NightTide: The Girl With Red Eyes

The next morning was interesting, no one came in to wake me up… Well it was seven so maybe it wasn’t time yet, there was a change of clothes waiting for me on one of the chairs… I guess someone came in last night, they must’ve been quiet. I grabbed the clothes and took a shower, there was shampoo in there as well… I got out of the shower and got dressed, when I stepped outside of the bathroom there was someone waiting for me. She was sitting in one of the chairs.

She startled me. “OH! H-hi!”

She smiled. “Sorry if I scared you, I’m going to be your therapist.”

Why is she in here. “Are you supposed to barge into people’s rooms?”

She frowned. “I knocked first, you didn’t answer. If someone doesn’t answer in five minutes I’m required to enter the room.” Oh… I looked at the clock, it was eight-thirty. I was in there for a while… “Let’s head to breakfast. We can start talking afterwards.” I ended up following her down, my hair was still wet but it wasn’t bad enough to spread to the shirt.

There were eggs, pancakes, bacon, hash browns, and several other things I hadn’t seen before. I guess everyone can get two plates. After we ate she had me follow her to a room, there was an odd-looking chair and a normal looking one, she asked me to lay down on the odd one.

She had a clipboard she was writing on. “How are you feeling?”

I felt fine at the moment. “Fine, I guess.”

She asked me another question. “I heard you had a breakdown. May I ask what caused it?”

They didn’t tell her? “Um… A guy named Nigel shot Elizabeth.”

She raised her head. “May I ask how you feel about Elizabeth?”

These questions are odd… “I love her.”

She wrote something down. “I see… Is she your girlfriend?”

Girlfriend? “I’m not sure what that means.”

She sighed. “I see, let me rephrase that then, does she love you back?”

That I understood. “Yes.”

She seemed a bit more cheerful. “That’s good to hear.”

She asked me questions for a while… I didn’t really feel much about them until the last one.

She was looking at the clock. “Well, we only have five minutes left… How is your sex life?”

What? “W-What? W-why do you need to know that?!”

She was being serious... “Just some information, our goal is find out what caused the breakdown.”

This made me uncomfortable. “F-fine.”

She wrote something down. Then she stood up. “We’re out of time for today, I’ll see you again tomorrow morning…” I nodded. “Alright, if you want you could check out the recreational area. It might help you relax a little.” I nodded again… I didn’t go there that day, I just wanted to go lay down… I ended up sleeping the rest of the day, I missed Elizabeth and Jessica.

I woke up to someone knocking at the door, I went get up and almost doubled over… I couldn’t see straight.

They opened the door after I fell. “Are you ok in here!” It was that lady again. I tried standing up again. She helped me up. “You have five minutes to open the door. Don’t rush yourself ok…”

I nodded, we went down to breakfast and went through more questions. Some of them were the same, but most were different. After that was done she didn’t have me just go do whatever. She took me somewhere else. When we got there, I saw a chair and that guy, Dr. Shah.

He was smiling, the lady left after I walked in. “Hi Red. I’m sorry to say this may be a bit stressful. It’s suspected you may have a form of PTSD and we want to see if we can find the trigger.” That doesn’t sound encouraging. “Just sit here.” I sat in the chair, he had those white circles. He put several of them on my head and then put a pair of headphones on me, then he went to go look at a screen. “You’re going to hear some noises, we’ll be watching for any reaction related to them. If you get to stressed out just say so.”

Some noises played. I heard dogs, cats, something I didn’t recognize. Eventually it got more intense, it went to gunfire and explosions. I didn’t feel anything but my hands were clenched… Then it played a sound of someone screaming… It sounded like Jessica and Elizabeth! I had to rip the headphones off, I couldn’t stand that sound! I didn’t want to hear it ever again!

My hands were shaking and I was covering my ears. I felt the doctor touch my shoulder. “Hey, it’s ok! Everything is fine!” I looked up at him, I don’t want to do that again. “We got the information we needed. Let’s head back to your room.” We went back to my room… I slept the rest of the day again.

I went through that routine, for about three months. Get up, eat with the therapist, then go to Dr. Shah… As it went on the I was able to get further into the sounds before I couldn’t take it… Once I made through one set of sounds a couple of times, they changed to a different set… none of the other sounds bothered me as much as hearing Jessica and Elizabeth scream… Elizabeth hasn’t come by to see me…

They also told me I have an inferiority complex… I guess it’s the reason I want to be useful so much, they tried helping with that… They said I respond to something called positive reinforcement incredibly well. I started helping Dr. Shah with stuff… He kept saying good job when I did something right, it was nice… The therapist told me all the situations I’ve been useful, I didn’t know I had helped that much…

Eventually they told me I was ready to leave. It was a couple of days before that would be happening, but the therapist didn’t meet me in the mornings now. I had to go eat breakfast on my own now, it was lonely… I still ended up sleeping the rest of the day… Then one morning Jessica and Elizabeth came up to my room… I guess it was time go.