Page 1 of True Sight (Nat. 20, #4)

CONRAD

H appy people are annoying.

The thought comes to me as I sit on an uncomfortable sofa with a pair of dark gray eyes surrounded by circle wire frames staring back at me. There are plenty of other ways I’d like to spend my Thursday afternoons but here I am.

“So, why are you here today?” Hanna asks, sitting cross-legged in an oversized armchair that looks like it was pulled out of a dumpster. The corners of the arms are snagged and the way she sinks into the cushion makes me believe it was once owned by a human three times her size.

My eyes scan her office from where I’m sitting on a navy blue velvet couch.

The space is small, but warm. There’s funky pieces of art hanging on the walls and the matte sea glass paint on the walls reminds me of the ocean.

Or the river. Or both, I guess. My eyes land on her desk and find a personalized name placard that reads ‘Hanna Smith, MD.’ Who in their right mind names their kid ‘Hanna’ with such a basic last name like Smith ?

I guess I have no room to judge seeing as how my parents gave me the whitest name possible.

Flicking my eyes back to the woman sitting in front of me, who looks more like a teenage girl, I take her in.

She has longer-than-shoulder-length ashy blonde hair that’s straight as a pin.

Freckles dot the bridge of her nose and she’s wearing a pair of loose fitting joggers and a T-shirt that looks less than professional for being a psychiatrist. The Apple watch on her wrist is pushed back in such a way that it exposes a tan line that tells me she must wear it daily.

She’s one of those people. In her hand is a clear clipboard and a piece of paper, the pen poised between her fingers at the ready.

When I look at her face again, she’s staring back at me, waiting.

When our eyes meet, she raises a brow at me, indicating my need to answer her question.

“How old are you?” I ask, squinting at her from my seat. She looks like she can’t be more than twenty-four.

“I’m thirty-two,” she replies directly as if she’s gotten this question before.

“Aren’t you a little young to be a ‘doctor’ already?” I flick my chin towards the name placard on her desk.

“I graduated from high school at eighteen. Went to college and graduated at twenty-two. Graduated med school with honors from Columbia at twenty-six and finished my residency last year at MUSC just before my thirty-second birthday.” She sets her pen down, satisfied with the receipts she provided, and smiles smugly at me with her legs still crossed in the chair she is sinking into.

“You look much younger than thirty-two,” I deadpan, hardly blinking at her.

“I have a great skincare routine. Now, are you going to tell me why you’re here or not?” She raises a brow at me again, waiting for me to answer her question.

I run my tongue along the inside of my cheek and rub my fingernails together. Pushing out a heavy breath, I finally relent.

“My friends tell me I need to relax. They tell me that I’m too ornery and that it’s killing my libido.

Well, only Malcolm says that but he’s pretty much addicted to sex so it’s not out of character for him to say things like that.

” I pause and feel the corner of my mouth tip up as I think about my friends.

“They say I can be…unpleasant to be around. Grumpy, even. And…” I pause for a moment, wrapping my lips around my teeth. “I’ve been having nightmares.”

“What kinds of nightmares?”

I tip my head back and try to recall the last one I had.

I’ve had them on and off for years now, but over the last few months they’ve gotten perpetually worse.

Ever since I turned twenty-nine, I’ve had some kind of nightmare that causes me to wake up in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat.

“The kind that keep me up at night,” I say shortly, not wanting to give her more than that. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye but decides to move on.

“What does your family think about you? Do they think you’re unpleasant and grouchy?” she asks, calmly scribbling words down on her paper.

“I don’t have a family.” This gets her to stop writing and look at me. Not a single muscle on her face flinches.

“You don’t have a family?”

“They’re dead. All of them.” The words come out flat because after years of suppressing the feelings around being an orphan, the impact of that truth no longer affects me.

I’m a facts and numbers guy—I don’t do emotions.

And I’m fully aware that this is part of why I don’t have many friends or generally like very many people .

People like emotions. I do not. Therefore, I do not like people.

Hanna writes something down on her paper again. “Can I ask what happened to them?”

“I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

“I think you should let me make that decision. I’m the one with ‘MD’ behind her name, unlike some people,” she quips with a half smirk. Her comment reminds me of my friend Hank’s wife, Bailey. She puts me in my place just as readily as Hanna is now and I try not to be annoyed by it.

“My parents died in a car accident when I was in second grade. Once they were gone, I moved in with my only remaining family member which was my grandmother. She raised me until I was old enough to go to college and died during my first semester away. So like I said, no family.” I say it so casually and Hanna looks back at me without writing anything down.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. That must have been hard, losing so many people you loved at such a young age.”

I shrug nonchalantly. “I guess. I met my three best friends when I moved to Charleston to live with my grandma. They became my family—they still are.”

“You’re close with them?”

“They’re like my brothers. They don’t know it, but they saved me when we were kids.

After I lost my parents, I stopped speaking.

People would ask me how I was or what I wanted, but the truth was, I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what I was feeling and the one thing I wanted I couldn’t have because they were gone.

But when I met my friends, I don’t know, it was like they took me in.

We were all in the same class and just…bonded.

It’s hard to describe.” I huff out a small laugh as memories of our childhood flood my brain.

I’m surprised by how easy it is to share this with her bu t talking about my friends is always easy.

