“Nada.” Three. Sarah reached up and righted the painting of the harbor hanging over her bed.
“Have you been taking your medication?”
“Absolutely.” Four.
“When did you last eat?”
Hey, this was going pretty damned good. Maybe she should do this over the phone more often. “About two hours ago. This hot guy took me to a cozy restaurant right on the water. It was nice.” Five. Six.
Damn, she was on a roll.
“I’m impressed, Sarah.”
She was, too. “I try, Doc.”
“Now.” Paper rustled as Dr. Ballantine flipped to a new page in her notepad. “Let’s start from the beginning once more. This time I’d like the truth.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. Fooling Ballantine had been wishful thinking. “Shitty. Yes. Yes. No. And I can’t remember.”
“I see.”
Honesty was never the best policy when it came to shrinks.
At least, not for Sarah.
“So, you’re not sleeping. You’re experiencing those same nightmares. You’re having night sweats and headaches. Not taking your medicine. And you haven’t eaten today.”
“I had coffee and wine. Does that count?”
“Sarah.”
She sat up and opened the drawer on the bedside table. A room service menu mocked her. “You know I hate to eat at these places. They could poison me.”
“Paranoid already? You haven’t even been there twenty-four hours. Doesn’t it usually take forty-eight?”
There was nothing worse than a shrink who knew everything about you. “Okay. I’ll eat. Then I’ll take my medicine and go to sleep. I won’t dream or sweat or any of that other stuff. Okay?”
“I wish I could trust you to do exactly that.” Dead air pulsed between them. “Sarah, if you stay on this track you’re headed for trouble. Following my advice is the only way to avoid it. You know this.”
Sarah pulled out the menu and scanned the items available after seven. What else would one eat in Maine? Chowder.
“I’m ordering something right now. You can listen.” Sarah ignored whatever the doc said and placed her cell on the table while she made the call on the room phone. She ordered the chowder and hot tea. A young female voice promised to deliver the order within fifteen minutes. Sarah cradled the receiver and picked up her cell. “You happy now?”
“Sarah.”
Here it came. The talk.
“Have you forgotten what happened last time?”
Sarah scrubbed her free hand over her face. “Of course not.” How could she? She’d spent seven days in a padded room with voices that weren’t hers screaming in her head. Then another seven days under close observation.
“This is the way it starts,” Ballantine scolded gently. “You stop eating and taking your medicine. You stop sleeping and then you become vulnerable to the break.”
The break. That was the official diagnosis. A break in reality. The inability to control one’s thoughts or actions and to discern the real from the imagined.
Not exactly a trip to the islands.
“I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” Sarah promised. “I’ll be fed and fully medicated. I swear.”
