30

Penny's first session with Melanie Anderson the next and they touched on a lot of things; life for Penny back home in Nebraska, Kurt, other men, the guys, though they seemed to talk more about Sheldon than Leonard. They talked about Penny's recent rededication to her craft and how it fell away after the Serial Apeist failure. They talked about Penny's feelings for Leonard and what he said their life would be like. Penny had no idea how she felt about herself. She could only repeat what her friends had said about her, much of which wasn't very nice.

Melanie concluded fairly quickly that Penny was clinically depressed but functional, prescribed weekly visits and suggested that Penny start taking anti-depressants.

"Melanie, I've never been a big fan of drugs."

"Penny, if you had a headache you'd take an aspirin, right?"

"Yeah."

"It's the same deal. You're depressed. Depression is a disease. There are drugs to help you with that, to help put you in a better position to deal with things. It may not be forever, but for now you need something to help you out of the pit you're in. Now, it's probably going to take a little while until you really feel a difference. If you really want to give the medication a chance, you should probably stop drinking alcohol."

"Completely?"

"For now, yes. Will that be a problem?"

"I don't think so, but maybe."

"Penny, how much do you drink?"

"I don't know, a couple, three glasses of wine a day."

"And you never thought that was part of your problem?"

"Not until lately. It's not like I'm an alcoholic."

"Labeling things is tough. But I think maybe you could have a drinking problem. Does your fiancée, Leonard right, does Leonard drink with you?"

"Pretty much. The first thing he does when he gets home is pour us some wine. He always has."

"Maybe that needs to stop."

"Might not be so easy."

"Penny, you are about to start taking medication that I absolutely believe you need to be taking. For that medication to work best you have to stop drinking."

"Okay?"

"If Leonard is unwilling to go along with that then maybe you need to consider that he might not have your best interests at heart."

"But Leonard loves me. He has for a very long time."

"If he really loves you he'll stop enabling your drinking. You should talk to him about that. And maybe you should consider a program like AA."

"I'm not an alcoholic," Penny responded sternly.

"Try not drinking for a few days. If everything is fine we don't need to talk about it again. Okay."

"Okay."

When he got home that night Leonard immediately pulled out a bottle of wine.

"I'm not having any, Leonard. I'm taking some medication and I can't drink while I'm taking it."

"What's wrong?" Leonard accompanied the question with a cocked eyebrow and a caring smile.

Penny wasn't really in the mood for a fight or much of anything else.

"I, um, have a little infection."

"So we can't…"

"Not for a few days, no."

Penny felt a little uncomfortable lying to Leonard, but she just wasn't ready to have the discussion she knew they needed to have.