They’re a bunch of idiots, but they’re also the only people I can stand.

“They sound really important to you.”

I look back towards the person who was a stranger on a screen last week when I decided to look up mental health professionals.

After the last few months of tumultuous nightmares and watching my friend, Malcolm, finally get the help he needed, I decided maybe I should do the same.

I scheduled an appointment with Hanna specifically because she was within walking distance of my apartment and because something about her picture calmed me.

I don’t take a liking to many people, but there was something about her that I didn’t immediately hate.

“They’re everything to me. And they’re all finding their people…” my voice trails off.

Over the last two years, all three of my friends have fallen in love and found their match.

What used to only be the four of us is now the seven of us, and I’m the lonely man out.

While I’m happy for my friends and their new found partners, I can’t help but feel behind or like they’re moving forward in life without me.

There is an ever present nagging feeling behind my chest because of it that makes it hard to fall asleep at night.

That they’ll all move on and start families and I’ll once again be alone.

“Are you looking for your own people?” Hanna asks, scrunching her eyebrows at me.

“I don’t like people,” I answer brusquely, causing her to start writing again. “What are you writing down?” I try to lean over to look at her notes but she leans away from me, finishing her sentence.

“Do you always worry about things this much?” Her voice tips up as she asks the question, flipping the clipboard over in her lap so I can’t peek at her notes.

“Who says I’m worried?”

“You question me about my age and want to know what notes I’m taking.

You look around the room almost as if you’re sizing things up, trying to get a handle on it.

You’re sitting up straight on the couch as if someone has affixed a board to your back, telling me you struggle with finding comfort.

” I slump down in my seat, not even realizing my posture.

“Then you talk about your friends in a way that tells me you’re worried about losing them.

That they’re moving on without you and that you’ll be alone.

Kind of like what happened with your parents.

” She says it in one breath and I look at her bewildered.

How in the fuck did she get all of that from our thirty-minute conversation?

I swallow hard and pull my shoulders back.

“I’m not worried, I just like to be in control,” I state, slightly shaking my head at her and keeping my eyes anywhere but on hers. No one, not even my friends, has seen through me as quickly as she has.

“You hate it when people are late and don’t like when things change. You stick to a schedule and like to be with your friends. If they aren’t around, you prefer to be on your own.” She’s not asking, she’s telling. And she’s right about all of it.

“Is that so wrong?” I bristle because the accuracy of her statements is irritating to me.

“I don’t know what you do but I bet it’s something solitary.

I bet you work for yourself or at least from home so you can isolate during the day.

You rarely go out unless your friends take you with them and even then, you’re uncomfortable and would rather be at home.

You don’t date because the idea of putting yourself out there makes you uneasy.

You’re happy with things staying exactly as they are and the thought of anything going off course stresses you out.

” Again, no questions, but no inaccuracies either.

“Are you done?” I say through gritted teeth. I don’t know what I expected when I walked into her office but it definitely wasn’t to be opened up like a filleted fish and have all the inner workings of my brain unpacked in front of me.

“Almost,” Hanna says, tossing the clipboard on the floor of the small, intimate office space, leaning over her knees.

Her eyes pierce straight through me. “You worry because you don’t like change because the last time things changed in your life you lost people who were important to you.

You worry that if things change, you’ll lose control, and if you lose that, bad things will happen.

But Conrad, I need you to know, that’s not true.

” She shakes her head at me gently and I stare back at her, unblinking.

“You’ve suffered a great loss and more than likely have an immense amount of trauma you need to work through.

You seem like the kind of person who likes to have all the facts in front of you, so I hope I didn’t upset you by putting it all out there like that.

My reason for being so honest is so you can take what I said and think on it before our next session together.

I want to hear about the nightmares and I would love to hear more about your friends but I need you to know this first— nothing bad is going to happen if things change.

Change is an inevitable part of life and learning how to deal with change in a healthy way is important.

I hope you’ll come back next week so I can help you learn how to deal with the changes you’re experiencing in your life right now. ”

She leans back in her chair and gives me a soft smile.

I blink a few times and let everything she just said sink in.

Maybe I am worried because of how things are changing within our group.

The guys and I have been tight since we were eight years old but the last two years have proven that we can’t stay like that forever.

They’ve all found people to spend their lives with, and I can either be okay with that or let the stress of it kill me.

The nightmares only seem to be getting worse and there’s a tension in my neck that won’t go away.

Surely I’m not doing myself any favors by trying to keep things the way they’ve always been.

There’s a heat between the pad of my finger and the fingernail I’m obsessively rubbing.

“Does the same time next week work for you?” I ask, pressing my lips together and looking towards the floor. When I lift my eyes, she’s staring back at me with a hopeful expression.

“It sure does,” she confirms, ripping a piece of paper from a notepad and handing it to me.

“What’s this?” I ask, looking down at the paper.

“It’s your prescription. I’m putting you on a low dose of Lexapro for the time being.

I want you to get it filled today and start taking it immediately.

It will take a few weeks to take effect but I want you to track how you feel after you start taking it.

I suggest a journal or a note on your phone.

Also track your nightmares going forward so we can discuss them together.

If you feel any weird side effects, call me and we can adjust it. ”

A prescription. Great.

Now I’m grumpy and crazy.