Yeah, I guess." Dr. White chuckled a little at Quinn's assessment. "Well anyway, I went to her house to practice and I guess I got kinda nervous about some stuff. Next thing I knew, I was up in her bed and she was holding a glass of water to my lips."
"You said that you were nervous about some stuff. What do you think you were nervous about?"
"I think there were a few things. I mean, first, there were a bunch of people at the practice. I think seven, which was just kind of overwhelming. I didn't know any of them. Then, she wanted me to play right away and I'd barely had a chance to look at the music. I mean, for a drummer, you have to study the sheet music first, or at least hear the song a few times to get it. At least, I do. And I had almost no time to look at the music and I'd definitely never heard the song before."
"What song?" Dr. White interjected with a grin.
"Uh, something from Barbra Streisand. 'Funny Lady'?"
Dr. White nodded, "'Funny Girl' is a Streisand movie. It must have been a song from the movie. Sorry, go on."
"So I just got freaked out by it all. I wanted to be so good for Rachel. It was her audition for college and I guess I panicked. Next thing, I was in her bed." Quinn swallowed hard, feeling a little ashamed.
"I can see how you'd feel that way." Dr. White was always so good at making Quinn feel right in her own body. "Tell me about the next time."
"Well, this time was at the audition itself. I didn't pass out, but just before we started playing, when the lights were on me and Rachel was kind of nervously looking in my direction, I started feeling woozy."
"What do you think brought it on that time?"
"Nerves again, I guess. And there was so much pressure to be good for Rachel. If I messed up, she might not get into college. I couldn't let that happen. I know we don't know each other well, but I guess it was just how I was feeling."
Dr. White thought about it for a while. Quinn had learned from him how to let silence just sit. She thought back on the audition and how she came back from the brink of passing out.
"I'm glad that you care enough about this new friend Rachel to offer your talents to her. At the same time, I'm concerned about the uptick in these incidences again. Passing out is very dangerous and you need to avoid those situations. What do you think?"
"It's not that dangerous, really though, Dr. White. She just took me up to her bed and I probably woke up like less than an hour later."
"It wasn't that dangerous this time, Quinn. It was certainly dangerous when you passed out in the shower a few years ago. And it was certainly dangerous when you almost passed out driving your mother's car. This isn't something to take lightly." Considering that Quinn barely talked to her mother, she rarely heard such strong words from an adult.
"Let's talk out some of your potential solutions."
Quinn nodded silently, still a little ashamed that she'd taken her own health for granted in front of the one person who seemed to care.
"First, there's avoiding these types of situations. On both occasions, it's been about performances. We could try going back to just practicing, without the performance piece."
"No, Dr. White. I can't do that. Drumming is the one thing that's kept me going and we're gonna start a band - that was my good news, my only good news. I can't give it up when I feel like I'm doing the one thing that I've been wanting to do for so long."
He gave an understanding nod. "I'm glad that you've found a group of friends to help make that a reality, Quinn. So, then, let's look at our other option. The other option is to play with the dosage of the medicine some. We could scale back or take you off of it and see if that allows your conflicting hormones to right themselves. I think those conflicting hormones are what's overwhelming your system and causing your body to shut down."
Quinn's heart pounded at the thought of changing the dosage she'd been on for the past five years. Though she'd had plenty of these "conflicting hormone" issues that Dr. White mentioned, she hadn't had to deal with her abnormal anatomy since she was 13. She'd never had another erection, not even a tingling. It was like it was numb. And it was tucked away and out of sight everywhere except in her own bathroom. Even when she was naked and in the shower, she never looked down at it and closed her eyes when she had to wash it. Even rubbing over it with a washcloth, she felt no stimulation. She feared a change in dosage because it might mean having to deal with the one thing she'd been avoiding most of her life.
It hadn't always been like this. When she was very young, she didn't know to be ashamed of herself. She still held flashes of her early childhood, playing with her "little doodle," as her mom called it. She'd run around the house naked and her mom would laugh. Although her father had left at that point, he hadn't completely skipped out of town. When he'd finally disappeared, her mother's demeanor changed. "Quinn, you are never to appear naked in this house again. It's not right, it's not natural, and I won't ask you again." That was on her fourth birthday. Even that long ago, Quinn still remembers the exact words.
That tone never left her mother's voice after her father left. Quinn never approached her mother with conversation. When her mother decided to speak with her, that tone reappeared. Their conversations revolved around the mundane: dinner time, chores, and occasionally whether Quinn had completed her homework.
"I can't do that," she told Dr. White. "We can't change the dosage."
"Do you have another solution I haven't thought of?" Dr. White always gave Quinn a chance to draw her own conclusions and solve her own problems. She imagined that this was what a good father might do.
"I can't go off the medicine, Dr. White, I just..." she felt desperation slip into her voice.
"We don't have to take you off of it, Quinn. It'll be ok. Let's try to come up with some other idea. Together. Ok?" He came from behind his desk and sat on the couch next to Quinn.
"Yeah, ok."
"Who is in this new band with you?" Quinn looked at Dr. White, sitting next to her. He'd shed his doctor's coat when she walked in. Now, he just seemed like the cool uncle who always gave good advice.
"Well, it's me, Rachel, and this guy named Puck."
"Tell me about Puck." Quinn looked up at Dr. White, trying to get a read on whether he thought Puck was a romantic interest like he did Rachel.
"He's kind of this punk guy, I guess. I mean, he's got a mohawk. He looks a little old for high school. I'm not sure exactly how he and Rachel know each other, but they're friends I guess. I really haven't had a chance to talk to him much, yet."
"So it'll just be you three? Three people you know?"
"Yeah."
"Ok, so maybe we don't have to do a lot of anything. You said that your nerves hit in a large group and in performances. I'm guessing you guys aren't going to jump into any stadium-sellout tours, so just practice with your band and have fun for now. No stadium sell-outs before next Wednesday, right?"
Quinn chuckled. "Yeah, no stadium-sellouts. Probably ever, Doc, let's be honest."
His face turned serious as he looked in her eyes. "Eh, don't count yourself out, Quinn. You've got a lot of talent and a big heart. You're going places. I've always known it."
Quinn could only nod in return.
"So this week: no performances, but let's try these band practices out and keep our fingers crossed. We won't touch the dosage." Quinn noticed that Dr. White didn't make eye contact on the last line.
"Sure, Dr. White. Thanks."
"I'll see you next week, Quinn. Have a safe drive home and a good week."
"Thanks. See ya."